Chapter 1
Hermione never could blame her father’s mistakes and endless mess-ups on anyone but him. When she was 8 years old and nagged her mother to get her an email, she wracked her mind for who to email. She saw her mother every day, so there was no point there. Her father ignored all contact except for a card on holidays, and visiting once a year when he had a business trip to London, which, Hermione would later realize, was a lot better than it could have been but a lot worse than it should have been. But that year, Howard sent her a card with a family picture in it. His real family. Hermione wasn’t yet mature enough to realize that picture should have hurt, but what she did see was an opportunity. She didn’t know how to get in contact with Maria Stark, nor did she know what to say, but since over half the letter went into detail talking about the marvelous achievements of the teeenager in the picture, seventeen year old Anthony Stark, she decided then and there that was what she was going to write to. She somehow managed to wheedle her half-brother’s private email out of Howard, and sat down to write.
Hi Anthony.
I don’t really know you, but I think I should. My mum says you’re my half-brother, but I don’t know how someone can be half of a brother. You’re not missing half of your body, are you? Because that would be terrible. One of my classmates in primary school is in a wheelchair and a teacher has to wheel him around. I hope you don’t have to do that.
I just learned to type so I’m learning how to write emails. Mum says it’s like talking to a person but you write it out, like a letter, but I’ve never written a letter, so I’m talking to you like I would talk over the phone. I don’t have a phone, mum says I’m too little, but Dad visits once a year and in his christmas card he says you know how to make really cool ones.
Dad’s card said you graduated college, but I’m only in primary school, because I’m 8 and mum says she wants me to be normal, that even if I could be moved up, I wouldn’t be. Did you go to primary? Mum says everyone did, even she did, even Santa did, but I know Santa isn’t real.
I hope you reply to this because then you can be my friend, because I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, but we’re related, so we can be friends.
Hermione
Two days later, Hermione received an email back, and she read it out loud to her mum.
Hello Hermione,
This is a little strange because I didn’t know you or about you before now, but I sort of wanted a sister, and now it turns out I have one. You can call me Tony, that’s what my friends call me. Only my parents call me Anthony, so you shouldn’t.
I don’t make phones a lot because any interesting additions to phones aren’t really worth adding, but I’m working on something even better. I’m working on creating an AI, that’s an Artificial Intelligence, creating a person capable of thinking like a real person but inside a computer. It’s like a smart pinocchio except much cooler.
I don’t know why you got a card celebrating my achievement, but I graduated with a bachelor’s degree from MIT, that’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I’m going for a master’s and then a doctorate, because otherwise I’m bored.
Where do you live? Maybe I could come visit. It would be nice to have a sister over more than just emails.
Tony
Hermione was a bright girl. She saw very clearly that Tony wasn’t talking like an educated person, but at the level that she wrote at. But she wrote back anyway. Their contact continued, and by the time she was 11, he taught her how to make sure her computer and WiFi could keep up with the daily or even more emails that they were exchanging, all in the same thread, with the subject line eight year old Hermione had labeled as Hi!!!!
When Hermione got a visit from Hogwarts Professor Minerva McGonogall to tell her about the admission to the school as well as the statute of secrecy, she asked another key question.
“Professor, what are the limits to family I can tell?”
“You can tell close family. Parents, siblings, and sometimes exceptions are made for aunts, uncles, or cousins when one is especially close. In short, your household, if they are muggles, and no limits if they are not.”
“Professor, my father and significantly older brother live on another continent, does that count as the same household?”
“If neither of them will tell and can be trusted, since they are within one degree of relation, they can be told.”
“Thank you, professor.” She didn't ask about Maria Stark because she had never met or talked with the woman, much less known her well enough to tell a legally binding secret.
Hermione didn’t want to tell over email, because it was a secret, so Tony created an especially encrypted chat box for the two of them so Hermione would tell. She decided, with her mother, not to tell Howard because she knew, in his never ending search for Steve and by extension, super soldier serum, there was no guarantee he would not ask to pull as much of her blood as he could without debilitating her as often as he could, or try to study her abilities in a lab.She knew Howard would never dissect her or do anything truly harmful, but it would not be pleasant either. Tony, however she had a close bond with, and decided she could trust. Howard died mere months after that, never knowing of his daughter's ability.
When Hermione went to Hogwarts, she went as Hermione Granger, under her mother’s maiden name, because with the amount of muggleborns or half-bloods, someone would know what the name meant, and so she went as she did in school before, as Hermione Granger, absolutely no connection to the billionaire Howard Stark and his only son.
Hermioine continued writing to Tony on summers and breaks, and eventually, told Rose and Ron about her secret, about the other part of her family. That was the moment Lilith shared of her own father too, Ron simply joking, “I’m sorry, you have to go on to the secret dad club without me.”
That lifted the mood, but that was also the moment Lilith started to look at her father in a different light. She looked at the books he had brought about Asgard and decided one day she might just go there and see it for herself, whether her father liked it or not. She looked at the rules, and for all she shouldn’t exist, she was in no danger, it was only her father’s cowardice and shame at her, which, when she looked for, she saw, that was stopping him from showing her about the place. And she made sure to take an example from Hermione and Tony when relating to her own infant half-sister, and she didn’t regret it one bit.
The last email Hermione ever sent to Tony was shortly before she wiped her mother's mind of her existence, years after Howard and Maria were dead.
Dear Tony,
The incidences with Voldemort have escalated beyond what we could have feared. I will wipe this email from my servers because it is too dangerous in case death eaters can use a computer and can find your connection to me. For all your weaponry and security detail, I could destroy all of them back when I was a third year, much less a trained adult, and a merciless killer like a Death Eater, and to add to that, they never go alone, cowards that they are.
I am going to resist, as you know I will, but as I am amongst the only ones left to lead, I have to go dark. I am wiping my mother’s memory of my existence, she will have a better, safer life without getting targeted, because if she were, there would be a lot the death eaters could get from me. Just in case though, stick around with Rhodey, for all he won’t know why, he’s a military man, and he can protect you beyond what a bodyguard can.
Say hello to JARVIS for me, and in case this will be my last email, goodbye. I truly hope I will survive the coming war unscathed, but the chances are slim.
If I don't, when it all ends, for I hope it will, if we win, I'll come meet you. I'll apparate into the secret room behind your closet you told me about, and JARVIS can tell you. If I die, one of my friends will. If none of us make it out and we die, you'll know, Tony, because you'll be fighting a madman. I know you, and I know you'd never bow, but I hope you never need to fight as I do.
Please, however, for your own safety, stay out of England, or rather Great Britain as a whole, preferably out of Europe as a whole. Your place in Malibu is perfect for the cause.
Goodbye, Tony, I doubt I will see you for a time. If anything happens to me, don't dive into alcoholism, drugs, and sex like you did after your parents' passing.
I hope to see you again soon, but remember, I love you Tony, I always have and always will.
Hermione Stark
It was the first time she had ever signed with that name, and it would be the last.
Hermione Granger Stark died as she fought, a lioness, defending her pack to the last.