CHAPTER ONE:

Being pushed through her mother's birth canal out into the world was extremely disconcerting. It took Hermione several panicked moments to get her bearings, and then she really wished she hadn't.

At least the hourglass had worked, she comforted herself as she scrunched her eyes closed and tried not to think about what was happening. Feeling cold air on her slimy, wrinkled, overheated skin, she opened her eyes again as her infant body was handed to a nurse so she could be cleaned then swaddled.

Her parents cradling her in their arms and looking down at her with adoring eyes made her feel a pang of guilt, for Helen and Richard Granger thought they had just created an innocent, perfect little baby girl and instead their daughter was a thirty-two year old woman trapped in the body of an infant. Hermione comforted herself with the thought that she could charm their minds so they'd decide to have another baby so they could have the child they wanted and deserved.

After all, Helen and Richard hadn't been awful parents. A touch on the absentee side, yes, but not awful and they deserved the child they'd longed for.

~

Being an infant was very trying of Hermione's patience. It meant she couldn't talk, couldn't consume anything other then her mother's breast milk for months (the less said about that the better) and couldn't control any of her fine motor skills. Practicing wandless magic was her only salvation as while her body had been reduced to something pathetic and reliant on the mercy of those around her, her magic levels were just as strong as they had always been. Training herself to use wandless, wordless magic became a way to pass the hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks (and months and months) of inhabiting the useless body. Well, that and sleeping.

By the time she was two months old, she'd managed to confund both her parents into thinking they wanted another child, and Cordelia Joy Granger was born a mere eleven months after her own birth. Her parents now busy caring for the newborn gave Hermione the privacy she needed to practice writing until she was able to create a fairly eligible script.

By the time she was two, Helen and Richard had grown aware of their eldest daughter's much higher then average intelligence and they started hiring private tutors for her, having decided that she was too young for school but not wanting to let her talent go to waste. Hermione really wished they hadn't as it didn't make the time passing more bearable, not when she was being taught a lower primary school level curriculum.

As her third birthday drew nearer, Hermione became aware of the fact that Halloween was approaching- no, not just any Halloween, the Halloween.

Now able to write a perfectly eligible letter, Hermione wrote an Owl Order form and (thanking Hecate, Circe and Morgana that a two, almost three-year-old owl was bigger then a two, almost three-year-old child) shifted into her owl animagus form to fly to Diagon Alley, hitching a ride atop a bus for a majority of the way as her weak muscles simply weren't used to the exercise.

The return flight was just as hard and she near about fell into a coma she slept so deeply all day the following day, but her efforts had paid off and an owl arrived outside her window the next evening, delivering her Ageing Potion.

Having the body of a witch in her twenties was incredibly refreshing, and Hermione easily navigated her way to the Leaky Cauldron. The atmosphere in Diagon Alley was tense, and Hermione worked quickly, using money she had gradually been stealing from Helen and Richard's purse and wallet to buy an illegal wand from Knockturn Alley and all the Ageing Potion she could afford (it was much more time efficient buying it pre-prepared, then to make it on her own).

She was slightly perturbed to run into a much younger Severus Snape in the Apothecary, and tried not to think about the last time she saw him, bleeding to death from Nagini's fangs, with the memories spelling Harry's death.

As she turned away from him her eyes stung with tears. If only Lily Evans Potter had forgiven Snape back in their fifth year, maybe he wouldn't have been driven to being a Death Eater. Maybe then he wouldn't have overheard that blasted prophecy and taken it to Voldemort. Maybe Harry wouldn't have been hunted down like a dog by a crazed, mass-murdering sociopath all his life. Maybe she wouldn't have had to kill her first and best friend, after watching the love of her life burn to death. Maybe everything could have been different.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

She couldn't do anything to change that, though. What she could do, what she was doing, was her best to change everything she could, here and now.

~

Halloween drew closer, and as it did Hermione's nerves grew and her temper shortened.

A week before the 'big day', Hermione tracked down Peter Pettigrew and held him under the Cruciatus Curse until he gave up the location of the Potters, as their house was under the Fidelius. It took less then a minute for the rat to squeal, though another few minutes after that for Hermione to let up on the curse, and she wiped the traitor's mind afterwards.

The day of Halloween, Hermione entered the Potters home, briefly duelled first James then Lily, subduing and stunning them both before using pure magic to trace out the runic triskaidecagon array she'd created years ago over their hearts, watching with satisfaction as it blazed to life before sinking under their skin where it would brand itself into their very soul.

Runes created directly from pure magic were much more powerful then those drawn out with ink or blood, though the risk involved increased dramatically— only Masters of Arithmancy dared to attempt such an undertaking, as a rune drawn out directly with magic could leech the magic from a witch or wizard entirely, should they lose control.

Magic that involved the soul, however, was the most powerful, complex magic of all and neither ink or blood would have worked— the magic of the Unforgiveable curses was... complicated, to say the least, but all three had the same baseline magic, as did several other of the Darkest curses known to wizardkind, and it was that baseline magic she had capitulated upon when created the array to nullify the Unforgiveables.

While she'd love to publish her creation, there were maybe three people alive other then herself who would be capable of drawing out then activating the triskaidecagon array, and despite having created it in an effort to protect the magical population, she knew it would end up killing more people then it saved when people failed to draw it out correctly.

Lily and James Potter, however, would both have the rare protection the triskaidecagon array offered and when Voldemort cast the Killing Curse on them tonight, the Unforgiveable would see Lily and James unconscious in a state that mimicked death but left them alive (it had taken only an adjustment to the array to make that so, considering that it was intended to simply nullify the Unforgiveables entirely with no effect whatsoever on the recipient— she'd had two years, however, to figure it out).

Hermione wiped both of the Potters' memories of her invasion and attack and then shifted into her animagus form and purching up in a tree in the backyard, hidden but watching (and occasionally having to shift back to top up on the Ageing Potion).

Everything played out that night like Harry had once described it to her; James told Lily to grab Harry and run, he tried to duel Voldemort and was felled by the sickly green curse, Lily begged for Harry's life, pleading for him to kill her instead, Voldemort ordered her to step aside and, when he agreed to kill her, he signed his death warrant.

Despite popular opinion, it hadn't been Lily's sacrifice, her love for her infant son, that had caused Voldemort's "death" when he tried to murder Harry. However selfless and commendable as Lily's actions were, she was not the first witch, or wizard, for that matter, to die for their child. No, it was during Hermione's research into the Unforgiveable Curses combined with her memories of viewing Snape's memories following the Battle of Hogwarts that she had uncovered what had really caused Voldemort's spell to backfire that night. Lily's sacrifice had certainly played a significant role, but it had ultimately been Snape's love that had saved Harry.

The Dark Mark was more then just a symbol, more then just a tattoo that Voldemort used to summon his Death Eaters— the magic that made up the Mark was tied to the magic of those he'd branded with it; it was what allowed his Death Eaters to apparate to his side, wherever he was, what allowed them to notify their Lord to where they were and call him to them.

With how closely the magic of his followers was thus tied to Voldemort's own magic, when Snape had asked for Voldemort to spare Lily and he had agreed, they had unintentionally made the equivalent to an Unbreakable Vow. And when Lily had begged Voldemort to kill her instead of Harry and he had once again agreed, the magic of the Vow had shifted— and when Voldemort then attempted to kill Harry, he'd broken that Vow and paid the price.

Hermione's heart was in her throat and she had to fight her every instinct as Voldemort pointed his wand at Harry and spoke the damning words— "Avada Kedavra!"— but just as it had in her original time-line, the Killing Curse backfired in an explosion of raw magic so strong part of the house collapsed around the nursery.

Hermione shifted back to human form, knowing she had mere moments to act. She took Voldemort's wand, edited James and Lily's memories so they'd think Voldemort hit them with a stunning spell instead of the Killing Curse and then she apparated away, though not to her home and her bed to sleep off the exhaustion and emotional drain of the last twenty-four hours— sadly, her night wasn't over yet.

~

Frank and Alice Longbottom hadn't hidden under a Fidelius, which meant finding them had been far easier and Hermione hadn't had to torture a Secret Keeper who was actually one of the 'good guys' for the location. She'd never known what time Bellatrix, Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange and Barty Crouch Junior had attacked and tortured the Longbottoms into insanity, only that it had happened the day after Halloween and so she once again hid, this time under a Disillusionment spell, and settled in to wait for them to arrive.

Eleven hours and four Ageing Potions later, the Lestrange brothers and Barty Crouch Junior arrived. The fight was over before it began, if it could even be called a fight. Bellatrix hadn't arrived with them, much to Hermione's frustration, but she hadn't dared to wait for the mad witch to arrive, not wanting to risk the Longbottoms coming to harm.

She hit the three wizards from behind with a series of quick cutting curses to decapitate them all, making sure Barty Crouch Junior, who she'd gladly admit to holding a grudge against, was first to die. Rabastan Lestrange, the last to die, had time to fire off one spell which she neatly deflected before his head rolled from his shoulders to the ground. It was then a simple matter to vanish the blood transfigure each of their bodies into a bone that when she left, she'd take with her to remove any evidence from the scene— it was a trick that Barty Crouch Junior had unintentionally taught her, back in her fourth year when he'd killed his father and hidden the body right under the nose of Albus Dumbledore himself.

Hermione waited several more hours for Bellatrix to arrive but after a full day had passed and the mad witch didn't show, Hermione resigned herself to the fact that the bitch wasn't going to turn up. As frustrating as it was, the butterfly effect was something she'd already resigned herself to— the ripples caused by Lily and James's survival might as well be tsunamis for how drastically it would change the future from the one she'd known. Maybe Bellatrix had gone after the Potters, maybe a Sirius Black who was not stricken with grief, guilt and betrayal had hunted down his cousin in the aftermath of Voldemort's death, maybe a single butterfly had flapped its wings and caused a hurricane on the other side of the world.

The more she changed things, the less accurate her knowledge from the previous timeline would be. It was a fact both fortunate and unfortunate and there was nothing she could do but accept it and adapt.

With nothing else she could do in that moment, Hermione returned home to her parents, taking a momentary detour to bury the transfigured bones in a park near her house. Thoroughly exhausted from being awake close to forty-eight hours at that point, she collapsed in her bed and went to sleep.