Spoilers: started before HBP, continued after The Tales of Beedle the Bard, but before Pottermore.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling. The author of the following story (which is me) has no connection to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Books or Warner Bros., Inc. – No money is being made from this, no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Prologue

Is it you, my Prince? You have waited a long while.

– 'The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood' by Charles Perrault.

Mr and Mrs Granger, long time residents of Littleton, Winchester, were proud to claim that they were as Muggle as you could get.

It was a lie.

Before her marriage, Mrs Granger was known as Miss Annabeth Crow. She met her husband at university and they were engaged by the end of their third year. When they had to choose where to live, she followed him to his family home in Hampshire and never looked back. She even succeeded in losing her accent. She had laid the groundwork with him of the strained relationship she had with her own family: how she had laboured to distance herself from them, going as far as switching universities halfway through her course.

But it was all a lie.

Mr Granger never questioned his wife; she had a right to her privacy and he had been raised a gentleman. She had been a good student and a hard worker, qualities that had drawn him to her in the first place and that he was pleased to have in their shared workplace after. It didn't matter to him if her side of the church pews was filled with friends but devoid of family relations. It worried him a bit when she was pregnant with their daughter and had no one to call to share the good news. Yet she smiled so serenely and spent so much time with his own mother, learning the care of the young from her, that Mr Granger soon forgot about his wife non-existent family.

The lies never stopped.

Mrs Granger watched their daughter with a keen eye from the very day she was born. The oddities did not take long to show; toys without batteries would play nonstop, books were coloured in even if Hermione had not been given a crayon, and food she found distasteful magically disappeared from her plate. Mr Granger failed to notice many of these instances and when he did, he was merely bemused by his daughter's conjuring tricks.

It all came to a head, of course, on Hermione's eleventh birthday.

As the child grew older, Mrs Granger had learnt to turn a blind eye, the way she supposed every ordinary Muggle mother would when their daughter started displaying signs of early magic. She knew the day would come and she also knew to expect more than just her admission letter in the post. She was not disappointed – she replied to the Headmaster in a flurry of emotion, for it had been years since she had last used an owl to send her letters. She explained the reason for going incognito and pleaded with him to uphold the charade with her husband and daughter.

When Professor McGonagall showed up on their doorstep to explain that Hogwarts was the English school of witchcraft and wizardry, she knew her plea had been heard.

For you see, before her disappearance from the wizarding community, Miss Crow had been known as Annabeth Ravenclaw.