AN: A few things to bear in mind:

1) You can't assume people are related. Eg - Sirius is Hermione's father whilst Lucius ISN'T Draco's. Surnames may be different to help with this. Some people's appearances may be different in the beginning too due to a plot element.

2) The story will begin in a Muggle AU and transition into a Magical AU. The prologue should explain most things.

3) This fic will focus on character development as much as plot, so if the characters seem OC at the beginning - fear not, that'll change!

This is my first fic - so I would appreciate any feedback! Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

X-X-X

PROLOGUE: Fate and Freedom

X-X-X

"I already said I was sorry, Granger! What more do you want from me?"

"Some sincerity would be nice."

Draco huffed out some rebuke at her upturned nose but ultimately she was still striding well ahead of him. He groaned and raced to catch up, shorter students fleeing out of the way of the Slytherin. Things had been changing, ideas had been shifting, all thanks to the two of them. But minds were not so easily changed and people still ran when they spotted the glinting blond locks of Draco Malfoy.

"I am being sincere! I know I fucked up and-" Her glare prompted a change of tone to something calmer. "...sorry. Messed up. But I know you're not going to accept 'it wasn't my fault' as an excuse just like the damn Weasel might-" Her face screwed into pain at the thought of the ginger. Draco didn't want to bring him up but she needed to understand! "-so I'm trying to find a way to make it up to you."

Hermione had stopped in the middle of the corridor and the terrified eyes of her peers crawled over her form, waiting to see what would happen. Would she strike him? Run off? Draco's footsteps slowed as he approached her back, pausing softly. Should her touch her? Would she let him?

"Draco," she hushed out. He swallowed and made a mild sound of acknowledgement. She swallowed. "Not now." And took another step forward into the dust of the corridor.

Draco stood fixed to his post, watching her leave. To the pearly eyes around him, he was the image of a frozen predator, scorned and ready to strike out his rage. Inside himself though, he was calm. Hermione wouldn't stay angered for long and it would be better to made plans for the future than get caught up in the present. They had a lot they still had to do together, after all…

X-X-X

Such a scene would take place in Hogwarts in three years time. To the Headmaster and the students, the couple would be the figurehead of unity, driving the opposing houses together. The students would begin to feel relief meanwhile the Headmaster would feel more and more disturbed.

After this fight, it wouldn't be long before Dumbledore, addled in his age and madness, began to see the patterns. Two students turning up to Hogwarts. Both in their last year with no previous magical education. Effectively muggles. Of course there had been stories of parents suppressing the magic of their children so that they could live in safety, away from the magical world. There were still pureblood families which remembered the truth and knew the evil of Dumbledore's revolution. That could easily have been the case with Malfoy. If 'Malfoy' was indeed his surname, it surely meant he had come from such a pure line. The fact he was sorted into Slytherin almost guaranteed he was right. But Granger? She had been sorted into Gryffindor, so it was unlikely that she was a pureblood. But if she wasn't - who in her life would have been strong enough to repel his detection charms for so long? And to make matters worse - for all the two were supposedly magically incompetent - they were geniuses! Tearing up every notion of ability. Their magic was unrefined, yes - but their sheer strength, willpower and skill challenged even the professors he had stationed to guard the castle. The two had known each other so he could understand their bond and their shared abilities and even their romantic relation. But it all felt too much like a plot. He'd spent his life detecting challenges so surely he couldn't be wrong now. The tide was turning and all his hard work to divide the houses, society and the magical world was being unpinned. By them and by exterior forces. It couldn't all be coincidence.

But it is important to remember that this scene would unroll in three years time. And the future cannot be put before the present. Hermione would be brave and Draco would be cunning and the two would be incredibly intelligent. But in the beginning, they were different. Younger and more naive. Hermione had been living on an island for over a decade under the pretense of muggle assassins threatening her life. Not untrue, but the threat had of course been much greater. Draco had been similarly unaware.

The innocent fight of a school love affair in the Hogwarts corridor would be just a farce, for they would have three years in which to secure their bond beyond the superficial. The two of them would indeed be there as part of a plot. In three years time, Hermione and Draco and a host of others would infiltrate the fortress of the most evil wizard alive and risk all that they had to defeat him. Before then though, they weren't ready. They were just a young girl and a fresh man. Things had to be done. There were trials for them to go through. They had to grow. And there was a man who was about to orchestrate it all. The two who would wouldn't admit their love would fight tooth and nail against the greatest tragedy in the Muggle world and fall impossibly in love. So much so that they would no longer be able to deny it. And then he would tell them. Sirius would tell them about their fate. As a wizard and a witch.

X-X-X

The job was supposed to have been easy. Kill the kid and run.

He hardly had a say in which jobs were slipped into the stack of 'accept's and which were thrust out in the pile of 'decline's. All he ever knew was what he personally had to do.

Stay tight against the wall: knees bent, muscles loose, ready for action.

Don't move until you're called in; use the code to check your line hasn't been hacked before moving.

Trust no one; trust nothing; trust only in yourself - and even then, having doubts is healthier than having none.

'Kill the kid and run' was translated into his role simply and efficiently on the same day that the rubber stamp pressed into the margin of the printed contract. A useless formality among the lawless.

Protect our assassins, kill any enemy snipers.

He knew the money didn't pay so well for games of cat and mouse. Snipers could land a hit on his charge or a hit on him. After so long in the business, he no longer knew which was worse.

Kill the kid and run.

The original order obviously came from some shadowy brow deep within the bowels of an empire.

He'd long lost the heart to care about whether the target was a woman or a kid, but his daily rigour and calculative apathy had grown to recognise that 'run' was what was wrong in the equation.

'Run' wasn't a word he had heard in a long time. Not since the bullies came towering over the playground plebs in an unavoidable wave of ferocity. He had ridden the crest of it and avoided the damage, learning as he went. 'Run' was a useless command of fading hope and a wish for mercy in surrender. 'Run' was when you tried to escape the unavoidable. 'Run' wasn't something he had wanted to hear even again.

But he did.

"RUN!"

No time to check where the order came from, the blasts of explosions clouded his vision. Their explosives, their terrified men, their plan torn to shreds. Why was it "run"? Everything had been under control. The kid and the mother. At home alone.

The targets were hardly important, a surprise they were even targets at all. Probably long lost claimants to some empire of worth. But in that moment, the possible empire was but ruins in a sea of fire. There should have been no moat of bodyguards, no catapults of bullets, no drawbridges of dynamite. So why was 'kill the kid' impossible? Why were they the ones suffering losses?

There should have been two shots. He had his role. Kill any snipers. Quickly, efficiently and silently. Protect our assassins. Once part one was complete, part two was guaranteed. Why had it been 'run'?

Blood sprayed over the walls and the hideous grimaces the mirror caught of his face and the detestable intimacy of organs curled around his palm as he clambered past the fallen men, past 'our assassins'.

There should have been two shots. The bitch and the kid. Why had he heard 'run'? And why had there only been one?

X-X-X

Sirius liked to think that he was a generally rational person. He thought with his head and felt with his heart and rarely did he let the two interfere with one another. Especially when it came to work. Of course, he had been a young man once and, like all young men, he had also spent a number of years doing both with consideration to another part of his body entirely. In fact, there were a number of people still alive who had the pleasure of reminding him quite regularly that his 'youth' had stretched beyond what was reasonable for even the most devilish of scoundrels.

But then there had been Andie. When she came into his life, all thoughts abandoned him. And for those first few months in her company he honestly found himself lost in a world he had never known before. The sensual instinct of his youth emerged to haunt his adulthood and his refined mind began to jam up in spluttering rebukes to her no-nonsense attitude. In essence, he began to discover what his peers had known for years: that love was the most beautiful thing and that you had never truly lived until your heart had poured and pounded in turns for the smooth affections which only honest romance could bring.

He was thankful that the woman he had fallen in love with was the type of woman she was. One who could keep him in line. She dug clawed fingers into his mind when it tried to fly away and stuffed words back into his mouth when he lost them. Other times, she'd get under his skin and know exactly what was bothering him and cajole him into capsizing out what he'd glued to the tip of his tongue for propriety's sake. She was the one who was always there to keep him on track and stay focused on the work which had become his duty.

But then she had gone. She had gone and he had felt even more lost than when he had experienced the first taste of addiction to her bluster. Dead. She had been shot from behind whilst protecting the little spark of life they had brought into the world.

He attended her funeral and all the while he turned over the 'what if's and 'what now's and the utter lack of time, but, perhaps more than anything else, his greatest regret was the fact he could barely remember any of it. The processions, the speeches and a tiny tugging hand all felt alien to him and even after so long the thoughts still drifted around his head unfettered and unchained.

After that day of gruesome black, he would have buried his heart and it would have been lost in the sands of tragedy if not for the beautiful light which had held him through the long nights which followed. A light which didn't judge his tears no matter how long they soaked on for. A child from any background had the undeniable property of truth and, on that day, Sirius realised that if his heart was to go on, it was to go on in her - his daughter. She was, after all, his truth. And to him there was no greater truth than love.

Trauma had ripped from him so much but he refused to allow it further. It had been enough to drive him behind the walls of calculation and the cold machine of a rationality but Sirius had tasted love and he was certain that he would protect the last hope he had of keeping it. No matter what the cost. Tragedy would drive them no further. But in order to do that, he would have to be the one to drive them further apart.

It was later that he learned of magic. And later that he learned of his fate. The fate which would surely become hers.

X-X-X

"Mr. Prince, sir. Could I- Oh." The dark-haired secretary walked in through the polished tan of the door and glanced around. "Sorry, I thought you had company. I could have sworn I heard you talking."

Sirius turned around, his weighty torso leaning back against the glass to which he had been whimsically murmuring only moments before.

"And I thought we had an impostor in our midst. Here I was wondering 'since when has Tom ever been this formal when we're alone?' So I suppose that makes both of us a little foolish." The slicked strands which had fallen to hang heavily over his nose lifted with the man's slight huff of air. "What can I do for you, Tom?"

The long-serving assistant approached gradually and prefaced his enquiry with, "You know I don't like to intervene and I hope you know that my comments are never a question of your judgement," the slight slap of a leather album on his boss' desk, "but I do feel obliged to ask: are you sure, Sirius? It's been so long."

A measured stride walked to bridge the distance. Empire burgundy swirled around the crystal rim seated at the edge of the corporate emperor's hand.

"How long have you known me for, Tom?"

"What most people would say was too long." Sirius smiled with humour.

"Then you'll know how impossible it was for me to say yes when I sent her away." Tom nodded. Sirius took a deep, slightly inebriated breath and uttered, "And whilst a great many things will face her - many troubles and dangers and threats beyond even my comprehension, I cannot begin to describe how selfishly happy I am to say yes this time. To have her back."

"Do you think she can handle it?"

"If the fate that awaits her is heavy because she's my daughter, then I know that, no matter what, she'll be able to handle it - because she's also Andie's."

"When should I inform the young man who's been with her about the change of plan?"

Sirius smiled with enjoyment and tilted his head to his dear friend. "Not until the plane lands. Let it be a surprise for them both - but mainly for her. She's been waiting so long, you're right, and events are finally coming to a head. I have reached the greatest position I could in the time I had and I've laid down as many tracks as possible to guide her on her way. Now all that's left is for her start following the path she must take. I'll give her as much to be free as I can but soon she will have to learn that with her freedom will come her fate, but also that with her fate will come her freedom."

A smile. "Of course, Sirius, of course."

X-X-X

A world away, the cackling ferocity of a mad genius let loose echoed up the stairwell. The duality of a man so powerful was intense and persistent, so much so that his own brother often couldn't recognise the boy he had grown up with below the layers of corrupt age and fanciful desires.

Rule the world? Destroy the filthy purebloods? Vengeance could have been so sweet if only Aberforth had not spent so long in the company of the man who had the power to make it happen.

The white beard of a dreadful tyrant sploshed into the cauldron of his potent plotting and the old coot swung around, happy on the buzz of dull alcohol, to splodge a sloppy kiss on his only family's face.

The twinkling eyes captured by alien photos and the innocently wise charm of an aged master reverberated only as far as superficiality would penetrate. Beneath lay only the depression of horrifying reality.

Aberforth knew his fate, and it wasn't death. It was the only thing he could do, because this insane swarm of darkness was his only family. He couldn't rule the whole world and he couldn't protect it all either. But he could be the martyr who sacrificed the security of familial love for the suppression of a most horrifying future.

There were people who could act - like him. And no matter how small their actions were, they would total up, and by the time the greatest concoction the world had ever seen is ready to be born, there would be an army of youth to overpower the old Headmaster. The codger's determination would crumble in the face of new belief, and the new order of justice would embrace their fate.

The world would neither be ruled nor saved. It would quite simply survive, through whatever ugly rebirth it would take. Because Aberforth knew that the stars in his brother's eyes were from madness, not genius, and that, no matter what the cost, he would not allow the world to be pinned under the thumb of Albus Dumbledore.

"Nox."