Summary: [Dr Strange/Hermione Granger] [SSHG] Life has changed significantly for Hermione since an accident with some potion ingredients Neville brought to her. Unfortunately, that resulted in her being left alone at the Muggle hospital with a brain tumour.
A/N: This was originally going to be written for Scratch That Niche, but I had back surgery, and let me tell you a bit about post-spinal fusion narcolepsy—it's a journey. LOL. I've been getting better slowly day by day, but there are so many contradictions when you can't bend, twist, or otherwise compromise your spine while everything heals. I have literally fallen asleep sitting in a chair, in the middle of typing an email, reading, and all steps of life. I'm a menace. Haa. Thank you all for your well wishes. It means a lot to me.
Beta Love: DragonandtheRose, Dutchgirl01
Rare Pair: Hermione Granger/Stephen Strange
Warnings: Probably angst
Stranger Things
Part One
All things must change to something new, to something strange.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Your Lethifold ate someone again," the Sorcerer Supreme said calmly as he sipped his tea. He casually flipped the page on the paper he was reading as they shared breakfast in the Sanctum Sanctorum. While he was capable of reading anything far more quickly, he enjoyed such quiet moments of normality when a crisis didn't need him.
"They deserved it trying to break into the Sanctum, Stephen," Hermione said with a sigh. "Every time someone from the Wizarding World gets a wild hair up their arse and proclaims themselves the next incumbent Dark Lord, idiots seem to come flooding out of the woodwork to scour Bleecker Street looking for trouble. That also includes rogue magic users, mutants, and whatever. I don't even think they realise we are here. They just attack all the places, and they know there is something about this area that is special. That's why the sanctum was built here."
Stephen's nose wrinkled with an almost audible crinkle. "Perhaps, we were better off when it looked like a townhouse," he said after a while.
"You had just as many random interlopers when this place looked like a townhouse on the outside than a storefront," Hermione said with no little consternation. "At least this way, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb in downtown New York."
"There is that most beautiful aesthetic," Stephen observed, his lips forming a flat line. He pointed to the magical scrying mirror that revealed the storefront of a tattoo and piercing shop.
"Tattooists hear all the gossip, magical or otherwise," Hermione pointed out. "Besides, who knew Wong could be such a dab hand at it? Who needs insidious interrogation techniques when people will pay us money to tell us all their secrets while under the skilful hand of a tattoo artist?"
Stephen's eyebrows creased together, but he sighed. "You were right."
"What was that?" Hermione inquired, arching a slim brow.
Stephen facepalmed and muttered, "You were right."
"You're welcome, love," Hermione said with a sniff.
"I will admit that I've never seen Wong so at peace," Stephen said. "All the katas, spellwork, reading—but his art is magical in itself."
Hermione smiled. "I'm glad he found something outside of protecting the planet from invaders and mutants to put his mind at ease."
A large black spider with a skull emblazoned on its abdomen leapt off Stephen's Cloak of Levitation with an audible sprong and landed on Hermione's arm, skittered up to her shoulder, and dove into her curls.
"You should take much better care of your cloak, Stephen," Hermione chided with a frown.
He closed his eyes thoughtfully. "I know. I take for granted how remarkably resilient it is most of the time."
He frowned as the Cloak of Levitation followed Hermione around as she busied herself tending cauldrons. Her Lethifold bristled and seemed somewhat irritated with the Cloak of Levitation's obvious crush on Hermione.
Stephen's expression softened at the sight, and his hand moved to the ring on his third left finger. While he and Clea had never married, he'd thought they were the closest thing to marriage a sorcerer and sorceress could have given their occupations and domains. But having rescued Hermione from what she called a "Muggle" hospital had turned his entire world upside-down.
She'd had what many had believed to be a large brain tumour, but it had turned out to be the growing egg of an appropriately named interdimensional Deathhead spider. How on Earth it had gotten in, was anyone's guess, but he'd seen them enough to know that the mother spider liked to inject an egg into the host's skull where it incubated and then hatched—
Only the normal hosts for such things had softer skulls, pliant brain matter, and highly regenerative abilities—not so much for humans.
The spider, which Hermione dubbed Noggin, had quickly become a stalwart comrade, and as it so happened, he was quite a dab hand in the fine art of magical tailoring.
Noggin, having incubated in Hermione's brain matter and magic for what could have been years, was quite attached to her. He refused to leave, and Stephen had finally acquiesced and allowed him to remain. At least Noggin wasn't a female of the species that would grow up to mate and lay more eggs into human skulls. Not unless he was a mutant of the species, at any rate.
Thank magic for that very large favour, he thought.
In order for her to keep him, however, Stephen had made one condition. Hermione would need to train to become a sorceress in order to tame the magic the interdimensional arachnid had opened her up to due to his unorthodox birth from Hermione's head like Athena from Zeus.
Turns out, she was already magical—albeit in a somewhat more crude fashion than Stephen was accustomed to. Sorcery was just an exciting new adventure for her.
Noggin had, unintentionally, paved Hermione's way into sorcery, and it was mostly about teaching her about method and practice rather than convincing her that magic existed. No, that had been his problem when he'd first been exposed to sorcery.
After the apprenticeship had ended, they had dated, but Clea had visited in the midst of their courtship. Hermione had realised that while Stephen had been open about pursuing a new relationship, Clea hadn't given up on him just yet.
Hermione had, quite understandably, taken a step back and placed Stephen in the friend zone again. They were, admittedly, still very good friends. He lamented, however, that love had never been as easy for him as it seemed for other people. Clea spent most of her time in the Dark Dimension, but he knew Hermione was right. There were still unresolved feelings between himself and Clea that had to be discussed and sorted out before he could even attempt to court someone like Hermione Granger—the sorceress who had accidentally banished Loki to Tony Stark's bedroom in a fit of anger-fueled sorcery.
Loki, of course, had promptly developed a rather severe crush on the woman, but Hermione had banished him to various random places every time the Norse god of mischief came calling.
At least, Stephen thought, it was keeping Loki busy and focused on something other than his previous occupation of choice: developing elaborate new plots to take over the world. Hermione, of course, was not amused by megalomaniacal takeovers anymore than she had been in the past. From what she'd described of the Wizarding War—she'd had more than her fill of such things.
Stephen hadn't really had the heart to tell her that such things were simply a way of life for him as the Sorcerer Supreme (or any other magic user, for that matter). The only difference was that the violent attempted takeovers required him to deal with gods, demigods, and all manner of malevolent beings from all across the cosmos.
Most of them were his job to face and banish as Sorcerer Supreme, but he was hardly alone in the task, thanks to various magical allies. The numbers of sorcerers and sorceresses had grown exponentially since the time of Dormammu's first attack on Earth. Clea watched over the Dark Dimension as its own Sorceress Supreme, and she kept a vigilant watch for signs of Dormammu's eventual return. Hermione had become yet another valuable ally in the ongoing task of keeping their world safe from any and all magical threats.
But she, like him, had found that she needed to step away from the life she'd known in many ways. Her "Wizarding World" was no more ready to know about the myriad interdimensional threats than he'd been ready to embrace the existence of magic itself during his time as a neurosurgeon.
"Stephen?" Hermione asked as she stirred a cauldron.
"Hrm?"
"When you found me in that hospital, was there no one there with me?"
Stephen knew there had been something haunting Hermione about her past, but she had always been hesitant to speak of.
"No," he answered. "In your record, the doctors wrote that you were found alone and unconscious. There had been some notation that you'd been brought to the hospital by an unnamed priest, but there was no one around when you were found or when I arrived."
"How did you even find me?" Hermione asked as she poured her freshly-brewed potions into various flasks and phials.
"An old friend of mine begged me to consult for him unofficially," Stephen said. "I have a reputation for understanding the obscure physiology of the brain, and you did have what they believed was an unusual kind of tumour."
"I'm not a tumour!" Noggin protested from Hermione's shoulder.
Hermione rubbed the spider's abdomen and shook her head. "Not very many people could have known that, love," she said. "Your egg looked quite like a tumour."
Stephen tilted his head in thought. "I will admit that I didn't even think to cast any kind of history spell to find out once I discovered what was trying to hatch in your head," he confessed. "That was, I fear, my sole priority at the time. I am sorry that I failed you in this."
Hermione shook her head. "No, it's fine. I simply thought that—" She trailed off. "I've thought about a lot of things, I suppose. The man who taught me potions—we'd worked together for some years after the war. Before I became ill, I thought we'd become close, but I guess being saddled with an invalid eventually became too much for him. He'd spent his entire adult life solving other people's problems and searching for ways to cope with his own. Maybe my predicament was simply too much for him to bear."
"I'm sorry," Stephen said softly. "I know you never seemed inclined to talk about what it was that brought you there. Thank you for trusting me."
"I do trust you, Stephen," Hermione said with a sigh. "Truly. Maybe not to make the best decisions for your heart, but saving the world, universe, what have you? Sure. I trust you for that."
Stephen let out a quiet snort, rolling his eyes at her. He reached out and gently grasped her hand, pulling her closer. For a moment, he stood and pulled her into an embrace. It was tender, intimate, but it was nothing but the friendship they had grown between them. He truly valued that in his grim world where almost everything was constantly teetering on the edge of cataclysm. He knew he could trust her with universal secrets and powers beyond the ken of most if not the majority of mortals. That alone was worth far more than a moment's fleeting pleasure while his heart was still conflicted over Clea. Before that, it had been Christine.
Hermione was right; he knew. He couldn't be trusted to know what his heart really wanted when even his heart didn't seem to know what it wanted from one given moment to another..
In a simple world, he would have snapped Hermione up in a heartbeat and whisked her away to some wonderfully intimate pocket dimension, married her, had a honeymoon the likes of which few living beings could boast, and lived a happy if a bit randomly dramatic life with a well-appointed house, two point seven kids, and a monstrous fifteen eyed dog-creature.
But life, his life at least, was far from simple. Nor, he noted, was Hermione's. He'd at least had the wisdom to let Christine go and marry someone who appreciated her without having their world try to explode first.
If only he had been so fortunate.
"Letting Harry live with his illusion of the perfect, happy family life was easier when I thought I had someone who cared about me," Hermione said as she gently stroked the spider with her fingertips.
The arachnid made soft chittering sounds of approval that proved it was not any spider native to Earth, as if the talking wasn't a great indicator in and of itself. Hermione had told him stories of huge talking man-eating spiders called Acromantulas that lived in the forest near her old school, and it made him want to cast a raze and obliterate spell to ensure complete and total destruction—
But that would require him to confess that he really, really didn't like giant spiders.
Noggin was the exception. He was polite and kept his venomous bite to himself.
"I had thought myself to be someone special," she said sadly.
"You are," Stephen assured her. He watched in amusement as his Cloak of Levitation wrapped around her in a double hug with the Lethifold. "Two out of two sentient cloaks agree."
Hermione laughed as she sipped her tea. She snuggled under both cloaks with a warm smile. "Who am I to argue with them?"
"I've tried winning fights with the cloak," Strange said with a slight frown. "It never seems to end in my favour."
"Aren't you the one who told me not to fight magic and let it choose the path?" Hermione asked.
"Tut," he chided. "Do as I say, not as I do. I obviously still need refreshers in magical etiquette."
"Obviously," Hermione commented, chuckling as she watched the Cloak of Levitation swat Stephen's hand away from the sugar bowl and serve her the tea instead. "Wong would say that you needed lessons in etiquette from day one."
"Wong and I took some time to grow on each other," Stephen confessed. "Far longer than it took him to warm up to you."
"We both have a highly developed respect for books," Hermione observed.
"I respect books!" protested Stephen.
Hermione's eyes sparkled with amusement. "He told me all about your respect for his boundaries in the library."
"That had nothing whatsoever to do with my respect for the written word," Stephen said with a sniff.
Hermione lay her hand over his and smiled. "Mmhmm."
"What was he like?" Stephen asked, feeling as though Hermione knew more about his failed love life than he did of hers. Even knowing that she had lost much in the way of her past friends and way of life, he couldn't help but wonder what had captured her attention and traumatised her with its loss.
"A razor-sharp wit," said Hermione after a moment. "He could be cutting one moment and yet insecure in the next. He knew exactly what to say to get under your skin, but he didn't have the first clue on how to be comforting. He had a keen intellect, was utterly brilliant, and hated when someone simply spouted off book knowledge with no practical application. He loathed most people, and most people felt much the same about him."
Hermione sighed. "We could discuss journal articles and debate potion formulae well into the night. We'd argue about whether one branch of magic was better than others like normal people would squabble over the best kind of tea. He both hated and loved puzzles. He hated mysteries, but he loved picking at something until the truth was exposed. I think you'd either get on really well or want to murder each other within seconds of meeting—"
Hermione shrugged. "You're both pretty stubborn and refuse to back down from what you believe in."
"Do I apologise or say thank you?"
"Maybe a little of both," Hermione answered. She cleaned up the dishes and sent them to the cupboard with a gesture spell, and they neatly packed themselves away after cleaning themselves.
"I'd like you to accompany me to the underground markets," Stephen said randomly. "I have heard from several people who frequent the tattoo parlour that some extremely rare goods will be passing through soon."
"And your other contacts?" Hermione asked as she drew complex symbols in the air and conjured a shimmering circle. She sent the cauldrons she'd been working on into it before closing it.
"Nothing," Stephen said. "As hard as it is for me to believe, we get our best tips from the parlour. People blather on about their entire life while being inked. I would have thought maybe a bar—" He shook his head.
"What are we looking for?" Hermione asked.
"There are rumours that this particular night, there will be souls on the market," Stephen said grimly. "While most of it will be rubbish, there is always the chance there could be something real hidden within the expected forgeries. The last thing we need is someone successfully casting a soul-fed spell and opening up a pathway for the second coming of Dormammu."
Hermione closed her eyes and nodded. "What time?"
"We'll leave around ten at night to get a feel of it," Stephen said. "The auctions start at midnight. I am more concerned about some of the other vendors, however. The auctions tend to sell a large number of forgeries and objects that look quite real but end up being fake."
Hermione nodded. "And are we dressing like proper magic users or something else, perhaps?"
Stephen's face seemed to pucker a bit. "We need to look like—" He scowled. "Tourists."
Hermione's eyelid twitched. "Wonderful."
The underground markets seemed more like a flea market than a highly suspect and, most likely, highly illegal gathering place, and Hermione felt more like a typical Wizarding person visiting London and trying to hail a cab.
There were flower shops, reagents vendors, knick knack collectors, little old ladies with Ty collectables, old electronics, highly suspect watches, both fake and those of questionable sale history, sports memorabilia, and even the ubiquitous pink flamingo lawn ornaments.
Magical contraband, alien artefacts, and things that never belonged in the hands of the ordinary, let alone the criminal elements, had plagued the world ever since people first began to gather in secret places. Checking places such as the underground market was a regular occurrence, but normally Stephen left it to a plethora of other lower-profile agents.
He was often away, saving the universe from all manner of dangers to the cosmos, and Hermione had long since learned not to hold a grudge that he hadn't been around to save the world from Voldemort. Ironically, he had been busy operating on brains back then, and he hadn't even known magic was more than a silly parlour trick meant to entertain children.
Hermione found it amusing that a Muggle neurosurgeon had somehow become the next Sorcerer Supreme, but then she remembered that she hadn't exactly been asked to save the world, either. Voldemort seemed like pretty small fry compared to the likes of Dormammu, however. If Harry or anyone in the Wizarding World knew that their "little" war was relatively insignificant in the greater scheme of things, the magical world would probably explode in violent protest.
She knew Harry's legions of rabid supporters would have wanted to hang her up by her toenails at the very thought that their beloved Boy-Who-Lived hadn't, in fact, been the "end all beat all" hero of the world.
Perhaps, she thought, he had been, at least for the British branch of the Wizarding World. But, as with so many other narrow perspectives, there was always something much bigger and "badder" out there than the very worst a person could imagine.
Take her horrible date with Cormac McLaggen. It had, most definitely, been the absolute worst experience she could have ever imagined at the time. But then she'd made a huge mistake in agreeing to go out with Michael Corner, one of Ginny's many exes.
Never again.
She'd fallen into a relationship with Severus while they worked to help Neville cure his parents—not for the Cruciatus damage, ironically, but lycanthropy. Someone had been admitted to St Mungos in an unconscious state that had lasted until the full moon. They'd turned and went on to attack many defenceless patients in the Janus Thickey ward—
Ironically, becoming werewolves had cured the magical damage due to the overriding lycanthropy; however, it had resulted in the powers-that-be turning the Janus Thickey ward into a holding facility for werewolves. Neville had desperately wanted his parents released to live their lives free from the social stigma of being werewolves and meet their grandchildren—
He'd brought her crate after crate of samples taken from rare plants all over the world, and that had spelt her eventual doom.
In one of those crates, there had been a female Deathhead spider looking for a host for her egg before she died—
Mind you, Neville wouldn't have been able to see the spider. Only the gods knew how the interdimensional arachnid had ended up hanging out on the giant Rafflesia flower harvested from Thailand that she'd been given from Neville's extensive collection of rare plants from around the world. Only those open to the magic of sorcery could see them outside of their native home, and sorcery was entirely different from the sort of magic that Hermione had grown up with.
She remembered knowing such tenderness, even in its awkwardness, from Severus as their relationship had grown. But it didn't last.
At first, he seemed quite desperate to find a cure for her condition—
But when she woke up with Stephen at her bedside and no Severus in sight, she realised that it had been too much to ask of him to take care of someone dying from a brain tumour. He'd already lost so much in his life, and just when there might have been hope for them both, she'd ended up with a spider growing in her brain.
Spider.
Tumour.
Poe-tay-toe.
Poe-tah-toe.
Little did she know back then that becoming a sorceress would mean a path towards encountering incredibly dangerous magic and foes that would seriously limit her ability to have any semblance of a personal life outside of it, even more than she had been limited before when she worked at the Ministry.
Stephen had split from her as they made their way around the market stalls, and while they weren't wearing glamours, they had worn the blandest, ordinary clothing possible. She'd chosen a faded Queen t-shirt and ripped jeans, and he'd managed to do much the same without having a coronary infarction of fashion.
She smiled at the thought, amused that Stephen was very much the peacock and Severus had been the very opposite. She imagined, however, that Stephen and Lucius Malfoy would not have got on at all. Mind, Stephen would have wiped the floor with Lucius on a bad day—at least once he knew magic existed and practised it. Then again, most of the sorcerers and sorceresses Hermione had come to know were highly skilled in both the mind and the body. If someone had told her that she'd become practised in hand-to-hand combat, weapons, magic, and all sorts of other things, she'd have told them they were off the plot for sure.
Stephen was brilliant in different ways than Severus, but both had qualities that Hermione admired. Both had her love in ways she thought of as tragically ill-fated. Stephen was still trying to sort out his love for Clea, and Severus—
Severus had left her; apparently, he'd found himself unable to cope with her inexorable deterioration and eventual, then inescapable, death. She was saddened by it, now, but she'd gone through all phases of denial to get to the point where she didn't want to give him a piece of her arachnid-mutated mind.
Body, too, perhaps, she realised, as whatever that mother spider had seeded inside her brain hadn't exactly "just been a Deathhead spider." Having one on Earth at all was strange enough. Having it lay one egg and then die wasn't exactly normal for the species either—in their natural habitat, anyway.
And Noggin's bond to her had seemingly started a series of strange magical mutations that even Stephen wasn't sure where it would end. Their symbiosis was, at the very least, unique.
Professor X had suspected that she was currently undergoing a series of mutations, but unlike the abilities one was born with that grew with you as you grew up, Hermione was experiencing them later in life, as an adult. She wasn't getting angry and turning green and rampaging throughout the city, thank the gods, and she hadn't accidentally drained the magic out of some random person she touched, but she had started to wear gloves when in public just in case something unexpected happened that she wasn't quite ready for.
She'd learned anything was possible in the world of mutants and magic, alien technology, and random exposure to radioactive elements. It was the kind of stuff that no textbook, tome, or book anywhere talked about in any place she grew up would have had. The books in the Sanctum Sanctorum were, admittedly, much more informative. The tomes in Kamar-Taj were even better, but they were all, still, like reading surreal almost-normal stories that her mind thought to be more fantasy than reality.
She imagined Stephen felt much the same way at times. Both of them had started their lives as "Muggles," as the Wizarding World would have termed it. Stephen had been a top-notch neurosurgeon. All she had was a part in saving the world from a magical megalomaniac that would have probably been broken in half by the Hulk just for getting in his way.
"That wasn't exactly a small thing, Hermione," Stephen had pointed out. "In the world you were living in, he was the greatest and probably the most terrifying thing you could imagine with magical skills far beyond that of most of your peers, if not all. You did not know of true sorcery. Your world was carefully hidden from the eyes of the rest of the world, both mutant and magical alike—but that is the way things are meant to be. Even in what you know now, there are people in this world who know nothing of us. They assume. They imagine. They doubt."
Hermione smiled at the memory. They'd bonded over so many similar denials they'd shared in coming to terms with sorcery. She'd taken to it far easier than he had, but she'd already known magic existed in some sense.
She just wondered how she always ended up collecting random creatures.
Noggin hadn't been the first. Walter, her Lethifold, had adopted her long before that after a Death Eater had tried to attack her in a thrift shop. Said Lethifold, that had been draped over a mannequin the shop had called "Walter," had promptly leapt to her defence and—
Well, ate him.
So, Hermione had surreptitiously folded the Lethifold up into a neat pile, paid for him for a grand whopping total of a fiver, and took him home to figure out what to do with him. She'd sent a message to the Ministry's Department of Mysteries rather than the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures because she knew from bitter experience what an utter cock-up that department was when it came to getting anything done. They'd have tried to put Walter down. XXXXX creature and all that—
Thankfully, Amelia Bones, the Head Boss of You as they called her affectionately, had come over with some Unspeakables that poked him a bit, tested him, weighed him, had given him an official registration tag, and registered him as her very own XXXXX Lethifold familiar.
The DRCMC was probably still writhing in impotent fury, most assuredly.
Every so often, they would ask her to "take care of a problem" that ended up with a very well-fed Lethifold. Win-win situation all around. She was, she realised, a Hit Witch—and that was something she'd never thought would end up on her resume.
Walter and Stephen's Cloak of Levitation seemed to have a strange sort of tolerance for each other. They both agreed that Hermione was the bee's knees (did bees even have knees?) and always wanted to please her, and it often seemed to overrule whatever territorial fights magical cloaks might have with regard to where they lived. Who was she to argue?
Poor Stephen sometimes had to persuade his cloak to stop flirting with her so he could go do his job.
She'd tried to lend him Walter once when his Cloak of Levitation had her wrapped like a human burrito and utterly refused to let her leave the bed after she'd been up for over two days straight without sleep. While Walter had seemingly functioned much as his cloak would have, a number of overly paranoid people kept thinking he was some kind of death omen or Mr Sinister or even Magneto. He also ate one of the members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in probably the most humiliating death a supervillain could get.
Hermione had ended up with glowing yellow eyes and randomly teleporting whenever she sneezed. Showing up in random places with her pants down (literally) had led to a few choice Obliviation spells that when combined with sorcery saved her the humiliation of amateur cell phone pictures appearing in the tabloids and putting her all over the news.
Amelia thanked her for that quite often. Muggles were bad enough. Wizarding folk becoming aware of mutants and whatnot was just too much to juggle in an already paranoid, almost-xenophobic wizarding society.
She had asked Stephen who he'd been fighting on that particular day, but he'd been fighting "a whole slew of everything," which left him rather shady on the details. Walter had saved his life, he admitted, albeit by eating one of the mutants that had tried their hardest to kill him first. Walter, much like the Cloak of Levitation, tended to act first in his defence and leave him boggling as to who was in charge of who.
Carol Danvers had once asked if Walter was like Goose (her "pet" Flerken), but Hermione was pretty sure Walter wasn't hiding pocket dimensions somewhere within his body.
Pretty sure.
Mostly.
Maybe.
Hermione had rather liked Carol Danvers, but the woman had a strange history of gaining powers, losing powers and her memory, regaining power and taking up new identities, losing power but regaining memory, and the list went on. Hermione's mental score card and memory palace for most of those she'd met were always highly detailed, but Carol's was especially complicated. It was more like a concept map with lines going everywhere and connecting pieces of paper like a crime scene board.
Severus would have been appalled, most definitely. He didn't like "complicated" after the war. He'd lived through well enough complicated to earn some simple and straightforward living in his opinion. A multi-verse of problems was just a whole lot of no thanks for Severus Snape.
Thoughts of Severus caused her to sigh. She wandered through the stalls and examined everything from harmless baubles to artefacts that would have had Arthur Weasley calling in the teams to confiscate the entire shop.
Such things didn't concern her on this particular day. They would be easily found by those like Arthur Weasley once they left the underground. Ironically, they were less of a concern than what she was helping Stephen search for. Soul binders rarely sold their items themselves. They filtered them out as petty baubles with a seller who sold to another who sold to another—but soul essence of any kind could be used for dangerous things, and the effects were quite often explosive.
There had been more than enough tears in the fabric of reality, thank you very much, and Stephen had been sucked into "the multi-verse" enough times to know that the reality she had grown up in was terribly fragile.
Whhuffff!
Hermione turned her head to see a multi-eyed hound staring at her from one of the stalls. Her "tail" was wagging madly, sending dark plasma everywhere. It annoyed the shopkeeper, but the beast's litter of "puppies" were all excited because their mum was excited. The hound had obviously been "procured" from some dimension in the hopes of selling off the pups as exotics or guard animals. The shopkeeper, however, seemed to be severely lacking in beast-handlers. He had many cages with various specimens in them.
Pick me!
Hermione blinked. The voice was crystal clear. It was also in her head.
The hound wagged her tail harder, coating the inside of the stall with dark plasma. The other contained animals panicked as the plasma seethed and burbled before fading away. The hound had lines of glowing eyes that shifted colour from purple to gold and teal, almost as if they were a type of mood ring.
The hound's eyes seemed to settle on a dark purple, and she strained at the magical "leash" that was tethering her in place. Her tail whipped again, sending the shopkeeper arse over tit into a pile of empty cages.
I'm for you!
Hermione heard the voice more clearly this time.
I've waited so long! Touch me! Please!
Hermione had never once heard Crookshanks talk to her. Walter sent her feelings and even the powers he "ate" but didn't speak to her in actual words as such. Noggin had lots to say, but he tended to be pretty random. This mind voice was clear, powerful, and determined.
Please don't go! I'm for you!
While Hermione had no doubt that ol' Crookshanks was a very smart half-Kneazle and usually had more powers of observance than Ronald ever had, she was still getting used to truly "alien" creatures. She wasn't sure where the hound had come from, and she couldn't even rule out Earth.
Earth hid a great many things from its more sentient species—like the giant hand that had erupted from the Earth, and everyone had thought some mutant was making a giant sculpture—
Not bloody likely.
Drawn to the great beast, Hermione cast a silent spell to make sure her senses were at their best and her sense of the beast itself was not being altered in some way.
I've dreamed of you, she heard in her mind.
Us too. Us too. Us too! Take us too! Tell her mummy! Mummy! Let us come too!
The "pups" were tumbling over each other, trying to climb over their mum to get a better look at Hermione.
The beast strained and fought against the restraint, the energy tether wobbling and struggling to remain strong. It was tightening around the poor beast's neck, and she was snarling as she leaned closer to Hermione, making a choked growl of pure frustration.
Hermione extended a hand slowly, palm up. The beast lay her chin down on it, dwarfing her hand with just the simple size of her jaw. She could feel power. Great power. The leash was something strange—something alien rather than magical. It was fraying, but not visually. The energy it was taking to hold the great beast back was obviously great indeed.
What manner of sale was this "man" trying to pull?
The beast's long tongue laved across her hand as a thrumming croon came from her throat.
Hermione took another step closer, her head resting on the mother beast's head as she felt its power thrum. She felt a warm feeling like being dipped in a pool of warm water spreading across her body, much like being wrapped in Walter's soothing warmth on a cold day when all she wanted to do was stay in bed and have a hedonistic three-day lie in.
She felt the loneliness and aching need in the great beast. Her mate had been slain after what had seemed like forever—slain by Eternals, those sworn to destroy them. She'd been hiding deep in the Earth, raising her "pups" to the age when their eyes were all open and their legs steady. Hermione felt the mother beast's purpose—once singular—to destroy the apex predators of the planet to pave the way to sentient life so the great Celestial seed would grow and be birthed.
But their purpose had become unwanted. Their task was muddled. In destroying and assimilating the greatest predators, however, they had ended up becoming the greatest of predators. They had become the most dangerous creatures on all of Earth but were also banished to the realm of disbelief and legend.
Myth.
Stories.
Boogeymen.
And she was tired of being lonely, tired of hiding away with no purpose, no direction. What could she teach her pups when she herself had no idea what her purpose was?
Hermione felt the beast's answer to her problems. Even in the Dark places, she'd dreamed of the bushy-haired one that would answer her loneliness and need for purpose. The beast's mate had thought her mad. What use would some weak fleshy two-legger serve one as great as they—they who had walked the Earth before civilisation was even a thought—
But the female beast was a survivor above all things, not a coward but careful. She had dreamed of Hermione since—
Before Hermione had been born.
It had never been the right time.
So, she waited.
Waited.
And kept waiting.
She'd been foolish in getting caught. The pups were eager to see the outside world. They'd been captured, and she—
She'd walked right into the trap.
But all that could be forgiven now that she had found Hermione.
All it would take is one act, and they'd never be parted. Not like she and her mate. Not like her pups who would eventually grow and toddle off to do their own thing. No.
I am Kudara, the beast rumbled. Let us be one that we will never need to know loneliness again. Give purpose to my eternity. Give reason to my strength. The Celestials have abandoned me, but I shall never abandon you.
Hermione felt the warmth and need and the keen longing that went far deeper than anything she'd ever had with Crookshanks. She'd come to realise that there were so many levels to what made a familiar a familiar. Crooks had been a faithful friend and a cunning companion, but he had not been like Walter or Noggin—or this great beast who wanted nothing but to be her stalwart companion for the extent of her life.
Hermione felt herself falling, and the feel of the great beast's mouth clamped around her like a lioness holding her cub. She felt like her limbs were being weighed down by concrete. Her mind was fuzzy, but she was comfortable. She didn't make a sound as the beast tucked Hermione between all four legs and set her head down over her, making her disappear from sight as the pups whined and struggled to get under to "see" what all the fuss was about.
Kudara's tail promptly whipped them all backwards, tumbling them away as her teeth bared in an unmistakable warning.
The pups whined and sat down, bellies to the ground in submission, tails wagging hard.
Dark plasma seemed to seep through the air and ground as the great deviant beast's tail thumped. The shopkeeper pulled himself up from the cages and looked like he was going to take some sort of prod to the beast for having flung him there.
But, the man failed to notice how the plasma from earlier had eaten away at the more flimsy cages under the stall, and about a hundred irritated creatures of all shapes, sizes, and species descended upon him as he screamed.
A few passersby turned their heads, but most of the visitors said nothing or did nothing to intervene. It was the underground. No one wanted to make a spectacle of themselves to save some illegal shopkeep with a huge beast taking up the front of the stall.
Kudara's "leash" snapped off the ring she was tethered to, but she didn't move. She kept Hermione tucked close beside her as the bond cemented, encouraging her pups to "go play" with the other creatures that had been set free.
Hermione woke feeling a bit like she was crawling out of a tar pit at La Brea, and her mind was filled with a pleasant, comforting presence that hadn't been there before.
"You slept a while," Noggin chirred from her shoulder. "That's okay, though, Walter and I both thought you needed it, too."
"I need to keep looking for trafficked souls," Hermione mumbled into the dense dark plasma "fur" of Kudara. The beast gave her a few affectionate licks as she would a pup, styling her hair to look rather like the bride of Frankenstein.
The wriggly pups all spat out various baubles in front of her, all of them pulsing with the unnerving captured soul energy that was distinctively unnatural anywhere but inside a living body. Their little plasma tails wagged furiously.
We do good?
I hope so!
They looked like what she wanted!
Mum said to go be useful!
We were useful, right?
She still looks sleepy.
If we do good all the time, do we get to stay?
She seems nice.
She cuddles with mum. Maybe she'll cuddle with us too?
Hermione's hands touched each of them, her eyes half-lidded with sleepiness. They all rubbed into her, licking and snuggling, fighting for the best pets. Their bodies thrummed with Dark plasma that formed into temporary tentacles that writhed and undulated with pleasure with her touch. There was an almost physical thump as a blast of Dark energy tightened between them, and the pups were all snuggled into her like a living duvet, Hermione akimbo as she was being snuggled to death.
Oooo! We can bond too!
We won't be alone either!
Yay!
Daddy said bonding made you weak.
I don't feel weak. I feel wonderful!
The one solitary pup seemed wary and unsure. He'd obviously had a closer bond to his father, and his father hadn't trusted anyone—not even his mate's judgement.
"It's okay," Hermione whispered. "I would never force anyone to be stuck with me for life. I believe in the power of choice. The freedom to make your own path in life."
Her voice was but a whisper, but the pups, sans one, all did their best to snuggle in harder to prove that they weren't going anywhere when they had the promise of the blissful companionship that would never leave them alone again.
The solitary pup, whose body seemed far more spikey and horned where his litter seemed more fluid and composed of plasma, seemed to scowl as his teeth bared in defiance. The other litter members concentrated, their bodies looking more spikey and horned to match his, and they growled at him in solidarity.
Hermione picked up one pup and snuggled it, and he immediately went back into a smoother and more cuddly shape, wriggling his feet as she pressed her face into his "fur". The others immediately decided cuddles were far more available when not covered in horns and spikes of various kinds, followed suit and squirm-snuggled for more love.
Hermione yawned and leaned on Kudara in order to stand, slightly groggy but shaking away the bonding sleepiness. She should, she imagined, be used to it, but who ever expected to have more than one familiar? Then again, she figured, the same rules didn't seem to apply to sorceresses, or so it seemed. Stephen had so many "tools" that were bonded to him that he could open up a metaphysical workshop.
Hermione, however, had—
Us! came the excited reply of the pups and Noggin even as Walter warmed around her shoulders.
Hermione smiled. "Thank you," she said as she leaned against Kudara and then picked up the miscellaneous baubles that they had brought her. Many of them were tiny, hardly anything that would catch the eye. Some of them were extremely gaudy-looking, which seemed to belie their true nature. All of them had a glow to them; however, the unnatural pulse of soul in something that did not breathe always left her with a sadness.
She tucked them away in a hidden "pocket" inside Walter, knowing that the Lethifold would promptly eat anyone that tried to rob him of his protected objects or people. She'd come to terms with the natural cycle of Lethifolds, and she was glad Walter was on her side and not some feral man-eater out in the jungle. Quibbling over Walter's natural carnivorous nature would be like trying to feed a lion a salad and wondering why it attacked the person instead.
Strangely enough, Walter had learned to accept food from her in the form of hams, shanks, hamburgers, and various types of farm-raised foods. As long as it was her feeding him, anyway. He had a strange fondness for schnitzel, and Hermione chuckled at how Walter would often beg for some whenever they passed their local ethnic restaurant. He rather liked steak and kidney pie, too, and Hermione was just glad he'd expanded his horizons.
Lethifold fast food. Who knew?
Surely a regular diet of Death Eaters, mad sorcerers, and evil mutants would require the aid of Lethifold Pepto—the gods only knew where half those things had been.
Deciding that she still needed to wander the stalls, she looked back to see that the shopkeeper (aka the bloody idiot) who had tried to keep Kudara and her pups captive long enough to sell was quite decidedly not in any condition to be selling anything else anytime soon. She made a small motion with her hands, setting the cages to rights and putting the illegal creatures back within it so they didn't roam the markets and hurt any innocent (well more or less innocent) folks.
Even random gangsters or members of the Illuminati didn't deserve to have their brain sucked out by one of the deceptively cute-looking "rabbits" the man had in the cages. Stephen had attempted to explain to S.H.I.E.L.D. why they had to capture and destroy "the cute little bunnies" before they killed people one time while he was off in another part of the cosmos patching up a gaping rift to the Dark Dimension. It had gone over about as well as he'd expected when he got back—
They'd ended up calling in Thor for help, and he'd proceeded to atomize them with Mjölnir—along with half of downtown Roswell, New Mexico.
Gas leak and explosion was the cover story.
Why half the corpses they could find had no brains, well, the tabloids blamed it all on "aliens."
Technically, she supposed, they weren't entirely wrong.
The shopkeeper, she supposed, was now, quite literally, brainless, judging on how the great pile of fluffy, adorable, brain-eating "bunnies" were curled up together, sleeping away like nothing was at all wrong.
She sent a brief note to Wong through a sling-hole, so he could come to do a bit of clean-up with a few of the recruits. He always enjoyed watching the recruits squirm whenever their comfy realities were tested. He'd enjoyed cracking holes into her idea of what was real, too. It was his number one favourite pastime.
The brain-sucking bunnies could be transported back to their natural habitat where they had to work at getting their food instead of having a planet full of clueless "suckers" willing to pick up and cuddle them.
Kudara and her pups were going to be rather interesting to walk around with and not be noticed.
The alien beast tilted her head in thought, rifling through Hermione's memories to find something "appropriate" with the ease of a master Legilimens.
Pop!
She and her pups were the spitting images of yellow Carolina dogs—just enough vagueness that the average person would shrug and simply think they were ordinary "yellow dogs" but not be overly distracted by the attractiveness of a particular breed. They didn't look too cuddly or as approachable like a labrador, nor did they scream fighting dog.
Perfect.
"I need to put collars on you so you look like you have a person with you," Hermione explained. "And a leash. Are you okay with this?"
We come with you, yes?
As long as we come with you!
This place stinks!
You're not putting anything on me!
Kudara stood up, hackles raised. Her lips pulled back menacingly from her teeth.
The defiant pup promptly tucked his tail and sat down, cowed. Fine, okay.
Hermione crafted a set of collars made in soft, tanned brown leather lined with soft lamb's wool. She placed them on each "dog" and clipped the individual leashes to Kudara's collar and harness so she was ultimately "in charge" of her lot. Kudara's harness fit loosely so she could move in any way she so desired, and Hermione clipped a short leash on her to give any onlookers the illusion of control.
"Thank you," she said as she pressed her head to Kudara's, and the mother beast whuffed softly in agreement.
Hermione stood and looped the leash loosely around her wrist like she was curving a rein around her fingers, just light enough for the slightest movement to send a signal to Kudara if there was anything wrong without giving away anything more that could make onlookers suspicious of the nature of her "pets." She had no idea how long she'd been out there searching, but the markets lasted for the majority of the weekend. She could hear the auctions taking place in earnest some distance away, and she had no doubt whatsoever that Stephen was checking the goods on offer carefully, just in case they were selling off slaves or souls (or some combination of both.)
She could only hope that the pups' enthusiastic "quest" while Kudara was watching over her indisposed body had snagged most of the spoils she was hoping to find. Only time would tell her how many other "baubles" remained.
There were quite a few people roaming the markets with pets at their sides, and most were far fancier and purposely intimidating to make their owners look tougher and more dangerous. Hermione wasn't sure if putting a heavy metal chain or spiked leather collars around a poor animal's neck did them any favours or perhaps it was simply meant to advertise them as fighting animals. It was always hard to tell in such places.
As much as she disapproved of such things, she wasn't here to make a scene or a statement. She had a task to do, and despite her misgivings, she had to leave her moral high ground at home. The gods knew that her misguided morals had gotten her in trouble with the house elves, and she'd managed to get most of the entire race pissed off at her for insulting their ways just because one "dysfunctional" house elf wanted to be free of his abusive owners. She'd assumed far too much, and she'd paid for it with both her own humiliation up and down the Wizarding World and from the elves themselves who treated her like she was toxic waste.
And of all the work she'd done to give them the rights she felt they deserved?
One, or perhaps two, elves had wanted to wear something more than a tea cozy or towel. None of them had wanted vacations or pay for their time. None of them had wanted her interference or help.
It was only years later that Severus had told her that a house elf that was deprived of a bond to a family or place would eventually go utterly mad. That was why Dumbledore had so desperately tried to save Winky's life by binding her to Hogwarts after being dumped by her family. The insanity had already set in—
But there had been no books to tell her the real reason.
Native Wizarding folk just knew such things.
She, the stupid Muggleborn, could only assume incorrectly.
She'd done a lot of that in her lifetime, and it had always come back to bite her sooner or later.
Now, most of the Wizarding World thought she had left them to live as a Muggle. The irony was thick that she was now using sorcery to protect them and so many others from things they couldn't even see—
Things like the Crumple Horned Snorkack which was actually the puppet-like decoy of a man-eating alien beast that loved to dine on witches and wizards especially—like the angler fish of the alien world that loved to dine on magically infused flesh. The only saving grace was that the decoy wasn't even visible to most of the Wizarding World, thus the alien did not succeed as much as it hoped. It did explain why many of those who had gone seeking the Crumple Horned Snorkack never returned.
Luna would have been totally heartbroken to know her Snorkack was both real and nothing like what she believed it to be.
Hermione thought about telling Luna the truth, but what exactly could she have said that wouldn't have Luna swanning off to find out for herself, perhaps proving Hermione wrong in a fit of disbelief? Did Luna herself even know? Had her mother actually found the Snorkack and met her doom? What had Xenophilius really told Luna about her mother's death?
To save her?
Was it a lie that became her obsession?
Hermione thought of all these things as she went from stall to stall, keeping her mind occupied with something other than hearing the usual derogatory chatter that always went around the markets. Insults were commonplace. Hawkers enticed shoppers to visit their stalls in all manner of ways. Hermione drifted from one place to another, sending out tendrils of exploratory magic to see if anything caught her senses.
It seemed, at least from the few passes she did going up and down the stalls, that the pups had been very thorough cleptomaniacs. Many of the merchants rarely knew where their items came from. They were three or four hops down a line of sellers long gone. The object of getting the items was not to shut down the sellers as much as it was to get the items as efficiently as possible.
Apparently, theft by an alien monster puppy was a very effective use of resources.
Just as she was about ready to attempt rejoining Stephen to see how he was faring, she found a small booth nestled away from the rest. The feel of the place was unsettling, and she watched a couple leaving—only one was storming away as if they didn't even know the other, and the other was in tears.
"Warren, wait!" the woman cried. "We were to be married!"
"Why would I want to marry someone I don't even know? I don't even know what I'm doing here! Get your hands off me!"
The man rudely shoved her away, storming off even more angrily. "How the hell do I get out of here? Get out of my way!"
The woman fell to the ground with a cry, tears flowing down her cheeks. She was frail-looking and bald, and had the look of some sort of sickness about her. While her skin was pink and flushed with life, it was obvious she had not always been so. Her body was emaciated as if having been suffering for quite some time. A quick magical scan, nothing as deep as a healer's, told her that the woman was quite human, not a mutant, and what would probably be considered "normal" in most circles. There was nothing overly special, no latent mutant abilities, no underlying magic. She was just a woman who had been suffering fairly recently, possibly from cancer if her baldness was any indicator.
Oddly, Hermione did not sense any hint of a cancer in her, but she was not a professional healer. What tricks she had were from sorcery that often told her a myriad of things but not necessarily how to deal with them. That was the challenge of sorcery—even knowing what you were facing, you didn't always know the best plan of action. Sometimes, you simply had to wing it and hope something stuck.
Without permission or having a really good reason, Hermione wasn't going to invade the poor woman's privacy, but—
She reached a hand out to take the woman's and pull her up. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear—"
The woman sniffled, letting out a low sob. "We came here together because of my cancer. We'd been to so many doctors. So many places. They said I only had a few months left to live—that it's spread everywhere. He found out about some woman who could help us for a price. He said he'd do absolutely anything, pay anything—"
She sobbed harder. "But she somehow took his memories of me! Of us! What good is it being alive if I can't be with him?!"
Hermione's lips pressed together as she comforted the woman who seemed so desperate for comfort that any comfort would do, even from a complete stranger. Kudara's nostrils flared as she sniffed the woman, but she did not attempt to make any moves upon the strange girl.
She saw the figure of an old woman inside the dark stall. The sound of running water came from within. The ominous feeling hadn't abated in the slightest. A name came to mind from one of countless books she'd read from Stephen's extensive library. The Bean-nighe. The Scottish Washerwoman was known to be an omen of death for whose clothes she was washing, but she was also known to agree to wash someone else's—for a price.
Knowing that fighting such an ancient spirit was futile—she could not take what you did not willingly give—made her pity the young woman. The man had obviously been desperate enough that any price was enough for him to see the woman live another day—another lifetime. The price was always as high as the favour asked. To avert Death's gaze was a powerful boon that required an equally powerful sacrifice, no matter how well-meaning it might be. The selfish usually were more brutally left with full awareness of what they had lost, just to torment them—not that this poor woman was left oblivious.
Her fiancé had obviously paid his price, but his torment would be an emptiness he may never be able to fill. Memories that could never be restored. Holes would remain that could never quite be filled because the pieces had been erased.
You'd never give up on us, would you? Kudara's mental touch startled Hermione out of her ruminations.
"Never," Hermione whispered, having felt the aching loneliness the ancient creature held—the hope—for that one something to fill the missing piece. Some prices were much too high, and death was—
Death did not always come at a convenient time, but it was every bit as natural as being born. Some would argue just as traumatic, while others greeted death with calm and dignity. There were some, however, that Death purposely passed over, choosing instead to allow them more time to do their jobs. Stephen was one such person.
The task of the Sorcerer Supreme was far too important to simply expire after a few years of peak life. He could still die, but it would not be due to something as simple as old age. One day, he might find a foe more cunning and powerful than he. As for how and when, that remained a mystery. In all likelihood, it would be quite a long time coming.
Stephen had admitted that he wasn't entirely sure how it worked after what had become known as the "Snap" when fifty percent of all life had vanished only to return again with the "Blip." She'd apparently been one of those to vanish and then return. For nothing had changed for her and the world—
The world had been a total sodding mess.
The world had tried to put itself back together in the years half the population had disappeared, but it had been a struggle. Then, when that half of the population blipped back in, the world was even more a mess. For the returners nothing had changed. For the survivors, everything had.
But something had happened to Hermione in that space between the snap and the blip, and she wasn't sure what it was, exactly. She felt as though there was something that happened in that gap, like a dream she couldn't remember. A lifetime in the span of a short "time."
She remembered the Star Trek episode she'd watched with her dad and mum on summer hols as a child. It involved the captain of the Enterprise being zapped by an alien probe and that caused him to live an entire lifetime in the span of a few minutes, and when he came to, both lives were very real.
Only she wasn't sure what she'd lived.
If she had lived—
Life was bloody complicated sometimes.
When she returned, she felt so warm and accepted. She had, however, been confused when Wong had immediately fallen over a pile of stuff he'd kept pristine since her sudden "snap" into non-existence. She hadn't really understood why Wong kept casting spells at her and trying to determine if she was a rather vivid hallucination.
"Come on in, dearie," the old Washerwoman said. "We both know that you know who I am."
Hermione closed her eyes and sent the younger woman away with a minor spell designed to guide her out and safely home to where she could grieve in peace rather than be torn to pieces for the underground.
"Yes, Mother," Hermione said respectfully as she stepped into the tent. It was always wise to address the Washerwoman as if one was the child. She considered it respectful, and the last thing you wanted an omen of Death to think was that you were disrespecting her.
She stepped forward into the Washerwoman's "domain" keeping her eyes cast down.
"You've met the one I cured of her cancer," the woman said as she washed a pile of clothes.
"Yes, Mother," Hermione said with a nod.
"They seldom seem happy with the decisions they make," the Washerwoman remarked. "Mortals are often like this, wherever they make their home."
"Was she to die very soon, Mother?" Hermione asked.
"Today," the Washerwoman confirmed. "Like most who come to me, it is their very last chance to evade what should be inevitable. And you, daughter? Why have you come here? Whose clothes do you wish me to wash?"
"I do not seek you to wash the clothes of another for my sake, Mother," Hermione said grimly. "I will embrace whatever fate's thread has in store for me when my time comes."
The Bean-nighe stopped her washing to look at her. "And you would not fight for the life of one you loved?"
"As best as I would be able," Hermione said, her hand resting softly upon Kudara's head and rubbing her ears. The Deviant beast rumbled softly and stepped firmly on one pup's leash to keep him from digging around in the Bean-nighe's belongings. "But we both know, dear Mother, that the prices you set for your aid are paid in utter desperation and leave an emptiness in its place that can never be filled."
"Yet, some consider this price preferable to the alternative; the death of the one they love—or at least the one they wish to stay around," the Washerwoman said. "Mortals come to me for a great many reasons. Love, perhaps, is the most misguided but most typical reason. Selfishness is the next. Some heir who wants their loved one to live long enough to sign their inheritance papers and the like."
The Bean-nighe looked to stare Hermione in the eye. "You come here asking me for nothing, daughter," she said. "That is rare in itself. You have the wherewithal not to attack me for some perceived injustice when you know it was paid fairly." The fae gazed at her deeply and then at her companions. Walter rustled under her scrutiny, wrapping himself around Hermione quite protectively.
"I would bid you a good evening, Mother," Hermione said politely. "I have tasks I must attend to."
"You are no longer of my domain and are beyond my touch," the Washerwoman said quietly. "Perhaps, even then, you were not, but I swear to you that I did not know it."
The older-appearing woman pulled out a small wooden chest that seemed to be worn with age but the grain was smoothed by countless touches. She opened it, pulling out what seemed like a marble, only it shifted and moved like a planet captured from space. "The contract is no longer mine to hold," she said. "You may do with it as you wish for my treading improperly upon the lives of those already Kissed by Death."
Hermione tilted her head, confused, but she allowed the fae to place the "marble" in her hand. She smelled something eerily familiar about it. Sensed something strangely intimate about it. Her hand closed on it, and she tucked it away into one of Walter's many "pockets."
"Be well, Mother," Hermione said, knowing that to thank a fae was just asking for trouble. One did not thank a fae, or it would insult their very act of generosity. Instead, Hermione said, "You are most kind."
The fae seemed to smile as she shooed Hermione off.
Sighing with relief and a bit of confusion, Hermione sat down on a nearby bench and pet Kudara and the pups. She dared not rifle through Walter's pockets in a place as chaotic and dangerous as the underground markets, but was definitely going to have to do some research when they returned to the Sanctum.
The smell of roasted meat and vegetables made her stomach grumble and mouth water, and she browsed the wide array of nearby food vendors. The Underground didn't let you go hungry any more than the local fair would—provided, of course, you had the money to spend.
She avoided the alien steaks until she found a few that Kudara seemed interested in, and she purchased a number of them for her and the pups. She bought herself two kebabs and a bottle of spring water. While she could have easily conjured an appropriate bowl, she tried not to make a show of anything she did, and she fed her "dogs" from their paper bowls and drank from the plastic water bottle, pouring some in her hand to allow them to drink as well.
She wondered if there were certain foods Kudara and her pups couldn't have, much like dogs or cats of Earth.
I can eat anything, Kudara told her as she placed her head in Hermione's lap. Rocks are a bit tough and bland, though.
Hermione snorted, and she pulled a piece of green pepper and onion off her kebab stick and offered it to Kudara. The "dog" made quick work of it, licking her chops in appreciation and contentment.
Good thing they weren't actual dogs, Hermione figured. What a horrible way to poison one's new familiar.
Stephen sat down beside her with a sigh, and Hermione simply handed him a drink and a kebab without a word. The sorcerer tucked in without so much as a grunt, having obviously lost any base communication skills in the face of starvation and exhaustion.
When he was finished, she handed him a napkin, and he dabbed around his mouth and beard with a slow reawakening of his higher brain functions.
"I really love you, you know that?" Stephen said suddenly.
Startled, Hermione leaned into him. "I know."
He wrapped one arm around her and pressed his face into her curls. "It's you I want," he said softly into her ear.
"Today, yes," Hermione said sadly. "But the moment Clea comes through a portal, you know that will change to conflict."
Stephen sighed against her. "Why cannot things ever be simple?"
The rebel pup pounced on Stephen's shoe and ravaged it, getting teeth marks on the very expensive leather.
Stephen looked down with a furrowed brow. "Something you'd perhaps like to tell me?"
"I've been adopted?" Hermione said with a wrinkled nose.
"Again?" Strange muttered, rubbing his left eyebrow.
Kudara growled softly at Strange, but Hermione's hand alighted on her head gently, and the Deviant beast whuffed contentedly, tail wagging.
"Those aren't even dogs," Stephen said with a wrinkle forming between his eyes.
"Close enough," Hermione said with a smile.
"Right, like a small garden lizard is Godzilla," Strange said dryly.
"Technically, didn't Godzilla start out as a small garden lizard?" Hermione asked cheekily. "I fear I'm not too clear on my Kaiju lore."
Stephen mumbled something under his breath. He gently moved his head to press a gentle kiss upon her lips. "Hermione. I'm an idiot. I'm an utter ass. I don't want to be that guy who hurt you because I can grow a pair and tell Clea what we both already know to be true. We've been over for quite a while now, living in some kind of perpetual marital separation. Playing our parts." He pulled the band off his left ring finger and pressed it between his index and thumb.
"It was expected, I think," he said quietly after a time. "A dream we wanted and thought both started and ended with each other. But if the bond was true—"
The ring in his fingers turned into a bit of shimmering dust. "That would not have been possible."
Hermione trembled against him. "Stephen—"
"Say you will have me, and all that I am, all that I can be, all the time I have in between saving the world—again—shall be yours. You know how hard it is for me to be in so many places at once, but you also understand how precious the time I do have with you is," he said, his hand stroking through the white at his temple. "And I finally understand that it isn't about an all encompassing life where every day has to be spent with the one I love, but that the time I do have is meaningful. More than just an act pretending what married life is like. Being the Sorcerer Supreme is like being married to the universe, but I wish to be yours. I envy Walter, Noggin, your new friends. They get to see you every day—and I cannot promise you every day."
He touched her cheek. "But I can promise you you will be here every day," he said touching his chest with his hand, "and the days we can be together, I would wish them to be with you."
The Cloak of Levitation and one shady Lethifold moved at the same time to shove them together into a kiss.
There was a wolf-whistle from one of the booths as someone yelled "get yerselves a room, ya horny kids!"
Hermione blushed furiously as Stephen attempted to gather together the remains of his dignity even as the Cloak of Levitation smoothly adjusted his shirt from its hidden illusion of being a backpack.
Walter, strangely, seemed to somehow always be perfectly camouflaged, no matter where they were, even if Hermione was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Lethifolds had their own kind of magic that defied the normal rules.
Kudara snuffled and tail wagged as Stephen pulled a small stone from his pocket.
A radiance heartstone, she said, her ears perked attentively. Formed within the pressure of an ice planet. In some of the greatest planets, they say it rains diamonds, and some of my kind would roll in them and coat their bodies to protect themselves from the apex predators of icy worlds. The rarest of such "stones" were the heartstones. Sorcerers can use them as foci for exceptionally powerful spells, or they can be used to focus great lasers, or they can cut the strongest of metals, but to find one is said to be—how do humans put it—like finding a needle in a bin stack.
Hermione chuckled. "Needle in a haystack."
Why would you put your needle in dry grass?
Hermione snickered, but then her eyes went wide as Stephen took the stone in his hand and closed his hand around it. A brief flash of his magic flashed outward. When he opened it, two identical ring bands remained, shimmering like the shifting rainbow trapped in ice.
"Marry me," he whispered. "Not for show. Not for an ideal. For life, however long we may be allowed to share it."
Hermione swallowed hard, staring like a deer caught in a spotlight.
A pup chomped her shoe.
"YEEEEIIS!" Hermione cried, startled.
Stephen slid the ring on her finger as he did the same to his. The rings glowed brightly with a vivid rainbow radiance before slowly fading into a less "HI! I'M MAGICAL, HOW ARE YOU TODAY? HELLOOO!" sort of way.
He pressed his hand to hers so that their palms mated, the whisper of his magic humming with hers.
"I'm so glad I finally got the words out before I had another horrible life decision haunting me," he said. "When I went travelling through the Multiverse, I met a version of me that had obsessively attempted to find a version of a world where I was able to keep Christine. He'd destroyed his world with his obsession, and there was something he said that truly rattled me. Even in all the different versions of me, every one of me lied to Christine when she asked if I was happy. I told her of course I was happy, but it was always a lie."
He pressed his forehead to Hermione's. "I am happiest with you, Hermione. I'm afraid of letting someone close to me because I might lose them, or else I tie myself to someone in something that should be a marriage but isn't. There was always something missing. At first, I thought it was that it wasn't Christine, so it would never work out, but I realised that Christine was never meant to be my one or only love. She was the one who taught me I was afraid of being loved and loving them in return and it could cost me something more than the pain of knowing it was my own cowardice that did it. It was because of her that I can say the love I have for you is real. It's frightening. It scares me because it's real, but—"
He grasped her hands and held them in his. "I'm okay with being scared if it means what we have is real."
Hermione squeezed his hands. "I'm not scared when I'm with you, Stephen. I am stronger."
"Hermione Granger, it would be my great honour if you would become Hermione Strange for as long as Principalities and the cosmos allows my life to remain."
Hermione blinked back tears. "Of course, Stephen, I would be Strange with pride." She paused for a moment, chuckling. "Some would say I've always been pretty strange."
Stephen snorted. "I hope you do not find the name a burden."
Hermione smiled. "It would never be a burden. Well, maybe for Wong."
Stephen opened his mouth to say something then seemed to rethink it. "You're probably right."
"I know I am," Hermione said cheekily.
Stephen made a face, his fingers lightly touching her chin. "They always call me arrogant."
"I'm just a know-it-all," Hermione commented with sparkling eyes. "I guess that means we're well-matched?"
Stephen smiled. "I suppose we are."
"Have you found—" he trailed off.
"Yes," Hermione answered. "I had help from Kudara and the pups. I was a bit—incapacitated."
"Someone cast a spell on you?" Strange said worriedly.
"Familiar bond," Hermione said a little sheepishly. "It kind of hits me like a truck."
Strange blinked. "I've never had a familiar. The closest thing for me—is probably the Cloak of Levitation."
Hermione smiled. "The cloak cares for you very much."
"Traitor cloak," Stephen muttered.
Hermione chuckled. "Just admit that you love him too."
Stephen rolled his eyes.
The Cloak of Levitation's cleverly disguised "backpack straps" reached out and tenderly brushed Hermione's cheek. She smiled warmly. "I love you too, silly thing."
Hermione stood. "Let's go home," she said with a sigh. "I smell like a kebab."
"Are you a sorceress or are you not?" Stephen asked as he passed his hand over her surreptitiously. Kudara sneezed and glared balefully at Stephen as if the change did not exactly please her.
I liked your other scent much better, Kudara complained with a small whuff.
Hermione shook her head, wrinkling her nose. "I am in truly desperate need of a shower, you know."
I could bathe you, Kudara suggested.
"Thanks for the offer but I don't think that would help me feel much cleaner," Hermione said apologetically, flushing a bit.
Stephen clasped her hand in his as they made their way over to a rare patch hidden away from the teeming crowds. It was pretty cramped, and they had to duck under a strange sort of planter covered in trailing vines. Stephen bumped his head, and he glared at the offending object, causing it to promptly magick itself elsewhere out of self-preservation.
Hermione smirked, biting her lip and trying not to laugh.
Stephen conjured a portal using his sling-ring from above and had it engulf them both with a pack of Deviant hounds, a Lethifold, one Deathhead spider, an ornery Cloak of Levitation and all.
One errant pup panted excitedly as he sprouted a fine set of horns and pointy spikes and started to tear off in a random direction. A sling circle swiftly opened up and Kudara's head reached out to snatch up her misbehaving pup by the scruff and yoink him back through.
The sling circle closed with a soft foop.
Stephen's eyebrows furrowed as he inspected the objects they had confiscated over the course of the night, and he rubbed his right temple with one hand.
"Over fifty souls masquerading as baubles," he said. "The markets are either booming, or they are not selling as fast as they are coming in."
His face was grim as he stroked his beard a moment and sighed. "Most of them are dead souls. Breaking them free would only release them to the afterlife of their belief system, but this one is the most puzzling—"
He waved his hand over the sphere that seemed to be filled with both ice and rainbows. "This is a piece of a living soul mixed with memories. Whoever this came from still lives."
Hermione tilted her head and the bones in her neck popped and realigned. "The Washerwoman was at the markets."
"The fae omen of death?" Strange asked, frowning slightly. "Interesting location to set up shop."
"There was a couple there," Hermione said quietly. "One of them had cancer. Had—the Washerwoman agreed to not wash her clothes in exchange for something from her fiancé."
"Something like that rarely ends well," Stephen observed. "The price is always as high as the miracle is deep."
Hermione frowned. "She took the man's memories, his love for her. I could tell she was thinking she'd rather have died than suffer his scorn."
Strange passed a hand over the sphere once more and clucked his tongue. "Yet this seems somewhat older than our recent trip."
"She said the bargain was no longer hers to keep," Hermione recalled. "So she gave it to me."
The sorcerer grimaced. "That doesn't seem like her at all. She never gives away something for nothing. She never releases what she bargained for unless—"
Hermione stared intently at him. "One could easily die of anticipation here."
"Unless the bargain she originally made somehow stepped outside of her realm of influence," Stephen said slowly.
"Death?" Hermione asked.
Stephen nodded.
"And how does one avoid death save for exercise, healthy eating, avoiding drugs, limiting alcohol, and not smoking?" Hermione asked, her lips pursed together. "And even that does not fend death off forever."
"Short of being an immortal by birth," Stephen said thoughtfully, "Death can simply agree to not seek you out."
"I'd rather not become a desiccated old woman who could never die," Hermione commented.
"Immortal and ageless," Stephen clarified. "Though such things seem less apt to happen even amongst the most powerful of mutants and aliens, which is probably good considering how many things we've had to fight over the years. There is true immortality in which one cannot be killed, and there is the common of the types, if one could even call it common, which is life that continues on until it is ended by something other than old age, disease, or debility."
Hermione's face wrinkled in confusion. "Why would she give it to me? Why me and not you?"
"My dealings with the fae do not occur as often as with other magical magical entities and the problems they cause," Stephen admitted. "We have that list of dangers to the world with the usual suspects like Loki and the Darkhold-using Scarlet Witch, Mordo, or other multiverse mishaps—"
"It's a little creepy to know there are other versions of us living lives so like ours with slight differences, never quite the same," Hermione confessed. "Worlds wherein the only magic was the Wizarding World, worlds where I may have been a Muggle dentist, just like my parents."
Stephen frowned. "You'd be a horrible dentist," he observed. "Maybe a better neurosurgeon."
Hermione smiled slightly and shook her head. "It boggles the mind, either way."
"I think this particular package of soul and memory is directly connected to you in some way," Strange said, looking thoughtful. "Which means you have to cast the scrying spell. It would not work for me."
Hermione slumped slightly, a book appearing in her hand as she flipped through it quickly, snapping it shut. She appeared somewhere else, taking another book off the shelf and flipped through it. Then, appearing back at the table, she drank her tea in one go and sighed.
"Fae variables aside, the conjunctures set in the proper alignment, protective wards in case the fae essence should have a volatile reaction to the possible cross contamination of the tendrils of Ikthalon, protections against potential incursions should it happen to touch upon the powers of Balthakk—" Hermione snapped yet another tome closed with finality, and it appeared back on the shelf. "Fine, I'll do it."
Stephen smirked. "And Wong thinks I'm the only one who does that."
Hermione frowned. "I do my research."
"Yes, but you research just like I do," he remarked with a clearly amused smile.
"I just hope I don't have to conjure up a sword of the Vishanti to deal with the repercussions of this one miniscule bauble of unknown history." Hermione rubbed her nose, and one of the pups sneezed as if to do it for her.
Stephen waved his hand, and the one errant pup who was always getting into trouble, came careening through the air to land next to his mum. The pup was covered from nose to rump in flour and chocolate chips.
Kudara growled at her spawn, teeth bared in obvious reprimand. The shady pup visibly gulped and sat down immediately, trying his best to appear innocent.
The rest of the litter seemed to give him the side-eye, looking unconvinced.
Hermione made a series of rapid gestures with her hands, and magical strings formed between her fingers as she quickly wove a magical net and cast it over the "bauble" in question. It flashed as magic swirled around inside the "marble" and a series of complicated matrices swirled around her in turn.
For a moment, her brown eyes flashed a vivid blue, and her body twitched spasmodically as if going through a thousand movements at hyperspeed. Then, all of a sudden, the magical grid disappeared, and Hermione slumped wearily with a loud sigh.
"Hermione?" Stephen said softly.
Hermione grimaced and opened her eyes. "They are Severus' memories—memories and feelings for me. Everything we shared. All of his love. He gave it to the Washerwoman—to save my life."
Stephen's eyes widened. "The Deathhead egg?"
Hermione nodded.
Something seemed to flicker across Stephen's face. "But she gave it back to you, which means—" He passed his hand over her for a moment, tendrils of magic swarming around his fingers. "How did I not see this? I'm an idiot. The reason she cannot hold him to the contract is that she has no power over you, Hermione. Something did happen to you in between the Snap and the Blip. You were tested by Death. You're now immortal. Ageless."
Hermione shook her head sadly. "I still bleed, and it hurts."
Stephen sniffed and let out a cough-like laugh. "Believe me, it will always still hurt, but I think—it is but a memory of what you think should be. Not what they are anymore."
Hermione poked herself experimentally. "Really, Stephen, I'm the same me I've always been."
"I don't think that was ever in question," Strange said gently. "But I think it wasn't just the egg that Noggin's mother placed in your body. She planted some sort of seed as well. And in that time between the Snap and the Blip, it grew inside you but was trapped in between. I had removed the spider, but it was only a—" he made a scrunched up sort of face as he struggled to figure out the proper word. "A vehicle to pave the way for what was really growing inside you."
"My brain?" Hermione puckered her lips to the side, a slim eyebrow rising in disbelief.
"Your soul, perhaps," Stephen said. "When Death tested me—I realised it wasn't so much about fighting against her but rather accepting it. Once that happened, I was given the time to do my job without having to worry about being in a wheelchair and pointing my cane at alien invaders and shaking it at them with my teeth falling out."
Hermione sputtered. "Wait," she said, her eyes going wide. "You're really—immortal?"
Stephen nodded. "The curse of being the Sorcerer Supreme."
"But," Hermione said very quietly, "I'm not a Sorceress Supreme."
"Close enough, my love," he assured her. "You may have a different path ahead of you than me, but we both have a great many responsibilities that we must bear. I think—your familiars are a testament to it. You're bound to Deviants—beasts that, as far I knew, were untamable. Destroyers. But you've proven so many times that such things are not always set in stone. Your Lethifold, for example. Noggin. Kudara and her pups."
He tilted his head. "One thing is certain at least. Our life together will never be dull."
Hermione's hand closed gently over the memory marble. "I truly loved him, Stephen. I still do."
Strange smiled a little sadly. "I know." He held her hand and rubbed her fingers soothingly. "We have a very long time ahead of us, Hermione. And, maybe, if he knows the full truth of what we are and what it is we do, perhaps he might prove open to—a bit of a timeshare. I will not always be able to be there at your side. Maybe for a time, I can be more understanding with all the time we have been given."
Hermione tilted her head, looking thoughtful. "Maybe, I could be a bit more understanding too. When you believe you're measuring time in such a short span, things seem like they have to be finished so very quickly. It—would not be fair of me to think you could not be so understanding and me so inflexible."
Stephen stood and pulled her into an embrace, kissing her forehead tenderly. "It's you that I love, but your life with Severus was cut off by a fate no one could ever have predicted. My failures with Christine were my own fear and arrogance. My failure with Cleo was in living a life that we emulated. There was attraction most assuredly, but this—" He brushed back her hair with one hand. "Simple intimacy without expectation. Tenderness. Understanding. This is worth being flexible for in the span of what will be an incredibly long life together."
Hermione touched Stephen's lips with her fingertips. "I do love you."
Strange brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers. "Give him back his memories. See if he can accept a life with a sorceress with a visiting Sorcerer Supreme and a few randomly collected familiars. It's quite a lot to take in. It took me quite a while to realise I knew so very little and had even more to learn. Not everyone wants to know that, much less accept it."
Hermione kissed Stephen tenderly on the mouth and smiled at him. "Can we make a guest room at the Sanctum?"
Strange chuckled. "Of course. Hopefully he has better manners than Thor."
"He's an acquired taste," Hermione allowed. "But he doesn't punch first and break an entire museum just trying to walk through it."
Stephen raised his eyebrows. "Does he like tea?"
"He's British," Hermione chuckled. "It's in his blood."
Stephen smiled. "I must attend to a disturbance on the far side of the moon. Be safe, my love, and remember, we have a long time now. We can adapt. I am greatly relieved—that we will not be parted by age. There are so many dangers we will face, but I hope that together we will make better decisions than we would alone."
Stephen sling-ringed a portal into space where the moon was visible, casting a spell around himself as he stepped through. The portal closed behind him, and Hermione sighed.
Suddenly the portal opened up again, and a hand with a Deviant beast pup grasped by the neck scruff shot out and dumped him back on Earth before disappearing.
Kudara swatted the errant pup with one paw and took him into her mouth and carried him with her as the pup whinged in protest at his mischief being managed.
"Kids," Hermione said with a sigh, shaking her head.
End of Part One of Stranger Things
A/N: I'm still considering if this will be a flexible relationship or if Severus would turn his back on her since she's found another (and is well, a sorceress of unfathomable different power than the witch he once knew.) Please comment with your thoughts, and who knows, maybe you'll convince me one way or another. My brain bunnies are sometimes very stubborn.