Author's Notes (I'll try not to leave many, I know most readers ignore them anyway):

1) Not all main/popular characters from these verses will appear. The focus of this fic is on Hermione & Geralt, so other characters will only enter into the story as necessary.

2) Based on the Netflix series, not the games. When I began posting this fic, The Witcher had only just become available in the TV Shows category & did not yet have any character selection options, so I had posted it under the Games category with a notation regarding the reason & an apology to any readers feeling mislead by the decision. However, FFN has since fixed this, and I have changed the crossover category accordingly.

3) There are some fairly big tells in the opening chapters as far as how the story will progress/end, so if you catch them, that's okay, you're meant to ;)

I was a little nervous about even having this idea, but my readers have beensuper supportive and excited for this story from the moment I mentioned having an inkling about it. Thank you so much for that!

REVIEWS, REVIEWS, REVIEWS!

Reviews are not necessary, but they do make writers feel loved & supported in their efforts to continue creating & sharing, so if you've the time, please consider leaving one :) (if you're worried about being annoying or not knowing what to say, let me tell you, you could leave 'thank you' or 'good work' on every chapter I've ever written & I would not get annoyed [I have a reader who does this, and I light up every time I see their name, I also have readers who just leave smiley faces and I seriously love that]).

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or The Witcher, or any affiliated characters respective to either work, and make no profit, in any form from this work.

Chapter One

Everyone in the Ministry's expansive legal department had looked . . . mildly terrified, if Harry were being completely honest, when he came strolling through the doors that evening. He'd understood things had been a tad bit tense since Hermione had been promoted to working directly under the department head, but this, the way everyone seemed like they were bolting toward the exit at the end of business that day as though no one felt they could leave the place fast enough, seemed a touch dramatic.

When he moved closer to her office, however, he began to understand why.

"Son of a bitch! Why the bloody hell . . . ? For fu—office, Hermione, be appropriate —for pity's sake! And just what sort of rubbish is this now? Oh, that useless woman!"

Opening the door, he poked his head into the room. There she was, her wild hair more frazzled then ever, her brown eyes reduced to angry little slits, fair cheeks touched with angry spots of pink, and documents everywhere, spread across her desk, spilling onto the floor . . . she even had a few that seemed to want to cling to her arm.

"Um, hullo?"

The witch appeared ready to throw her quill at the interruption—he imagined it sailing, dead-shot, into his eye like a dart through the air of a pub—until she looked up and saw who stood there. Immediately the set of her shoulders eased and some of the strain fled her expression. "Harry!"

"So, what's going on in here?" he asked in a falsely jovial sing-song tone as he stepped inside, gently closing the door behind him. "From the looks on your coworkers' faces, one would think you were battling a demon with your quill and some choice words, alone."

She groaned and returned her attention to the mound of paperwork scattered before her. "Certainly feels like it," she grumbled with a sigh.

Frowning, he walked across the floor and rounded her desk to peer over her shoulder. "What is all this? Looks like . . . half-finished family trees."

"This," she said in a hissing whisper, "is as far as my boss got before she handed off the task to me. And, yes, it's exactly what it looks like. D' you remember when our dear old friend, Dolores Umbridge, was the Senior Undersecretary of the Ministry?"

"I do vividly recall that pastel-coloured travesty of justice, yes."

"And you remember her claim that she got her hands on Salazar Slytherin's Locket because it was a family heirloom passed down to her from the Selwyns?"

He nodded. "I remember she was lying through her yellow teeth."

Hermione smirked, snickering under her breath. "Well, she had good reason for thinking she'd get away with it. Apparently during her tenure, she spent many a day in the Ministry's archives—unsupervised due to her rank—mucking up family registers. She was so embarrassed to have a Squib brother and a Muggle mum that she wanted the entire world to believe the Wizarding blood from her father's side was purest of the pure, best way to do that was to make sure no one could contradict her claims . . . best way to do that—"

"Was to destroy evidence that said otherwise."

She braced an elbow on the desk and dropped her forehead down against the heel of her palm. "And in order to not have anything stand out and look suspicious in case someone else did have the chance to look, she wiped clean patches of other family registers at random—of course, only those descended from the Most Ancient and Noble Houses, so that if someone was, say, looking for a pattern—"

"They'd assume that because her line was included, it must mean she's descended from one of those Houses."

"Exactly. And this is why we're friends. You just get me, Harry."

For his part, Harry only shrugged. She must be tired, he thought, as his conclusion seemed fairly logical and obvious from the information she was giving him. "She had control of so much for so long, she probably thought she could bar access to the records for anyone who might catch on."

"Seems to be the case, which is why it was only caught recently." Hermione didn't need to explain further on that point. With everything that had befallen the Ministry of Magic during the Second Wizarding War, checking over supposedly ancient records was rather low on the to-do list. "She was in charge of that vile Muggleborn Registration Act, so along with all the other things she should never have had her fat fingers in, she had complete control over familial records for every citizen of Wizarding Britain. It also made it easier for her to tie herself to the Selwyns, because the only surviving member of the family is a Death Eater, most of whom hadn't a clue about the Horcruxes, and he was busy working with the Snatchers at that time. He wasn't exactly going to drop that so he could come deal with a half-blood witch defending her possession of a trinket."

"Hermione, deep breath," he insisted. At this rate, she was going to give herself a migraine.

The witch nodded, inhaling long and deep and exhaling slow a few times before nodding again. "Sorry. I just still hate that woman so much. It's like every new thing I learn about her time in any position of power is just another item on the long list of reasons she'll burn in Hell."

"Sounds about right." He pushed himself back to sit on the lone clear spot of space on her desk. "Look, the pure-bloods—even the ones locked up in Azkaban—are ridiculously proud of their lineage. They should have their own records, shouldn't they? Or be willing to fill in the blanks however they can? Can't this just be as simple as going and asking them for their records?"

She stood from her seat and stretched, causing the disconcerting sound of joints cracking in the small of her back. "God, I've been sitting here for hours. Anyway, yes, you'd think so, but I'm encountering resistance from a most unexpected place. I've been in contact with a number of the affected families, and the vast majority of them have been more than happy to comply with my request for records. I've got appointments all next week of people coming in to proudly show me their 'authentic documentation.' A few have owled me duplicates, but there's about a third of that I can't seem to make sense of, hence the spitting and cursing you heard when you came in."

"Well, now that we're all caught up . . . who's the hold out?"

Turning her gaze on the parchment strewn across her desk, she tapped a finger against one in particular.

Harry arched a brow. "The Malfoys? That's surprising."

"Not so much, what's surprising is the way their register's information is missing. Not like it was wiped in Umbridge's erasure. The Black side is completely accounted for, but the Malfoy side it just . . . I dunno, it feels weird, it's like at some point the family just sort of sprung up out of nowhere."

"Well, that certainly can't be right."

"I know, that's the problem. The Malfoys date back to mid-thirteenth century." She pointed to the apparent base of the tree, where the initials GR and ML were listed as a root pair, but nothing more. "The other erasures start from earlier on and reach onward, leaving only the more recent generations; the Malfoy erasure ends too far back to really sync."

He frowned in thought. "Maybe she just made a mistake?"

"That's entirely possible, but requests for documentation from Lucius Malfoy about his ancestry have been declined or ignored, entirely. Apparently, however he responded to direct inquiry was precisely the straw that broke my superior's back and caused her to hand this rubbish down to me."

"How is any of this a legal matter?"

The exhausted witch shrugged. "Inherited finances and property holdings. If there was ever a dispute—which there hadn't been, another thing which led to Umbridge's scheme going undiscovered for so long—it would fall to us to sort it out. God! I got into this department to learn more about Wizarding laws and try to change them for the better of the downtrodden, not to have pure-bloods parade around my office puffing out their chests and patting themselves on the back for their ancestors' inbreeding!"

Okay, she was getting feisty again. "All right, you're working yourself up again. I think . . . ." Holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender, he eased himself to his feet and took hold of her hands, pulling her out of her chair. "I think you need to let your best friend take you to dinner and maybe buy you a drink, or five. You can deal with this tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Saturday," she said with a wince as he turned her by her shoulders and pushed her toward the door.

"Exactly," he replied, again with that forced joviality. "You pop over there tomorrow and if you find Mr. Malfoy is still being disagreeable—which is highly likely, since this is Lucius Malfoy we're talking about—perhaps Draco would be willing to help. We did save his life a few times, you can always throw that in his face to get the ball rolling and you'll have the answers you need when you return to work on Monday."

"I guess, it's just . . . God." The witch groaned and shook her head at her predicament. "Chasing after a Malfoy for the sake of some ruddy documents on my weekend? This job really has me thinking I'd rather be back in the thick of battle, up to my neck in foul monsters of the Dark."

Geralt scowled. He was near-literally built for his job, but some days he didn't wonder if a life spent toiling over paperwork—fretting over how some rich bastard of a lord wasted his wealth—might not more ideal of a thing. As sure as his strike had been, that creature had still exploded on impact. The slice should've been clean, quick, precise.

Yet, here he stood wiping rank purple-black guts and spurt from his face with the back of his hand all the same as if he'd run at the beast swinging his blade like a drunken barbarian.

This was why he hated Aedirn. The nobles were horrid and their townsfolk not much better, the forests were horrid, the monsters . . . well, went with the territory, really. But then he'd known there was no escaping having to venture into Arthur's Realm. Not with his former lover's words still ringing, incessantly, in his ears as if by magic—which he, frankly, would not put past her. He had to go here because she'd foreseen it. That here, he would stumble upon his future, for whatever that was supposed to mean. First that had meant raising Ciri, but that was all done. What it meant now, he had no idea.

Absolute nonsense. There was no future to be found in the ransacked ashlands of Lower Aedirn, though there he was headed. Yennefer insisted. Ciri—grown and capable and no longer in need of a protector as she set to rights the overturned empire of Nilfgaard while restoring a gentler, renewed queendom of Cintra, and trusting of the elf-blooded mage at her word—insisted, and he thought if Jaskier were still around, the bloody bard would have insisted, too.

Honestly, Geralt was more certain by the moment, by every crunching footfall through this accursed forest, that he'd chosen to undertake the journey just so they'd stop pestering him about it. He just had to get to Lormark, he hadn't even been trying to hunt anything just now, yet here he fucking was, wiping the blood from the silver blade of his sword against the forearm of his black leather jerkin as he glared down at the malformed thing. He wasn't even certain what it was and that didn't happen often.

In truth, that was a circumstance which occurred so rarely that he was a little troubled by it.

Lifting his head, he held still as his gold eyes scanned the trees around him. He would keep his sword unsheathed until he was out of the vast, forested outskirts of Dol Blathanna, entirely. It was quiet here, unnaturally so. Forests were never silent, but then perhaps the animals were only sensing him, yet he doubted it. Wherever this thing had come from, however it had come to be, there was every possibility it was not alone.

Perhaps someone in Lormark would have a tale to tell which might shed some light on this.

His features twisting unpleasantly, he started bagging up the beast. Some damn fool alchemist might think its uniqueness a good thing, or a taxidermist might want it for a curiosity, either way the creature was certain to be worth a few coins to someone.

He'd get himself cleaned up—not a thing he normally fussed about, but the animal that had just bled on him was bound to be offensive to the senses for miles around soon enough—have a good night's rest at an inn and, provided there were no further surprises in store for him, be on his way to cross the Dyfne river first thing tomorrow.

Tugging a cord tight around the mouth of the sack, he sealed it shut and slung it across his shoulder. Gods, his missed his horse.

Whatever awaited him in Lower Aedirn—if anything at all, he was beginning to wonder if Yennefer wasn't going slightly mad after all these years—wasn't going anywhere.

Hermione was half-certain she might still be just a wee bit inebriated from the night before as she banged her fist against the door of Malfoy Manor late the next morning. But that was good, she thought, as she wasn't sure she'd be able to do this sober, and it absolutely beat the hell out of the headache with which she'd awoken just scant hours earlier. Backpedaling a step, she waited for someone to answer. There was a strange sort of glee for her in remembering that the Malfoys had to answer their own door since one of the penalties they'd faced for helping the Dark Lord—their eluding imprisonment or any formal charges notwithstanding—had been that they were stripped of the right to acquire any new 'servants.' Though, she didn't recall there being much of a scramble to replace Dobby, so perhaps the dear little elf had been more difficult of a loss on Lucius Malfoy than she'd considered.

"Oh, well," she muttered to herself under her breath. "Maybe if you'd treated him better, Harry wouldn't have tricked you into freeing him."

As though on cue—perhaps his ears were burning—the door creaked open and there stood the Malfoy patriarch, himself. He appeared to take a moment to collect his thoughts, clearly startled at her presence upon his step. "Miss Granger?"

"Mr. Malfoy?" she said with a curt nod. "Good, we both know who we are."

His slate-grey eyes narrowed lethally. "To what do I owe the . . . courtesy?" As though it weren't plainly obvious he had a completely different sentiment in mind than that she was here to be courteous.

My, his attitude had gotten even more prickly since the last time she'd crossed paths with him. A year after War's End, they'd nearly collided in the bookstacks of Flourish and Blotts and he'd had the audacity to seem surprised to see her for some reason. As though she should be hiding her head after her side lost the War and she'd only saved her own arse with a last minute defection across battle lines . . . . Oh, no, wait . . . .

Okay, so she was being a bit internally cheeky just now, however, she felt it warranted, because whatever he'd said to her boss had left the poor elder witch even refusing to speak about the Malfoys, let alone bring up their lineage. Never mind that that was literally their job right now. Hermione was braced to not let herself be intimidated by the man and that, apparently, meant joking within her own head to keep an absurd image of him firmly planted.

Withdrawing the paperwork from where she'd held it tucked beneath her arm, she didn't wait be invited in, instead she slipped past him to stand in the foyer—there was an advantage to being on the petite side. As she moved by him, she pressed the documents to his chest, forcing him to take them.

"What . . . ?" Evidently flustered by her bold behavior, Lucius turned to face her as he looked at the papers she'd shoved at him. "Oh, Merlin, not this rubbish again."

"Yes, Mr. Malfoy, this rubbish again." She don't know why she'd found him so intimidating when she'd been a child. Certainly he was still an imposing figure, and he very much looked like he could still slice right to someone's very heart with no more than his acidic wit, but she was too annoyed at simply having to be here to care. "If you'd only assisted Mrs. Shafiq, you remember her? My superior at the Ministry, nice lady, seems to feel just mentioning your name might bring the fires of Hell down upon her for some reason? Yes, well, had you simply complied with her request for validating documentation so that she could replace the missing information on the Malfoy family register, I would not have to be here now. On. A. Saturday."

Harry had been wise to suggest this, after all, as it seemed the very fact that it was a Saturday might be enough to keep her ire stoked while she was saw this through. She had not set foot in Malfoy Manor since the day she'd been tortured by Bellatrix; staying angry would likely stifle any residual fear that might result from being here.

Shockingly, perhaps, Lucius arched a brow in a thoughtful expression as he shut the door and turned to face her. "Have you ever been told, Miss Granger," he said with a lazy sigh as while he took a moment to examine the papers, "that when you speak while angry, you bare your teeth?"

Her forehead creased in puzzlement at the bizarre segue. "What?"

"Rather like . . . ." He seemed to consider his words before he met her gaze and nodded, a frown curving his mouth downward. "Rather like a little wolf."

The witch's chestnut eyes flashed wide and she breathed deep, drawing herself up to stand as tall as she could. "Mr. Malfoy, you are going to take me to your family records, and you're going to do it now. I do not have time for games or insults."

He shrugged and, as she could swear he muttered something under his breath about it not exactly being an insult, walked by her, presumably to lead her through the house. "Very well, as you wish. This way."

"Finally," she whispered with a shake of her head.

She followed along, relieved to find he was being somewhat more agreeable than expected . . . . Until he led her to the basement door. "Down there?" she asked, her brows shooting up so high they nearly disappeared into her hair.

"We keep our family archives separate from our library, you understand."

"Fine, here I am, understanding," she said with a nod, but unable to deny a sudden spiky tension winding through the pit of her stomach. "You go first."

Again Lucius Malfoy shrugged, strangely she thought he might've expected her to react this way as he put up no fight, nor did he seem curious about her caution. She told herself it was a matter of him being fully cognizant as to why she did not trust him as far as she could throw him—without magic.

She felt like perhaps she should reach for her wand as she trailed after him, down the lantern-illuminated stone staircase. Assuring herself she was being paranoid—despite her earlier belief that staying angry would keep any lingering fears at bay—she stopped herself from retrieving her weapon from the leather sheath on the inside of her left forearm. The war might be long over, but she'd taken the lesson to never go anywhere unarmed with her.

He reached the foot of the staircase and continued along, not even looking back to see if she continued to follow him. It was all quite unsettling, really. If this was what he'd done to Mrs. Shafiq, then Hermione couldn't say she blamed the woman for not wanting to deal with him again. He probably thought unnerving them within an inch of some sort of breakdown served them right for feeling any need to question his family's lineage.

God, the Malfoys were an exhausting lot.

"In here, then," he said, pausing in a doorless archway.

When she didn't budge from the bottom of the staircase, there was finally a crack in his blasé exterior as he rolled his eyes. "Really, Miss Granger? And here I'd always suspected you possessed of an overabundance of bravery."

Her eyes narrowed sharply at his prompting. "There is a line between bravery and stupidity, and you'll forgive me if I refuse to be stupid enough that blindly trusting a Malfoy would ever cross my mind."

She expected that he might find her continued boldness insulting, but instead he smirked and nodded. "Noted. But this is where you'll find what you're after."

He ducked into the room and she waited, still. After a few moments, she heard the unmistakable sound of a book thudding against a wooden surface—if anyone would recognize such a noise at a distance, it would be her. A bit of the tension draining from her, though she refused to lower her guard much at all, she proceeded after him.

There, set out on an ancient desk before a wall of marvelously aged and tightly-packed shelves, rested a book. Its dense leather cover made a soft crackling noise as he eased it open.

Stepping aside, he swept a hand toward the desk in a gesture of invitation.

With a hard swallow, Hermione willed herself to enter the room. A chill went through her as she crossed the threshold and again the thought to draw her wand reared its head. Telling herself it was her imagination, she approached the desk. Mr. Malfoy had rather thoughtfully set out the papers from her office, along with a quill and an ink bottle, on either side of the open tome.

Well, now she felt ridiculous. This was helpful, after all.

"Thank you," she said stiffly.

Lucius Malfoy nodded as he backpedaled, apparently leaving her to her work only after he watched her handle the book for a few quiet moments. Had he been waiting for something? "Miss Granger?"

"Hmm?" she breathed the sound, distracted with the feel of the thick, worn pages beneath her fingertips.

"Where are you from?"

Shaking her head at the odd question, she said, "London, why?"

"Simply curious."

As she turned a page in the book, she spied a telltale smear of crimson. Her stomach clenched in apprehension at the sight. Hadn't . . . . hadn't Mrs. Shafiq come in with her hand bandaged the same day she told Hermione this task was hers, now?

The elder witch had claimed it was nothing—her familiar had been startled and scratched her, but this . . . ?

"Mr. Malfoy," she started, a lump in her throat and the fingers of her right hand touching to the hilt of her wand at her left wrist. "What did you do?" she finished the question as she turned on her heel to face the door, her weapon at last drawn on him.

Yet, Lucius Malfoy was nowhere to be seen.

Where he'd stood, just inside the archway, rested something that glinted, round and silver, beneath the lantern light.

Her wand gripped tight and aimed toward the main body of the basement, she approached the object. The face of a wolf stared back at her from the surface of the medallion Lucius Malfoy had left there. Have you ever been told, Miss Granger, that when you speak while angry, you bare your teeth? Rather like a little wolf.

A sharp breath escaped her as the words echoed through her mind. What sort of madness was going on here?

Unable to help herself, she reached for it, pinching the long chain between two fingers and lifting it from the floor.

Okay, not a portkey, she thought in relief—she would not put it past him to have booby-trapped the necklace simply to get her out of his hair.

Relief . . . until she traced her fingers over the outline of the wolf's face. Clever bastard had contained the charm to only one piece of the necklace, lulling curious parties into a false sense of security. She was sent whirling, but knew better than to let go of the medallion or she'd go flying off mid-travel and likely end up severely injured, if she was lucky enough to survive. Instead, she wrapped her fingers around it tight and held it to her chest, her wand still grasped in her right hand as she braced for her landing.

The portkey dropped her, surprisingly gently, on a grey shore.

Breathless and dizzy, she tried to collect herself as she got to her feet. "Stupid portkey!" she bellowed, though there seemed no one about to hear her. "I'm not letting you out of my sight." The witch slipped the chain around her neck. After Lucius Malfoy's bizarre behavior, and his comments, she could not help but think this necklace was important, somehow.

She looked about. There appeared to be nothing here, the entire landscape was . . . well, barren would be a polite way to state it. Turning toward the body of water at her back, she saw on the other side a wholly different image. The steepled roofs of a town in the distance and lush green surroundings. Where the hell was she?

Frowning, she braced to Apparate back home . . . yet nothing happened. Alarmed, she aimed at a pebble in the sand. "Wingardium Leviosa." Swish and flick and up the pebble lifted. She set it back down. So her magic worked, but not Apparition?

Something was clearly very wrong here.

Swallowing her unease, Hermione sheathed her wand. She couldn't know how the locals wherever she'd landed would take to a witch—she started toward the water's edge, intent on finding a way across.

Hours passed and she wanted to collapse on the spot even as she pushed herself to keep walking. Night was creeping across the sky when she happened upon a decidedly narrow bow in the river. She might even be able to wade across without too much difficulty, but she halted.

There, too, was a small group of what appeared to be fishermen, building a fire on the shore. A boat was run up in the sand not far from them.

Maybe they could tell her . . . .

No, no. A trickle of ice pooled in her stomach as she watched them. Their clothes were so odd. Medieval, maybe? Not in the way of Wizarding clothing, either.

Swallowing down her fear and disorientation, she began to inch backward, trying to retreat into the shadows.

"Oi! Oi, you over there? C'mere."

Fantastic. She didn't know the protocol here, what she did know was that if she ran, these strangers might give chase and that could not possibly lead to anything good.

Nodding, she plastered on a polite grin and moved slowly toward them. "Um, my apologies, I didn't mean to intrude."

"Nonsense, you're probably cold. I's okay, you can share the fire."

With another nod, her brows shot up. "Oh, thank you."

As she stepped closer, still, however, the man's gaze caught on the silver wolf.

"How'd you get that?" he demanded through clenched teeth as he shot to his feet. "I's just like the one they say the Butcher wears."

Her eyes shot wide, panic beating in her chest. "The what?"

"You're one of them, ain't ya?"

"She can't be, she's a girl," the nearest of his companions said, but that didn't stop him from drawing a blade.

Holding up her hands, she tried to speak calmly while she reached her fingers toward her sheathed wand in a slow, subtle movement. "Whoa, sirs, please! I've no idea what you mean."

"Her clothes . . . look at her clothes! She's from somewhere else. Maybe she stole it, but better safe than sorry, yeah?"

Apparently, this all meant something to the man and his companions, but Hermione'd had enough of this. In one day, she'd been hung over, still slightly buzzed, angry, unnerved, scared, felt threatened, shunted off to who knows where and now threatened again—overtly this time!

No more bullshit. She was simply done.

As she gave up the pretense and grabbed for her wand, yet before she could draw it, before she could reveal its presence to her enemies, she heard, more than felt, a sharp crack against the back of her skull.

There were stars bursting before her eyes, and then everything went black.