Xx H.G. P.O.V. xX
"Hermione, I have the door, go keep an eye on the tea." Helen called out then turned to look at her and whispered, "Keep him off kilter by him not seeing you right away." With that she winked and walked to the door as Hermione walked back into the kitchen.
Hermione could hear the door open. "Hello Mr. Stark, Nice to see you again although it should have been years ago." Not giving him time to reply she turned to Pepper "You must be his assistant, or are you his lawyer? It would not be the first time he sent a lawyer to me. Anyways come on in, we are in the Family room ironically. Would either of you like tea or coffee?"
Helen had a whole lot of bite in her words, leaving Tony speechless while Pepper stepped up to answer her. Putting her hand out to shake hands with Helen.
"Mrs. Granger, my name is Pepper Potts. I am actually the current CEO to Stark industries. I do believe we have a lot to talk about. A lot of wrongs that need to be made right, and I would love some tea. I am sure Tony here would like a coffee if you could."
Helen liked that Pepper had some steel to her and so she shook her hand and lead them to the Family room.
"Hermione dear, we need 1 coffee and 3 teas."
God, Mum is brutal! That is where I get that trait from. Hermione just smiled and got working on the refreshment tray. When she had all the drinks ready and some biscuits on the tray, she headed out to the family room. Poor Tony was sitting there looking like a fish with his mouth open when he saw her. Hermione just smiled and set his coffee in front of him. Handing Tea out to everyone else after asking how they dressed it.
"Good morning, I am Hermione. No need to tell me who you guys are. It is a pleasure to meet you Miss. Potts, Mr. Stark." Hermione said trying to play up the nervous kid card while showing she was smart enough to know who she was meeting.
Again, it was Pepper to respond, Tony still awe struck was just staring at her. Although he had finally shut his mouth.
"It's lovely to meet you Hermione, as you said I am Pepper. We are here to talk to you and your mother about your trust fund that Mr. Stain as well as other things that Mr. Stain did that need to be brought to light."
Pepper looked at Helen like she wanted to ask if it was ok for Hermione to be here for this part. Helen seemed to know what she wanted to ask and just nodded.
"Well as Tony seems to be to dumb struck to say anything, I should tell you. Tony had NO idea that he had a daughter. It seems that Mr. Stain had kept Hemione hidden from us and forged paperwork saying that Tony wanted nothing to do with her. After what Mr. Stain pulled in trying to kill Tony last year we discovered a file on his personal server that had Information on Hermione, we noticed that he had been funding her and thought that he was just sponsoring a rising Genius in hopes for her to work for the company when done with schooling. It was not until we got deeper in the file that we found the DNA test that he had you preform when she was born. Tony had J.A.R.V.I.S. restart her trust fund right away and started correspondence with you to set things right."
Tony just sat next to Pepper nodding his head still staring at Hermione trying to find all the similarities between him and her.
Helen seemed dumb struck at the fact that Tony did not know. She had thought that he did and just did not want anything to do with his daughter. To everyone's surprise Hermione was the next to talk.
"I appreciate that you have come to make things right, but you only need to make them right to my mum, I have known that you did not know about it. I think I was 6 or 7 when I hacked Obie's computer. I saw all the files. That being said me, and Mr. Stark are going to need to have a long talk after you are all done talking to mum." Hermione stood up and looked at her mom. "sorry mum, I will explain it all to you better after you come home from work as you are due to leave the house in about 15 minutes if your going to be on time at the clinic and that is just not enough time to go over everything."
Hermione turned around to face Pepper and Tony both looked a bit shocked.
"I am sorry, I could not keep up that cute little shy kid façade. I know you know that I am smart I have seen the files that Obie had on me. All my test scores and everything. That being said I will be back in about 10 minutes to relieve mum so she can go, and we can have that talk that I really need to have with you."
With that Hermione walked out of the room, bussing her teacup into the kitchen and walking to her room to check and make sure that LAIL had everything ready.
"LAIL, have you gotten ahold of Professor cat?"
"Yes my lady, the number she left seems to be connected to a phone in what they refer to as 'the Ministry' they were able to get ahold of her for you, she will be back tomorrow at 2 pm if we can have Mr. Stark come back then."
Hermione looked at the clock she had 5 minutes left so she ran to use the bathroom before going back downstairs. Figuring that when they started actually talking that she would not have time.
Walking back into the Family room Helen seems to have gotten most of her questions out and was getting ready to stand up.
"Alright mum, time for you to get to the clinic. Don't want you to be late now do we." Hermione turned to Tony and Pepper "We will be right back, feel free to talk amongst yourselves."
Hermione walked her mom to the door handing her the car keys, her purse, and her cell phone. "mum we WILL talk more when you get home, but I really need to get things straight before we do as me and LAIL have been helping him more then he knows. So, I love you, but you got to go." With that Hermione kissed her mom on the cheek and lightly pushed her to the door.
Helen just shook her head and closed the door behind her. When the lock clicked Hermione turned around and went back to the family room to see Pepper and Tony whispering to each other.
Hermione flopped into the chair that she was sitting in earlier. "Well now that she is gone, I can stop with ALL the kid stuff. So here is the deal. I have known about you not knowing for a long time and on top of that I was actively trying to mess with Obie's plans. I want to stress that I had no idea that he was going to have you killed but up tell than he had all sorts of shady dealings."
Hermione stopped talking for a few seconds to make sure they were keeping up with what she was saying. They both looked a bit shocked but seemed to understand what she was saying.
"So, as I had no idea what he was planning my plan was to collect enough evidence on him to get him put away for life. If you, Tony; I Can call you Tony, right? Don't know why I even asked as I have been calling you that for years. Anyways If you look in the couch on the right side of your cushion you will find a folder. That is all that me and LAIL have found on Obie before he had his "accident"."
Tony pulled out the folder and started pulling out shipping manifests, information on offshore bank accounts and inventory for money laundering operations. It was more than J.A.R.V.I.S. had been able to link to him. Tony looked up at Hermione. Now he knew what she had in common with him.
"How did you find all this? No offence kiddo but you are like 11 or 12, I have a supercomputer and I am a genius and I still do not have all of this information. I know you are a genius too, but this is a lot for someone your age to understand let alone to know that it was illegal."
Hermione just shook her head. She was going to blow his mind.
"If you think this is a lot you are going to lose you head by the time I am done. first off, I am a genius. Second who said I don't have my own A.I. you are not the only one to think of that. And third Obie had me working on projects that he said you scraped because it was 'not possible' to do. By the way I fixed the flux in your amp reduction program in the Stark defibrillator and I made a version of the stark phone that is impervious to a EMP. So as to say Obie basically groomed me to be you with less ego so he could hopefully control me. He actually tried to turn me against you. Saying that you did not care about me and that the only way to make you see your mistake was to be better than you in every way. I was on track to do just that, but not for his reason. I just wanted to be the best and as you are the standard it worked out."
Tony leaned forward. Running his hands through his hair.
"ok, there is a lot to unpack in that last bit. So, First, you don't hate me?"
Tony's eyes looking at her like she held his heart in her hands. Hermione just smiled and shook her head.
"No, I don't. I actually idolized you."
Tony's eyes lit up and Pepper looked like she was starting to cry in happiness.
"Now that I know that you don't hate my guts time to get to the shop part of that last little bit. You fixed some of my tech and you have a A.I. like my J.A.R.V.I.S.?"
"Yes, I fix your tech. I have not published anything that could have hurt you, but I did have to give Obie something if I wanted to keep on his good side. His bad side equaled less funding and I have plans. The plans I have include my A.I. and yes it was designed based off of J.A.R.V.I.S. but with some upgrades. If you want to see her, I will show you."
Tony set his coffee down. "Show me!"
A/N: this was the end of a chapter, but I could not stop writing so here is a double length chapter! 😊
Xx Still H.G. xX
They all stood and followed Hermione to her bedroom where she had set up 2 extra chairs. Hermione waved her hand for them to have a seat. Tony was looking around the room looking for some high tech A.I. core and all he saw was just a normal pc town.
"so, where is this A.I. of yours Hermione, I want to see what you got."
With a smile Hermione pointed to the monitor that turned itself on.
"Good morning Mr. Stark, Miss. Potts. My lady has been impatiently waiting to meet you for a long time now. My lady had named me LAIL and it is a pleasure to finally have you here. Also, my lady I have an update for you about that stock in First national."
Hermione smiled at Tony's disbelief, but answered LAIL anyways.
"Hold off on the update for now LAIL, we are showing off. You know what they say about all work and no play. This may be the only time I get to show off to someone that will understand the work that went into you."
"Of course, my lady, I will run it passed you later this evening."
Tony was back to gaping like a fish. Pepper was kind of reveling in the fact that someone would finally be able to talk and understand nerd with Tony.
"How? How did you manage fitting a full A.I. in to such a tiny tower? J.A.R.V.I.S. is in a massive block of towers in the basement of my house. How did you do it?"
Tony was stammering it made Hermione smile bigger.
"Well, to tell you the truth she is not in that tower. That was a trick to fool Obie in to thinking she was still an unfinished construct. That and mom would kill me if she knew what I did to my room. That being said…"
Hermione stood up and looked Tony right in the eye "Time for show and tell LAIL."
Hermione swept her hand toward her bed as it flipped vertically reveling a rising platform with a 6-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide tower.
"This is LAIL, short for lifelike artificially intelligent lady. This is her main core. My plan is to make her a body. That way she will have a mobile core, it is taking longer than I would like but her mobile core will be optimal. I intend it to use the tech I created to make her impervious to EMP's, she will still be able to work like J.A.R.V.I.S. as in running all my computers and interfaces but she will also be able to bring me tea or help mom with the errands. I have already started on a prototype but than the trust ran dry so I had to start making do with whatever I could salvage from the junkyard down the road."
Tony stood halfway into her talking to look at the tower. It was impressive.
"I see you went with Nitrogen cooling, it's a bit unstable but I see you balanced it by running it in the bottom and using fans to move the cooling. Essentially avoiding the risk that comes with Nitrogen cooling leaking. Never would have thought of that, it saves space from having to run liquid cooling through the whole tower like I did with J.A.R.V.I.S., very innovative."
Tony was mostly mumbling to himself at this point. Pepper was more interested in that fact that she was building a body for her A.I.
"you said you were working on a prototype for her body, may I see it?"
Hermione was smiling again; Tony was about to flip again.
"Sure."
Hermione pulled the arm and legs out of the trunk as they were sitting on the top, handing them to Pepper and Tony who had heard Pepper request and wanted to see also. The last piece that Hermione pulled out of the trunk was glowing as she brought it to her table. Tony's eyes went wide as dead center of the chest was a mini arc reactor.
"Obie wanted your arc reactor when you came back. The SI sci division was not able to do what he asked so he sent me a copy of the original blueprints and requested that I make it smaller. And by requested, I mean that he demanded it. What he did not know is that I cracked it in 2 days, but I kept it from him. I also hacked SI sci division and was constantly destroying progress that they made it the right direction."
Then sheepishly she looked down at the ground and said "I didn't know that he was so desperate that he would have took the one out of your chest or I would have given him one that worked but had a kill switch."
Tony overcome by emotions he did not even know he had walked over to Hermione and pulled her in to a hug.
"Listen here Hermione, you are a kid. You should not have even been put into that situation to begin with, but with you being a Stark you used your brain. You tried to stay safe and keep your mom safe. That is all we can ask of you. And even that you out did! You collected information to get him out of my life, I did not even know you existed, but you were trying to watch over me like my own little guardian angel! You are more than I could have ever asked for. You are amazing and have nothing to be ashamed of."
Hermione looked up at him.
"Well let us just say I didn't feel that was true… I felt guilty so I tried to make it up to you. When I cracked the arc, I noticed that the core of it was Palladium. That metal is poisonous over time if continued exposure, so I started in on research. I could not find any element that could replace it, so I reached out to a friend that I made when turning in some thesis. Well Jane said she herself did not know any but she gave me a number to someone at shield. After a few conversations with Phil Coulson I got access to grandad's effects from his shield days. He had the answer, but I did not have the means to produce the element, so I had it all repacked and had Nick send it to you. If you were half as smart as I gave you credit for you would figure it out. I can say that the fact that you are standing here is proof that it worked. So, yay us!"
Hermione shrugged with a little smile on her face.
Tony looked dumbstruck again before kissing her head than lifting her in the air and spinning her around.
"You, little sneaky goddess. Keeping your old man kicking without him even knowing about you! You are an Angel! If you ever want anything its yours let me know and I will have it for you! You deserve it my sweet girl."
Hermione stepped out of his arms looking down at her hands with a low slightly shaky voice.
"I would love to be able to call you dad instead of Tony."
Tony stepped forward so fast to get her back in his arms lifting her up and putting her head on his shoulder. His own eyes glistening with tears.
"My sweet girl. Of course, you can call me dad. I didn't think I deserved the title yet to ask you to call me that, but I would love for you to call me dad."
Pepper was standing back wiping her eyes as she was full out crying at the seen in front of her.
A/N: That is all for today you spoiled readers. I am still writing more today but you are only getting the 2 chapters today!
see you next Chapter!
