She finally leaned back into the chair, the list by her side on the coffee table. She glanced to the side, where a clock had appeared earlier, as per her wishes. Only been an hour. Huh…
"What to do now?" She muttered to herself, as she glanced back at the contents of the list. Most of the things on there were either years away from her reach, or she was not strong enough to tackle them right now. Even going by the year, there was nothing much she could do right now.
Now that the Golden Trio didn't exist, there was no guaranteed way of how she could acquire the Philosopher's Stone. She was sure there was much more to the Stone's capability, than just turning lead to gold, and being able to produce the Elixir of Life. But how to get her hands on that now? With no Golden Trio, there won't be any challenges made for them, and as such, no sure path to the Stone.
Looks like I'll have to improvise a lot. Ehh, nothing new, but always exhausting. She thought to herself, a sigh escaping her, more out of habit than anything else.
I will need to keep an eye on some key players now. Track their movements. Maybe that'll give me more information. But for that, I'll need the Marauder's Map. At least, that's an easy thing to acquire.
As far as she remembered, the Weasley Twins got their hands on the map right in their first year. Should be easy enough to get the map from them. They would most certainly carry it on them. Just confound them and snatch the map from them. And even if they do not, it should be easy enough to break into the Gryffindor dorms.
"Hmm, yeah, lets do that tomorrow." She nodded to herself, planning to get the map tomorrow. "But what to do until then?" It was barely midnight, and she wasn't about to just go to sleep. Not when she had the whole night.
She glanced at the door, leading to the training room, as she had dubbed it. Hmm, might as well.
She pushed herself off the chair, and started to walk towards the room. The cat meowed and made to follow her, but she stopped it. "No, stay. It might get dangerous for you." The cat tilted her head, as if considering to follow her still, but then meowed, and gave what looked like an equivalent to a shrug, and trotted back to its back.
Hermione's eye twitched at that. She continued, shaking her head, a wry smirk on her face. "This cat… Its something else." She muttered to herself.
She stepped through the door into the massive, dark training hall, the door sealing shut behind her. The air was cool and still, the granite dummies standing as silent, useless sentinels. Her gaze fixed on the open, rattling crates to her left.
A strange, restless energy thrummed under her skin. For years—first in her old life, then in this new one—every action had been one of control, of suppression, of holding back. She had never, not once, truly let go and seen what she was capable of. Now, in this perfect, indestructible, and completely private arena, there was no reason to hold back.
She raised her hand, her will focused on the nearest crate. A silent, invisible blade of her dimensional magic sliced through the shimmering bindings on one of the Bludgers.
The effect was instantaneous.
With a sound like a small cannon firing, the black iron ball exploded out of the crate, rocketing straight at her head.
She didn't roll or dive. She simply took a sharp, precise step to the left, letting the wind of the Bludger's passage whip her hair as it smashed into the stone wall where her head had been a fraction of a second before. The impact sent stone dust spraying into the air with a deafening CLANG!
The Bludger ricocheted off the wall without losing any of its momentum and came at her again, this time low, aiming for her legs. She again simply sidestepped, her movements economical and fluid. The Bludger screamed through the space she had just occupied.
For a full minute, she let it continue. It was a brutal, chaotic dance, but with only one opponent, it was a manageable one. The Bludger was fast, very fast, vicious, and relentless, but it was also somewhat predictable. It operated on the simple physics of angles and momentum. She moved with it, her body, honed by years of her own physical conditioning, responding with a speed and agility that would be out of place for a normal eleven-year-old.
She was breathing easily, her pulse steady. Her analytical mind, even in the midst of the kinetic chaos, was processing the data. Fast, yes. But it's a single vector. I can track it. This is a good warm-up, but it's not a challenge. I need more, she thought, easily ducking under another pass*. A real threat isn't one object. It's chaos.*
While sidestepping the first Bludger as it came around again, she raised her hand and pointed at the crate. Her will lanced out and severed the bindings on the other two Bludgers from the first chest.
The room erupted.
The deep, echoing CLANG of the first Bludger was joined by the higher-pitched, furious WHUM of the other two as they launched into the air. The battle instantly transformed into a unpredictable three-dimensional war.
There was no time for analysis, only reaction. A black blur screamed at her from the left; she dropped flat, the wind of its passage pressing her to the ground. Another came from the right; she rolled hard, the iron ball smashing the floor where her ribs had been. The first one was already banking, coming back.
Somehow, impossibly, the bludgers were getting smarter in attacking her now. Not just shoot and miss like before in her direction, but even changing their direction mid air, as they missed their target. Even targeting her more strategically.
Now she was forced to move. She was running, ducking, weaving between the granite dummies, using them as temporary, sacrificial cover. The noise was a deafening, percussive nightmare of impacts and screaming air. She was fast, she was agile, but she was being herded. A dummy to her right exploded into gravel. The floor in front of her was shattered by another.
She skidded to a halt in the center of the room, her chest heaving, adrenaline singing in her veins. She was cornered. Two Bludgers were vectoring in on her from the front and a third one was screaming in from her right flank. There was no physical way to dodge all three.
This was the limit of physical agility.
She stopped dodging.
As the first Bludger screamed toward her face, she planted her feet, her expression shifting from one of frantic survival to one of absolute, cold command. She raised her hand.
She didn't try to catch it. She didn't try to deflect it. She projected an immovable, invisible wall of her dimensional power.
CLAAAAANG!
The Bludger stopped dead, as if it had hit a foot-thick wall of solid steel. It hung in the air three feet from her face, vibrating violently against her will, the sound so loud it made her teeth ache.
The other two were still coming.
Without taking her eyes off the first, she extended her other hand, splitting her focus. A second, invisible wall of force snapped into existence, catching the Bludger from the left. A third, higher-pitched CLANG! rang out as she snagged the final Bludger from her right, its momentum stopping so suddenly it seemed to defy physics.
The cavernous hall fell silent, save for the low, furious thrum of the three iron balls vibrating against the invisible tethers of her power.
She stood in the center of the room, breathing heavily, but in complete control. She had her answer. Physical agility was a supplement. Her power was the solution.
But the test wasn't over. This is stopping power. What about neutralizing power?
Crushing them was an option. A crude, brute-force one. But this was a test, and she had an arsenal of tools she hadn't been able to use in a long, long time. She brought all the bludgers into a single line, one behind another, still struggling against the invisible grasp that held them.
She released the rigid 'wall' constructs, but her telekinetic grip on the three Bludgers remained absolute, shifting from a shield to a set of precise, invisible hands. With a complex act of will, she moved them, arranging the three vibrating iron balls into a perfect, straight line, one behind the other, hovering ten feet from where she stood.
They were aligned. She held them there, immobile, with the focus of her left hand.
Then, she raised her right. She extended a single index finger.
The cold, dimensional power answered, but this time, she didn't shape it into a wall or a hand. She focused her entire intent on the principle she had spent years perfecting in the privacy of her old room. Not light. Not force. Laser.
A silent, needle-thin beam of pure indigo light shot from her fingertip. It was not a flash; it was a scalpel, a focused point of pure, destructive energy, held out for only a second.
There was no CLANG. There was a sharp, high-pitched hiss as the beam struck the first Bludger. The solid iron offered no resistance. The laser bored a clean, molten-edged hole straight through it.
The beam passed through the first and, in the same fraction of a second, lanced through the second. Another hiss as metal vaporized.
It didn't stop. It punched clean through the third bludger before dissipating against the far wall, leaving a small, glowing-red scorch mark on the dark stone.
She released her telekinetic grip.
The three Bludgers, each now bearing a perfectly round, smoking hole through its center, fell to the stone floor with a heavy, final thud.
She stood in the silence for a moment, her chest heaving slightly, the adrenaline from the chaotic chase finally registering. The laser itself, a complex construct, had cost her almost nothing in terms of magical energy; her conduit, trained for years, was far beyond such simple tasks. The only cost was the physical exertion, the strain on an 11-year-old's body from a high-intensity drill.
A big manic grin spread across her face as she took in the ruined bludgers on the floor before her, adrenaline pumping high, for it was the first time she had been able to test herself without having to limit herself.