The steady rain ran down Hermione's face, mixing with tears of frustration, anger and upset as she trudged through the mud and past the wooden houses and stalls of the quiet market town she had once called… home? It didn't resemble anything she recognised. In fact, she had no clue where, or even when, she was.

Home. The word seemed hollow to her now, her life so far away from the one her parents inhabited. Had inhabited.

Lifting her face upwards towards the unrelentingly grey sky, she shivered as a clump of her long hair peeled away from the back of her neck where it had become glued by the descending barrage of water. Normally uncontrollably frizzy, it now resembled the sodden strands of a mop as it fell over her skin and soaked through clothes. Just one more reason to be happy, she smirked.

Everything she'd learnt since discovering her magical gifts. Everyone she knew, before and after. Gone. Dead. Her own survival attributed only to the last drop of Felix Felicis she'd secreted about herself in case of emergencies. Luck? She was alive, definitely, but at what cost?

After it'd happened, she'd tried casting a spell with no success. Her talents had become legendary in the years since the confrontation between Tom Riddle and Harry Potter, the renowned Hermione Granger, Order of Merlin, pivotal in the conflict and subsequent fallout. They'd expected Voldemort's followers simply to give up and go into hiding. However, it hadn't quite played out that way. In his arrogance, the Dark Lord had not accounted for the bravery and tenacity of a few key members of the wizarding community and had perished, yet the widely publicised capture, trial and imprisonment of his followers had only one flaw. His name was Lucius Malfoy. Hermione sighed, wringing as much water out of her hair as she could and then cursed loudly.

~-oOo-~

"Fitting, don't you think little Mudblood? That we should conclude this here, at the beginning of your story?"

Her heckles rose immediately. "What do you hope to achieve by doing this? You're insane!"

"Insane?" muttered the tall, gaunt figure quietly. "Perhaps." He paused and gave the woman facing him, wand drawn, a withering look. "My wife and son died, victims of a battle they had no choice in which to participate. I have spent the last three years unable to grieve for them due to you and your famous friends' attempts to track me down and cage me."

Hermione's eyes widened and her grip on her wand tightened, her knuckles whitening. "You… murdered them in cold blood. Your own wife and child!"

Lucius' face darkened into a scowl. "I had no choice. I could no longer protect them. How dare you lecture me on my actions? You stand here with your righteous indignation and you speak to me of things you could not know anything about."

"So this is how you choose to remember them? Wanton destruction and carnage? Families just like yours will die. Draco and Narcissa would never want this!"

The frown was replaced by a malevolent smile and Hermione swore she never saw eyes as dark and lost as the ones she looked into now.

"My wife and son are not here, nor should somebody of your heritage deign to speak as if you know what they would think. This," he waved his arm around as if to encompass their surroundings, "all this is a fallacy, a façade. There is nothing here worth keeping."

"That isn't your decision to make. Expellia….uuurk", she choked in surprise as his wandless magic ripped her own wand from her hand, the attempt to disarm reversed spectactularly. Malfoy cackled maliciously.

"Try anything like that again and you'll be first to go. I knew you had something about you the moment I first set eyes upon you and your little trio. He underestimated you but I will not. Not this time."

Hermione could feel her heart pounding and adrenaline rushing through her. She knew the man before her was crazy. The problem was that he was crazy and powerful. She started to back away, never taking her eyes from his. "Malfoy, you'll pay for this, I promise you that."

"Oh, my dear girl, I already have. You should know, however, that I intend to survive."

He lifted a pendant from underneath his shirt and began to toy with it. "Recognise this, Miss Granger?"

"My time turner… How?"

"Not quite your time turner, although the parts remain the same. I reconfigured it slightly for my own purposes." He paused again, clearly enjoying revealing his scheme. "The curious thing about time and space is, should someone mess around with it too much, the results can become a little unpredictable. In this case, it was purely by accident I stumbled across a note in a margin made by an over zealous wizard. His experiment revolved around exploring parallel dimensions but sadly for him, he ended up half in this dimension and half in the one he'd attempted to get to. Apparently the explosion ripped apart a city and sent it under the ocean."

Hermione shook her head in disbelief. "You mean to escape to another dimension?"

"Not without having a little fun first, naturally. You see, the explosion here cannot be stopped, something about leaving a black hole which implodes, but the effect on the new dimension should be negligible. I perfected the technique for portalling myself. It isn't without some risk, obviously, but I sent tiny particles sideways through time and that seemed to work, so I thought, why not?"

"Because its evil?"

Whilst Malfoy had been enjoying himself, Hermione had secretly broken the tiny vial of the remaining luck potion she'd kept since Professor Slughorn had given it to her when she had been a teenager, and it now dribbled over her tongue and down her throat. She needed a few more seconds to keep him talking, then she'd see which path to take.

"I really do find good and evil to be such flexible concepts", Lucius grinned manically. "Now, we've spoken enough. Its time for me to embark on a little trip. Goodbye, Miss Granger."

Hermione didn't wait for him to finish the sentence, rushing at him with no warning and leaping towards the device at his throat. As he began to twist the dials in a way she hadn't seen before, she felt the potion she'd taken begin to have its effect. Her hand closed around his and she tugged. The last thing she saw before her eyes and ears filled with agony was the look of indignation etched on his face, which then began to distort horribly and quickly loop further and further away.

~-oOo-~

Hermione had no idea where the hell she was, with no wand, no money and no clue what dimension she was in. On reflection, she'd had better days. Bloody Malfoy. Bloody magic. She was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apparently empty houses and shops. The only activity she noticed as the rain refused to stop drenching her vest top and jeans and the mud began seeping through her trainers, was what looked like an ostrich tethered to a post, supposedly for attaching the bridle of horses, like she'd seen in all those old Western movies. It looked at her balefully and squarked, clearly not happy to be stood in the dubious shelter offered by the leaky roof above.

The unmistakable sound of a child's laughter came from further down the street. This was followed by the splashing of several feet, which turned out to belong to three pre-teenage children. The one in front, who had a shock of spiky blonde hair held in check by a forehead protector and was wearing what looked to be an equally bright orange jumpsuit, stopped in front of her and stood with his legs planted firmly in the mud and his hands resting confidently on his hips.

"Hey lady, why are you stood in the rain in those weird clothes?"

One of his companions, a bright eyed girl with hair pinker than she'd ever seen, slapped him hard across the back of his head. "Naruto, that's no way to speak to a stranger!"

"Sakura-chan...", he moaned, "her clothes are funny and she's stood in the middle of the stree…OWWWW!" As he fell into the mud, the boy called Naruto nursed the back of his head from the second blow.

"Idiot", said the third, sauntering past with his hands in his pockets. He addressed Hermione as the pink haired girl giggled admiringly at him. He didn't seem to notice.

"We are genin of Konoha. We are on a mission here to ascertain why everyone has disappeared. Can you tell us anything?"

Hermione was taken aback. Firstly, by the authority with which the boy spoke. Secondly, because he and the other two youths had spoken in a dialect of Japanese. She took a moment to compose herself, remembering her language studies.

"I am not native to this village. I only arrived here an hour ago and I have no memory of how I got here." She decided to bluff a little. "Perhaps that has something to do with the disappearances?"

Naruto narrowed his eyes and stood up, approaching her and looking closely at her face. "Sasuke-kun, something smells funny here. She has a strange accent."

Hermione noticed the other boy had armed himself with a knife and was standing guardedly. Their female companion spoke, offering Hermione a half smile.

"For once, I agree with you, Naruto. We should wait for Kakashi, but first, shall we get out of this rain?"

The three of them led her into an empty barn and opened up packages of food. Hermione's stomach rumbled loudly as she smelled the fragrant food the kids were tucking into and a smiling Naruto offered her a rice ball, which she accepted gratefully. As the children talked amongst themselves, she started to relax a little and observe their interactions. They looked an interesting bunch, all of them precocious. It made her think about her own friends and instantly she felt more maudlin. Her thoughts were interrupted, however, when Sasuke spoke to nobody in particular.

"You're late."

Hermione's brow furrowed and she looked around the barn, feeling suddenly confused. Confusion turned to alarm when a male figure appeared from nowhere two metres in front of her. She turned towards the children for explanation. It was Naruto who spoke, reporting to his "master" with enthusiasm and a grin.

"Kakashi-sensei, we found this strange lady wandering about and nobody else around except for that annoying ostritch."

"I see", the new arrival spoke.

Hermione stood up slowly, conscious that she was an unknown quantity to her new acquaintances. She bowed towards the man named Kakashi and took her time with the unfamiliar language.

"It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Hermione Granger."

There was a moment of silence as both Hermione and Kakashi appraised the other, the young woman careful to appear non threatening and respectful of the fact they were unknown quantities to one another.

The children's sensei was stood slightly slouched, yet she could see straight through that, having played her own part in the counter insurgency efforts following Voldemort's death, rounding up dangerous Death Eaters. She knew when someone was combat ready. Behind the laid back exterior she could practically smell the experience of the man, his shinobi uniform well worn and the attentiveness of his students indicating a great deal of respect for their master. Hermione noted the spiked white hair and masked face, only one quite youngish eye visible and contradicting her initial estimate of his age, which she'd put in his fifties, yet judging by the lines on his skin she revised that to be maybe thirty, no more than thirty-five. Physically, she figured he looked like the classic ninja. Aside from the armour, she could tell he was in great shape, his lower arm muscles solid and sinewy. If the rest of him was like that he'd be fast and surprisingly strong for his height, which was only slightly taller than she was.

Hermione knew that she looked a fright, her drying hair completely unforgivable and her wet clothes still stuck to her body. She defensively wrapped the blanket one of the children had offered her around her shoulders, covering her tight and completely inadequate strappy white top, which in turn covered an electric blue bra, showing very clearly through the protective layer thanks to the downpour she'd found herself in following her encounter with Lucius Malfoy. In the sunshine of the British countryside it had represented a suitable outfit, the blue of her bra straps matching her jeans, but now she felt hopelessly underdressed and not a little exposed to Kakashi's inquisitive eyes. She offered him a nervous smile.

For his part, the jounin was half analysing the young woman stood in front of him, half enjoying himself. It wasn't often that C ranked missions took an unexpected turn and when they did, it was usually something a great deal more threatening than meeting an attractive, albeit obviously foreign, stranger. He could see immediately that she wasn't shinobi. Hermione was in good shape, her stomach, visible through her top, and legs were nicely toned, but the clothing she wore, aside from being unfamiliar, was clearly unsuited for hand to hand combat. She bore no obvious scars and wore no forehead protector.

"A pleasure to meet you too, Granger-san", Kakashi replied to her politely, offering her a smile. At least, she assumed he was smiling, as she could only see his right eye. "I see you've met my team. I assume they have conducted themselves properly?" The question was partially directed at the three genin and Hermione heard Naruto mutter to himself quietly as Sakura fixed him with a pointed glare.

"They have been of great help to me, thankyou." She saw Naruto glare back at Sakura in response and Sasuke raise his eyes at the pair of them. "However, I can see that my presence here is of interest to you, so I would like to explain a little, if I can, of what I am doing here. In return, could you tell me where, in fact, here actually is?"

"The rain shows little sign of stopping and I have even less interest of dragging us all back to Konoha without completing our mission here, so I would appreciate as much information as you can give me", Kakashi said, his tone resigned as he looked outside at the weather, which, if it was possible, had gotten worse. The ostrich was making plaintive noises, which were clearly aimed at the group. Sasuke sighed.

"Please can we just kill that thing? It'd make a really delicious supper."

Sakura tittered at him. "Oh Sasuke-kun, you're so funny!"

"..and you're annoying," he replied. Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. The ostrich had mysteriously gone silent and Sakura had gone a shade of pink darker than her hair.

"No, we can't just kill it, it belongs to someone. Why, I have no idea, but how would you feel if your ostrich was just cut up and eaten by a bunch of junior shinobi on a mission?"

The ostrich, reprieved, began to squark again. Hermione wondered if this was coincidental, or whether the giant bird could actually understand what they were saying about it. It brought the first smile to her face since she'd appeared here and she began her account, edited of course, of how she had arrived here.

As Kakashi sat down with his students, he noted that two of them seemed completely enthralled by Hermione. Sasuke, as always, had a distant look on his face that constantly gnawed at the senior ninja. Nothing seemed to interest the boy save perhaps bettering himself and finding new ways to express his disappointment with his teammates. That, however, was normal. Hermione Granger was definitely not in that category. When she began her explanation, his paranoid nature, fuelled by years and years of personal experience, began screaming at him that what she was saying wasn't the entire truth.

"So, to sum up, you were on a boat with some relatives of yours which was blown off course, then you encountered bad weather and had to 'abandon ship'?"

"Essentially, yes", she replied. "I know I'm a long way from home, but if you could help me find out where I am, I might be able to find my way back."

"So, why were you wandering through this village, which mysteriously all the occupants have disappeared from?"

Hermione put on a glum look and continued, deciding that the less detail she offered the better. "I really don't know. I don't have any recollection of why I'm here, my journey from my boat, or where my family is. My head…" she pointed towards the back of her skull, where conveniently she had fallen earlier that day before meeting Malfoy, "My head took a blow when I fell off the ship and my memory must be slow in returning."

Kakashi didn't look convinced, but with no evidence to suggest Hermione was at fault for the recent disappearances, had no choice but to take her word for it.

"Well, Granger-san. Where you are is one of the towns of the Land of Fire, one of the seven Kingdoms. We, as my team have already informed you, are shinobi of Konoha, a village around fifty kilometres from here. Once we have completed our mission, I will take you to meet my superiors and should they have any information as to requests for missing persons of your description, I will let you know. Do you have any means of paying for food?"

Hermione shook her head. "I'm sorry, even if I did have any currency, it wouldn't be local. I can work though, if there is anyone who needs assistance and can provide me with food and accommodation." She felt on a stronger footing now the jounin had accepted her story, at least for now.

"There's always someone who needs help." Kakashi thought for a moment. "What is your expertise?"

"I'm very well educated in several schools." She thought now would be a bad time to mention they were schools of magic, "But specialise in herbology and medicines. I can also cook and am not a stranger to hard work, although possess very little in the way of practical application when it comes to building or repairing things."

He nodded acceptingly and looked outside. The rain had lightened and a bright rainbow had formed in the distance. "I think that's our sign to leave this barn. Miss, please wait here until my team and I have completed our sweep of the town. I do not wish to alarm you but this country is rife with bandits and nefarious individuals who would prey on a woman alone," he paused and winked at her, "particularly one as appealing as you."

As a snort from one of the genin sounded in the background, the three of them got to their feet and followed their sensei, who was already halfway out of the door. Shivering still, despite the blanket, Hermione pulled her knees up to her chest, having no intention of leaving the barn. This tentative alliance with the people from Konoha was a start towards finding out what to do next. Besides, she'd rather be in the presence of Kakashi and his cohorts than alone in a strange land, particularly considering she was a foreigner here. Dammit, this sucked.


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