Prologue. 1
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
- Charles Dickens
Hogwarts had been her home for the longest time.
Her first home in a magical world that took her far too long to understand. The first place she had made friends and seen what real danger could look like. It was also the place where she had begun to feel trapped, eager to go out into the world and do something about the maniac out there killing people for fun. Still, she had always imagined coming back to Hogwarts, doing one last year before becoming an adult.
Now, it stood like a ruin. The smell of smoke and burning bodies seeming to cling to the air even a year after the war – rubble all around the ground and the towers standing at an angle, held up by magic in an attempt to save them. Her home was destroyed beyond repair.
A sigh escaped her as she stood before the destroyed Gargoyle statue, her legs aching from the climbing the broken staircases, and her hand reaching out to touch the stone only to watch it crumble in her hands. She couldn’t stay here all day; they would be back. They always came back to search for her.
It didn’t take long to make her way into his office, just as destroyed as the rest of the castle, his many ornaments and books ripped and broken on the floor, nothing like it had been when she last came up here.
Yet his portrait remained, leaning to one side as though someone had tried their hardest to pull it from the wall only to find it couldn’t be removed that simply.
His eyes twinkled brightly at her, seeing her much the same way he had when she was younger, and his beard seemed even whiter than she remembered. There was so much she wanted to ask him, the questions on the tip of her tongue as she moved forward but they couldn’t quite form in the way she wanted – strangled by her own throat.
"Hello Miss Granger."
“Sir.” Her voice was clipped and he looked as though he understood, if the sadness settling on his face was anything to go by, eyes drifting to the letter he had written three years ago, clutched tightly in her hand. "Do you really think this will work?"
Her voice held hope for the first time in a year, twisting its way around her veins and settling in her heart until it was all she could feel, though it was tainted by anger. Anger that he could have told her this years ago, saved them all the stress and starvation. Could have saved three teenagers from running around the woods and the whole Wizarding world if he had just let them know.
“I sincerely hope it does my dear, you after all are our last hope." Her teeth set on edge as she shook her head and refused to look at him, to be his pawn once again.
How many times had he done this? How many contingency plans did he have in place even after he had died? How many people could have been saved if he had done this first, sent someone back with a clue? It wasn’t fair that he had kept this to himself and waited until the last possible second, that he had to ask her once again to sacrifice everything she knew.
Wasn’t it enough that her family was gone? That Harry, Ron and everyone else she loved were gone too? “Why me?” She asked after a second, finally looking into the eyes of a man she had once trusted to do the right thing, who was tainted in a dark grey.
"Miss Granger, you are the only one capable of making such a journey." The truth rang out around them, for who else could they ask when everyone was either dead, hiding, or in St. Mungo’s? She was the only one who understood everything they had done, who knew where everything was, but she couldn’t stop the panic and anger rushing through her. "I am sorry to be asking such a thing of you once again."
He wasn’t, she could see that much. Even dead and as a portrait he still could tug on her heart and make her want to do what she could to impress him. She wanted to fight again, to live in a world where her friends wouldn’t have to suffer anymore but she just didn’t want to be the one to do this.
Her hand clenched around the purple beaded bag, reaching inside to pull out the box that had been delivered to her not a day ago, the gleaming bronze time turner shining at her when she opened the lid. She could hear Dumbledore mumbling to himself, could hear the echoing sound of feet upon stone.
They were here.
"I'll do it." Her voice was harsher than she intended but they didn’t have much time to discuss anything else, five more minutes and they would be upon them and this whole thing would be for nothing but she couldn’t leave, not without asking one more thing. "What year will I land and when will I see you again, Sir?”
The metal felt cool against her neck as she rested her fingers on the small dial, his crooked smile and twinkling eyes seeming to hide yet another thing. “Turn it five times - we shall meet again very soon, and when we do we shall have a long discussion." Her teeth gritted as he didn’t answer but the footsteps were closer, and her fingers were already turning the dial.
The world around her began to twist, voices and screams around her as she drifted through the past, but this was different than third year. It seemed to last forever, her body twisting and convulsing as it did so, Dumbledore’s office gone from her sight and instead there was nothing, but trees and the starry night followed by blackness and a mind-numbing sleep.