A/N: Well, I'm trying my hand at a crossover! I've been reading so many of these Harry Potter/Marvel crossovers and I have to say I'm pretty obsessed.

Please remember that this story is not epilogue compliant for Harry Potter, and I've taken some liberties with MCU storylines. Notably, I've moved the Harry Potter storyline up a few years chronologically (Final Battle happening in June 2003 instead of 1997) so that it lines up more with the MCU. Also, this story is meant to take the place of Iron Man 3 - so while everything up to the Battle of New York happened as movie canon (other than Tony/Pepper), everything after the battle is not necessarily canon compliant.

I would also like to note at the top of this story that I do NOT agree with or condone JK Rowling's transphobia/TERF views. As a cis queer woman, I have found it difficult to reconcile these beliefs with a story that I was basically raised on. Therefore, I refuse to engage with anything that would give her any type of money, but as she earns nothing from my fanfiction writing, I'm gonna keep playing with characters that were by best friends when I was growing up in the safety of fanfics.

Cross posted to AO3 under the username HelloMyFriends1, where all the juicy stuff will be included.

Without further ado, let's get to it! I hope you enjoy :)

It had been years since the war had ended, nine in fact. If one had asked Hermione Jean Granger nine years ago what she would have been doing following the war, she would have spoken at length of her plans for reform, for rebuilding the world – perhaps she would have settled in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement alongside Harry and Ron, or found herself campaigning for creature rights in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, maybe she would have founded a charity to support war orphans… The only thing Hermione would not have said, is where she truly ended up: living in New York City as a Muggle.

Hermione had learned the hard way that British wizarding society, despite the pain of war, was truly incapable of changing. For two long years, she had put all of her energy into rebuilding Hogwarts, pushing for reform in the Ministry, trying to make her world a better place. However, despite her best efforts, there were always those who were determined to remind Hermione that it was not her world, that despite putting her life on the line for what was right, she was still – and always would be – an outsider, a Mudblood.

The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was her breakup with Ron. Their relationship had always been rocky – if Hermione were to speak candidly, she had never believed it would last forever. While a part of her had pictured children with a mass of frothy fire-coloured curls and Ron's face creased from years of smiling, she had always considered that to be a pleasant fantasy but an unlikely reality. All too soon, their relationship had devolved from passionate to angry. And truthfully their breakup, all things considered, had been amicable, mutual. What had decidedly not been amicable was the way she was lambasted in the press following the breakup.

Wizarding publications from The Daily Prophet to Witch Weekly speculated wildly as to the cause of their separation, seemingly unable to accept the idea that the spark had fizzled and the relationship run its course as the two grew from war-scarred teens into young adults. The papers' plastered her visage on the front page (including a truly awful photo the Prophet had held onto from her fourth year at Hogwarts) under salacious headlines that accused her of leaving Ron for Harry, general "whorish" behaviour, and even that Ron had left her as she had her sights set on becoming the next Dark Lord… er, Dark Lady? It was all preposterous of course. The hounding press grew to be so bad that she could not even visit a coffee shop in Muggle London without being followed or even accosted by press and paparazzi.

So, she left.

Maybe she should have stuck it out, kept fighting the good fight. But two years after the defeat of Voldemort, Hermione Jean Granger was so tired of fighting. It felt like she had been fighting all of her life – certainly since she'd been eleven, a child. She didn't want to fight anymore.

She left Britain three days before her 20th birthday after a hasty goodbye to Harry and the Weasleys. For a year she'd travelled the world picking up odd jobs here and there before moving on. She'd spent time in Madrid and Venice, Valletta and Marrakesh, Seoul and Calcutta, before making her way into Canada. After a stint in Victoria, she'd settled in Toronto for a few months. That's where she had decided to pursue a Muggle university degree. She'd applied to schools across Canada and the United States (with a falsified high school diploma as her education at Hogwarts was meaningless to Harvard and McGill). She settled on Columbia and moved into a tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn, unable to fathom living in dorms with teenagers who had no hope of understanding her and with no privacy to break out her wand sometimes.

After completing her degree in sociology, Hermione had been ready, eager even, to throw herself back into trying to make the world a better place. She'd contemplated returning to England, but despite Harry's insistence that it was "home", it just didn't feel like that to her anymore.

Hermione ultimately wound up taking a job with MACUSA, working in the Wizarding Resources Department. While in the department, her proficiency in dealing with the "strange" cases quickly saw her promoted out of the department to take a place on the coveted field ops team in the Major Investigation Department. Her research skills were unparalleled, her comfort in both Magical and Muggle spaces was an asset, her combat experience, and her quick and powerful spellcasting made her uniquely qualified for this role despite her young age.

And so, nine years after the Great Blood War in her home country, Hermione Jean Granger had become an indispensable asset to the Magical Congress of the United States of America.

H – H – H

February 4, 2013

The incessant vibrating of her wand woke her up as always. She rolled over in bed to grab it and shut the damn alarm off, despising the early hour. Hermione clambered out of bed, stretched, and fumbled in the dark towards her bathroom, intent on relieving the pressure in her bladder. Hitting the light switch as she stumbled into the small ensuite, she blinked away the bright light. She turned the shower on to warm up and then used the toilet quickly before jumping under the mercifully hot spray.

As the water ran through her hair and down her back, Hermione struggled to keep her eyes open. She rushed through the motions as quickly as possible, pleading with herself to stay awake and to stay on task. On cold mornings like this one, there was something so seductive about the warm spray – it pulled her in with no room for escape… or maybe she was being a little melodramatic. Either way, as she pulled the wide toothed comb through her conditioner saturated curls, she wanted nothing more than to sit down and let the water run over her forever.

When Hermione finally exited the shower, towel wrapped snuggly under her arms, she felt marginally more awake but desperately in need of a cup of tea. Opening her bedroom door and spying the kettle just down the hall in the kitchen, she set it to boil with her wand before moving to the small vanity in her bedroom.

The vanity had been an impulse buy, and she truthfully did not have room for it in her tiny one-bedroom apartment but there was something so undeniably luxurious about sitting down at a proper vanity to tame one's hair in the morning. Plus, it was a gorgeous (if slightly run down) piece she'd acquired at a steal from a small charity shop down the street.

Over the years, she'd somewhat perfected a routine to care for her wild mane of curls. While her hair undoubtedly still had a mind of its own, she was able to coax it into less of a frizzy mess… most days. She massaged the products into her hair with practiced motions before applying simple makeup and casting spells to make sure it held up and blended well with her skin. Leaving her hair to air dry, she quickly grabbed clothes from her wardrobe, throwing them on before making her way to her kitchen, sensible heels and her cellphone in hand.

Thankfully, the kettle was just reaching boiling point, so she quickly set out her favourite mug with a tea bag, pouring the water. As her tea steeped, Hermione made up a quick bowl of cereal. While she had always despised Ron's obnoxious way of eating, the speed at which she devoured her bowl of cereal would have put any Weasley to shame – though she did at least manage to chew with her mouth closed. As she added sugar and a splash of milk to her Earl Grey, Hermione took a deep breath before reviewing her agenda for the day in her work issued smartphone.

While magical society in Britain was slow to adapt to Muggle technology, American wizards had no such hesitance. They had established complex spells and wards to allow magical folks to safely use Muggle conveniences without fear of them blowing up due to errant magic. She answered a few emails and flipped through Facebook as she drank her tea before she packed her bag for the day. She slipped her heels and her phone in her bag before bundling up to brave the snow.

On days like today, she wished that American magical society had embraced the Floo network – traveling through fire without ever setting foot outside seemed incredibly appealing in New York's cold winter. Slipping into an alley not far from her apartment building and double checking that she her Apparition spot was still hidden from the view of the many cameras that peppered New York City, she turned on the spot, vanishing from Brooklyn and appearing in a few blocks down from MACUSA in the Woolworth Building's designated Apparition Zone.

As she walked towards the building, she began to notice the flurry of energy that seemed to surround the building, with far more people coming and going that usual. She dismissed it though – perhaps there was some major law to be debated today that she'd forgotten about. Crowds of magical citizens as well as the press often fell on the Woolworth Building when there was some bill of note being debated or passed by MACUSA. The last time she'd seen this many people swarming the building had been when they passed a law to prohibit drinking and flying. (And really, how was this legal until late 2012?)

The second she stepped foot in the building, Hermione realized how wrong her assumption had been – the energy, the emotions in the air, it was all wrong. There was a sense of panic and fear in the air. The energy fed into her as she rushed to the lifts and to her office.

Something was very wrong.