Disclaimer: I do not own Harry. I wish I did, since he is AWESOME, but all that responsibility and pressure... no way. :)

A/N: There's Dumbledore bashing in this chapter. And Hermione tuning a little into her inner cursing side... gah, you know what I mean. Also, Voldy hasn't taken over the ministry yet, so he couldn't have taken over Hogwarts. He only killed Harry, and is basking in the afterglow of the murder he had to wait for for 15, almost 16, years. So no Death Eaters taking over yet. Plus, there are no pairings in this story, including Dramione that sort of looks like it's gonna happen in this chapter. Sorry Dramione shippers!


Scrimper Succeeds Fudge

Rufus Scrimgeour, previously Head of the Auror

office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,

has succeeded Cornelius Fudge as Minister of

Magic. The appointment has largely been greeted

with enthusiasm by the Wizarding community,

though rumors of a rift between the new Minister

and Albus Dumbledore, newly reinstated Chief

Warlock of the Wizengamot, surfaced within hours

of Scrimgeour taking office.

Scrimgeour's representatives admitted that he

had met with Dumbledore at once upon taking

possession of the top job, but refused to comment

on the topics under discussion. Albus Dumbledore

is known to—

"Merlin, this is stupid." Hermione Granger put down one of her older copies of the Daily Prophet and rubbed her forehead. Ever since her best friend, Harry Potter, had been murdered in June, she'd been experiencing headaches. Maybe due to her worrying about her OWL results and the NEWTS in her future, mingles with the depressive feeling of her best friend of five -almost six- years dying, she felt sick. Her other best friend, Ron Weasley, wasn't doing better. Similar to Hermione, he had lost his first actual best friend who wasn't family. But, Ron had befriended Harry two months before Hermione, and had more 'fun' (dangerous and reckless in Hermione's point of view) times and memories with him. So, the loss was harder on him.

Hermione was, of course, mourning and all sad like a real friend is about Harry's death, but there was one little thing that really annoyed her about Harry dying. When she got on the Hogwarts express just that morning, everyone but the Slytherins (nasty little buggers, they probably threw a party when they heard the news that Harry was dead) kept on giving her sympathetic and pitiful looks and pats on her shoulder. One seventh year, McLaggen, offered his shoulder for her to cry on. She almost hexed him for that. Yes, Harry's dead. Yes, she's devastated. But no, she doesn't need your sympathy. The other Hogwarts students never really knew Harry. At least, not the real him. Bet they never knew that he was afraid of pigeons. So why did they start being super nice to the memory of Harry? They called him liar and a lunatic for the last year of his life. Why bother?

But, Harry wasn't the only thing she lost that summer. She also lost her trust and respect for Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. In mid-July when Hermione was staying over at the Order's Headquarters when he showed up. And, with what Hermione suspected with fake sorrow, he had explained to Her and Ron what he should have explained to Harry years ago. While he explained the prophecy, about the horcruxes, on how Harry himself was a horcrux, Hermine had felt white-hot anger bubble up inside of her. It took all she had not to explode in front of him.

That bastard! He had kept all that information from Harry for five-freaking-whole-years! And he had the nerve to tell them that he didn't plan on ever telling Harry he was a Horcrux. If all went perfectly right (in which the probability was close to zero), it would have been Snape's job. Bastard.

Well, she figured one very important thing after the old coot's meeting with her and Ron: Dumbledore considered the whole Order and the Death Eaters as chess pieces. Harry was a pawn in his and Ron too. And, the rest of the Order. And he was the white king. He was the one with the puppet strings. The other pawns trust their king blindly, and would jump in front of an avada kedavra for him. Hermione didn't want to be a blind pawn. She had just gotten her first look, first taste of what was going on outside of the borders of the chess board, and she wanted more. She wanted to be free. And slowly, she was snipping away each of the strings controlling her.

Harry's dead?

Snip.

You want to keep us in the dark forever?

Snip.

You want me to possibly die for your cause?

Snip.

All his moves were for the greater good. Well, the greater good her arse.

Since that day in mid-July, she was free. Completely free. But the side effect of her freeness is that she lost all her trust for the Order. It would take years to rebuild all that trust that Dumbledore had torn down in one conversation. But instead of becoming distant from the Order (they would assume that something was wrong and mess everything up), she threw herself in yet another research project. Which really wasn't new, and nobody would question it. The topic was horcruxes.

Hermione spent a week checking and double checking the Black's ginormous library in Grimmauld Place, but there wasn't even one word, one hint, one clue that mentioned Horcruxes. That old git must have banished them from the library, for a dark family like the Blacks must have had at least one old tome about splitting the soul.

But, her search didn't end there. She decided to make a trip down Knockturn Alley during back to school shopping with the Weasleys. Black cloak and all, of course. She still very much looked like the same person from Witch Weekly in her fourth year. Only two years had passed.

*Flashback*

"Mrs. Weasley?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Would it be fine for me to go book shopping while you guys go to Fred and George's?"

"Book shopping? Oh, Hermione, you and your books! Yes, dear, you may. Just be careful. These are dark times… bad times…"

"Dark times indeed, Mrs. Weasley."

Hermione and Molly Weasley stood in front of the almost abandoned building where Eeylops Owl Emporium used to be in Diagon Alley. The rest of the Weasley clan that was currently present (Arthur Weasley, Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley) were walking and talking a few meters in front of the two females, on their way to the Weasley twin's new shop in Diagon Alley. Hermione was practically itching to get away and throw on her hooded black cloak to escape to Knockturn Alley.

"Well, if you absolutely need to, dear, go to your books." Mrs. Weasley said.

"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley!" Hermione was already walking away with a triumphant smile on her face. It was hard to walk away from Mrs. Weasly in such a public place, where one could be kidnapped in a snap. Harry was, and he got murdered….

"Stay safe!"

"I will,"

Freedom.

Hermione pulled out her black cloak once out of sight of the Weasleys, and hauled it over her body (it was a heavy cloak). She managed to push her wild curls to the back of the hood and pulled it over her head, making her face disappear from sight. If she were seventeen, she could have just used some glamor spells, alas she was a year younger….

Once she was perfectly covered, she had trooped down an alley leading to Knockturn Alley, and to all the shops collected down there. She saw quite some interesting people on her way to a suitable bookshop; a hag in the corner selling amulets, an old man shouting out prices for shredded lethifold hide (extremely rare, but also extremely illegal), someone who had a strong likeness to the one and only Bellatrix Lestrange, and a hooded cloak that was selling house elves 30 galleons each! Those poor souls.

Once she made it to a decent bookstore (Msaw Ætare) she had found another surprise. When she went over to the ancient looking door (which said pull) and tried to open it, it wouldn't budge.

Unusual.

So she pulled the handle again.

Nothing.

The door had the words Open at all times, never closed engraved to it. So maybe it was stuck?

She tried again.

Nothing.

Then she got angry. With all her might, she pulled the door open with such might, that she almost yanked the handle off. And with the door, Draco Malfoy stumbled out.

Ah, so it was a dual-swing door.

"Watch out, or you might break the door," Malfoy said, looked at Hermione with an impressed expression. "The store keeper'll have your head if you do." He whispered, with a smile. Hermione never thought she would see the day where the bigoted prat Draco Malfoy would talk and smile at her. Hell must have frozen over.

"Oh, thank you for informing me this. Now, if you excuse me, I would like to go somewhere called the inside of the store so I can do an action named purchasing a book."

Malfoy had looked shocked.

"Wha—do you know who I am?"

She fibbed. "No."

"Oh, good. Then, may I introduce myself? I'm Draco Malfoy. You may call me Draco. And you are…"

"None of your business." Was he hitting on her?

"Oh, dear. Why won't you tell me? You sound like you're a sixteen to seventeen year old female, at the least. You won't show me your face, or tell me your name. Why would you decline me, a handsome, muscular blonde?" Malfoy, that git, asked her.

"Because a) you're not 'muscular," she made quotation marks with her fingers at 'muscular'. "B) I don't want to over blow your ego, and c) you're in. My. Way!" Hermione jabbed her pointer finger into Malfoy's chest to emphasize her point. He moved out of the way after that. "Bloody prick."

"But… my dear, why?" He followed her back into the bookstore like a lost puppy.

"I'm not your dear."

"Well, then I'll call you Pansy."

"Don't name me after Parkinson, that pug-faced bully!" When Hermione was alone without any of the boys in the library, Pansy Parkinson took up the habit and hobby of bullying Hermione merciless.

"Ohh… so you do go to Hogwarts."

"So what if I do?" Hermione was looking at the books on the shelves, scanning for the title Magick Moste Evile. That book had information on horcruxes, and she desperately needed it.

"So then I must know you." His voice dropped to a whisper. "What house are you in?"

"Not in your bloody house!" Hermione replied, and snatched the book she was looking for from the shelf. She took a few strides towards the paying area and paid her four galleons to the old man behind the counter. She hurried herself towards the door and stepped out onto the cobblestone path of Knockturn Alley.

She was fast, but he was faster. He grabbed onto her arm before she could disappear back up to Diagon Alley.

"But… who are you? You're not in Slytherin, yet you are in one of the most darkest places in Knockturn Alley buying a book about dark magic. You're not a Hufflepuff, you're too snippy and… just don't fit into that house. You must be a Ravenclaw." Malfoy looked at Hermione with big puppy eyes, pleading that she should tell him something about herself.

"And what if I'm not?"

"No. You can't be a Gryffindor. All Gryffindors are light. And what would a light person do in a dark place?"

"Malfoy? Have you ever heard the names Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black?" His hand lost its grip a bit, but enough for Hermione to get her arm out and escape back to Diagon Alley and the Weasleys.

*End Flashback*

Now she had all the information. But what would she do with it?


Whoo! Second chapter! That is super long. About 2,000 words! Yeah!