The Annotated Hermione
It's time, thought Hermione,
to write it all out for a book.

Original story material is the property of the fanfic author; other material of JK Rowling et al. falls under the usual disclaimer.

What better way is there to become immortal
than to write every day of your life?
- Ray Bradbury

Hermione had begun planning her little project while still in her second year at Hogwarts. "I can't think of any name too clever at the moment," she said at the time. "I just call it The Wizards' Book for now."

Ron, as might be expected, was not pleased when she explained it. "So, you're going to blab every bloody little thing we say and do, in a book?"

"Oh, that wouldn't be a good idea, Ron. I'd be detested by everyone! Besides, your Mum would find out how many times you say 'bloody' in an average day."

"Erm…yeah. Don't do that, please."

"What's my silence worth, anyway?"

"WHAT'S IT WORTH? You're going to bribe us to keep quiet?"

"Just joking, Ron! But I'm sure you're not going to hex my fingers to stop me from writing — considering how often I use my fingers to correct your homework!"

-o-

In Ottery St. Catchpole on 24 December 2014, the morning sun chased away the last quiet flurry of Christmas Eve snow. The sky turned intensely blue, the ground glaringly white, and the air icy cold.

In the kitchen at Heron's Nest, two pies were baking and a huge salad was mixing itself. Ron and the kids had already gone to the Burrow, and no doubt Molly and Fleur were doing the usual self-defeating thing — howling about Hugo and Rose tearing around the house, while feeding them sugar-coated biscuits at every turn.

Before she went to join them, Hermione had a rare few hours of solitary quiet at home, which seemed like the perfect occasion to begin carrying out the project she had long anticipated.

It was not unusual that an active literary mind like Hermione's would want to write about the events in her life. She had prepared for this moment so well in her years at Hogwarts, jotting down notes about the happenings around her. Someday, she had thought, it might make a wonderful series of books for the magical world — one book for each of her seven years, perhaps?

After all, Hogwarts: A History only went so far. If it was a thick book, full of wonderful tales, that was because it covered more than a thousand years and some of the most exciting people, doing little things here and there that shaped the school of today.

But it was disgustingly brief about everything. It averaged little more than a half-page for each year of history, and who can tell all in so little space? It didn't tell many of the dirty little tales. Salazar Slytherin's departure from the staff hardly rated a mention, let alone anything about a rumor of a "chamber of secrets" in the bowels of the castle. Why did she have to beg Professor Binns to tell about it?

With all the patronising talk about generous, faithful house-elves, it wasn't mentioned that the school had long used elves as virtual slaves, neither paying them or properly clothing them, and many private owners mistreated them without concern or punishment. The school also taught the marvels of Flamel's potions, but never mentioned him by name. That was typical of their schoolbooks. Even now, the improved recipes of the 'Half-Blood Prince' were missing from the Potions curriculum.

Worse, Hogwarts: A History concluded a century before Hermione's time. It told nothing about Dumbledore's encounter with Grindelwald, or what evil that villain had done. Moreover, one would think the 20th century wars would have been reason for a newer edition, but so far the school had done nothing to revise the book.

Harry's childhood moment with "You-Know-Who" was in a few books, but it seemingly ended there, thanks to postwar disinterest and disinformation. The second war and Harry's eventual victory was almost universally ignored. Lockhart was his old self again, writing a best-selling piece of tripe about his close friendship with Harry and his own vital part in the battles — though he had spent the entire war in the safety of St. Mungo's.

I can fix that, thought Hermione. She could tell the truth, in detail, and put the lie to the likes of the Daily Prophet with one fell swoop. Her original working title would do; she would call it The Wizards' Book.

She started as she always did when writing reports at work, by taking a fresh piece of parchment and writing "The" at the top. The rest of the page should come to her easily, and the words would flow by the thousands.

First Year had ended with a bang, when the students heard about Harry's encounter with Quirrell. But, they didn't know Harry had almost been murdered in plain sight during a Quidditch game, earlier that year. If he had fallen from his broom, there might not have been time for an onlooker to utter a saving charm. How things would have changed!

She picked up her quill to write about that critical moment — and stopped.

She couldn't mention the Quidditch game, could she? She had stopped the broom curse by setting fire to Professor Snape, a callous act of anger — and misdirected, as it turned out. What if an innocent Snape had been injured in the act of chanting the countercurse? What if she had been caught at it, and expelled? What if Quirrell had not lost his concentration, but stayed the course instead, bringing Harry down? What if the fire had spread?

Okay, she thought. Not a good example of my cleverness. The books can get by without that one little incident. There's still so much.

There was the battle at the Mirror of Erised. Harry did his best, delaying Quirrell and Voldemort until Dumbledore arrived and cast the decisive blow. I can describe all those clever defences we had to defeat — the keys, the chess game, the potions and so on...

Then again, none of it had been necessary. The "tests" were pointless defences; Quirrell could not get the stone from the mirror, no matter how much he wished for it. Snape had been injured and Ron had ended up in the hospital wing. Even at this late date, the Ministry might not like to hear that Hagrid had been harbouring Fluffy the giant cerberus, or that Dumbledore allowed such a dangerous beast in a school. She certainly couldn't describe how they moved about Hogwarts at night, using Harry's invisibility cloak; it would be giving bad example to the students.

I'd have to abbreviate that story quite a bit, wouldn't I? All right, skip that too. Moving right along...

Now, Second Year is full of potential!

Well... there were some more omissions she'd have to make. Madam Pince would bar her for life if she disclosed she had torn a page from an ancient book that mentioned the baselisk, even though she had repaired it. Dumbledore and his staff would look foolish for having trusted the useless Lockhart to single-handedly save Ginny from the monster. Lockhart's new generation of fans might not appreciate the circumstances of his self-inflicted memory wipe. Omit the polyjuice episode, of course.

And, forget Third Year altogether. Time-turning with McGonagall's blessing? Freeing Ministry prisoners? No. As well, she couldn't expose Teddy Lupin's father as a werewolf all over again.

How irritating, thought Hermione. So much will have to be left out!

Oh, but Fourth Year! How she would enjoy exposing that harpy, Rita Skeeter!

No, wait. She's have to explain how she had silenced Skeeter's lies. Trapping a human in animagus form was misuse of magic — or worse, cruel captivity without the force of law. They'd think she was quite the hypocrite for imprisoning Rita and forcing her to act against her will, while complaining about humans enslaving house-elves! Hmm. Maybe that story has to be overlooked, too.

Oh, and Hagrid would be in trouble (again). He divulged the secret that dragons would be one of the tasks. The record books still say that Harry and Cedric jointly won the cup. Harry, who had never had much opportunity in the Muggle world to learn swimming, only completed the underwater task by the sneakiness of Barty Crouch Jr., who rigged the entire contest.

And speaking of rigging, should she confess to rigging a Quidditch game? Well, let's not go there.

And she couldn't tell how they defeated Umbridge by abandoning her in the forest.

And how would Harry feel if she talked about the battle at the Ministry, and Sirius' death, when it was all for naught?

The words 'Malfoy Manor' were a dread to her. The Malfoys could not deny the imprisonments in their dungeon, or the fact that she had nearly been food for a thirsty vampire. Still, at this late date, she couldn't really rip the Malfoys a new one, the repentant Draco being a family man now. No sense making life miserable for Scorpius. How could she describe daily life for Harry without mentioning the name Malfoy?

Best not to mention their activities at Gringotts and the Ministry either. Those folks still grumbled about all the damage. For a handful of teenagers, they certainly had cut a mean swath of destruction through those buildings! Hermione most regretted that the world's supply of Time-Turners had been destroyed in one fell swoop.

Her parents wouldn't want her mentioning the Wilkins Australian Expedition. What was she thinking when she did that! Before she could find her parents and correct their memories, Dad had built a dandy agricultural station, and Mum had fallen in love with Outback life. They found it a bit disruptive to be told they were actually mundane English dentists named Granger, under a spell, with Hermione the teenage warrior-witch for a daughter. They had to rebuild their client base when they returned to normal life, but couldn't tell the complete truth about their year's sabbatical. Undoing a good spell was always so messy.

Then, there was her postwar campaign to free the house-elves. Oh, that went well, didn't it! Sure, S.P.E.W. convinced a lot of magic folk to do without elves. The elves quickly realised that unemployment was not a good thing, and she had to spend time developing Elf Industries Ltd. They hadn't been too practical at management of their own company. Hogwarts was open to letting elves teach, but no elf professors came forward. Finally, she asked the elves what talents they had, and in the end, they were doing their old servile jobs again, but with all the problems of finding housing, managing their money and so on. Another less than perfect idea!

That lone annoying word The continued to stare back at her from the otherwise empty parchment.

"Oh, dash it all!" moaned Hermione to herself. "I so want to tell this story, but I'm too emotionally involved in every bit of it! How am I ever to write seven volumes about our adventures? I can't write even one simple sentence!"