A/N: Oh, most definitely AU. This is what I get for binging on Dr. Who all weekend.

Summary: Hermione is trained as Dumbledore's instrument of war by himself, Snape, and McGonagall. His goal? Make it so the war never had to happen, and preserve the life of Harry Potter. Things don't quite work out as planned. Time travel rarely does.

Beta Love: fluffpanda

Prompts:

12. (word) echo

13. (word) riverbank

14. (quote) 'I drink to make other people more interesting' - Ernest Hemingway

Word Count: 3000 via Gdocs, 2993 via LibreOffice

-o-o-o-o-o-

The Crucible

It was the echo of Professor Dumbledore's last words to me that rang in my head. So many instructions and so many lessons boiled down to one moment in time.

"For a future without war, Miss Granger," Dumbledore had said.

Harry would have called me sentimental. Ron would have called me mental. Severus would have called me insufferable. Minerva would have called me her "endearing slice of insanity." It was always good to hear different perspectives.

As I lay on my belly in the muddy riverbank, all I could think of was what had brought me to this particular moment in time. Plucked from the fold of Gryffindor, I was taken and sworn into a secret plan. It was a plan, Dumbledore said, that would save Harry and so many more. It would prevent a war, and it would most likely change the Wizarding world for the better. There was always a catch.

After surviving the test of getting Harry to the Mirror of Erised, I became something else. I became an instrument. I was no longer allowed the luxury of childhood. I was no longer allowed mistakes. I was forged in ice and fire. I was reshaped as an apprentice with multiple masters.

Albus taught me to both expand my mind and protect it. He sifted through my memories and taught me that nothing was sacred or safe. He taught me that no one was to be trusted, especially him.

I was tool.

I was an instrument.

I was an investment he could not afford to lose.

Albus had brought in his friend, Nicolas Flamel, and they discussed things together far into the night and well into the next week. By the time they came out, Nicolas had come out with a parcel of vials of his elixir and a grim face. He held my hands in his ancient, wizened, old hands, and kissed my brow telling me I was very brave. He smiled and said he hoped that one day, I would know it for myself.

Albus asked me if I was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for a future without war. I was still naive enough to eagerly agree. I wanted my friends to live. I wanted my best friend to have his parents. I wanted no more deaths for the sake of one man's quest for immortality and power. There was a great irony in what Albus wanted to do, and I did not realise it until after the deed was done.

Albus had me lay on this isolated bed in the infirmary. He strapped my arms and legs down as very special IV infused a strange, beautiful liquid into my blood. Dark red, orange, and gold shimmered down the line, propelled by gravity into my veins.

It was then that Professor Snape and McGonagall, by chance, found me in the infirmary, writhing in pain. They cursed at Albus the entire time they held my hands. Snape swore at him for sacrificing a child's innocence for his war against the war, yelling at him that the research was theoretical and had never been tested before. Minerva screamed at him that he had promised find another way. Perhaps, it was Dumbledore's intention all along, making himself the bad guy, because after it, the bond between my other masters and I was undeniably strong.

Minerva protected me like a lioness protecting her cub. Severus showed me a side to him no other student was privy to see. They bound themselves to me as my masters, and I swore myself to their service. That is, I think I did between screams.

All I know for sure is that the pain was unbearable. My screams went on for hours. The tremors wracked my body, twisting it as the magic of the stone and whatever else Albus had mixed with it fused to my very soul. Minerva and Severus took turns cradling me as the power that was in that cocktail of magic transformed me from within. Dumbledore had said it would be only thing that would protect me from Tom Riddle. He had sworn to me it was the only way. Perhaps, he was right, but try convincing a child that torture was justified and you understand a little as to what I was feeling at the time.

I cried for hours. I curled into a ball in my professor's laps as they cradled me. They promised me they would teach me everything—everything Albus would not. I swore if I survived the pain that I would make them proud of me.

They swore they already were.

I found out later what Albus had laced my body with. I began to skip time. I would find myself back in bed in the morning after falling asleep on studies in the afternoon. This was the key to my education, he explained to me when I arrived in his office in a panic. I would take my classes with Harry and Ron as any student of Hogwarts, and then I would meet my Masters in the special chambers he had transfigured just for my education.

I'm not sure how I did it. I'm not even sure how Albus thought I could. The research he had done on what his concoction would do to me had been half baked at best, and the long term effects were even more unknown. Master Snape often cursed at Headmaster Dumbledore under his breath. Sometimes, when he thought I was resting, he'd curse over his breath. I learned quite a few ways to insult people through him. When I wasn't learning how to curse people without magic, I learned potions. I could brew a hundred different potions backwards and forwards in my sleep. I'm fairly certain that I did my O.W.L.s asleep. I don't remember taking them.

Master McGonagall taught me transfiguration so intimately that I could turn a bludger into a snitch at five hundred meters, conjure birds to chase and track my enemies, turn candles into rabbits, humans into chickens, fling an Incarcerous while running, and transform teddy bears into spiders. Ron didn't appreciate the last one. I tested it on his teddy bear when visiting the Burrow. I never did tell him I had done it. To this day he blames Fred and George.

Minerva also taught me how to transfigure myself, and I became one of the youngest registered Animagi on the registry. I also became the only known winged otter known to… well anyone.

Master McGonagall said it was most likely my altered body chemistry and magical make-up that had leaked over into my Animagus form and mutated it. Master Snape had rolled his eyes and said only I could have managed to be a winged weasel and make it look adorable.

I had tried to argue that otters were not, technically, weasels, but he had just shoved his book of Advanced Potion Making into my hands and told me to study Veritaserum.

You wouldn't have believed the things I learned from Master Snape's old Potions book. I learned much about my Master through that book—as much of him as from him. He taught me Occlumency and Legilimency. He caught me curses, hexes, counter-shields, and dispels. Both he and Minerva flung spells at me until I could handle them both at the same time. When I was exhausted, Severus would disarm me and force me to fight without my wand. He would battle with me until I was a mess. He would fight with me until I wanted to fling furniture at him to make him stop.

I drink to make people more interesting, Hemingway once said. Screw that, just give me the drink.

It would end when I managed to get a spell past his shields. I specialised in singing his eyebrows or greasing his hair. Oh, the look he would give me. He would arch what was left of his eyebrows at me and wipe the grease from his hair and sneer and then offer me lemonade. We would sit in silence afterwards, and ever so gently, his hand would alight upon my head and he would say, "You are improving, Miss Granger."

It made up for the times when he had to dress me down in Potions Class. I played my part well. I raised my hand and waved it like a incessant swot, and I spoke out of turn in a way that annoyed myself. I knew the truth, though. My Master cared for me, and he cared for the quality of what I was learning.

It made it hard to listen to Harry and Ron's ceaseless ridicule and hatred of him. I held his secrets thanks to quite a few enthusiastic Legilimency lessons. He and Minerva kept my secrets. They had held me as I cried, screamed, and moaned. They had listened to me whimper for my mother and father as the pain had been too much to bear. The pair of them had become my anchors in a turbulent sea.

Years passed, and I grew up, seemingly twice as fast as my peers and then, even more oddly, stopped aging. Only my Masters and Headmaster Dumbledore knew the real reason. Harry and Ron thought I was studying myself to an early grave. They wouldn't have believed me if I'd told them.

When it became evident that my ability to jump time did not work to Dumbledore's extended and long-reaching time schedule, he had me try time turning. It didn't go as planned.

The first time he had me jump, I arrived trapped in the body of a three headed dog puppy. Hagrid "adopted" me like I was his only friend, tried to tie me up, and cooed over me, saying I would make a great mate for Fluffy in the Dark Forest. I bit him thrice over and escaped after chewing through the cord he had me tied up with.

Thankfully, whatever it was that had turned me into a three-headed dog wore off, and equally thankfully, I didn't change back naked in the courtyard with first year Hufflepuffs staring at me, or worse, tied up in Hagrid's hut with a rope around my neck. That would have been awkward.

More time experiences had followed with the Time-Turner. Each time I had arrived in the appointed moment, but then I spent a good day or two as some random animal. The students were convinced that McGonagall and Severus were "testing out" new familiars. I'd been everything from an English robin, a squirrel, a raccoon dog, a marmot, a salamander, a hedgehog, and a strange panther looking thing with tentacles on its back and an extra pair of legs. To this day, I have no idea what that last one was. Nothing I read in the library seemed to know what I had been.

One fateful afternoon, Albus gave me back the Time-Turner, having adjusted it yet again to his specifications. The jump was successful, but I arrived as a basilisk.

I accidentally indirectly petrified Mrs. Norris as I was chasing after the "other" basilisk in the halls, and then I accidentally petrified my younger, mirror wielding self the time when she caught me trying to read a book in the restricted section.

I holed myself in the walls of Hogwarts, feeding on rats until the forced time-transformation wore off. Hogwarts was certifiably rat free by the time I sated my undeniably strong hunger. Ron was also, unfortunately, down and out one familiar. Unfortunately all rats looks the same to a hungry basilisk: rat-shaped heat signatures. He stared me right in the face as I was hunting the halls for prey. I realised he was Scabbers the moment my jaws started to close around his dead, petrified body. He smelled of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans and crisps. I crept back into the walls of Hogwarts just as Ron found Scabber's statue-like body. I didn't feel too overly bad over it, as I knew who Scabbers really was, but in this moment in time, Scabbers was nothing more than Ron's chubby familiar. No one realised who the rat really was.

That was my last thought as Time wrapped its coils around me and yanked me back to "where I belonged." Somehow, Time had finally decided to claim me as its instrument, and it wanted me where it wanted me. It also wanted me face first on a muddy riverbank. Thank you, Time.

My debriefing with Severus filled in what had changed after Scabber's unfortunate demise. Fortunately or not, Scabber's fate as a statue had changed the entire thread of what was to happen. Ron had taken to carrying around petrified Scabbers around in his backpack and to every class, lamenting his poor, lost friend. No one had the heart to tell him he was being really creepy. Because of this, however, Professor Lupin had examined the petrified familiar and realised that Scabbers was Peter Pettigrew in his Animagus form. He had run all kinds of tests on him. Scabbers had not been in any position to protest.

Harry's godfather, Sirius, had been exonerated when the truth came that Peter Pettrigrew had not been murdered by his one-time friend. Harry may not have gotten his parents back, but he had gained Sirius and Remus as the most dutiful guardians he could ask for. Because of his stony fate, Peter had never fetched Voldemort from Albania, Barty Crouch Jr. had never escaped Azkaban, and Tom Riddle's un-body had shriveled up and died, again. Tom's tortured spirit, unable to materialise, and anchored by his Horcruxes, lived in limbo, forever condemned to a mind without a body. The Horcruxes were, almost lazily, found and destroyed by Dumbledore's hands, and Lucius Malfoy, possessed by his Lord Voldemort in a last ditch effort to have a body, attempted to murder Harry Potter in cold blood on Hogwarts' grounds, and the curse had backlashed and killed him as it had the first time.

Harry Potter lived— again. He was free.

The irony was that after all that training, all it had taken was being trapped in the form of a hungry basilisk to complete the mission. I had been severely over prepared.

Albus Dumbledore had retired, saying that he was taking a lesson from Nicholas Flamel and going to live his life while he had it. Minerva was now Headmistress and she handed me a scroll sealed with wax once I had enough coffee in me to be coherent. Dumbledore's personal seal was fixed upon it. Confused, I opened it.

-o-o-o-o-o-

My Dearest Hermione,

If you are reading this, then you have returned victorious, and while you may take some getting used to some of the subtle changes, I think you will agree while the original plan never came to pass, you have succeeded regardless.

I must apologise for having stolen your childhood to set into motion thing things that allowed this to happen. I cannot apologise for the outcome, however.

Your friends, your family, and the staff of Hogwarts believed I sent you an important mission the day you left my office. I told them that you would return when it was done and that it could take years.

I have converted the chambers that has served as your training rooms for the last decade into a living space worthy of you. Crookshanks has settled in as its guardian, and will most likely be waiting for you upon your return. It is my hope, and I am sure Minerva will agree, that you accept the position as Professor and Master of Transfiguration and teach the following generations even a fragment of your skill. It was a condition of my retirement that you always be given a home here, Hermione, even if you do not accept the teaching position, for without you, I have feeling Hogwarts would not be there to house anyone.

While you were away, I took the liberty of filing all your official paperwork and all your official O.W.L., N.E.W.T, and Mastery scores. I have enclosed the key to the personal vault I have set up in your name. In it, I hope you will find both compensation of back pay for the years you spent as an apprentice under the radar as well that for being my agent. Within, you will also find copies of my memories for a pensieve, if the situation occurs where you must prove it.

I fear I will not be there to welcome you home, Professor Granger. I promised my sister when we were children that we would see the world together. I aim to visit every continent and take comfort that the world you have helped preserve would be to her liking.

Sincerely,

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

-o-o-o-o-o-

As I looked up from the scroll, my fingers fiddling with the key to my new vault. I clutched both the scroll and the key with half sob of relief. It was over. It was done. Just like Harry, I was free at last.

Severus was standing in the doorway now, his dark eyes looking down at me from a seemingly impossible height. He was so many things to me: a Master, a teacher, and my friend.

Oh, how I'd missed him.

Propriety be damned, I launched myself at them both and wrapped my arms around them, pulling them close to me with a sob. They pulled me closer and closer, providing security like a port in the storm. We were on the floor, on our knees, crumbled in a pile of arms, clinging to each other as our mutual tears flowed together.

As Severus gently stroked my hair, he promised that I'd never be used as a tool again.

I closed my eyes and buried my face into his thick teaching robes that smelled of herbs and charcoal and something else.

Home.

He smelled of home.

At last, I was free.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/N: If you caught the displacer beast reference, I heart you!