Disclaimer: I own nahsing. Nahsiiiiing! Really, though. Characters are all courtesy of J.K. Rowling.

Author's Note: This is my first fan fiction. Do please be kind? I've no betas of any sort, so proof reading has been up to me, and I do hope that I didn't miss anything. I did notice that I use commas a LOT. And very long sentences, or sentences that aren't technically sentences. Argh. Critiques welcome, it will help me grow into this process. Also, several things to note:

1.) Hermione is approaching 30. Roughly a decade has passed since the final battle.

2.) It's pretty AU.

3.) I don't give all the info at the beginning. For a rough back story, I would like to say that Hermione was hit by an extremely debilitating curse during the final battle that has left her right leg with very little mobility. I probably won't go too in depth. But, all the details regarding it, and regarding MOST THINGS occurring in this story will be explained in due time. Not really a 'HERMIONE THINKS ABOUT THE FACT OF THIS' kind of writer. I give detailed descriptions over time.

And now, without further adieu...

Act I

In which, Hermione Granger may have begun hallucinating

‡

"Granger."

Hermione continued grading papers as if she had not heard the drawling, sneering voice. Seeing as how it was shortly after lunch, but before Severus Snape's seventh year class, she could only conclude that he had come to berate her. After all, after lunch but before the seventh years was third year Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff double potions.

"Granger. If you do not respond to me this instant I shall hex you into the afterlife so swiftly you will reincarnate as a pygmy puff," he hissed.

Granger snorted in what could only be described as a decided lack of intimidation and scrawled a note in gold ink atop the essay on the top of her stack. (An interesting theory, Miss Tirion, but I regret to inform you that you cannot bypass the strict laws of transfiguration. Were you to roast a pig transfigured from another object and eat it, you would fall ill, and death may very well follow shortly after. No food!) Pushing a hand through her hair and finding it tangled, she glanced over at Snape hovering at the side of her desk as she attempted to extricate her fingers.

"Why, Professor Snape, you look rather peaked. Is everything quite all right?"

"Who on earth teaches Ravenclaws about the uses of Transfiguration in Potions in their third year?"

Students walking past the open classroom door – slammed open with a typical billowing of robes- winced in sympathy for the Transfiguration professor. Severus Snape in a mood was most certainly a terrifying idea.

What they didn't see was the lack of true venom in his eyes as he worked himself into a snit.

"Professor Snape, I assure you-"

"Don't you Professor Snape me, Granger. Teaching those dunderheads foolish wand waving in regards to-"

"Dunderheads? May Rowena Ravenclaw turn over in her grave, the day that dunderheads are placed in her house. It's no longer the Dark Ages, Snape, foolish wand waving," she managed to inflect the proper amount of sneering disbelief into it, warranting the most minute twitch of Snape's mouth at the very furthest right edge of his lips, "is fast integrating itself into more and more of the potions community!"

"And may they enjoy studying it at University, not in the third year!"

"I like to push my students far ahead of the mandated Ministry minimum curriculum, thank you, Severus," she said primly.

"You knew very well Thalia Longbottom would be incapable of resisting putting it into practice after you taught her this rubbish," he drawled with an air of righteous indignation.

"I knew no such thing," she said primly as she rose up from her seat, with Severus Snape muttering under his breath as she did so.

Being a genius was entirely too much work sometimes, she thought with a wry internal grin. It warranted impassioned speeches on ground breaking research completed in her time not consumed by House squabbles, youthful dilemmas needing resolved and teaching. And if it exasperated Severus, with whom she had taken a certain prickly friendship with as intellectuals, well… all the better. His amusedly embittered rants made her day.

Grasping her rather ornate walking stick, Hermione leaned heavily upon it as she rounded the desk and then began her limping progress towards the door.

"If you've a free period, which I know you do, you should help a crippled old lady shuffle and limp to the Headmistress' office. I need the forms to order some teaching aids to fill out before we begin this weeks session," she declared with a sigh of the long suffering.

"Crippled old lady, my arse," Snape sneered, "I've no doubt you'd sooner beat a man about with your cane than call yourself an invalid."

And thus they bickered on their way out the door, not noticing the miniscule glimmer hovering several yards behind Hermione.

It was so small, so inconsequential, that no one had noticed it for the last decade.

‡

Hermione's stomach rumbled traitorously. It was at least ten minutes since dinner would have started in the Great Hall, and the gurgling from her mid section was railing at her.

To top it all off, she had to slowly sip the potion Snape had given her in teaspoon increments. A potion that tasted a bit like rotting sewer rat marinated in toxic sludge and dredged in ashes. Honestly, she thought, does he suffer under the hypothesis that if a debilitating curse is terrible, it's cure must taste exponentially worse? She suffered another sip that tickled her gag reflex and was relieved to find she had perhaps two more sips to go.

The potions master chose that moment to billow in with a leather bound journal that appeared to be weathered from many years of use, and a rather sinister looking book with a title in a language she did not know.

"Not quite done yet, Granger?"

Her nose crinkled. "Unfortunately. And it tastes so delightful, Severus. You really go the extra mile to make this pleasant." Sip.

He smirked, and murmured silkily, "I do live to please."

His expression becoming cool and professional, he strode over and flipped open the journal, Accioing a never-ending ink quill to himself. "Is there anything worth noting thus far?"

Hermione chortled, taking her last sip and grimacing as she choked out, "Please, sir, may I have some more?"

"Granger."

It was amazing how one disdainfully, but amusedly sneered surname could speak a thousand reprimands.

"Thankfully, this round of experiments has not made my leg cramp violently. Then again," she noted with a withered smile, "It also has not eased the general pain the muscles general provide anyway. Ah, it seems to have…" She trailed off.

Snape's eyes grew sharp, "Problems, Professor Granger?"

"… er, the potion seems to have… relaxed the muscles, I'm not positive I could… ah, walk, that is, if I needed to. Without looking rather like Igor, that is. I feel… scatter brained, though. Hard to… grasp on to any one thought. Occlumency shields feel… devastated. I'm quite… er…"

Severus muttered curses under his breath as he scrawled new notes down within the journal, and crossed out or revised previous entries. Turning from her, he paced back to his desk and sat down to write, and open the tome he had brought in with the journal, flipping it open and referring to it.

Hermione rubbed a hand against one of her temples, and did not notice as the small glimmer wriggled through the air with as much of an air of desperation as a disembodied speck of minutia could manage. It landed somewhere in the bushy mass, and seemed to despair at the ill tended knots. But it still pushed towards her scalp, and then, through.

It felt a bit like a piece of ice had crept into her brain for approximately one second, and then it was over.

The glimmer came out the other side much brighter, and much more substantial.

"Er… Severus. Potential… side effect. Glittering balls of light come out of your head."

Snape looked up briefly, cursed profoundly, and returned to scribbling with even more barely restrained ire, as if the time taken up to have to write, rather than brew, was entirely too much to bear.

Hermione could not be bothered by this, though. Seeing as how the 'glittering ball of light' seemed to be expanding at a rather accelerated pace until a barely discernible silhouette was in front of her. Dear Merlin, Severus is going to duplicate an army of Hermione's on accident until he is drowning in mounds of bushy hair, she thought hysterically.

That thought did not stick, though, as the silhouette began to gain fine detail. A face, silvery and ghostly, with dark silver nigh on black for eyes. Neat, short clipped hair, as dark as the eyes. A thin mouth that expressed neither pleasure, nor displeasure, and a high, clear brow. A slim, rather scholarly physique and a severely outdated Hogwarts uniform completed the young man. He appeared young, but the solemn air about him could put him anywhere between sixteen and his early twenties.

Severus was far too occupied being aggravated at his latest potion for not going exactly as planned to drag his large nose farther than an inch from the paper he was writing upon.

He was also across the room, and did not hear Hermione. She had been startled out of her usual brash, confident voice into a murmur.

"Goodness. … er, who are… you? Did I just… give birth to a ghost out of my… head?"

The apparition appeared disgusted, "Merlin, no. That's quite disgusting, ma'am. And I," he said with a touch of arrogance so slight you almost couldn't pick up on it, in his ghostly voice that she had to strain to hear, "am Tom. Tom Riddle."

He was moving to put his hand out, as though she could shake it, when the name penetrated her potion induced scatter brain.

"SWEET HESTIA SCISSORING HERA," she screeched, scrambling from her seat and knocking it over in the process.

"Granger! Are you all right? What in the name of Merlin is going on? I thought I told you ghosts to stay out of my private laboratory!" Snape appeared to be torn between concern for his colleague, and ire at the unfamiliar ghost, and could not keep his questions to a minimum as such.

Hermione Granger was a staid, steadfast sort of individual. A veritable rock, the apple having not fallen far from its former Head of House tree. Cynical, perhaps. Jaded? A bit. Ridiculously intelligent and incapable of letting a train of thought go once it had possessed her? Absolutely. But of all her faults, being a shrinking violet was not one of them, and she was certainly not feeble hearted.

So, naturally, Hermione Granger fainted for the first time in her life.

A shame, as well. She might have found a sick, twisted form of humor in responding to the ghost claiming to be Tom Riddle, as his wavering, otherworldly voice queried in absolute, total mystification,

"What on earth is scissoring?"