Authors Note: This is a work in progress story. No, the entire story will not be first-person, just the prologue. I am in need of a Beta Reader, so if you are interested, then please PM me. Not quite sure where this story will go, but it is over how Hermione re-enter's the wizarding world after abandoning it for over a decade. I am open to any and all suggestions. The story will not focus on her son, Doran (derived from the Gaelic word for exile, wanderer), but on Hermione and her story. I am American, but I will try to stay as British as I know how. A Beta with experience in this would be wonderful. On a legal note, I own nothing. On another note, my other story, Once Upon A Time is up for adoption. I don't know where to go with it any more. I plan on this current one being slow moving, and slow with updating. I am a full time college student and therefore very busy. For now I am uploading without a Beta until I get one, once I do, all chapters will be betaed before uploaded. All comments are welcome, and I don't care if you flame or not, though I prefer constructive criticism. Praise is always great too, especially when you add something. Enjoy,

Momma Goose (or Mummy, depending on who you are)

I will admit to you now that this is not a happy story. This is not a story where everyone lives happily-ever-after, nor does everyone survive. This is a heartbreaking tale, however, I cannot hold it in to myself any longer. The story is of my life, and from the time that I was a child it has not been an overly happy one. The few moments that were "happy" in my life I now see as naïve and foolish. This is what happens when tragedy consumes a person until they lose who they once were. I do not write this as a warning, for I had none. I do not write this to become famous or liked again, for that is not a possibility. I write this for myself, to feel some sort of justification for my failures in life. I write this for my parents, who have only known the masked happiness and never saw the catastrophe that would become their lives. I write this for my former professors who ignorantly thought that what they taught us would lead us to long, happy, productive lives. I write this for my enemies, so that they know how they created their biggest fear. I write this for my son, who tragically has been born to a broken mother and an uncaring father. I write this for you, so that you can open your eyes to the cruelty of this world and of this ignorant law you all so joyously praise.

As a child, I was doomed for disaster. I was the weird one, the one who never fit in, the one with the buckteeth. My looks were never pretty, in fact they were quite plain. I was the one who had odd things occur around them. I thought that when I turned eleven that all of that would change, I thought that this new world would show me a better life. I was wrong. That world which for a short time held so much promise turned into a world of discrimination and war. The war had been going on for decades before I entered it, but had been in a time of relative peace. The moment I entered it with my classmates, this war reared its ugly head again, and from that moment on I was a soldier. Although, at the time, I had no idea. To me it was a simple question of good and evil – of light, and dark. You all know the war – that black, blood-purist war where hundreds died in our small world. The blood that was spilt was on everyone's hands, the agony rested atop the shoulders of every person in the war – even, no, especially on children's shoulders. We all fought for the "light," for the good side, the right side. And we had a pyrrhic victory. The Dark Lord and his followers fell, but at such a huge price. The bodies had piled so high that our population was halved almost overnight. There was no "Great Battle," there was simply bloodshed after bloodshed, in town after town. Men, women, and children alike all fell at the hands of both sides. People who weren't even a part of the war became dragged into it. I watched the people I grew up with die before my eyes. So did you.

With the population lowered so drastically, the aftermath of the fall of the Dark Lord was frenzy. People did not know what to do. Politicians, storekeepers, teachers, housewives, children – all struck down in violent numbers during the last phase of that war. They say that a group will make decisions that a person alone would never do. That is how this law came about. The question was not about propriety, about rebuilding, but it was about population. The vast numbers who were gone left such a vacuuming hole in our society that people felt the need to fill it – and fast. We were all partnered off within days and given one objective – produce children, and lots of them. Many people clung to this to divert their attentions away from their lost loved ones. In less than a year, we had a whole new generation of "post-he-who-must-not-be-names babies" who were 'destined' to bring our society into the light. Unfortunately, the law provided no stability for these children. Parents quickly went their separate ways, children grew up in broken homes, and nothing was done to help the real problem – the mental travesty of the population who had survived the war. That was ignored.

Perhaps in the magical world, this would be considered normal, however I grew up in the muggle world where post-traumatic patients are treated with mental therapy. For many people, they were able to move on, focus on the abundance of children in their midst, and forget. For the few who were in the thick of the war for years, however, fell victim to their own deceitful minds. Nightmares plague me, visions and ghosts follow me wherever I go. I see my dead friends in front of me, I see my parents' frozen faces covered in a soft, green light. I could not handle remaining in England anymore – everywhere I turned I saw my past haunting me. After I conceived according to your accursed law, I left. And everyone hated me then. Let me correct that, they already mistrusted me, and my departure gave them the reason and opportunity to hate me. You see, I am the last one remaining who was in the thick of battle. I am the last one who fought for their entire lives and survived. I am the last of the Golden Trio – and only my word can account for what occurred. People mistrust me because of this – what if I had been the one who killed my friends? What if I had been hiding and am now taking the glory for my courageous friends' downfall? These questions irritate me. Some have even questioned my loyalty. With all the major players gone, there has been no one to vouch for me, that I did not turn, that I was a prisoner for the dark and a spy for the light. For the last eight months of the war, I lived in a small cell with no light and very little food. People think that I turned, that I am to be the next Dark Lord.

What utter crock. Now, I am returning to England. It has been just over a decade since the Dark Lord fell and it is time for my son to attend school. I do not trust the schools on the continent, nor in other countries. Hogwarts has been rebuilt and is running again, and it is time for my son to learn that he is a wizard. Yes, I have kept him from this cruel world his whole life, but I cannot bear to see him be the same outcast that I once was. My only hope is that with the Dark Lord gone, he will be able to be a normal student at Hogwarts like I never was. He is brilliant, how could he not be with I as his mother and with who his father was? He does not know him, nor shall he ever, for his father once fought on the side of the war for which I so desperately fought against. It is time for my son, Doran Apollo Granger, to enter the magical world and for I, Hermione Jean Granger, to re-enter it and face all of what I had been running from for so long.