Author's Note - All Characters belong to J.K. Rowling. This takes place between books six and seven, right after Hermione has sent her parents to Australia.
Looking around the suddenly so very empty rooms of my family's flat, I realized it might be for the final time, ever. The days ahead could be the end of me. As inherently frightening as that thought was, it did not hold the visceral terror for me that it apparently did for the one who might order my death, He Who Must Not Be Named. As I rearranged things and made sure I had everything I needed, my hand fell onto the Bible I'd been given when I was nine. I should probably read it more often; there was just so much schoolwork, not to mention the extra research materials I found, that I needed to make a priority over any other books. Yet, though I probably could only recite a very few verses, I was familiar with its words and decided it belonged in the necessary items I would take. If I was about to die, I wanted something that would tell me how to do it properly.
For some reason, I looked out the window. From this vantage point, I could see Muggles all running around on useless errands, talking on cell phones, going about their lives, largely unaware that disaster loomed and lurked all around them. My eyes landed on a gaggle of teen-aged girls. Though they were probably my age, they seemed younger, almost an alien species of being. Even without a set of Extendable Ears, I knew that their conversations would consist of their "major" concerns in life; who's snogging whom, and why isn't he snogging her instead, clothes, cosmetics, summer plans, and the latest celebrity gossip. They even had their own code words and catch phrases that sounded like gibberish.
How could I be so very different from people that I could be like, as hard to imagine as that might be? Had I ever been that young? No, probably not. From the time I was eleven, I'd been a soldier in a war; fighting trolls, helping find the Philosopher's Stone, being turned to stone by a Basilik, facing an escaped, albeit wrongly convicited, criminal, helping set free a Hippogriff, turning time to my advantage, dating an international Quidditch star, seeing people I cared for die, and most of all, being Harry Potter's friend. That was the most dangerous and best thing I had ever done.
I looked at the girls again as they faded from sight. Would I like to be them? Ignorant of what was real in life, yet blissful? No. Taking a stand against evil, being a friend to someone who was making a difference, those things were worth more than shallow pleasures.
Even if I had a mega-powered Time Tuner that could reverse things and allow me to change everything, to not accept my letter to Hogwarts, I would not alter my past or change my destiny.