Disclaimer. As usual I don't own Harry Potter, or any of the characters, things, or animals, that are mentioned in the Harry Potter books, I do how ever own the plot in this little venture into the Potter verse.

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The life of Harry Potter, and Hermione's part in it.

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Part one

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"Hermione! Hermione Granger, could I have a word with you?" the old man asked the ten year old girl with bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth, as she walked toward the open school gates. Last one in an exodus of rowdy children and parents all heading home for their homes and evening tea.

Hermione looked at the ancient old man standing at the school gate, dressed in a long silver grey smock like thing that reached right down to the floor he reminded her of pictures of Merlin from the stories of King Arthur and the round table. In fact if Merlin had not been a myth, Hermione Granger thought, she may well have believed she was looking at him right now.

She could feel some odd connection to him. A kind of tingle like electricity when it made the hair stick out, and she could see something in the old mans twinkling bespeckled green eyes, it was a look similar to the sorrowful look her dad had when he looked at mum if he had somehow upset her, and yet it was more wistful, deeper in some sad unfathomable way.

"I'm sorry sir but I'm not allowed to talk to strangers," she told him as she wisely remembered her parents warning about strangers, she edged away from him a little.

"Yes I had thought about that, you always were the cautious and clever one, right from the first day we met," the old man said confusing her.

"I never met you before, I'm going to shout my dad," Hermione said stepping back inside the gates.

"If you look over there you will see that your mother Helen is waiting for you just as she always does," the old man said smiling "so you call your mother over, and we will talk on the way to your house Ok," the old man said as he gave her a friendly grin.

Helen Granger watched her daughter and wondered why her little girl was waiting at the gate and not running to meet her as she normally did.
Getting a little impatient Helen walked around to the gate way and called to Hermione as she approached.

"My mums here now," Hermione said to the old man her fear dissipating a little.

"Yes, yes, you know I always did like your mum, just like your dad, she has a very open mind," the old man chuckled "so shall we go?"

Helen stood and held out her hand to Hermione and asked as Hermione took hold "Is there something wrong dear, you look a little pale."

Hermione watched as the old man fell in step with her and her mother as they walked toward the family car; she could not believe that her mum said nothing to the oddly dressed, long bearded, be-speckled stranger walking with them.

"Er, no not really," Hermione answered.

Reaching the car Hermione looked up at where just a moment ago the old man had been standing, she then looked around at the surrounding street but the old man was no where to be seen. Slightly puzzled about where he had gone, Hermione turned her attention back to the car as she heard the remote locking mechanism whir and the lights gave a flash that was accompanied by a small beep.

Still puzzled by the old mans sudden disappearance and what had happened to him, she reached out and opened the car door, as she turned her mind back to the task in hand, which was climbing into the car back seat, she was surprised to see the old man already sitting in the car waiting, her mother seemed oblivious to his being there. "Don't forget to belt up," the old man chuckled.

As the car pulled out into the traffic heading for the small village where they lived the old man began speaking. Hermione was not really listening at first as she tried to figure it all out, and she also wondered why her mum had said nothing.

"Mum did you know there's an old man in the car with us?" she asked feeling a little foolish for asking such a silly question.

"Has he got a curly white beard and a red suit?" Helen chuckled as she looked at Hermione through the rear view mirror.

Hermione was about to make another comment when the old man spoke "She can't see or hear me, it's an anti Muggle charm, anyway I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. First I should wish you a happy birthday! I have a package for you; it contains your birthday card, a book, a cloak, and a wand. Before I give it to you I must ask you to promise not to touch the wand until you have read the first few pages of the book."

Even though she was scared, shaking a little as well, Hermione was not going to show her fear to a total stranger, besides the promise of another book to read peaked her curiosity. She decided to play along with this new figment of her imagination, which he obviously was if her mum could not see him or hear him.

"I promise," she said crossing her fingers.

"No Hermione, I want a real promise, it's important, very important, and since when did you start to cross your fingers and tell lies?" the old man said reprovingly.

"I do not tell lies," Hermione said rather indignantly.

"I know dear," her mother said from the front seat "you really do have Santa sitting in the back with you." She then chuckled.

"Sorry, I promise," Hermione said spreading her fingers on her lap.

"That's ok sweety," mum replied smiling.

"Good, now remember to read the first part of the book first," the old man said as he slipped an envelope and parcel to her.

Hermione looked down at the parcel just as the car stopped for some traffic lights, when she looked up she was alone on the back seat, the birthday card and parcel still resting in her lap.

At home having hung up her coat, Hermione with the neatly wrapped package tucked under her arm, collected her small pile of birthday cards from the hall table and then went straight up the stairs to her bed room.
She placed the parcel along side her birthday cards on to her desk, and then sat on her bed just staring at the parcel for a long time. She had some how expected it to vanish just as the old man had vanished; she was almost convinced that the old man could not have been real. Maybe she had been dreaming, maybe this was just another one of the odd, unexplainable things that happened around her.

It was the last thought that made her wonder just what it was that could cause the school bully to fall back on his fat behind when he tried to hit her. Or what happened the day her snotty cousin visited and went home with blue hair. When she began to think about it quite a lot of strange things happened if she was scared or angry, sometimes even when she was really happy, though that was not very often since she started school.

School was a lonely unpleasant place where being bullied and picked on all the time was the normal daily routine when you have large front teeth, and an unquenchable desire for knowledge.

Looking again at the parcel that had remained just where she placed it, she took a deep breath and went to sit at her desk. Slowly she opened the brown paper wrapping just as she always did, careful not to rip it and then folding it up neatly she placed the plain brown wrapping paper in a draw of the desk.

Opening a rather nice wooden box she found a black leather bound, rather expensive looking book sitting on top of a silvery coloured piece of material, poking out from under the material was a thin round piece of polished wood.

Hermione Jane Granger could no more resist reading a book than king Canute could hold back the tide, she knew some how that the old man had known about her love of reading. Slowly she lifted the book from the box and noticing that the pages were not simple paper, but that they were all made of fine parchment. She did not notice that now she held the book in her hands it was far to big to fit in the small box. Eagerly she opened it at the first page; and she began to read the first few hand written words.

'Harry James Potter, his life, and your part in it'.

Dear sweet Hermione if you ever get to read this then I will have done what even in the world of magic is thought to be the impossible. Not to mention highly illegal to even attempt.
I know that you are not like other ten year old girls, this is why I chose your tenth birthday to give this to you, I know that even at ten years old you are really very mature for your age; you are also one of the cleverest people I will ever meet in all my 186 years.

I have spent a long time working out just what I should tell you, in fact this note that you are now reading was the very last entry. After 116 years of careful thought and work the book is finally finished and all my calculations are complete, thanks mainly to the work you did before…

Hermione wondered who could have written such an elaborate joke and why? Was it just another one of the tricks by the snotty nosed girls in her class at school? Or maybe it was a fiction novel; she much preferred to read factual books. But then it was hand written with her name clearly written on the first line. She knew the book had been written for her personally. She glanced at the thickness and thought that someone had gone through a lot of trouble and expense to hand write an entire book just for a joke. Still she decided she should read it to see what it was about before coming to any conclusions, turning her thoughts back to the book she read on.

I suppose you are still at the sceptical stage right about now, I used to love to see you when you were trying to find a rational explanation for things; I found it highly amusing but very endearing, it was one of the reasons I fell in love with you, the fact that we lived in a world of magic and yet you still thought in that logical way of yours.

Now I don't want you to take this next part the wrong way, it is not meant as an insult.

You Hermione are a witch! And no I do not mean one of those green skinned ugly women of the fairy tales, the ones with huge warts on their nose.
I mean a real magical witch. One who will grow from a plain Jane to be a very, very beautiful woman. To prove this to you I have written the first spell for you to use on the next page. Once you are confident you can perform the spell correctly use it on your self in order for you to prove the truth of what I am going to be telling you with in this book.

Please study the incantation carefully and find some thing, a twig or stick to practice the wand movements, be quite sure you can do this part correctly before you use the wand from the box.

Hermione looked sceptically down at the wand nestled at the bottom of the box, "As if," she sniffed sticking her nose in the air. Turning back to the book she read on.

'I suppose you have just given the box one of those famous looks of yours or maybe you stuck your nose up and huffed. I truly wish I could be there to witness your first introduction into the world of real magic. Poor old McGonagall is going to get the shock of her life, but more about her later.
To begin proving this magic does exist, and to give you a little incentive to learn the first spell, I have placed my cloak in the box for you. If you take the cloak and stand in front of your mirror when you put it on, I think you will not only begin to believe me but you might even be amazed at what happens, I know I was.'

The last few lines had caught Hermione's attention, it seemed the writer really did know her, how else would they know about the disdainful look she had just given the box, it was almost as though the writer knew how she was thinking.

She put the book down and picked up the cloak from the box, it felt oddly silky and soft, some how it also felt rather like warm water. She stared at it for a few moments watching it as it shimmered in a way she had never seen before.
Taking the cloak she walked over to her wardrobe and opened the door revealing a full length mirror, she studied her self in the mirror for a moment unable to believe that the girl who's reflection looked back at her was starting to hope that magic was indeed real, wanted to really be a witch able to do magic, it would explain so many things.

Carefully handling the gossamer silk like cloak, she took hold of it at the shoulders and with a rather elegant swish she wrapped it around her self.
Standing there in front of the mirror Hermione felt more than amazed, she stood staring, her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide as she looked at her head floating in the air, her body totally invisible.

Still staring disbelievingly at her reflection she pulled the cloak up and covered her head, she could see from the mirror that she was now totally invisible and yet she felt her body unchanged under the now see through cloak.

The change of mind she had was instant, she did not even bother to close the wardrobe door as she normally would before rushing back to her desk and sitting down to read more about the world of magic.
It was only as she tried to pick up the book that she remembered she was still wrapped in the amazing cloak, she stood just for a few seconds to pull it quickly from around her self and to place it on the back of her chair, before she sat back down and began to read once again.

'So I am thinking that you by now will have tried my cloak and accepted that magic is real, odd that I should use the cloak to prove things to you when you were the one who wanted me to give it back to Dumbledore (more about him later). I can only say that I am quite happy that that occasion was one of the few times I did not listen to your advice. Not listening to you on an occasion in our fifth year has been something I have deeply regretted every single day since.
Hermione was a little puzzled by the constant reference to things she did or said but she was slowly coming to a conclusion. She studied the small drawing just below the last sentence, decided that she would indeed need something to practice with so she closed the book and placed it safely in the bottom draw of her dresser, covering it with her clean underwear.

Now for the spell I promised, you once told me about just how embarrassed and upset you were as a child, how you hid away to cry when your peers made fun of your teeth. I also know that your parents, both of whom I liked a lot, did not want you to have your teeth altered by magic. Now I know that your parents are very loving people, but I do think that making you suffer through your childhood, to be called names etc, just to keep the dentist in them happy was rather cruel, even for dentists, it may well be unintentional cruelty but the way I feel about you it makes me want to scream at them for their one blind spot.

Something you should also know, there is a ministry of magic and they can detect when an underage witch or wizard use their wand outside Hogwarts school. It is illegal for anyone underage to perform magic unless in desperate and life threatening circumstances. The wand I have given to you how ever is the same wand you bought one day 175 years ago, and the trace charm that the ministry had placed on it has been removed for many, many years. No one will ever know you used it, unless you perform accidental magic which most children do occasionally as they grow up, or use it where you can be seen by Muggles (That's the name we call non magical people), hopefully though as you learn from this book you will no longer have the accidental magic problem.

Anyway onto the spell, remember you must practice it and make sure you have it all correct before you try to do it for real, actually it is one of the more simple spells and charms that you will be learning from this book, once you have done the spell and corrected your teeth, I will then move on to tell you about the life of Harry Potter, how you fit in to the story and why I have worked so hard to get this book to you.

So the actual spell is quite simple, you just point your wand at your front teeth and say 'macero lente incisors correcto' when your teeth reach the size you are happy with you say 'finite'.

I have drawn you a diagram of the wand movements required 'so study and practice before you cast', (that's what you always told me).

An hour later having eaten with her parents in the kitchen, she walked out into the back garden to look for a small stick. As soon as she was back in her bedroom she decided she would work on the spell to correct her teeth before reading any more from the fascinating book, the book she now believed may well have come from the future.

She practiced the wand movement for two hours before she was confident enough to try the spell, taking the wand from the box she once again stood in front of the full length mirror of her wardrobe, awkwardly pointing the wand at her teeth and carefully making the correct wand movement she uttered the words "macero lente incisors correcto."

At first she could detect nothing happening but as she stood and watched, her rather large front teeth began to very slowly shrink, when they were about three quarters their original size she said "finite." Then she re-examined her teeth and felt quite pleased with her self, the book was right, magic was real, and she was a witch. She thought of doing the spell again but decided she would stick with her first decision, and reduce the size of her teeth slowly over the next few weeks, if she did it right then everyone would assume it had happened naturally, especially her parents, she did not want to anger or upset them in case they should discover how she had done it and confiscate the book.

Having reduced her teeth, and had a little fun walking around the house hidden under the invisibility cloak. Hermione climbed into bed feeling that this her tenth birthday had been the best birthday she had ever had. Tomorrow evening she would read the next part of her book of magic.

Thursday at school seemed to be one of the longest Thursdays Hermione could ever remember. Even though it was normally her favourite day with all her favourite lessons, every time she looked up at the clock on the wall above the teacher's desk, just a few minutes had passed. By the time the final bell rang to announce the end of school for the day, Hermione already had all her school stuff packed into her school bag. As the teacher said the word 'dismissed' Hermione was already half way through the door, instead of walking along the corridors to meet her mother she ran as fast as her legs would carry her.

A/Note, I got the idea from another story that contained a book sent to Harry from the future. The only similarity between the two stories is however only the reference to a book from the future.
So with that out of the way let us move on to the next chapter shall we.