As Natasha walked into the café, she ran through the deployment in her head once more.
Two blocks, twelve field agents.
A sniper position on the opposite rooftop, with tranquilizer rounds powerful enough to bring down an elephant.
Two agents and a signal jammer sat inside the ice cream truck on the corner.
If negotiations broke down, this café would become a sealed containment chamber within thirty seconds.
For dealing with a twelve-year-old girl, this was already an extravagant operation.
Natasha accepted her coffee with a smile, glancing out of the corner of her eye at the brown-haired figure by the window.
Target confirmed.
Hermione watched the man and woman, who were clearly a couple, chatting happily and giggling every so often.
The sickening stench of romance.
She rolled her eyes, quietly finished the remaining half of her coffee, and walked over to them.
"Scoot over. Make some room for me."
She pushed the young man aside and plopped down in his seat as both of them stared at her in bewilderment.
Hermione looked at the woman before her.
The woman appeared to be in her twenties, with a gorgeous face and a voluptuous figure. Her tight-fitting clothes showed off every sexy curve.
Her slightly wavy, wine-red hair added an alluring touch that made hearts flutter.
Unfortunately, Hermione was now a pretty little girl herself. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.
"Little girl, what are you..." The red-haired beauty spoke first, her eyes full of confusion.
Before she could finish, Hermione interrupted her.
"Drop the act. What do you want with me?"
Before the red-haired beauty could answer, the young man beside her frowned. "What do you mean, want with you? Why are you taking my seat, little girl? I don't have any spare change for you."
He was clearly implying that Hermione was a beggar.
Hermione did not get angry. She merely glanced between them and muttered to herself, "Could the Ministry of Magic have sent them? But there isn't a trace of magical energy on them. Why would the Ministry send two Muggles? I don't understand these people..."
Her voice was thick with confusion.
She had already decided on her persona in Marvel.
A little witch with a modest sense of justice, but very clever, even a little cunning, with a mysterious and powerful background.
Now all she had to do was keep up the act and bluff these people.
"You!"
When Hermione ignored him and continued muttering things he could not understand, the young man grew irritated.
"Quiet, you." Hermione took out her wand and tapped him on the forehead, then looked up at the red-haired beauty. "If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I'm leaving."
Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?
I'm a professionally trained adult, and a little girl barely old enough for middle school just knocked me on the head with a stick? The young man could not believe it.
"You..." Coming to his senses, the young man tried to say more, but the red-haired beauty raised a hand to stop him.
"Agent Jason, leave us for now. I'll handle this."
The young man's expression instantly shifted from anger to resignation, as though all his earlier reactions had been an act. He rose quietly and left the café.
As he left, he kept muttering, "How? How did a little girl that young see through us...?"
Only after he was gone did the red-haired beauty speak.
"Miss Granger... may I call you that?"
Hermione was not surprised. She grinned and said, "Just call me Hermione."
Whatever else happened, looking at a beautiful woman always lifted her spirits, even if having a beauty on each arm was no longer an option for her.
A flicker of delight crossed the red-haired beauty's eyes.
The target seemed easier to talk to than expected.
"All right, little Hermione." After considering her words for a couple of seconds, the red-haired beauty asked the question weighing most heavily on her mind. "How did you see through us?"
She actually shared the same doubts as the male agent who had left.
As a top-tier agent, she had absolute confidence in her disguise and was certain she had not given herself away. If she had not been utterly baffled, she would never have put her mission aside to ask this first.
For a moment, she even wondered whether the little girl before her was a spy trained from childhood by some secret organization.
"Huh?" Hermione looked puzzled. "Don't you know that wizards are very sensitive to people watching them?"
"In the short time since you came in, you've sneaked six looks at me, and that guy stole eleven. Is this really how you two date?"
"Even couples at Hogwarts who are about to break up pay more attention to each other than you do!"
The red-haired beauty froze.
Were children these days really that perceptive? Could they even sense someone's gaze?
Hermione chuckled inwardly.
The whole thing about sensing gazes was nonsense, of course. She had recognized the woman simply because she knew her.
She had seen her on-screen so often in her previous life that her face could not have been more familiar.
Natasha Romanoff!
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top agent, code name Black Widow!
Everyone's favorite Widow!
Natasha thought for a moment, going over Hermione's earlier words again. Suddenly, she stiffened as she caught the key word.
What... what had she just said?
A witch?!
Throughout their conversation, this child had conveyed one message: she was a witch!
Meanwhile, in a spacious office inside a towering building, a bald, one-eyed Black man's pupil likewise contracted at those words, and he looked down at the girl's file.
Several photographs lay on the desk: Hermione working outside the barbecue restaurant, the body of the Black robber, and the corpses of several Hell's Kitchen criminals.
Natasha smiled.
"Little Hermione, lying isn't a good habit for children."
Before coming, she had read the target's file. She should simply have been a little girl with some unusual abilities. Though the claim about being a witch had surprised Natasha, on reflection, it was probably just a child's fanciful delusion after gaining superpowers.
As for witches and magic, she categorically refused to believe in them.
But Hermione's next reaction took Natasha by surprise.
She had expected anger and embarrassment at having a lie exposed, or perhaps a childish tantrum. Instead, Hermione's brow furrowed, and her cheerful expression turned puzzled.
"Huh... you don't even know that? Then you really weren't sent by the Ministry of Magic to watch me?"
Hermione suddenly grew serious, then scratched her head in distress.
"Oh no, I've gotten into trouble again. I told two Muggles all this. Dumbledore's probably going to lecture me when I get back."
Natasha watched Hermione intently, her expression a little stiff.
She tried to find signs of acting in Hermione's reaction, but failed.
Either the little girl before her was so immersed in her fantasy that she could no longer distinguish it from reality, or... she was telling the truth.
"Ugh, this is such a pain."
Looking miserable, Hermione slumped over the table and idly waved her wand around. Then inspiration struck.
"Oh, right! If I erase your memories before the Ministry of Magic finds out, no one will know I revealed the existence of wizards to Muggles."
Hermione suddenly perked up and clapped her hands.
"Yes, that's what I'll do! Ha, I'm a genius!"
What?
Erase our memories?
Hearing Hermione's words, Natasha felt her scalp prickle.
The little wooden stick in the girl's hand pointed at her. As Natasha saw its tip slowly light up, an overwhelming sense of danger unlike anything she had ever felt swept through her body.
It was the intuition of a top-tier agent.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Remembering her mission, Natasha used sheer willpower to suppress the instinct to draw her gun and shouted, "Don't you want to know who we are?"
That seemed to pique Hermione's interest. She slowly lowered her wand and asked, "Pretty lady, if you weren't sent by the Ministry of Magic, who are you, and what do you want with me?"
As the sense of danger gradually faded, Natasha let out a heavy sigh of relief. At some point, her back had become completely drenched in sweat.
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