Hello! Thank you for the reviews and the people following my first story... It's really motivating. I will update when I can.

Disclaimer : I still don't own this magical world, everything belongs to J.K. Rowling.

It has been a week now since Hermione woke up in this strange world. Almost two weeks since she almost died.

Flashback

She, Lucius and Severus had decided to 'pull a Hermione' as Lucius would call it. They had gathered information from a shady witch in Knockturn Alley, who may or may not have been a prostitute; and they had developed a plan to ambush a few Death Eaters. Their plan was perfect really, it had been designed by Hermione herself and they had used different versions of it at least a dozen times before to trap and try to lower the number of Voldemort's followers in their world.

But this time, they'd been double-crossed. Damn whore.

At least two dozens of Death Eaters were waiting for them when they arrived. They might have been shocked to see their two former brothers alongside Hermione Granger, muggleborn friend of Harry Potter, but Hermione couldn't be sure. All she registered was a gasp - her own, as it turned out - and Severus muttering "shit" before all hell broke loose.

Dark spells were flying everywhere. Their own and theirs. It had been a while since she had any misconceptions about the fact that she'd have to use dark spells in order to survive a dark war. She had been trained by her friends and she was good at it. Not that she ever let herself be swept into the darkness beckoning her. She always maintained control. She was good at that too.

At that moment, her control of the situation had slipped through her fingers like water. She could see in the corner of her eyes Severus wearing black from head to toe, fighting his way like the Prince he was through every opponent coming his way. She could also see Lucius' blond hair flying around his face from the wind of the spells he was throwing, it gave him some kind of halo of light. Both wizards were like two contrasted angels fighting the same enemy. If the situation wasn't so critical, Hermione would have stopped fighting just to enjoy the beautiful sight they were forming.

But the situation was critical, and Hermione fought tooth and nail to protect her friends and herself to the best of her ability. There were too many of them for only three people, even if two of those people were some of the best duelists in the country, and the third was considered 'the brightest witch of her age'.

A blond head other than her friend's caught Hermione's attention. That's when she saw her coming from who knew where and approach Lucius from somewhere he couldn't see.

Hermione didn't think, she just reacted.

Narcissa fired a nonverbal curse, black flames shooting out of her wand and heading towards her husband.

But the muggleborn girl was already in front of Lucius, and took the curse right in her chest.

Time seemed to slow down. Hermione screamed as a burning feeling spread from her chest to every part of her body, before settling into her brain. She was on fire; she was sure of it.

Severus promptly caused the wall behind the Death Eaters to fall on them as a distraction, before taking a hold of his friends' arms and apparating away.

They landed in the middle of the Forest of Dean with a loud crack; but the noise was swallowed by Hermione's screams of pain.

"P... Please! Please make it stop!" she cried after she felt like she didn't have the energy to scream anymore. She couldn't think straight. All she could focus on was the horrible pain inside her head.

Lucius quickly threw protecting wards around them, making sure to add strong silencing charms.

"What curse hit her?" Severus asked, dangerously close to panicking. He was trying to calm Hermione down, to use every spell he knew to lessen the pain she was feeling, but nothing seemed to work. She was still moaning in pain and thrashing around. Perspiration began to coat her skin, and she appeared to have trouble breathing.

"I don't know; it was a nonverbal! Some black flames, but I've never seen something like that before..." Lucius answered, kneeling on the other side of Hermione, casting diagnostic spells over her body. "I don't understand" he added, watching the results, "the diagnostic spells say there isn't anything wrong but her body is shutting down..."

"What do you mean, her body is shutting down?" Severus asked, raising his head to read the results himself. "Fuck!" As last resort, he pulled some healing and pain potions out of his robes, pouring them down Hermione's throat.

But nothing seemed to work. It was too late. She had stopped thrashing around, and they could see her breathing slowing.

Lucius and Severus exchanged a long look over her body. Everything had happened so fast. Only half an hour ago they were standing in the alley with all those Death Eaters, and now...They knew they had tried everything they could. They could only watch the spells keeping track of her condition grow darker and darker as her organs died one after the other...

Until her chest stopped moving entirely.

A sob caught in Severus' throat before he could control himself. He got up and pressed a hand to his chest, where he could feel like it had been stabbed. He thought at this moment that being bitten by Nagini was far less painful than this sensation. How could this have happened?

As for Lucius, he was still kneeling beside her body, his forehead pressed against her shoulder. He was whispering under his breath: "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." over and over again.

Severus took a deep breath. He would grieve later. When he had fixed this. He put a hand on his blond friend's shoulder. "We need to leave. We'll go to Spinner's End."

"I know." Lucius answered, putting himself upright. "What... What do we do with her body?"

Severus swallowed hard before answering: "we leave her here. She always liked the Forest of Dean. She used to come here with her parents when she was little... We put wards around her to repel animals and other beings."

"So we don't bury her?" Lucius asked, frowning.

"No." Severus answered. "We just... Put flowers around her. And then we leave. We need to change things, Lucius..."

"What exactly do you mean by changing things?"

"I mean that we change things..." Severus said, throwing his friend a meaningful look.

"Oh..." Lucius said, realising what Severus meant. He looked one last time towards Hermione's body, before nodding. He pulled his wand, waving it to create a beautiful bed of flowers. He then put Hermione delicately on it. He closed her eyes, and kissed her forehead before getting up, completely determined this time.

Severus knelt down and kissed her forehead himself. He got on his feet and put strong wards around the place.

"Let's go" Lucius said.

They both apparated into the night.

"WAAAAAAIT!" yelled Hermione. Or she tried to yell. But no sound came out of her mouth, and all she could hear was the crack from her friend's apparition. She was alone in the forest.

What the hell happened? she thought.

She remembered blacking out from the pain at one point. She woke up a few minutes before to hear Lucius and Severus talking about what to do with her body. The pain was mostly gone, even if she could feel a massive headache, it was nothing compared to what she had suffered before. She had tried to talk, explaining she wasn't dead. But she couldn't move, blink or even breath... It was like being petrified all over again.

Was she petrified? What was that horrible curse Narcissa used?

Thus began a series of internal questions Hermione couldn't answer but couldn't stop asking herself. She was still 'petrified' and she still had a headache several hours later...

End of Flashback

Hermione had stayed in that strange motionless state for a few days. Or so she thought. At first, she had found it sweet that Lucius and Severus had been so delicate with her body. Several days later, after not being able to tell the time of the day or night, she was internally cursing Lucius for closing her eyes like they were in some stupid drama movie.

She hadn't realised at first that she could move again, being so used to be in one position. When she had felt her finger move to scratch a hitch on her belly, she had snapped her eyes open, only to be blinded by the strong light of the day.

What happened? Did Lucius and Severus succeeded in lifting the curse? Maybe they killed the crazy bitch! Are they coming back?

After several moments of pacing - it was so good to use her legs again -, Hermione had realised two things. One: she was so hungry she was sure she could it a troll, and she was thirsty too. Two: her friends weren't coming back for the moment, and she needed to eat.

She had transfigured a hooded cloak to wear and apparated in a small alley near Diagon Alley. It was risky, but she wanted to snatch a Daily Prophet to see which day it was and to read who had died in the days she was 'out'.

She ate and drank so much she thought her belly would explode, but it had been worth it. It was the meal that had rendered her careless, she guessed, because she had then run into a hard body, causing her hood to fall off her face.

Sirius Black had steadied her by catching her arm and had stared at her for a moment before smirking.

Hermione was so shocked that she just apparated back to the Forest of Dean, forgetting about the Daily Prophet.

It had been three days ago.

She had spent those three days hiding in the forest, scared out of her mind to run into a ghost again. Maybe she was dead after all.

What a brave Gryffindor you make... she thought to herself.

But Hermione was sick of hiding. If she was really dead, then so be it, but she needed to move to find out. Hiding like a coward wouldn't answer her questions.

She stopped pacing and took a deep breath. She had to stop hiding and go find answers in this world where she had noticed the sun was shining more than she had seen it in years... In this world potentially composed of ghosts of her past. And good food. It could be worse after all.

She took her wand in her hand and apparated away.