Hopefully someday I’ll have some really amazing stories to impress someone like Tony Stark. Who: Hermione Granger and Penelope Garcia When: May 20 Where: Coffee shop? What: Meeting up? Rating/Warnings: Low/None Status: Complete!
The cafe was nearly packed. Hermione had come by here instead of the library because she was in need of a power outlet, a cup of coffee, and a little table space to play on her laptop. Unfortunately, she only had two of those things. Most of the tables were full already. She just had to figure out which one had the most room, and beg whoever was sitting there to let her join them.
She moved over to a table where a woman was sitting, and gave a warm smile. “Hi. It’s all full up, would you mind if I joined you?”
Garcia had a tiny netbook and was sipping a latte. She smiled when the girl spoke to her. “Oh, not at all, have a seat, she of the great hair.” Nobody could ever say that Penelope Garcia wasn’t nice.
Hermione gave a little laugh. “Is it terrible today? I tried to reign it in.” She slipped into the chair opposite, and plugged in her laptop, then opened it. It was a modest sized macbook. “Just thought I’d kill some time before I meet up with my husband later.”
“No, no, it’s amazing. I wish I had hair like that. My hair is all flat and depressing.” Garcia pointed at the pigtails she was wearing it in, grinning. “I just cover it up.”
“Your hair is lovely.” Hermione said, giving the other woman a grin. “I love that you can be creative with it!” She added. “My hair in pigtails is... well, a bit scary.” She confessed, giving a gentle shrug. “Like giant, brown, cotton balls glued onto the back of a barbie head.”
“Well, thank you.” Garcia chuckled to herself, ducking her head. “I appreciate it. I’m Penelope, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi, Penelope. I’m Hermione.” Hermione reached her hand out across the table to shake the other woman’s. “It’s a pleasure, really.”
“Oooh, we should start an awesome names club.” Garcia grinned, shaking the other girl’s hand. Huh. Like in Harry Potter!
“Yes! I really like the name Penelope. I knew one in school.” She said, then paused. “That sounded strange. There was another girl named Penelope where I went to school. Though, we all called her Penny.”
“You know, you’d think I’d want to be a Penny - Inspector Gadget, natch - but I never did. I’ve always been just plain Penelope.” The blonde shrugged and nibbled a little on her scone.
“When I was in school, Penny and Percy dated. I’m not sure I could date someone whose name was so close to my own. Then again, I can’t think of any male equivalents of ‘Hermione...’ Herman, maybe? That’d just be odd.” Hermione said, then lifted her coffee for a sip.
“I think Herman is the male equivalent, yeah.” Penelope wrinkled her nose. “Last guy I was with was a Gerry with a gee. That was okay. Well. Except him being a huge nozzle, that part sucked out loud.”
Hermione couldn’t help but chuckle. “Nozzle? Well, no wonder he sucked. Isn’t that what nozzles do?” She set her coffee cup back down and crossed her feet at the ankles. This was turning into a very pleasant day.
“He was a douchenozzle too.” Garcia giggled. “Those just blow.”
Hermione actually laughed at the word ‘douchenozzle.’ What even? She shook her head a little. “I thought they sucked?” She asked, still giggling. “Do they suck or blow?”
“Douches sort of spurt water, so it’s more ... erupty?” Garcia laughed, enjoying being silly with a new friend.
Hermione went pink, but was too busy laughing to get too embarrassed. "Which is worse, erupting or fizzling and deflating?"
“Yes.” Garcia was quick and to the point. “The answer is just yes.”
“Best. Answer. Ever.” Hermione agreed, lifting her coffee cup as if in a toast.
Garcia did the same. “I feel like we should hang out way more,” she laughed, pulling out one of her business cards and jotting her cell phone number on the back. The Stark Industries logo was emblazoned on the front.
“Ooh, yes,” Hermione said, nodding. She gulped from the cup then glanced over and saw the logo. “You work at Stark?” She added. “I hear they’re a fantastic company to work for. Thought I’d try for an internship there, if I can hack it.”
“I do, I’m in IT.” Garcia smiled. “I’m sure you’d be great at whatever it is you do. You’ve got that determined thing to you.” Garcia was a pretty good judge of character.
“Aww, thank you,” Hermione beamed. She liked her new friend already! “I’m switching majors right now. From Pre-Law to Space Physics.” Such a thing actually exists. Hermione was thrilled to learn--and she may have been the only woman in the whole subsection of the Physics department.
“Sciences are hard for girls, but don’t worry, you’ve got a sister over here.” Garcia smiled. “Where are you studying?”
“UCLA,” Hermione said, somewhat proudly. It was a struggle to get in, but now she was in the school she planned on staying through her post-graduate work. It was close to where she and Jim lived, too. “I love it. Honestly, I don’t know where I’d be without school.”
“I went to CalPoly, and I know in my department, they were such assholes sometimes. The guys, that is. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” Garcia beamed to herself.
“Yeah?” Hermione grinned. It was nice to communicate with another intelligent woman. Not that her other friends weren’t, but there was a difference between smarts and academic smarts. “What did you study? IT is a pretty broad field, isn’t it?”
“I specialized in the security aspect of computing.” Ideally, she’d wanted to help program anti-virus software. Ironically, that was what she did, but she’d always thought she’d do it for the government.
“Fascinating. You work on anti-virus software?” Hermione asked. That seemed to be the logical conclusion from someone who studied computing security. It wasn’t exactly what she’d be interested in, but learning computers must be fun. “You can hack into any website in the world, can you?”
“Kind of? I do that. I also work on hacking into things so we know where they’re vulnerable.” She went beet red when Hermione mentioned hacking into any website. “Um. ... probably? Funny you say that, s’why I didn’t get my doctorate, actually.”
Hermione had been sipping. She nearly did a spit take. “Oh goodness. I hope you got a good story out of it?” She offered, hopefully. She was cautious that she was treading near a sensitive subject.
“Oh, I did. Tony recruited me personally because of it.” It wasn’t every day someone hacked the CIA.
“That’s brilliant.” Hermione said, and she meant it. “Man. Hopefully someday I’ll have some really amazing stories to impress someone like Tony Stark.” She sounded slightly starstruck. Didn’t everyone, though, when talking about Tony Stark?
Garcia didn’t, if only because she knew him and had lunch with him sometimes. “Oh, I’m sure you would. He’s not too hard to impress.”
“I think it might be difficult for me to impress anyone,” Hermione said, ever humble. She didn’t really think that researching skills were something to brag about. And that was the majority of her skills, if you asked her.
“You’ve impressed me!” Garcia grinned. “That has to count for something, right?”
Hermione beamed. “Really? Well, yes! That does! Let me buy you your next coffee.” She added, incredibly glad she’d made a new friend today.