Hermione Granger and the Swiss Tournament

Hermione Granger and the Swiss Tournament by Diane Castle is the long-promised sequel to Hermione Granger and the Boy Who Lived. Set in the Mega Crossover world of The Teraverse like its predecessor, it takes place years later, well after the events of The Secret Return of Alex Mack. In addition to returning to characters created (or adapted) by Castle, it also draws upon some of the many Recursive Fanfiction stories written in the Teraverse for its cast. In it, a grown-up Hermione Granger, now a data analyst for the SIS, is given an assignment by Rupert Giles: to attend the latest Inter-School Tournament as a judge, and while there, identify and stop a possible threat. To help her with this task, she is temporarily given "double-O" status -- as Agent 007, Jean Bond.

Once she arrives in Geneva, Hermione finds herself embroiled in the predictable politicking, cheating and mutual spying she expected from the Tournament. But there's something else going on, too. She can't quite put her finger on what, not at first, but something is off about the whole affair -- and it just might have everything to do with the mysterious threat she's supposed to avert. And although she planned on being the single most sedate and boring 007 Britain's ever dispatched on a mission, circumstances seem to be consipiring to leave a trail of car chases, bodies and explosions in her wake, regardless of her intentions. And it almost seems like events are designed to force her to call in special backup -- her friend, the superhero Terawatt. Terawatt is engaged in a deep-sea mission of vital importance: the extermination of hundreds of eggs laid by the turtle Kaiju Kamera at the bottom of the sea. But she's willing to drop everything to rush to Geneva and help out if Hermione needs her. Hermione has to repeatedly convince her not to.

And as the Tournament draws to a conclusion, it appears that the unknown actors behind the mysterious threat are growing impatient -- or desperate. They abandon subtlety for more direct action, and Hermione must face a far more complex and dangerous plot than she had anticipated at the start of the assignment. And to her chagrin, along the way she finds herself forced into the kind of over-the-top action she had sworn to herself that as a Bond she would studiously avoid.

First published 14 October 2019 and completed 28 March 2022, Hermione Granger and the Swiss Tournament can be found on Twisting the Hellmouth here.

In addition to works already listed on the pages for Hermione Granger and the Boy Who Lived and The Teraverse, characters or elements from the following works make appearances in this story:


 * Agent Cody Banks (A Cameo appearance by an adult Cody Banks early in the story)
 * Gamera (Kamera)
 * Hogan's Heroes (Professor Carter)
 * Killing Time (Maria)
 * Matt Helm (Matt Helm, headmaster of the Culper School)
 * Person of Interest (R00t and Sameen)
 * Supernatural (Celeste Middleton)


 * Adaptational Villainy: Kamera lacks the heroic and child-loving attributes of the original Gamera, and is an undisputed force of not-entirely-mindless destruction.
 * An Offer You Can't Refuse: Rinkin is forced to take a contract to scrub Hermione because of threats made to the safety of her family/clan by what turns out to be the Order of Teraka.  She does her best to derail her "assignment" without looking like she is doing so.
 * Ascended Recursive Fanfiction: Rinkin Mueller, a character created by Teraverse author Batzulger for his stories set in the same 'verse, plays a role in this story from the very first chapter.
 * Numerous other characters and organizations first used by Batzulger in his Teraverse stories also show up here and play major roles, most notably the so-called "Chicago Seven".
 * Bavarian Fire Drill: Jack's magnificent verbal ploy to confuse the operatives trying to kidnap him during the Third Task and convince them that he is actually a member of their own faction.
 * Bond One-Liner:
 * Hermione gets one off the second time she fights the Mongolian meta in chapter 47, then immediately excoriates herself for "turning into a Bond". One of her backup team who overheard her cites the trope by name, and is thrilled to have actually witnessed one.
 * Svetlana prompts Jackson to make one after they defeat an actual ambush by real hostiles in the midst of their run through the Third Task.
 * Catch Phrase: Hermione's frequent (if often unspoken) expletive, "Damn and blast".
 * Chekhov's Armoury: Hermione's visit to Q Division.
 * Chess Motifs: When totalling up everything she's done to, Hermione lists it all in terms of chess.
 * Chest of Medals:
 * Jack O'Neill has enough medals on his dress uniform to practically qualify as a breastplate. He finds them annoying.
 * Al Mundy steals two small, unimportant-looking ones off him as a bit of a prank, unaware that the medals she picked had considerable personal meaning to Jack and that his discovery of their theft would ... not have gone well.
 * It's mentioned in passing that Terawatt has received so many medals, ribbons and other honors that she has six mannequins at Fort Meade just to hold them all.
 * Chronically Crashed Car: Averted by Hermione, presumably to Q's delight.
 * Cyanide Pill: League and Order operatives all seem to have them, either as actual pills or in false teeth.  More than a few of the operatives caught actually use them rather than be interrogated.
 * The Ditz: The cover identity taken by Piccolo's assassin Maria.
 * Doomy Dooms of Doom: Jack O'Neill refers to his full dress regalia as "The Big Fancy-Schmancy General Costume... of Doom."
 * Eureka Moment: Hermione has one when she hears that Rinkin works for Long Island University, which triggers a long chain of connections, deductions and revelations about Rinkin and why she might be a judge at the Tournament.
 * Evil Counterpart: R00t, to Hermione.  They had all-but-identical childhood histories, right down to the friend raped and murdered by a sexual predator.  The divergence between them was that Hermione's attempt to bring her predator to justice (more or less) succeeded, and R00t's failed.
 * Friendly Enemy: Everyone from every nation at the Double-Oh level, regardless of how many times they've found themselves opposing each other.  There are even romances across national divisions, such as Matt Helm and Vadya.  Hermione is surprised at just how chummy supposed enemies are while at the same time being very straightforward about rivalries and scoping out the Tournament opposition.
 * Grenade Tag: Hermione ... inconveniences the Mongolian meta with a grenade fired into him from a rearward-facing launcher built into her motorcycle.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard:
 * How We Got Here: The story opens on the first day of the tournament, then immediately flashes back for several chapters to how the various point-of-view characters got roped into their parts in the tournament.
 * Idiosyncratic Chapter Naming: Many of the chapters told from Hermione's point of view are entitled in the form "Hermione and the X".
 * Imposter Forgot One Detail‎: How Hermione quickly determines that a message she receives (allegedly from L) during the Third Task is a fake -- the sender doesn't know that Ron is there at the Tournament undercover helping her, and claims he's been injured on an op.  The sender also doesn't know certain (important) details of L's communications arrangements.
 * Is That What They're Calling It Now?: Hermione says this about a reference to "international relations".
 * It's All About Me: Part of what sinks the actual villains' plans -- they automatically assume that the threat they pose to Terawatt's friends will be of a higher priority than anything else Terawatt faces and she will drop everything to address it.  They don't anticipate that Terawatt could possibly be dealing with something more important and would prioritize it over her friends.  (Even so, it's a close thing a few times.)
 * Kaiju: This time it's the Teraverse version of Gamera, called "Kamera" due to a different romanization of the original Japanese.
 * Kill It with Fire:
 * Hermione's solution to the kothoga.
 * Loophole Abuse/Exact Words: Hermione thoroughly abuses the rules of the tournament to help the Harworts champion, even despite the Tournament organizers anticipating -- indeed, expecting -- her to do so and explicitly designing the tasks to thwart her.
 * Meanwhile Scene: Every few chapters the focus switches to Terawatt, slowly and doggedly searching the ocean floor as part of a project to find and destroy Kamers's eggs.
 * The Mole: They're everywhere!  They're everywhere!  In addition to agents for one country undercover among the agencies of another, there are also moles for the League of Assassins and the Order of Teraka all over the place as well..
 * Monster Progenitor: Kamera, which has laid a field of dozens of forty-foot-tall eggs four miles underwater.  Destroying them all before they hatch -- while keeping "Commodore" Schubert from getting his hands on any of their genetic material -- is the mission of Terawatt and her support team for most of the story,.
 * The Name Is Bond, James Bond: As befits the current 007, Hermione introduces herself to tournament VIPs as "Bond, Jean Bond".
 * The Harworts champion -- who is certain he's unlikely to ever become a genuine Double-Oh operative -- is occasionally addressed (and identifies himself) as "Shepherd, Jackson Shepherd". How frequently others refer to him this way increases as the story progresses.
 * The Nicknamer: Jack O'Neill continues to live up to his reputation here; among others, he tags Professor Antonio Piccolo with "Tony the Flute" (and the appropriateness of this Mafia-like appellation only grows as the story progresses).
 * No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup:
 * Obfuscating Stupidity: Piccolo's assassin Maria takes on the persona of his ditzy mistress.  Not everyone is fooled, though.
 * Out of the Inferno: After Hermione catches him in a massive fireball, the Mongolian meta simply walks out of it, mostly unaffected.
 * Promoted to Scapegoat: Hermione is concerned that something like this trope is in play when she is explicitly requested to be a judge at the tournament, and her superiors (temporarily) make her the new 007 as part of it.  (It turns out to be much worse than that.)
 * Properly Paranoid: Hermione, of course.
 * Required Secondary Powers: Invoked by name and explained in a lecture Hermione gives on metahuman powers during the Tournament.
 * Rent-A-Zilla: Despite its importance to the plot, Kamera is The Ghost and doesn't even appear until the last fifth of the story, although it and its actions (and its eggs) are the subject of much discussion and concern.
 * The Reveal: A very minor one, at the end, when we find out that.
 * Running Gag: Svetlana's "untrustworthiness" throughout the Tournament is frequently expessed by others as an expectation she would "throw someone under the bus" for any advantage she could get.  It pays off when she actually throws a bad guy under a moving bus during the ambush during the Third Task.
 * Secret Secret Keeper: By the start of this story, Hermione has correctly deduced Terawatt's Secret Identity, but hasn't told anyone.  Nor will she.
 * Seppuku: At the end of the story the unnamed Honda clan genin offers to atone for his clan's dishonor in exterminating the Osaki ninja clan with a formal act of contrition.  Rinkin accepts his apology and does not require him to kill himself.
 * She's All Grown Up: Gabrielle Delacour, who seems to have become even more of a stunning beauty than her older sister Fleur.
 * She's Got Legs: Vadya, despite being in (at least) her sixties.
 * Stuff Blowing Up: Seems to be the curse of being 007/"Bond".  Even though she tries to minimize or eliminate collateral damage, Hermione still ends up blowing up and burning down multiple structures and vehicles, to the amusement of her support team, who tease her about it.
 * Theme Naming: Discussed -- Hermione wonders if, based on the precedents of Gojira and Kamera, future kaiju will all be named along the lines of "something relevant" + "ra".
 * Three-Way Sex: One night, Jackson has a threesome with two of the other champions, Anna (Russia) and Dao-Ming (China). Of course it's about more than just sex, with some mind games and emotional manipulation in play as well.  Plus Dao-ming manages to arrange for Anna to "accidentally" pull a leg muscle during the throes of passion.
 * Two Lines, No Waiting: The Tournament plotline and Terawatt's efforts to destroy Kamera's hatchery seem to be completely unrelated except where they briefly touch during Hermione and Jack's few calls to Alex.
 * Unflinching Walk: The Mongolian meta calmly walks out of a massive fireball Hermione set off on top of him.
 * Victoria's Secret Compartment: Invoked by name by Hannah Abbott in chapter 43 when describing actual secret pockets sewn into female agents' bras.
 * You Monster!: Hermione says it teasingly to Q about his "penalty" for the last member of his department to get out the door at the end of day -- they have to clean the teapot and make the tea for everyone the next day.
 * Zany Scheme: Really, the entire plan behind the Tournament:
 * Zombie Apocalypse: The scenario used for the Third Task, complete with an in-universe Shout-Out to the problems caused by Umbrella Corporation in The Secret Return of Alex Mack.
 * Zombie Apocalypse: The scenario used for the Third Task, complete with an in-universe Shout-Out to the problems caused by Umbrella Corporation in The Secret Return of Alex Mack.