AN:

Credit to Inwardtranscience for inspiring much of the mind-magic stuff in this chapter.


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Hermione jolted awake, and immediately regretted it. Every heartbeat caused the ache in her skull to throb. An involuntary groan slipped out, and she let her head loll sideways, cheek to… pillow?

Her eyes snapped open to white cotton sheets, sky-blue wall and tiled floor, a sunlit room – the bed beneath her really more of cot, a clean herbal smell, warm air—

"There you are."

Another jolt – another throb of her headache that she did her best to ignore as propped herself up on the elbow of her left arm, found that her right arm was free of its sling and wrapped in fresh bandages, warmed by the sunlight shining through a narrow window in the far wall, next to which was a wooden coffee table flanked by two wicker chairs – one empty, the other occupied by the poised figure of a woman whose large, placid aura Hermione recognized even before her eyes adjusted enough to clearly see her face.

Atueya Arantza Ezkibel of Agĩtamaiyũ, Doctor of Cognitive Psychology and natural Legilimens, met her gaze with a serene smile.

"Good afternoon." She then held up a potions phial between her thumb and forefinger. "Painkiller?"

Her head was bare this time, revealing neat corn-rows that zigzagged over her scalp and became free-hanging braids in back. She wore a sleeveless maroon tunic that bared her leanly muscled shoulders and arms, one leg over the other in loose-fitting slacks—

"The tea will also help." She nodded to the coffee table and the two earthenware mugs resting on it, faint wisps of steam curling up out of them.

Hermione stared for a moment, mind scrambling for context – the obsidian hall, the basin, the oath, the golem staring down at her with its blazing gemstone eyes – the flash – the darkness—

She looked down (a bit fast for her aching head) and found the hawthorne wand still tucked into the holster strapped to her left forearm – her travel tee-shirt still on as well, sports bra still underneath it, denims still snug around her legs beneath the white sheet, but her trainers, where – there, resting beside her bag on a bench by the door, which wasn't glyph-covered like the doors in Patil Manor, but did have the same wandlike lustre as pretty much every magic-drenched wooden thing she'd seen since arriving in Lagos.

(Just because her magesight couldn't detect any enchantments did not mean they weren't there.)

"We are in the Temple of Hwtł'auŋQwéyyə," said Doctor Ezkibel, "The Old City's oldest and finest place of healing."

—except the actual words she used were Tuko katika hekalu la Hwtł'auŋQwéyyə, mahali kongwe na bora zaidi ya uponyaji katika Mjiwazamani - which took Hermione a second to fully register because she had understood those words without needing to mentally translate.

Which was a first for her, when it came to Swahili.

"You've been here for most of the afternoon," the Doctor continued in kind… "while the healers made sure you were not injured, ill, cursed, or possessed. You were rendered unconscious by a sleeping charm – not by trauma."

…and Hermione understood every word as naturally as she would French or English or Ìgbò.

"Yes, thus the headache," said Doctor Ezkibel.

What?

"It's simply not possible for a mind to absorb that much knowledge so quickly without some discomfort – though you have slept through the worst of it."

Doctor Ezkibel – who was not a medical doctor.

Who had, during their first meeting, projected thoughts and memories into her mind without lifting a finger.

Hermione had read everything she could find about mind-magic since the Impostor tried to legilimize her – and had found very little actionable information besides some very compelling reasons to never be alone with a natural Legilimens. They could allegedly browse through your thoughts and memories as easy as breathing, alter memories with only slightly more effort, invade and rearrange people's dreams, twist aversions into phobias, idle fantasies into cravings, interests into obsessions – the Dark Lord was said to have altered people's personalities until they were unrecognizable to their own friends and families, planted hidden compulsions to steal or murder or worse—

"Tom Riddle," said Doctor Ezkibel —Hermione accidentally met the woman's gaze and quickly looked away again, heart pounding— "does not accurately represent the average mind-mage."

(—though the word Hermione understood to mean 'mind-mage' was dzwèłèiółtsù, which contained neither of those words and had clearly been borrowed from Siralic, because apparently she could now recognize that just by hearing—)

"Most of us possess a fully-developed sense of empathy, for one thing. Myself included." The Doctor lifted an earthenware mug off of the coffee table and leaned back in her chair. "For another, your retentive acuity and your awareness of how your knowledge and memories are interconnected gives you something of a head start when it comes to what the English call 'Occlumency'; I suspect you would notice the signs of an erased, suppressed, or altered memory in short order. I also happen to be a law-abiding citizen of a society that has strong safeguards against the misbehavior of mages like Tom Riddle; another hard-earned lesson of the Secrecy Wars. I am trusted to be alone with you, Miss Granger, because I've taken a very thorough blood-oath not to do almost anything permanent to the mind of any resident of the Ubuntu League without their explicit request. Were I to violate that oath, I would be rendered incapable of external mind-magic – which is essentially my sixth sense, and more vital to my life and work than sight or sound."

All of this she said in Swahili - which Hermione continued to understand as if she'd been speaking it her whole life.

She swallowed, mouth dry, and rasped: "Almost anything permanent?"

"Giving knowledge is fair game," the Doctor replied. "As you've noticed."

"You—" Hermione stopped herself, frantically reviewed the last few minutes, and came right back to the same absolutely mad conclusion— "I'm sorry – it sounds like you're saying you just put an entire language in my brain."

"Well, the process is a bit more delicate and tedious than the word 'put' would imply," said Doctor Ezkibel. "The recipient's mind does do most of the work, with the donor largely just supplying the knowledge and accelerating its assimilation, but one also has to keep checking to make sure all the correct associations are being made, which is roughly on par with threading an entire pack of needles one-handed."

…which was fascinating, but also meant yes. She had. While Hermione was asleep .

"Would you have preferred to postpone your more… purposeful studies in order to take language classes with students half your age?"

Well no, but—!

"Besides, this way you also get most of my academic vocabulary – along with plenty of connotations and colloquialisms."

Oh.

Donor, she'd said.

"You…" against her better judgement, Hermione looked Doctor Ezkibel in the eye. "You gave me your knowledge of Swahili?"

"Of course. Why draw water from your neighbor's well when you've got one at home?"

"…thank you," said Hermione, feeling – oddly touched, which was not a reasonable thing to be feeling under the circumstances... but she couldn't help it.

The Doctor smiled, just a little. "I'm just doing my job, Miss Granger."

Was she? Siphoning languages into people's brains didn't sound like part of the job description for a 'cognitive psychologist'… but then again, Hermione barely knew anything about normal psychology, much less magical varieties thereof.

"Please, join me." Doctor Ezkibel gestured vaguely towards the empty chair, or perhaps the unclaimed mug and phial of potion resting on the coffee table— "Your brain needs liquids."

Well, when she put it like that…

Hermione sat carefully up, scooted to the edge of the bed, and planted her sock-clad feet on the floor – finding it pleasantly warm. Then she stood —with another painful head-throb— and walked over to sit across from the Doctor.

The liquid in the mug did look and smell like tea – earthy orange, with a slightly minty scent. The phial beside it was clear glass that revealed the blue-green hue of the potion inside, which was a common color for low-strength analgesics. It might quickly banish her headache… which was only there because of the woman in front of her.

"Why?" Asked Hermione, looking at the Doctor's hands where they held the other mug, rather than her face. "Why go to the trouble, if it's such a 'tedious' process? And why was I sleep-charmed? The wards, what did they—"

"Eldest Sister," said Doctor Ezkibel – and Hermione apparently already knew that this referred to the City's wards, said knowledge infused with a vague sense of something that reminded her of visiting the shrine in Patil Manor or seeing Torah scrolls at Shul—

"Who, for context, has possessed something resembling sentience since we were still fending off pharaohs."

It – she – what?

"Thus the name," the Doctor went on. "Calling Her 'wards' would be like calling your brain 'meat'; not technically incorrect, but an extreme oversimplification. And offensive to the many people that revere Her. Some also call Her the 'Spirit of the Mountain'."

right. Hermione supposed that did contextualize how it had felt to be scrutinized by the thing – like an immense, intangible weight pressing down on her – after she gave it her blood, if she was connecting the dots correctly—

"Apparently She perceived an 'intrusion' of some sort through the Assessor when you made your oath. She then incapacitated you and alerted the Ward-Singers, who are… sort of like a quasi-religious order of highly skilled maintenance workers, though I advise against calling them that in public. That Eldest Sister delegated this to them rather than just turning you to ash indicates that She does not consider you a threat to the City."

…right.

At least there was that.

"I'm not sure how the 'Singers translate whatever stimuli She gives them into words," said Doctor Ezkibel, "but they say that the distinction between intrusion and intruder matters here – enough so to have you categorized as 'potential possession-victim' rather than 'potential enemy agent'. So you aren't being accused of anything. We've also determined that you are not, in fact, possessed, so."

…wait.

"They're currently preparing some sort of ritual to figure out what exactly it is about you that caught Her attention. Since they need your informed participation in said ritual and refuse to speak any 'language of the colonizers', they put in a request for someone to ensure you'll be able to understand them – without the need for an interpreter whose presence would require adjustments to the ritual. There are very few people in the City capable of inducing accelerated language acquisition, and of those few, I was the only one who had any familiarity with your mind."

Possession – intrusion – that one line in the oath – I swear that I shall not help any person, creature, or spirit enter Mjiwazamani without explicit permission—

Mægthgast Blæc.

Clan-spirit Black.

I, thought Hermione, am an idiot.

"Wrong," said Doctor Ezkibel. "You're far from the first person to bring their family magic into the City, Miss Granger."

She…?

…right, no – of course not. It would create all sorts of problems with immigration and diplomacy if the wards freaked out anytime they sensed family magic…

Then again, the Mægthgast had several factors distinguishing it from the tutelaries of other Houses – she rather doubted the Potters had ever made a habit of feeding people to theirs—

"Yes," said the Doctor. "That would be a compelling point, if this were the first time Eldest Sister had met your Mægthgast."

Hermione blinked - barely resisted the urge to look at her face again— "...what?"

"House Black sent some of its spare sons to represent the family in the ICW's invasion force, during the Wars. And to bring back plunder and slaves, of course. One of those sons apparently got bored during a lull on the western front, decided to pay a visit to the Algerians camped up north, and ended up picking a fight – which would have gotten him killed, had some of the City's own not taken advantage of the chaos he caused to launch their own attack. Battle-mad fool ended up fighting side by side with the people he'd been trying to kill not a month prior, and developed a fixation on their commander – an Aŋzué huntress."

Aŋzué being the singular form of Aŋzwéla, which Hermione suddenly knew referred to what the Delacours would call a sister-tribe to the Veela—

"She was just mad enough herself to decide to seduce him to our side - helped along by some grudges he had against his countrymen. Possibly his family too. He ended up helping the resistance enough to be allowed into the City, post-war. Mægthgast Blæc did present a problem at first, but given that he lived to sire children, they clearly worked something out.I'm not privy to the exact details."

…right.

That was… absolutely something she could picture Sirius doing, actually.

Or Andromeda, for that matter.

(Half the curses Tonks taught Hermione, she had learned from her mother.)

"Anyway." Doctor Ezkibel took a sip from her mug. "The 'Singers usually do their Singing in Tsìḥréila, of course, but they also consider Tsìḥréila too hallowed to see it 'disrespected' by someone not learning it the slow, old-fashioned way, so. Swahili. And weaving any language into someone's mind is the sort of procedure one is obligated to stick around after, to make sure everything's been properly integrated, which it does seem to be…"

Hermione felt her attention intensify, then, a slight pressure on her face, the faintest ghost of a sensation in the back of her head—

"Why don't you tell me something?"

She blinked, instinctively looked up into the Doctor's eyes, looked away again with a jolt of fear that made her want to set something on fire.

"Like what?" She asked.

"Oh, I don't know. You've read up about Rozvi, I assume?"

The defense academy, she meant – about which Hermione had thoroughly questioned the embassy staff back in Lagos.

"Yes," she replied (though she rather doubted the need to actually say anything out loud around this woman). "I have, and I intend to apply as soon as possible."

"Good," said Doctor Ezkibel. "I'll recommend that they admit you."

What?

"Provided you meet the relevant benchmarks on your placement exams, of course."

"Why?" Hermione blurted. "Why would you—? You don't even know what it is about me that the… Eldest Sister noticed."

"No," said Doctor Ezkibel. "But the fact that the Wardsingers had you brought to a hospital rather than a containment chamber suggests it probably won't be a major obstacle, once they figure it out. As for why… "

—she took another sip—

"How many of those vicious little curses and rituals you've been practicing are part of the Hogwarts curriculum?"

Hermione glared at the Doctor's hands. What did that have to do with—?

"You're going to become more dangerous no matter what school you attend. Your fear and anger demand it. I've seen such anger warp compassion into self-righteous cruelty… but I've also seen it used to help and protect people. You have the intellect to make that anger felt, for better or for worse. Which do you think Mægþgast Black will encourage, if you let it?"

Hermione recalled the sight of Skeeter on her knees, disheveled and trembling and powerless. The feeling of it. The rightness.

The thrill.

"So you see," said the Doctor, with an unnervingly knowing look in her eye, "to deny you proper supervision and guidance would be highly irresponsible."

Hermione's hands clenched around her mug. "How pragmatic of you."

Ezkibel smiled mirthlessly – and in the same tone one might use to discuss the weather, replied: "You distrust authority figures too much to take any concern I might express for your wellbeing at face value."

Hermione moved 'learn proper Occlumency' to the top of her to-do list.

"I look forward to teaching you," said Doctor Ezkibel.

She—? "You teach at the defense academy?"

"We have an arrangement. They need their graduates to be capable of guarding their minds under great duress, and my combination of ability and expertise makes me very good at helping with that."

Cognitive psychology, direct knowledge-transfer, Occlumency lessons…

How many jobs did she have?

Was she even really a psychologist?

Doctor Ezkibel (if that was her real title) set her mug down on the table and leaned back, fingers interlaced in her lap.

"Tell me, Miss Granger… what sort of career do you imagine attracts more mind-mages than any other?"

She'd definitely heard that thought, then.

"I… assume it's not 'cognitive psychology'," said Hermione.

Or teaching, for that matter – the Professors at Hogwarts had seemed stressed enough without being constantly exposed to all the filth and nonsense and hormonal idiocy that surely filled their students' minds—

"It's not," said Doctor Ezkibel. "I'm actually rather atypical in that regard. Those of us whose gifts manifest in childhood tend to know more than we'd like about how other people's brains work before our own have finished developing."

She had a habit, Hermione realized, of peppering distractingly interesting bits of information into conversation – fully aware that Hermione found them distracting, no doubt—

Ezkibel raised an eyebrow. "No guesses?"

Hermione scowled at her.

What sort of career…?

What sort of professional was capable of legilimency, direct knowledge-transfer, and Occlumency instruction, and would be called in to help ward-experts figure out why their overpowered security system wasn't able to identify the reason some random girl tripped the alarm – a girl who said professional just happened to have prior familiarity with, because they'd met while she was visiting London to—

Oh.

To gather information on the likelihood of regime change in one of the wealthiest and most influential magical nations in the world – that was what she'd said. If anything, stopping by to tell them about Mjiwazamani had been a secondary objective, probably a late addition to her itinerary.

What sort of job sent someone uniquely well-suited to discovering secrets to gather information on the political instability of a country that was a cornerstone of the organization they blamed for tearing the world apart – and keeping it torn?

If someone from said country tripped the alarm of your super-advanced security system for unclear reasons and didn't seem to have any idea why , what sort of professional would you send to make sure she was telling the truth?

"This…" Hermione swallowed. Wet her lips. "This is an interrogation, isn't it?"

Ezkibel smiled in a way that was unnervingly familiar – not happy, but pleased, which should not have been gratifying—

"This is a conversation," she calmly replied. "I see no reason it shouldn't continue as such. Do you?"

"No," Hermione managed to say rather than squeak. "Ma'am."

She missed her cypress wand. The hawthorne wand was better than no wand, but it… still…

A sudden chill washed over her.

It still wouldn't matter.

Letting a potential foreign agent keep their wand only made sense if you were absolutely certain it wouldn't make them even slightly more difficult to subdue – or contain – or—

"You've been in my mind for hours," she blurted. "You know I'm not working for anyone, you know I didn't mean to – to bring any sort of danger—"

"I do," said Doctor Ezkibel. "I believe you are innocent of any wrongdoing or ill-intent - and between my assessment and the fact that Eldest Sister let you into the City, the relevant authorities will believe so as well. You are , however, a person of interest."

"What…" Hermione swallowed, mouth still dry, head still throbbing - and picked up the phial. This woman had no need to drug her. "What does that mean?"

"More or less what it sounds like." Ezkibel sat back in her chair. "Eldest Sister has successfully protected this City for over three thousand years. She has stopped threats no mortal saw coming, and saved countless lives. Entire cultures, entire peoples, survive only here. So when She tells us to look closely at someone, finding out why becomes a very high priority."

…well then.

Hermione pulled out the cork, and downed the potion in one quick swallow. Bitter, viscous herbyness poured over her tongue and down her throat. She took a gulp of tea to wash away the taste – and found the dryness of her mouth banished by mint, citrus, and something that wasn't quite ginger. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was.

"Right," she said. "Well. You're the expert. What do you think it is about me that...?"

"I think it's most likely something that was done to you without your knowledge," Ezkibel replied. "Most likely while at Hogwarts, given that the longest gaps in your memory occurred during your time there, Sirius Black's mental state likely renders him incapable of anything that Eldest Sister wouldn't be able to identify, your parents' home was monitored for emanations, and both the Tonkses and Patils are fiercely protective of you."

Right. That… tracked.

Unfortunately.

"Your magesight – when did it begin to manifest?"

"What, you haven't reviewed that already?" Hermione couldn't help but snipe - and then immediately regretted it.

Ezkibel's full lips twitched back into a slight smile. "Do you think I understated the complexity and delicacy of helping someone's mind assimilate an entire language in one sitting? I did of course check for control-curses and hidden compulsions and such before getting started, but afterwards I needed a break."

Hermione's face felt a little warm, by the end of that.

"It started manifesting the summer after my second year at Hogwarts," she said – and then, quite against her will, recalled whispers in the halls, threats slipped into her books, blood on the walls, the sound of scales on stone, that stale smell, two huge yellow eyes—

"A basilisk," said Ezkibel, voice suddenly hard and flat. "In a school. "

"Yes," Hermione hissed through clenched teeth. "Which is very unpleasant to remember."

"Is that why you've since neglected to tell any healers that you were once petrified for nearly a month?"

Hermione glared back over the rim of her mug despite how bloody nervous it made her to meet the woman's gaze. "Well, it hasn't been relevant to any of the examinations I've undergone."

Ezkibel just… stared at her for a moment.

Hermione resisted the urge to shrink or hunch or look away. "There haven't been any lasting physical effects."

"There haven't…?" Ezkibel leaned forward, uncrossing her legs to plant her elbows on her knees and press her hands together in front of her mouth as she peered across the table at Hermione. "You've never even taken a proper anatomy course, have you? Much less…"

Well, she didn't have to rub it in.

"Right." Her hands dropped, clasped between her knees— "The prevailing theory about the origins of magesight amongst those of us that don't consider applying the scientific method to magical phenomena to be some kind of sacrilege is that it results from mutations in at least the genes that dictate the structure of the eye, activated by prolonged immersion in higher concentrations of ambient magic during gestation."

…so probably 'yes' to her really being a doctor, then.

"This is admittedly outside my field of expertise, but I've never heard or read of it manifesting later than age six. Suddenly developing magesight in mid-adolescence is very much a physical—" Ezkibel paused, something subtle rippling through her aura. "...change…"

Her eyes narrowed –not looking at Hermione so much as through her, which was both a relief and somehow also unnerving–

"...which can be induced via blood-alchemy without a modern understanding of genetics."

This last bit she uttered quietly, almost to herself. Then her gaze re-focused, as oddly piercing as ever.

"So the real question," she said, "is how else you may have been altered in those twenty-six days you lay petrified. And by whom. And why."

Oh.

Those were very good question.

Hermione wished they weren't.

She couldn't remember anything from those days clearly – only blurred, shifting colors, discord amidst harmony, random mood shifts… and then the sudden shock of being able to move and breathe and touch again, of feeling like her bones were too fragile and her skin was too small

"Oh, that is promising."

And that – that was too much.

"Can you stay out of my head for one minute?" Hermione snapped.

Ezkibel blinked and sat back, calm as anything, which kicked Hermione's heartbeat up a notch – but she would not apologize for wanting some bloody privacy in her own—

"Yes," said the Doctor. "I have what I need, anyway."

Oh, well if she had what she needed—

"Though when the time comes to examine whatever that was, and it will, I can suppress your emotional reactions to the memories."

She…?

Huh.

That… actually sounded rather useful.

Ezkibel looked down suddenly, at one of her bracelets – a single glyph-covered bead of which was now pulsing blue in Hermione's magesight.

"Right." She rose from her chair. "On your feet. The 'Singers are expecting us."

What – ah. Right. Investigatory ritual.

"But first…" With a Auror-quick wrist-flick there was a wand in Ezkibel's hand. Hermione jolted and all but leapt to her feet – but the Doctor only tapped her wand on the windowsill three times in a row, each with a little pulse of power… and the widow stretched broader, its glass pane melting away into the surrounding adobe, letting in a warm breeze that carried a green, earthy sort of scent.

"You missed out on the view earlier," she said with a smile. "Come. Take a look."

Hermione hesitated for a moment, heart pounding in her chest. Only after Ezkibel had turned away and gone over to the door, wand vanished back into its invisible holster, did she step up to the window. Sunlight immediately warmed her face, bright enough she had to squint and blink for a moment until her eyes adjusted enough to see the verdant garden that seemed to curve around the building maybe two floors below – islands of tropical trees and ferns and flower-bushes separated by curving pathways, along which small groups of mages were strolling while others lounged in the shade. At the garden's far edge was the very top of a retaining wall, and beyond that…

Oh.

A caldera. She was looking out the window of a building high on the inner slope of a vast caldera – which was utterly full of city. Every slope was terraced, carved into what looked like stairs made for giants, some covered in green farmland dotted with clusters of huts made tiny by distance, others supporting semicircular neighborhoods that varied broadly in architecture – domes here, squat cylinders there, in several places what looked almost like giant free-standing beehives, each set curving around its own forested park – and all of this surrounding the dozens of larger buildings that covered the floor of the caldera, clustered cones and garden-topped ziggurats and pagoda-like towers and what she would've mistaken for stadiums were they not full of more lush greenery, all separated into concentric rings by many concentric canals that gleamed in the sun. Hermione looked up to see a web of many-colored magic pulsing and rippling across the sky overhead. Beneath it, winged creatures swooped from tower to tower and terrace to terrace. Airships, literal ships tethered to hot air balloons, floated this way and that over the city – though all avoided the sextet of massive step pyramids in its very center and the grove of gargantuan trees that loomed up out of the space between, tall as high-rises, with a collective aura like a translucent golden storm-cloud.

Hermione honestly forgot to breathe for a moment.

She couldn't bring herself to look away –or even move– when she felt the strange frisson of another aura brushing against her own.

"Worth a little caution, don't you think?" Doctor Ezkibel leaned against the wall beside her. "To protect it all."

Hermione didn't bother to reply out loud. There was no need to.

And yet…

A little caution.

The armed guards, the veil-wards, that thing in the fog and the gate only it could open, the hall of stars she now suspected were each capable of doing something to would-be infiltrators, the golem and the ancient, sentient wards that peered through it…

These were not the hallmarks of a nation at peace.

They were the defenses of a nation that had been tested by its enemies within living memory… and had withstood them. Had overcome them.

She took a steadying breath, and turned to face the woman beside her - without whom she never would have come here.

Doctor Ezkibel was easily two heads taller than her – and if the lean muscle of her crossed arms was any indication, much stronger as well. She'd drawn her wand like an Auror, and something about the way she was leaning against the wall reminded Hermione of Tonks. She spoke like a professor, and something about her steady gaze was vaguely reminiscent of McGonagall – right from their first meeting, in fact, when she had taken one look at Hermione and decided to help her become a warrior… which, in hindsight…

Hermione's eyes narrowed.

"You're recruiting me," she said. "For the defense academy."

And from 'one of the wealthiest and most influential magical nations in the world' – wealthy in no small part due to the riches it had plundered from Africa while forcing African mages into hiding – a nation that was a cornerstone of the organization that maintained the tyranny of Secrecy across an entire subcontinent (and probably further, given its alliances with equivalent organizations in other regions), right as that nation was sleep-walking into a civil war over the rights of Hermione's people—

"Of course," said Doctor Ezkibel. "I've seen war, Miss Granger. I've seen bright young minds lost to it. Ruined by it."

She didn't look a day over thirty – though she could probably be twice that given how slowly some mages aged, and she wouldn't have had to actually go to war to know what it was like, given her abilities—

"I could not in good conscience let another go charging into it unprepared… especially not when I have the means to help you become the most prepared."

Hermione remembered Kalenga's illusions – mages deflecting hails of bullets and calling down lightning upon their enemies, shield-wards withstanding magical bombardment, the mighty lion brought down by a thousand tiny stings…

She could practically see the strings attached to the offer, the shadow of a larger agenda looming over it… and she found that she didn't particularly care.

"Well then," she said. "Shall we? Wouldn't want to keep these Ward-Singers waiting."

And sooner they figured out what had been done to her, the sooner she could begin.

Doctor Ezkibel smiled that infuriatingly approving smile, and handed Hermione her shoes. When had she—?

"Welcome to our city, Miss Granger."

She turned and walked toward the now-open door.

"Welcome to the fight."

.

.o.

.


AN:

:D
The next installment will catch up with the squad back in Britain, and then jump back and forth between them & Hermione.