Prologue- Before It All Began
If you asked anyone around, Hermione had always been a special girl. Kind, brilliant, confident, honest, and shone brighter than the sun.
In her childhood, she was like a nymph or fae with her seemingly permanently tanned skin and wild curls that only magic would ever be able to fully tame. She was always outside no matter the time of day or weather. She was always reading, wandering the forest next to her parents cottage, playing on the beach that her parents could see from their kitchen windows, or simply just laying on the grass and looking up into the sky. She was a free child, and nothing her parents said could convince their neighbors that she wasn’t at least part magical creature.
As it turned out, they had been right. But her parents would never admit it. No, Jean and Tom Granger had always been private people. When asked where they had sent their daughter for school, they simply replied that they had sent her to a school for gifted children. Which was the truth, by the way. Just not the whole truth. But it wasn’t other people’s business where their daughter was.
Hermione thrived at Hogwarts. She had always done well at school, but she was reaching the age where it became boring to her. She had advanced a year and had been taking accelerated programs. Now she was in an entirely new world she knew nothing about, and she was thrilled. The only problem, however, was that she was lonely. At least for a little while. No one wanted to be friends with a know-it-all. Which was strange because she barely knew anything. At least about this world. She knew there was so much more to learn.
Throughout the years, Hermione’s neighbors noticed her become quieter and quieter. Somber. The curls that had once been so wild were being tamed and eventually limp. Her light slowly dimmed. She still spent all of her time outside, but she was mostly reading on the beach or in her lawn. She would still lay in the grass, but she wasn’t as relaxed as she used to be. She always seemed so fidgety.
She never went back into the woods.
Then, one year, Hermione left and never came back. A week later, the Grangers, for some reason referring to each other as Wendell and Monica Wilkins, packed up their things and left. The house had been sold to an anonymous buyer, but no one ever moved in. The Grangers didn’t return for nearly four years.