Chapter 1
Nineteen-forty.
It was supposed to be nineteen-forty.
He was supposed to be a thirteen year-old boy with no friends or family, not a twenty-three year-old man leading a small army. He was supposed to be alone, uneducated, and horcrux-less, and removing Tom Riddle from the picture was supposed to be an easy task.
But Dumbledore had miscalculated. He had gravely miscalculated, by a decade, and now, it was her who was paying the price.
Hermione wasn't so deluded to believe she would be any match for a young, up and coming Voldemort. By the age of twenty-three, he would already have a band of loyal followers, numerous hidden horcruxes, he'd be far more magically adept than her.
In nineteen fifty, she wouldn't be able to stop him. He was too far gone, and the wheels of history were already in motion.
But... that wasn't to say she would be useless. While her predicament was far from ideal, she would still do what she could. When the first wizarding war struck, she could help the Order. She could arm them with the knowledge that would prevent a second war, could save countless lives, could save Harry's parents, could save Harry.
It wasn't much, not nearly as much as she'd initially planned with Dumbledore, but it was the best she could do given her circumstances.
And while it was a plan B that Hermione could make her peace with, Voldemort wouldn't be making any overt movements until the seventies. There were twenty years until then, and she was stuck. She and Dumbledore had never planned a return trip to her own time, and as far as they knew, such a thing was impossible. To the past, she'd been given a one way ticket.
Which meant, the nineteen fifties were her new home.
And so, in the meantime, Hermione did the only thing she could. She settled in for the long haul. She got a job. She made some money, did some research, she published her first article, started to make a bit of a name for herself.
She lived.