"All — all three of us?"

"Oh, come off it, you don't think we'd let you go alone?"

"Of course not," said Hermione briskly. "How do you think you'd get to the Stone without us? – PS, pg. 200

Part I: Where Dwell the Brave at Heart

She and Ron waited on tenterhooks, and Hermione imagined all the horrible things that might have happened to Harry. Her fingers worked over the flute in no particular pattern, but the three-headed dog didn't seem to have discriminating tastes. She leaned carefully over the gaping hole, waiting for the sound of crumpling limbs that surely must be coming.

"It's okay!" Harry called. Or at least, she supposed it was Harry. The voice echoed strangely and Hermione wondered how far down Harry really was. She didn't dare lean any farther forward.

Beside her, Ron was shifting his shoulders as though steeling himself. He swung his legs over so that they dangled into the hole below. "See you in a minute," he said, before sliding gently into the gaping blackness.

A sense of bewilderment washed over her. She felt as though he had missed a step somewhere. Hermione Jean Granger did not go where she wasn't permitted to be. Hermione Jean Granger trusted teachers implicitly. So how was it that Hermione Jean Granger came to be in a forbidden room with a three-headed dog of mythical proportions, after hours and against explicit orders from Hagrid and Professor McGonagall?

Never mind the gaping hole, into which she was expected to jump. Imagine!

No one had ever told her she was brave, except for her parents, who had to say such things. Because she wasn't brave, she was clever. Hermione was certainly clever. Twelve years had been long enough to teach her this. Hermione Granger knew the answer to the teachers' questions. People had been telling her she was clever since she could talk. Hermione was secure in her own cleverness. When someone was rude to her, Hermione Granger did the clever thing and did not allow herself to be baited into a fight. But Hermione Granger couldn't even work up the nerve to jump from a moving swing or climb to the top of the play structure.

The Sorting Hat could babble about destiny all it wanted, but she knew it was all rubbish. There was no amount of magic that could make her believe in the Fates pulling the strings. People were what they were.

She told her parents that she didn't think the Sorting Hat had made the best choice and her father had written that courage was one of those things you had to practice. The idea came from a philosopher whose name she couldn't remember. In the letter, her father had said it was like playing piano or doing maths. Save enough people from burning buildings and eventually it was second nature. But when her father told her to practice courage, she was pretty sure he meant things like being brave enough to make friends with her dormitory mates and joining clubs. Not trapdoors.

For the first eleven years, eight months, and six days of Hermione's life, she had known who she would be. She didn't know whether she could study law or medicine or business, but there had always been a rough sketch of the life of muggle Hermione Granger. She would get plenty of A's and A*'s and they would use words like "highest distinction" when she finished university. She would marry late, to someone in academia, medicine, finance, or something equally respectable and intellectual, and they would settle down. It was perfectly straightforward and convenient. For eleven years, eight months, and six days, she had wanted that life.

Then Professor McGonagall arrived and Hermione felt as though everything she had ever known about herself was wrong. The walls of St. Mary's Secondary School toppled and when the dust had cleared, it was barely a memory. Hogwarts had seemed more real every day, despite the ghosts and talking photos and moving stairs. For a few weeks, Hermione was unsure of her place in this new world, but then she stumbled into Flourish and Blotts and there was order again. She would be a clever witch. She could be the wizarding equivalent of a solicitor or a doctor or a professor. She thought she had things on straight again.

Then that hat had to go and give her that ridiculous tosh about destiny and put her Gryffindor, against Hermione's better judgment. Hermione's entire life spiraled out in front of her, but she couldn't see the end as she had before.

Harry and Ron were Gryffindors to a fault. Hermione had no such instinct.

There was Nobert, she supposed. That which had landed Hermione Granger in detention for the first time in her entire life. But that had been a necessary risk. Logical even. They had to get him away from Hagrid's house, didn't they? Anyone who cared for Hagrid would have done the same. Besides, she had been afraid that whole night. True, her fear had had more to do with being caught (which they had been), than it did with the dragon itself, but fear was fear. Harry hadn't been afraid that night. She had never known Harry to be truly afraid of anything.

She stared down at the dark hole, into which first both boys had jumped without a second thought. But Hermione thought about everything.

And well, she had snuck into the teacher's box at the Quidditch match. But that was only because she hadn't wanted Snape to hurt Harry. She had clambered over Ron and run in the general direction of the teacher's box, and decided on flames as she was climbing up the teacher's section. That might not count as bravery, if she couldn't really remember choosing to get out of her seat in the first place. Besides, it was only a way to work out whether she was right about Snape.

But she wanted to be brave, didn't she?

Hermione Granger wanted to argue with teachers when they were totally and completely wrong. She wanted to stomp up the corridor toward people like Draco Malfoy and Hannah Rogers-Kelly and call them names right back. She wanted to jump down into the darkness and bravely rescue the stone.

The stone. She had forgotten the reason they had come to be here in the first place. Snape was already through the trapdoor, Harry had said so. The thought of Snape with stone was a horrid one, but the thought of Snape realizing that he was not alone and turning upon Harry and Ron, well, she didn't like to think of it.

The music of the flute came in quick and raspy notes as Hermione thought anxiously of her friends.

Harry and Ron weren't exactly bad, especially when they bothered to pay attention in lessons, but all three of them knew that Hermione was the best at magic. She had to jump, she decided. The boys stood a better chance if Hermione was with them. It was only logical.

"Come on, Hermione!" called Ron.

She closed her eyes and gripped the trapdoor.

When she opened her eyes again, she was already falling.