The sobs reigned in the forbidden forest like a wounded animal."Tell me what to do?" Hermione asked brokenly with Harry in her lap, her tears splattering on his dirty face. She held his head oh-so-gently as if he would break under the feather-light pressures of her fingertips.

"Hermione, I-" Harry whispered before a shuttering breath made his chest up rise and a pool of blood spurted out of his mouth.

"Harry!" Hermione screamed; her vision blurred with an endless flow of tears as she slowly watched the life fade from the vivid green eyes of Harry James Potter.

"Nonononono!" Hermione cried as Harry gazed upwards, letting out one last fleeting breath. "No! Harry stay with me! Please! You have to stay with me, Harry! Don't leave...please, please don't leave me!" Hermione cried her head falling on his still chest. Sobs wracked her emaciated frame as she cried the tears worthy of a thousand years.

Time stood still to her in a moment locked with only pain so intense it felt surreal. She had no thoughts on the length of time she stayed there crying, no care for the pitying tear-filled eyes upon her. Harry was dead, gone from her for the rest of her life. Now she would only have memories of when he was alive; she would never hear his voice again, feel his eyes upon her, or glide her hands over his pale white skin, he was never going to be too far from her; he would haunt her memories every day for the rest of her life. And that was wrong! Harry wasn't supposed to die! He wasn't supposed to be a horocrux!

What was Dumbledore thinking? How could he possibly let this happen? How could he have knowingly sent Harry to his death? How did he expect that they, that she- would ever recover from the loss of him? He was so much more than the boy who lived, so much more than the chosen one; he was Harry, emotional, sad, and the most optimistic person she knew! No, if Dumbledore thought that sending Harry to his death was the only option, the only solution, then he was wrong! Simple as that.

It was up to Hermione to fix this. Harry Potter will not die on this day because Harry Potter was not going to be a horocrux at all. Hermione was going to make sure of that...

...O,O...

"Marius Black was a man who lived without care or meaning. At a young age, he learned of his own insignificance as his two older siblings wielded magic and promise with the ease all pureblooded children rightfully possessed and he could not. The experience of being, at first, accepted and cultivated, to shunned and blasted off the family tapestry left dear Marius with little to no emotions. He was empty inside, filled with self-hate and broken dreams. All this, simply because he could not wield magic. Something he could not control reduced him to be less than even a mudblood or a muggle; at least they weren't born into magic. He had been and yet... he was a squib.

He will never forget the faces of the family who had spurned him and he will never forget the feelings of betrayal. However, he was still a Black and so he stayed living in the isolation that the family had placed him in- the muggle section of Grimmauld Place. He was not invited to family events and he was not there to see the birth of his younger sister, Dorea. But he was still a Black, at least in name.

So it came as a surprise when, many years later, he was invited to Dorea and Charlus Potter's wedding. For a long time he struggled on whether or not to attend. He was convinced it was some sort of cruel trick that would only lead to foul play. He went anyway.

For all the pain and suffering the Black family and their pureblooded ideals put him through, he was starved for them- for their magical splendor. Prideful man that he is, he just couldn't admit that to himself.

When he arrived, he was shocked and disappointed to see that there was relatively no one there. Not his Father or Mother nor his brother Pollux or their other sister, Cassopeia. No one from the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black was in attendance, yet many others replaced them. He recognized none of these but he knew his sister instantly even without the added help of her white wedding gown to indicate so. It was all in her mannerisms; she screamed Black in the lines of her upright posture, tidy well kept appearance and even though she was obviously very far along in pregnancy, she stood in high heels and smiled as if she had not a care in the world.

When she had looked at him, he knew that she recognized him instantly too. Their matching gray eyes as they met across the room, held equal sorrow, equal knowledge and equal bitterness that could only be wrought by Black family upbringing. They had talked for a little while privately, during which time he learned that his sister had been considered a disgrace for being pregnant out of wedlock and shunned for marrying Charlus Potter who was quickly on the rise to being considered blood traitor status. He had listened to her express some sorrow at what could have been a very splendid sibling relationship between the two but had not said the same in return. Petty though it be, Marius Black knew he could never really love nor be around wizards or witches, it hurt too much.

That all changed when he went back to his home at Grimmauld place that very night. A baby was sleeping soundly in a bassinet left on the stoop of his door and this baby had a wand tucked in its tightly swathed blanket. And when said baby blinked it's watery brown eyes and looked at him with such open trusted need, old and bitter Marius Black had loved her instantly..

...O,O...

Five years later...

Albus Dumbledore is a man who could, indisputably, wield powerful and gifted magic. When natural talent was born it was a beautiful thing but when it is cultivated and harnessed into something extraordinary, then its simply a blessing. Albus Dumbledore had cultivated his natural talent instead of just riding it out and he had reaped the benefits of doing so, becoming the most talented wizard of the century but even Dumbledore himself doubted that what the little girl before him was achieving could be considered natural talent.

His blue eyes watched calculatingly from the window in the small kitchen of Grimmauld place a giggling girl playing in the small green backyard. He had been watching her all day, coming to Marius Black's household at his insistence that his daughter, Hermione, was something of a magical prodigy. Dumbledore hadn't really been interested at first- of course, all magical children could do some impressive wandless magic at a young age and honestly, he thought that maybe the well-known squib was just exaggerating her feats, not used to such magical wonders.

He could now say shamefully that he was terribly wrong. Hermione Black was far from even being a prodigy, she was beyond exceptional... she was unheard of. He watched as the girl continued to play in the dimming light of day with the fireflies. He watched as she'd disapparate and then apparate across the tiny yard trying to catch the little creatures into a little jar that she continued to enlarge in her tiny hands. He had watched earlier in the day as she stunned, wandless and nonverbally mind, a small bunny that had gotten in the tiny garden. She then ran to it picked it up and enervated it back to consciousness; the list of magical feats went on and on.

Dumbledore would be lying if he said that he did not covet the girl. Performing magic as children was something that was common but what this girl, with unmanageable brown locks and all-absorbing brown eyes, was accomplishing was rewriting all that the wizarding world knew. She was performing magic like a house elf. Just a snap of her fingers and she seemed to be able to do everything a graduating Hogwarts student could do. It made Dumbledore wonder what she could do with a wand.

"I will hide her Marius." Dumbledore said without taking his eyes off the laughing girl. Marius frowned, staring at the old man before him with untrusting eyes.

"You will hide her Albus?" Marius said coldly, a wave of possessive and fierce greed holding him. He had been raising the girl by himself for five years and knew first hand just how powerful she could be and he was proud that it was him who was chosen to raise her. He would not let anyone take that away from him not after all he had already been stripped out of in his life.

Dumbledore's blue-eyed gaze flickered and clashed with grey for only a second before they returned to the girl once more. "Years ago you had found this extraordinary girl on your doorstep with merely a wand and a note and you honorably took her in and raised her like your own," Dumbledore stated, his voice strangely solemn. "Today, you asked me to come to see for myself the wonders of your daughter's magical ability... and now it falls to me to tell you your daughter must be hidden away. She will be coveted after by dark forces and hunted like an animal if word got out about her. You know this to be true, Marius. You are too close to those dark forces and she is too young to understand the extent of her powers to try to control them in front of others. It would be a great risk to keep her here." Dumbledore's eyes were stern and knowing as he gazed at Marius.

"My 'family' hasn't darkened my doorstep in over twenty years! So don't try to use some underhanded excuse with me! And I can protect my own daughter, Albus! You can hide us somewhere outside the country! We can flee to America or Australia or wherever-!"

"It would do no good Marius, no good at all." Dumbledore interrupted, shaking his head remorsefully. A wave of anger exploded in Marius as he slammed his fist in front of the old man.

"I will not let you take my daughter away from me! I had come to you out of trust! I thought you able to help us but you only want her power for yourse-"

"I want your daughter safe Marius, and away from evildoers who will turn her into nothing more than a killing weapon. And yes, I want to mold her powers with my own hands-"

"See! I should never have trusted you-"

"Listen to me old friend. I understand your pain and suffering but you know as well as I that there is only one place in this world where your daughter is safe and that is at Hogwarts. She must be trained so that she is not a threat to herself and able to protect her mind! It is inevitable that no matter where you take her she will be sought after wherever she goes. She must come to Hogwarts and be trained by the people you have known and trusted for years upon years, Marius. You know this...

...O,o...

Four years later...

Hermione Black chewed idly on the pastry in her hand as her eyes flitted back and forth over the pages the book, Hogwarts: A History. The fire glowing in the fireplace a few feet away from her cast the large room in a homely glow that she used to read her favorite book. But as she read, something subtle started happening to her. Her position, once relaxed and languid, grew tense and her mouth pinched into a frown- her brow furrowed as she drew her legs to herself. She continued reading, however, subconsciously dropping her pastry to clutch her book with white knuckles and gritted teeth. Stubbornly, she tried to remain focus on the words before her but already her mind was fading, her eyes unfocusing...

Slowly a white light started glowing from her eyes. Her mouth, which opened to admit out a long loud bird-like cry. Her brown hair started floating all around her and she hovered slightly off the couch, the book falling onto the couch...

'Please! I don't want to!' was Hermione's last thought before her surroundings faded...

The forest was dark. She was hungry and tired but her brown eyes were still alert as she eyed the darkness around her. "Harry, I'm really unsure of this..."

"Oh, will you pipe it down already! We don't have a choice, Hermione!"

"But we're supposed to find the horocrux Ron! Harry," Hermione reached out to desperately grip the black-haired, green-eyed boy's arm with both her hands very tightly as she fearfully stared into his face. "This is a bad idea, please trust me on this! I think this is a very, very stupid and rash thing to do!"

"Ron's right, though, Hermione. We have to do this." Harry responded, trying to brush her off. A flicker of hurt flashed on the girls face before she let him go.

"You'll listen to Ron over me, Harry?" She whispered, stepping very close to him so their grumpy and annoyed red-headed friend would not hear. Green eyes stared sadly but determinedly into wounded and resigned brown.

"I'm not going to listen to innocent people getting killed just because it's too risky Hermione. My life isn't worth any more than theirs even if I'm the only one who can stop him." he responded, though he reached out and gripped her hand comfortingly before letting it drop. The girl sighed as she turned away but raised her wand and continued further into the words nonetheless. For a while, nothing happened except that the three famished and dirty teenagers would occasionally jump as howls sounded in the far distance.

Hermione just couldn't help but feel all wrong as they continued further and further and so she stopped the boys one last time."You both are sure you absolutely want to continue?" she asked sternly as the light of the moon brightened their path slightly so she could see Ron roll his eyes and Harry clench his jaw.

"Yes, already Hermione!" Ron said exasperatedly. She sighed once more before pointing her wand at Harry who blinked owlishly at the unexpected draw.

"Alright, but you'll need to let me at least put some protective charms and spells on both of you," she said before uttering complex words in Latin and drawing intricate figures and patterns in the air that created a glow around each of her companions and herself. Both boys raised their eyes, impressed as Hermione shrugged and then walked a full wide circle around the boys muttering as she went, occasionally stopping to draw points onto the ground.

"Uh, Hermione what are you doing?" Ron questioned to which Hermione just shot him a glance and continued her spell work. When she was done a fiery looking circle blazed for a moment around them before residing.

"It's a protective circle for when we leave here, in case we can't make it all the way back to the campsite." she explained, nervously looking into the dark expanse of woods as something howled at a nearer distance and a wind blew ominously in the otherwise still night.

"That's brilliant!" Harry said, giving Hermione a small smile that she returned. And then they continued on, the air seeming to oppress them with fear and nervousness. And then suddenly they weren't alone, as five figures, two exceedingly short, came running out of the trees and straight into the three. Shocked they stopped and watched as the five bounced away from them, Hermione's protective spell glowing upon the impact.

Wide-eyed but reacting quickly, Harry pointed his wand at the figures and cast a nonverbal spell to bind them, Hermione and Ron quickly following suit.

"Stop please!" one voice said weekly, freezing the three as they stared incredulously at one figure on the ground.

"Dean!" the three bellowed staring at their dark skinned friend, who glared up at them.

"Shhh!" he hissed as his eyes flickered all around the trees nervously. "Are you trying to kill us!" he hissed as the three undid their spells and helped the three men and two goblins onto their feet.

"What's going on here?"

"Why are you guys here?"

"What was all that yelling?" The three all questioned at once as the other five nervously flickered their gazes all about.

"Shh, you nimwits! There are dark creatures in these forests...dark, dark creatures!" hissed one of the goblin's, his beady eyes going back and forth frantically as a howl rose once more."

"What kind of dark creatures?" Hermione asked nervously as right at that moment a scream so horrified and shrill sounded in the night around them. Wide-eyed, they all stared into the darkness before Harry went running ahead. "HARRY!" Hermione screamed before running into the darkness after him. She could hear Ron following behind her. They stormed through trees and bush, Hermione barely able to see two feet in front of her even with the light of her wand."Harry!" She cried, as the forest became eerily quiet with only the sounds of her ragged breathing and pounding heart. Fear was not an emotion, just the need to make sure that Harry was alright, to protect him...

She could see him running full speed ahead into a break in the trees. She followed quickly behind, Ron creeping up from behind her to charge after Harry. She froze when she made it to the tiny clearing, her eyes absorbing the scene in a split second.

There were five men, and something mangled and deformed a few paces away. In front of the men stood Harry, wand upright and screaming off spells that did not deter the creatures before him. And Merlin help them, those creatures were foul! Hunched beings with black scales, long pointed fingers and elongated mouths, resembling closely the creature in the movie Aliens that she once saw a life time ago with her parents. They moved soundlessly and seemed to blend with the night entirely, moving fast and flying upwards into the sky picking off people in the process. The screams that sounded out of sight from those people were absolutely terrifying...

Hermione acted in an instant, she knew what to do with these sort of creatures...

"Eximu Lumos Spectrumous!" Hermione cried pointing her wand skyward. Gently, like a tiny firefly, a white light sprouted from her wand and moved gracefully up into the middle of the clearing above their heads, it hovered there for a moment before the light turned blinding, encompassing their surroundings completely like a miniature sun.

The power that light admitted took over Hermione's senses until what felt like hours later, the light faded and Hermione was able to see and feel again. And when she was able, she wished she wasn't, immediately throwing up and the sight before her. At least ten of those evil creatures, burnt to a crisp and twitching, their disgusting long tongues lolling out of their mouths, and the smell was putrid. It burnt her senses and made her eyes water. She cupped a hand around her mouth and foolishly backed away. She tripped on one of those things behind her and fell into a pile of them.

Shaking and horrified, Hermione quickly jumped back up but they were everywhere and the stench was making her head spin. She was pretty sure she would faint.

And then it got worse.

Her eyes fell upon one of the victims. His skin was completely pulled tight and all his blood and insides had been drained, his eyes bulged outwards with red veins, his mouth wide open frozen forever in a lasting scream. It was hideous.

Hermione felt like she had stepped into a nightmare... an endless nightmare. She felt she would go mad if she stayed any longer. She felt Harry's presence before he grabbed her hand, his touch bringing her back from the cusp of dangerous territory

"Hermione, we have to get out of here!" Harry's strained, panicked voice said with biting urgency. Hermione blinked numbly as if waking from a long slumber and stared at Harry uncomprehendingly for a moment before she registered his pained expression and the dire situation. Snapping to, she shot a quick glance at Ron as he struggled to hold up two limp men. She strode over to the other side of him, trying to process nothing as they hurriedly escaped from clearing. They got close to halfway back to the campsite when the strain on all of them veered its ugly face. Harry, utterly exhausted fell onto a knee trying to keep the weight of the other man from making him collapse. Tiredly, Hermione looked at him and moved with Ron to help him get up but they stopped when they heard a sound...

"What was that?" Ron whispered fearfully. Hermione stilled everything, even her breathing as she tried to pick up anything. When nothing else passed Hermione breathed out a sigh of relief. She had moved back to Harry when she had an epiphany nearly dropping the man she and Ron were holding up as she hit her head.

"Oh, how could we be so stupid!" Hermione said before waving her wand at the three barely conscious men. They sprung up and hovered above the air as Harry and Ron visibly sighed with relief.

"Can't believe we didn't think of that before." Harry said as Ron nodded.

"That's why have Hermione," Ron said with a shaky grin to Hermione who tried to return it. "Even if she's a bit late she can solve any problem."And then they continued forward, Hermione tried not to think of the threatening sounds in the distance. She tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Unfortunately, the night was far from over and all hell broke lose…

Hermione felt the wave of images plague her very soul as they pounded into her mercilessly. When she came to, she had found herself on the floor with a great big bruise where her thigh must have hit the table in front of the couch. She barely even felt it; her body was shaking uncontrollably, so much that her teeth were chattering, and she was sweating profusely. Tears streamed steadily down her face and her teeth were gritted so tightly they ached. She knew she was going to throw up and managed to roll over right before she puked right onto the rug.

Still, the shivering and sweating wouldn't stop and she continued to dry heave long after. It was only when her body had finally realized she had no more to give did she get up. With a wave of her hand, the vomit disappeared and she used all couches, chairs, tables and walls to brace herself as she made her slow trek to her bathroom where she splashed water onto her face and neck and tried to breathe and calm herself.

The images never left her. They burned behind her eyes unyielding. She wished she could stop them, that she could just obliviate them all away...she wished she had never seen the three men they had just risked their lives to save being mauled and ripped to shreds right before their eyes by manicores, she wished she hadn't seen the soulless white eyes of the yeti's as they stood eating the first group of five men, including Dean, only a few feet away from Hermione and Harry's safe ground.

It made her sick to know that she had seen, heard and smelled all those things only to apparate away without a single soul to claim they saved...just memories that haunted them ceaselessly. She couldn't let these emotions consume her, however, and so she took a deep breath, focused her mind and tried to regain her composure and moved out of the bathroom. Immediately she went to the window to look at like she always did to gaze at the castle sitting majestically in the distance.

It took a while before she felt stable again and when she did she moved with practiced ease to do her next task. Get Dumbledore.

The portrait of Kendra Dumbledore was bland, with one red curtain obscuring most of the frame and a tiny wooden chair by a horrible patterned wall and an old-fashioned oil lamp. Hermione crept up to it and tapped lightly on the frame.

"Mrs. Dumbledore." Hermione called into the picture and seconds later Kendra appeared. Her hair was raven black and piled on her head in a style that made her appear stern. She wore a completely black dress that covered everything and had white trim on the high neckline. It seemed like terribly warm to outfit to wear.

Despite her gloom and doom appearance, Kendra was a lovely woman who was supremely kind to Hermione; her hazel eyes met brown with all the fondness of a mother and she smiled a warm closed lip smile that Hermione returned with her own.

"Hermione, darling." Kendra greeted boisterously before frowning. "Oh, I'll go fetch my son right away." she said before hurrying off, not needing Hermione to explain.

Hermione sighed and then moved to sit by the fireplace. It wasn't long until Hermione heard the sounds of footsteps climbing the stairs just before the entrance and with a flick of her wrist the door opened and admitted Dumbledore.

"Hermione," he said, his face gravelly serious as he came before her. "It has happened again?" It was not a question, one look at Hermione's face and it was obvious to see. He sat down on the couch looking completely out of place in the room with his fancy royal purple robes and pointed hat; she thought this no matter how many times he had come to the shack to see her. The grave expression on his face was uncharacteristic of the normally boisterous old man but was a very common expression to Hermione.

"Do you need me to fetch Poppy?" He asked carefully but Hermione shook her head; she knew that Dumbledore was eager to find out what she had seen. As Hermione contemplated her next words, he too pondered. His blue eyes- not for the first time- evaluated the mysteries of the girl before him. She was unlike anything he had ever witnessed before.

She sat before the fire with an exhaustion in her eyes unlike anything a child should ever hold. She was very contradictory. At times she was serious and thoughtful with a matureness that was astounding and well beyond her age, yet at other times, he also knew the girl to be childish with her wonder of the castle and magic. She understood to be dark and evil yet still had that dream-filled fantasy for utopia. Sometimes she was completely a child without a care in the world, emotional and demanding, other times it was as if she was a forty-year-old woman, haunted and depressed. Two extremes trapped into one that was Hermione Black.

Dumbledore would admit that he had contemplated on the girl being possessed by a different entity, with two souls in one body. It was still a possibility he was looking into, especially after the discovery of the strange markings on the girl's back. However, intuition was nagging at him to consider broader options, options that were far more complicated than mere possessions.

Either way, she was something to be kept well hidden which he had been doing successfully since she was brought to his attention four years ago. He was not ashamed for taking her away from Marius and hiding her in what he had deemed the shrieking shack. It had been a convenient hiding place away from the ears of the students and most of the staff yet close enough for him to come at any time and for her to still be protected by the wards and magic of Hogwarts.

"Professor," Hermione finally spoke with a deadpanned voice and her eyes staring out into the flames of the fire. "I saw death tonight, death and creatures far darker than the night. As dark as the abyss of hell. They slaughtered all who we knew and took great pleasure in or torment and pain."

Dumbledore shook his head forlornly at her words his mind racing. He knew that the one he was speaking to was not a child at the moment. She spoke with the words of a seer or an Oracle and so Dumbledore had long since learned to merely listen and to not question her at these times."You were with Harry and Ron, of course." He said to which she nodded.

"You were with Harry and Ron, of course." He said to which she nodded.

"Of course."

"And you and Harry were unharmed but had to bear witness to these cruel events?"

"Yes."

"And what was the reason? The underlying point?"

"He was hunting all whose blood impure and feet spurned by fire."

"Muggleborns and people of the order?"

"Yes. Many fled to the woods but he has unleashed foul beasts when he learned of them being able to live in the woods without the magic he stripped from them. He did so to make it clear that there would be no place safe for them to hide and they would receive a horrendous unthinkable death for even trying."

"I see." Dumbledore spoke with a contemplative nature. A long pause followed in which Dumbledore absentmindedly pulled out a lemon drop from his purple robes and started to suck on.

"Professor, you have kept me long enough from Marius...and you can't hide me here for much longer. You know why; I have already warned you to the wolf's coming...what will you do?" she spoke in that same deadpanned voice.

Dumbledore only had time to glance at her with his all-knowing eyes just before Hermione's head fell forward and she fainted.

A/N: I know I shouldn't be doing this...Another story on top of three that I'm already working on but I couldn't help but post this one! If you liked it I have some questions I'd like to ask so please answer in a review! Excluding of course the obvious... Did you like it?

1. What are your opinions on flashback moments in stories? Annoying or fun? 2. I've made it so that there could be interactions between Hermione/Sirius/James even before Hogwarts (If you look at the family tree J.K Rowling made you'll see Marius Black is technically Jame's Uncle and Marius lives right next to his niece Walburga) Would you like to see an interaction between the three before first year? 3. Do you want a Hermione/Lily/Serverus friendship bond in the story? How about Lucius/Bellatrix drama?/p