A/N: Bonus chapter for the day. Let me know what you think!

The Battle of Hogwarts

Covered in dirt and blood a bereaved Hermione made her way up the Headmaster's office, looking for a bit of peace from the carnage and celebration. The Dark Lord was dead, but so were many friends and allies.

She sat in what had once been her mentor's office and cried.

"It doesn't have to end like this," a voice came from high up on the wall.

Hermione scrubbed the tears from her eyes and looked up at the portrait of Professor Dumbledore. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, if you set the right wheels in motion, you could keep it from ending this way," Dumbledore said. "Take to box out of the bottom drawer of my desk. It was my contingency plan with Professor Snape. Read it, and choose."

She pulled the dark wooden box out of the bottom drawer; it had the Hogwarts Crest on the top. She gently lifted the lid and pulled out the top sheet of paper and read.

'To whom it my concern,' it said in Snape's spikey scrawl. 'If you are reading this then Dumbledore has entrusted you with a great secret, and a terrible mission, but he deems it necessary. You must take the potion in the bottom of this box and change history. Take the second sheet with you; it will reveal the entire mission once you are twenty years in the past. Only Dumbledore can know what you are doing. No one else. Good Luck.'

Hermione pulled the potion bottle out of the bottom of the box and pocketed the second piece of parchment. Dumbledore was right, this shouldn't be the end. She uncorked the bottle and chugged the silvery green liquid. She clutched her stomach as pain ripped through her body, and as suddenly as it was there, it was gone and she was standing right where she had been, but with a very shocked Professor Dumbledore looking at her, sun streaming through the office windows.

"Well," Dumbledore said, looking over the disheveled girl. "How can I help you, my dear?"

Hermione pulled the parchment out of her pocket as the first instruction was revealing itself. 'Tell Dumbledore the truth.' She placed the potion bottle on his desk and looked at the man she had lost a year before. She sunk down into one of the wingbacks in front of his desk and took a deep breath. "You may want to have a seat, Sir," She said. "It's a long story, and I don't even know all of it." She told him what she knew about the first war, about the Potters and Sirius, Remus, Pettigrew, and Snape. She outlined the next eleven years, and then told the story of Harry Potter, the boy who lived, right up to the end of the Battle of Hogwarts and Snape's final moments in the Shrieking Shack. The sun had long since set when she finished with the potion in the wooden box.

"And the parchment, what does it say now?" Dumbledore asked when she finished.

"When I first got here all it said was 'Tell Dumbledore the truth.' Now it says 'Get sorted into Gryffindor.' So it looks like I'll be staying for a while."

"My guess, Ms. Granger, is that you will get instructions as the mission progresses. It is quite an ingenious invention, one of a kind, at least it was." He pulled another parchment from his desk and sparks spiked as the two got close. "So it is mine, very good." Dumbledore pulled the Sorting Hat off the shelf. "Students don't arrive until tomorrow, but I see no harm in getting this out of the way now."

"But you already know where I'm to be sorted," she wasn't at all interested in that hat digging around in her brain again. Once was enough, thank you very much.

"It's not me you must convince, my dear girl, but the Hat," Dumbledore said, coming around the desk. "If I was to simply put you in Gryffindor, the parchment would have said so. Instead it instructed you to be sorted."

He placed the Hat on her head, and she could feel it riffling around in her brain. "Well, it's not often I get a glimpse into an older mind. Yours in much more complex, but I know where you belong. Very few would embark on a mission such as this, with so many unknowns. It takes the heart of a lion to look into such darkness and still see light. You are truly meant to be in Gryffindor."

"Well, Ms. Granger, I will have your things sent up to Gryffindor tower. In the meantime, it would be a good idea if you came up with an identity for yourself." She checked the parchment, but it had no instructions for her. "You mustn't expect it to give you all the answers, my dear. You were chosen for a reason, don't forget that." Dumbledore disappeared through a door, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

A/N2: Suggestions for names and background are welcome! Review or PM me.