Disclaimer: All characters from Harry Potter belong to JKR. The story ideas can be adapted by others just PM a note that your using it. I'm just using the ideas to get a feel for writing more so than writing to complete a story.

On The Edge of Chaos and Light

'This should be fun,' she thought wryly to herself as she looked across what had been a deserted moor through a pair of binoculars, 'Nearly a hundred Dementors inbound and twenty-five bloody Deaters to coral them as they breed. Yea.'

She still wondered how Potter and Longbottom had convinced her to stay and help with this war. She was muggleborn, but damn the rest of this backwards society didn't even try to save itself. If her reading of history was correct they had either a dark lord or a goblin rebellion at least thrice a century followed by a period in which they re-affirmed the same bloody policies that lead to the conflicts in the first place. Why bother?

'But no,' she thought, 'after Harry found out what I can could actually do he had to challenge me. What better chance to test your limits he had said. Sneaky little Snake hiding for years in a den of Lions.' She quirked her lips into a smirk at that thought. Who would ever expect that the Boy-Who-Lived would use flattery and blackmail, but she had agreed with him in principle. She would like to come back to this country at some point in the future and if that meant helping him defeat the bastard Dark Lord, well so be it.

Potter had though made sure that they had a plan after Dumbledore's funeral, he and the Weasley siblings would scour the country for whatever was keeping Tommy from actually dying, as the entire family was basically known as Blood Traitors it was best they stayed out of sight protecting the "Chosen One". Neville and Luna would handle Hogwarts keeping a student resistance alive; as purebloods they had the best chances of not being summarily disappeared by whatever Death Eaters showed up on staff this year. She had been tasked with causing as much chaos as possible; using everything she had learned over the last six years of self directed study in the Room of Requirement unknown to anyone else save Neville and later Harry.

"Speaking of chaos", she sighed aloud. The Twins had sent her information on this raid after listening in on an Order meeting. The Death Ministry deciding to increase the population of Dementors by killing off Muggles near Ben Hope in Highland. She figured they were going to move slowly through the area and pretend it was a killing frost or some such bull. It was nearly December, people might even believe it.

She began her meditations, fixing the spells and their derivatives that she would need over the next few minutes battle in her mind. Opening herself fully to her own magic, the world, the flows of power and essence that existed out of sight from every other magic user she had ever met she concentrated on what she perceived as a slowly rotating translucent indigo pentatope. This was her body, her mind, her soul moving through time and space itself; what made her unique as far as she knew. Throttling that connection of power slowly so as to not alert the Dementors and through them the Deaters too early; she slowly tapered off her thoughts as mind, body and soul balanced on a knife's edge of infinity.

Casting her first spell of the evening and opening now violet glowing eyes, Hermione Granger fixed upon her first grouping of targets, the last group in the raid in the distance, the one with the leader and in a blast of arcane energies teleported into their midsts.


"Oi, Stan, think 'ol Flint will let us bugger on ahead and shag a few?"

Turning slightly on his broom Stun Shunpike, late of Azkaban and the Knight Bus, sometimes Snacther and Auxillary Death Eather looked over his annoying cousin. "Maybe, don't get your hopes up though. After all that to do in f'ckin London, our fearless leader back there probably just wants to get this shite done before we freeze are bloody balls off out 'ere. Speakin' of could yah hit me with another Warmin' Charm, wills ya? Is damn near cold as Azkaban out 'ere with these fuckers."

Looking back at the flock of Dementors as he flew a few meters above the moor he couldn't help shudder remembering the few weeks he'd spent on that gods-cursed isle. After his stint over last year on 'suspicion' and upon the Dark Lord releasing them all he had taken the time to learn the Patronous Charm. Lucky him he could now produce a mist that would force one of those forsaken horrors back and that had landed him this job of helping to corral them.

Then back in late August they had somehow 'lost' near forty of the beasties attacking one neighborhood on the outskirts of London; they hadn't realized it until both the main raiding party of five Eaters and the Dementors they brought along for dealing collateral hadn't shown back up at that raid's jumping off point. Though what had required Dolohov, four outer circles, and a few of these fuckers' he still didn't know.

"Yeah, well looks like were just about a few miles to town and here's yer bloody Warming Charm just keep those beasties off me."

At that his cousin hit him with the spell. This was a milk run as long as they all followed the procedures. Marcus Flint in charge as an Outer Circle, and Stan's fellow twenty-four associates. Two to a group casting Patronuses to keep 'em in line; three to back them up and keep them warm as they rested or cast on this little jaunt through the Highlands. He had met the Dark Lord just once after he had freed them all of Azkaban, he'd been quite happy with Stan, didn't continue to get Crucio'd at all after telling him were Potter lived and where to find it on a map. Even got a nice comfortable bed to recover from the ones he'd receive prior to that point.

Looking out over the flock he couldn't help but notice that most of them were slowing and looking behind him to towards the mountain in the distance. 'Huh, wonder what's...' and with a sudden crack a quarter mile behind him a feminine voice rang out across the moor.


"We Arrive," she voiced, in a Sonorus enhanced double harmonic, with her appearance. Her goal tonight was nothing more then destruction. Playing up the dramatics would do nothing but add to her fun.

She was though stating this two meters above the moor, four meters below the last group of broom riders while letting loose a wave of force with her entrance. As she fell she cast her main distraction for this battle. Landing softly three identical women stood and started the systematic destruction of all they surveyed.

With a twitch of her wand she targeted her former fellow Hogwarts student as he was separated from his broom and falling from the disruption cause by her entrance with her second most powerful spell. 'A beautiful end to an absolute arse' she though detached, 'I'll have to tell Harry that he'll never have to deal with him again.'

With that done she shifted to the Death Eater that had not fallen from his broom launching waves of missiles in his general direction. A triple sweep of her once plain vine and dragon heartstring, now wrapped in mithral to keep from burning out the core, sent three bright purple arrows out from her wand.

They streaked unerringly to connect with his unprotected body, two piercing his thighs at different angles aiming for the femoral arteries; the third hitting between the ribs of the sternum aimed not at his heart, but his spine.

With this done she turned to her final unoccupied target of the group, a twenty something female, whilst absorbing a blue curse the little bitch had actually had the chance to get off. Her own counter attack was to launch another volley of missiles spread out bracketing her opponent. Less than a quarter second later all four converged upon her neck, spraying arterial blood and badly botching her decapitation.

"Give Our regards to the Gryffindor Ghost, he'll be happy for the company,'' she stated for her fallen target just as to her left Marcus Flint, had finally regained his footing and stood up, just in time for a bolt of violet power to fall from the heavens and obliterate his position leaving nothing but a ruined crater to mark his passage from life.

Her two mimics had kept the attention off her back and as their targets finally died her helpers disappeared as well. The twenty other Death Eaters were now rallying as the Dementors psychically screamed across the ether. They wanted revenge, for the one she had killed at Hogwarts in third year, for the ten she had killed in London, for the chance to taste her soul.

Her laughter rang out across the plain enraging this night's chosen enemies further and with a feeling less like spell casting than falling towards apotheosis she continued. Opening herself fully to that connection within her she rose into the air to continue the slaughter, streams of violet and indigo power twisting about her aura as she brought her hands together for the next performance.

'Test my limits indeed.'


Observing the glowing being floating above the moor a few hundred meters away the last thing that went through Stan Shunpike's head, other then a beam of pure red energy, was the thought that now he knew what had killed Dolohov's raid.

Less than a minute later the moor in the lee of Ben Hope was once more quiet. The people living in Altnaharra would comment on the odd violet and red aurora of that night til spring.


A/N: The magics are from the Wizards of Sanctuary in Diablo 3. d3/en/calculator/ wizard#akQPOm!fXg!cccZaa for the specific build she went into that fight with. That franchise belongs to Blizzard.

This What If? came about from thinking what if Hermione had avoided the Troll in First Year through one means or another and instead ended up in the Seventh Floor Corridor while thinking thoughts about why she was in the Wizarding World to begin with, what options did she actually have and what magics where actually out there?

Poof the Room of Requirement appears filled with books that basically show she's screwed. She's an intelligent Muggleborn witch and the parochial society she now found herself forced to live in would do everything to turn her into nothing more than a broodmare. The WW is about control, Dumbles' Greater Good is just to keep a status quo where the people who can kill with a word don't, the Game of Houses is there to keep the individual under thumb, personal freedom does not really exist.

In this case the idea was to get her started along a path to power so that nothing would actually be able to hold her. Let Neville take her place in the Trio, let her be more friends with him and an acquittance to Harry at least until later years. Second Year and the utter lack of reaction from the Wizarding World over the Basilisk would just reinforce the path. Later years blow up the world, if your going to give main characters power from a verse that's apocalyptic the best course is to let Voldemort follow through and make everything worse.