Iron and Magic

CHAPTER ONE

Page count: 9

"Dr. Granger?"

Hermione looked up and away from the alien technology she was examining, well, actually, she had determined it to be a magically charmed sword that had rusted over time and began to corrode and it was completely harmless despite the faint magical aura that still surrounded it.

"Director," she greeted the eye-patch wearing man as he entered her lab.

Only few knew she existed, even fewer knew where her lab was located for security reasons, and only three of those had the access code, herself, Agent Phil Coulson and Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD.

"Do you have another item you wish me to examine?" She asked, moving away from the workbench and pocketing her wand into her lab coat.

"No, you are being reassigned," he replied, his expression blank, his tone exceptionally calm and free of emotion. Nick Fury was a hard man to read, but if one spends enough time searching, the ticks were clear. A slight twitch of the eye, a blink that was faster than usual, the tensing of his shoulders, the pulsing of the vein in his neck.

"Excuse me?" Her voice rose in pitch.

"You are being reassigned," he repeated.

He shifted his hand closer to his holster where his weapon was stored upon the notice that she was calm, too calm. That was, until, golden sparks zinged through her hair like an electric current, her curls frizzing into a bushy mess that resembled her earlier school years, and her body straightened and stiffened.

"Excuse me?" She repeated, her voice dramatically lower, her kind eyes turning cold and deadly.

"You have been a remarkable asset to SHIELD and now, you are to be given a new assignment. You will no longer be aligned with SHIELD, on paper, at least. Your contract has been sold and you are now expected to report to another."

"And who exactly is that?" She seethed, her eyes hardening into a narrowed glare and her hands clenching into fists, fighting the urge to draw her wand.

"Tony Stark."

He observed her closely. She was quiet and stiff until her wand was in her hand and the floor to ceiling glass windows of her lab, separating the room and corridor, were slammed by a pulse of magic, shattering into thousands of pieces and covering the ground.

Fury barely held in the sigh and roll of his eye. That was going to take hours to clean up and repair, something he knew she wouldn't help with, even if she was the cause of it. She was furious and he could sympathise, he wouldn't wish to be in the same building as Stark either, let alone work under him for an obscene amount of time, but they all had to make sacrifices. Admittedly, Dr. Granger was a truly remarkable asset, one he didn't wish to lose but his hands were tied. He hated politics.

Stark had offered a donation that couldn't be refused. If they gave him Dr. Granger, he would share his cloaking technology with SHIELD, something his tech experts had been working to develop for over three years, and of course, Stark had done so in as little as a month. It was irritating how clever he was.

He'd been prepared for her angry response, the brunette being known to have quite the impressive temper on her to rival the Hulk, and whilst he was glad she hadn't conjured those little yellow birds of hers to attack him, (something he'd seen happen on more than one occasion and silently admitted was quite entertaining) he did think her response of shattering the windows to be a little childish. Did he voice that? No, he wasn't Agent Barton. He had a brain, unlike the archer who seemed to enjoy getting a rise out of the witch, no matter of the consequence and hex it brought him in the process. Agent Romanoff was hard-pressed to keep her best friend alive and he didn't envy the deadly assassin.