Chapter One

Her name was Hermione Granger.

Only, it wasn't Hermione Granger. Not here. Not now.

The air had turned white, and then grey, and then black.

God, she thought, her eyes shut tightly. Not here. Not now.

Not after everything.

...

When Fate arrives, the scared ones stay. It is the cowards who run. So she stayed.

...

"You have suffered," Fate said, Her forked tongue carving out the words, "for your misdeeds."

The air around them spun and was nothing.

Hermione Granger crackled in the light, or the dark, her hair blazing, her eyes aflame.

"Yes." said the witch, in a voice much too old and worn for a girl so young. "But so will he."

And Fate smiled upon her.

...

Fate was hungry.

Hungry to know.

Hungry for more, for more than fate, for more than standing by to watch the bloodshed and the hatred and the greed and the-

...

"If you fail, child?" She asked. "What then?"

The teenager shut her eyes, but the tears still won. "I already know failure." she spoke, her fear now gone.

It had been replaced with something else, something more. Purpose. Anger. Venom.

...

Hermione Granger was starving.

...

With long, slender fingers, Fate reached out to touch the lost girl's face.

"Then, I suppose, we have both turned," She whispered, "from order."

Hermione nodded severely.

Fate inhaled a long, deep breath. "You may stay. Against all laws, all rules. And do what you must."

"Thank you."

"But you will always be Hermione Granger." Fate said, and granted the girl her mission.

...

And she woke to the sound of distant shouts and the smell of wet grass, in the middle of the forest on her own.

In clothes that were new.

With a wand that was old.

In a time that would never be hers.