"To us!" Ron crowed, clanking his tankard against theirs with a great slosh of butterbeer. This had to be the fourth toast of the round, and he was clearly running out of ideas. But it was the thought that counted, wasn't it? She felt a crushing wave of affection for him as she and Harry whooped joyously, 'Hear hear!'

All around them, Hogsmeade was a roaring, teeming mass of delight. It was official; Harry Potter had passed his NEWT's and half the school had been invited to what promised to be a night to end all nights. Even Hagrid came, hiding his tears of pride behind those old fashioned goggles of his.

Music was coming from somewhere and she would bet her last galleon that it was Muggle music. It was so loud that they practically had to bellow in each others ears just to make themselves heard. Various young wizards and witches were attempting to dance with varying degrees of success. Ron's face was sticky with sweets, and the night was warmer than an English autumn had a right to be.

It was perfect.

None of them had said it aloud, but they all knew that tonight marked the end of the mourning. The end of the grief. Their dead were buried, and the weight bearing down on the survivors grew a little lighter every day. The future that Voldemort tried to rob them of was ripe for the taking, and what better way to honour the dead than to live their lives as best they could?

Harry was going to be an auror. Ron was going to be- well, whatever Ron was going to be. Quidditch Captain, Hogwarts professor, co-owner of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. His life's dream changed on a daily basis.

And as for her?

She grinned conspiratorially behind her tankard. Well, she had made up her mind months ago. She was going to prove every stuck-up Slytherin wrong. Every witch and wizard who had ever looked down their nose at her and thought that she didn't belong. That because of her heritage, she would never amount to anything.

She, Hermione Granger, was going to be the Greatest Witch of the Age.

Seized by an impulse she hadn't felt in weeks, she gave her boyfriend a kiss on the cheek, firmly ignoring the cheers that erupted at the sight. Ron's smile lit up her world, and across the table from them, Harry laughed, green eyes sparkling with joy to see them so happy. Voldemort's death had aged him, but the miasma of dread was gone. He was so confident, even then. Ginny sat beside him, just as she would for the next twenty years.

In the dream, for she knew it was a dream even now, she felt Ron's hand take hers and give it a tender squeeze and her heart lurched, and she desperately, desperately, did not want to wake. They were still in love! And all four of them, still together!

But dreams, she had learned, were fragile things. They did not last forever.

And victory was more fragile still.

Looking back, it took a long time before the nightmare started to surface.

No longer did she have to deal with any of the snide bullying, loneliness, or rampant danger that characterised so much of her childhood. She rode the euphoria of victory, and youth, and more than anything, the softly-glowing memories of that final night at Hogsmeade, like a tidal wave.

She spent the next six months living and breathing magic. When she was not barricaded in her flat with a mountain of old books and Crookshanks, or practicing some heady incantation, she was scrawling notes for her own charms. She found she barely needed to sleep. Exhilaration and success proved a potent tonic.

After several stringent letters from her (and a single explosive one from Harry) she gained access to the Ministry's own libraries, and her walk into enlightenment turned into a run. Seeing the wealth of knowledge there almost made her regret relinquishing her Time-Turner. But instead of being daunted by the prospect of so much work, she was thrilled by just how much there was to learn. After all, for every great witch and wizard who had been kind enough to write down all their knowledge for her to enjoy, there were a hundred who felt no such compulsion. The thought of how much knowledge must be lost from one generation to the next was faintly horrifying, and it did not take long for her to realise that books could not be her sole educators if she meant to truly become the greatest witch of her age.

Thankfully, Hermione Granger was nothing if not resourceful. Once a fortnight, she drank tea with Madame Maxime. She took the time to cultivate a friendship with the Head of Martial Studies at Durmstrang (which, in itself, was a great achievement, as far as she was concerned). She attended lectures and symposiums all across the wizarding world. Her fame granted her access to all sorts of ancestral vaults and private collections, and before long her Pensieve was filled with memory upon memory of all the spells and potions she had uncovered.

Of course she, Ron, and Harry were almost never in the same room nowadays. They could never find the time. But their friendship never wavered. They were proud of each other, and physical distance was not powerful enough to sever the bonds that war and hardship had made between them.

By the time she was twenty she had become, if not the Greatest Witch of the Age, (for the Age was not over yet, as Headmistress McGonagall was so fond of reminding her) a serious contender for the title.

It was not all easy, though. Lying to her parents became more and more difficult, and Ron's fear for George was a palpable thing. She remained in therapy, as per the strict instructions of Molly Weasley. And try as she might, there was no potion that could banish her nightmares forever, nor the subtle tremors that ran through her if someone so much as raised a wand in her direction. It was normal, her therapist assured her. She had been tortured. She had been in battles. She couldn't expect to walk away from that as if it was nothing. Sometimes, this knowledge proved to be of little comfort.

But she had no intentions of giving in to her past. She had been sorted into Gryffindor, after all.

Since she routinely filled up notepads with her findings, it only made sense to publish what she could. She released her first work in the autumn of 2000. It was a simple treatise on some of her more tame charms and jinxes, but the resulting income immediately secured her financial independence from her parents. And it was just the beginning. She made sure to keep some of her more dangerous discoveries private, but everything else she made open to the public. She hoped that some of her defensive spells might save a life some day, and she had real hopes for her healing draughts…

Before long, the Ministry offered her a position as an 'independent researcher'. It was the exact same thing that she had been doing, with the small caveat that she had to inform the Ministry of where she was going and what she was getting up to. Being in the Ministry's pay also required her to attend the occasional charity function and take photos with important people. She did not mind, since the events were often the sort she would have been interested in anyway.

She took the job gladly. It was not everyday that one was offered a position as a government funded scholar, after all. And the pay was absolutely marvellous.

For the first time in over a year, she came out of her academic mania and turned her attention back to what was happening in the world around her. She saw that Shacklebolt's Ministry was making all sorts of changes; most of them for the good. She used what influence she had to better the lives of non human magical people and non purebloods. It was not as difficult as she might have expected. Most of the time all she had to do was be there, and people would be reminded of the War, and all the prejudices of times gone by, and promptly (if a little guiltily) start turning the wheels of progress as fast as they could in the right direction.

The possibilities were endless. She was making friends at the Ministry; an interesting position for her -a Mudblood and a former activist- to be in. Every day she felt more and more secure in herself, her abilities and her power.

If she had been asked, she would have been hard pressed to recall a time when she had ever felt happier, or more accomplished.

It was at that point, naturally, that the nightmare began.