SAVE YOURSELF
Chapter 1: Déjà Vu

Hermione was certainly familiar with the existence of prescient visions and prophetic dreams, both theoretically (from books) and practically (though only second-hand).

They were not as someone like Professor Trelawney would have described them — as wholly metaphysical, an extension of the great Inner Eye. The instances of mystical foresight that Hermione had witnessed appeared to be seeded in something far more...elemental.

In Harry's case, it was not mere chance that he was gifted with these abilities. In fact, more often than not, they presented themselves as something like an afterimage of past misfortunes, accompanied by pain and doubt, not clarity or power. And, of course, one could not forget the prophecy that had canonized him and the preternatural connection to Voldemort that he possessed as a result.

All of which is to say that Hermione Jean Granger, a stalwart skeptic on the subject of divination and the abilities of those who claimed clairvoyance, was not especially disposed to consider that perhaps she herself may have been the recipient of a prophetic vision.

After all, she was not Harry Potter. No prophecies had ever been made about her (as far as she was aware, though there happened to be a curiously large number of unexplored orbs hidden away in the Department of Mysteries). Any dreams or sense of déjà vu that Hermione ever experienced were attributed strictly to illusions of the subconscious mind, and any alignment they may have had with events taking place in the natural world only served as confirmation that they were rooted firmly in the quotidian, not magical or transcendental phenomenon. For what greater universal purpose would be served by dreaming about being buried under a pile of borrowed library books except to remind the dreamer to return them on time?

Therefore, the dream she woke from breathlessly, tearfully, with a hand clamped over her mouth on the morning of her twenty-first birthday was viewed as nothing more than a regrettable happenstance — a byproduct of some internalized anxiety about growing older, or about leaving the past behind, or some other unease of a similar kind.

She certainly didn't have time to fret about such things in her waking hours — not with a full-time job at a Ministry that was still recovering from years of political turmoil, extracurricular time spent advancing S.P.E.W., and a full-time boyfriend with an unusually healthy appetite to attend to. And she'd also recently volunteered to re-catalogue the Hogwarts library on spare weekends in anticipation of its full reopening next fall. It only stood to reason that in lacking time for personal rumination during the day, her mind would resort to an alternate means of transmission.

Hermione cursed herself for being so bloody thick, for not learning her lesson from the Time-Turner crack-up in her third year at Hogwarts. Clearly, she was now neglecting herself to the point of forcing her own brain to resort to subterranean mental trickery, the kind that lifted and shifted the cobblestones of the neatly laid course that she ritually abided day-in and day-out.

She'd been thinking about the dream all day, tripping over it whenever her focus was most demanded: when she should have been drafting her latest report about the increased demand for knarl quills and the protective measures needed to maintain the wild knarl population; when reviewing notes from the informal interview she had conducted with Winky last spring (whose condition had improved considerably through the years); over dinner as Ron complained about the case that he and Harry had caught today, something to do with a group of profoundly stupid teenagers who'd started a secret society at an Unplottable location to collect and trade Dark Artifacts.

Only after Ron had slipped away into unconsciousness, his back facing her as she stared up at the bedroom ceiling of her small but cozy Muggle flat, was she able to recount the dream from beginning to end.

She was floating…...supine, hands resting on her stomach, in a long white cotton nightdress. Her back was flat, face deeply passive as though enchanted into a deathlike slumber like a fairytale princess.

She was drifting over the Black Lake at Hogwarts, the harvest moon painting light across the water's jewel-dark surface in a long shimmering stroke, all the way to the shoreline. She followed the lighted path, her pale face and bare shoulders seeming to pull toward the lambent moonlight, her soul warmed by its golden cast. Creatures deep in the Forbidden Forest howled with urges she could not understand and the wind whistled, chilly and uninviting, rustling her slip and catching her untamed hair.

Soon, she was entering the castle, familiar figures coming into view. The first was Luna Lovegood, sitting under an arch in the front cloisters, knees pulled up, back against the column, a copy of The Quibbler open in her lap.

"Strange, though not unexpected, " Luna said softly, not looking up.

The front doors creaked open then, and Hermione saw herself pulled in, toes and ankles pointing ahead. Other faces began to emerge, each turning to watch her as she passed.

Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout conversing over a jar of twinkling herbs. Mad-Eye Moody poking Hagrid in the back with his walking stick, leaning in to whisper something conspiratorial as Hagrid stooped to his level. A small pride of Gryffindors including Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, and Lee Jordan hot on the heels of Fred and George Weasley, large grins splitting their faces, clearly on their way to stir up some mischief.

She floated past the open doors of the Great Hall, a large mixed group of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had joined together in what appeared to be an Exploding Snap tournament. Cho Chang seemed to be taking Cedric Diggory to task while Hannah Abbott was getting the best of Michael Corner as Terry Boot and Susan Bones watched eagerly. High up at the teacher's table, Professor Dumbledore sat, attentive yet relaxed, on his stately Headmaster's chair, both listening with his left ear to the adamant concerns of Professor McGonagall while keeping a close eye on the developments of the card game below.

She floated upward, toward the stairs, finding Lupin and Tonks on the first landing. Lupin was holding up a young Teddy as Nymphadora directed his attention to something exciting out the window, all three of them with wide eyes and parted mouths, happy together. Hermione watched a glittering tear slip down her temple from her own closed eye.

As she continued, she encountered the usual quiver of Slytherins — Crabbe, Goyle, Zabini, Parkinson — all huddled together, unspeaking, eyes haunted.

Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown rushed up to Professor Trelawney, who was wrapped securely in her endless beaded shawls, and gushed sycophantically to her about some silly something-or-other they'd viewed in their crystal balls.

Around the bend, Arthur and Ginny were having a lively conversation about the Holyhead Harpies lineup, Arthur's arm slung lovingly over Ginny's shoulders, while Molly smiled proudly and Neville listened in, a half-step removed. He watched Hermione curiously as she drifted past, lifting his hand in a small wave.

Further still, Professor Snape lurked in a darkened doorway, arms crossed, tsk-ing as she went by.

And finally, she came upon Harry and Ron sitting on a long wooden bench, listening in amazement as Sirius recalled a wild misadventure of the Marauders from his misspent youth. They laughed together with genuine happiness, relaxed and innocent, the kind that no one, not even the dementors or Voldemort can ever take away from you.

Then she was alone, drifting for an eternity down a long empty corridor, the voices of all of her friends and loved ones far behind. The corridor began to shift into darkness. All paintings and doors disappeared. The floor curved down into oblivion.

She felt her body come to a halt, suspended in nothing but soft, silvery blackness. A deep loneliness began to creep in, pushing, expanding, cascading across the invisible nothingness.

Somewhere near, a figure materialized from the dark and began a slow, fearful march to her side, banishing the loneliness with each step. The figure lifted her hands, just enough to slip a midnight blue envelope beneath them, which she cradled against her belly.

She spoke, eyes still pressed closed. "When will I see you again?"

"I don't know."

A rush of warmth flooded her body as she felt a soft kiss pressed to her forehead.

She felt herself becoming smaller and smaller and smaller as the surrounding universe grew bigger and bigger and bigger until nothing at all seemed to matter much anymore.

Then, all gone…

When she woke, a feeling of incurable dread was waiting to greet her. She felt as though she had lived a whole life in the space of that dream, and she'd never be able to revisit it or explain it to anyone.

Now, lying in bed, having spent the whole day with a feeling of unreality hovering behind all of her usual commitments and interactions, she was faced with nothing but awful choices.

Sleep and subject herself to the possibility of another disruptive vision.

Sleep and give herself back to normalcy; allow the construct to collapse, the details and the emotions swept away with a night of dreamless sleep.

Don't sleep and compound her feelings of helplessness and otherness.

She knew sleep was only inevitable, and therefore sleep was the only sensible thing to do.

But she mourned a little at the thought that whatever this was, this feeling, this sense of something terrible and sublime that had so clearly come from inside herself (because she could not entertain that it had come from anywhere else) would disappear back into the self-shuffling deck of thoughts and memories and ideas and illusions and hopes that lived deep inside, lost to her until the most inopportune moment, when it would surely emerge again...just in time to explode in her hand.

"Oh, I'm rubbish at this."

"I'm sure it's fine. It's only a progress report. Just do it quickly and move on."

Hermione was quite out of patience already this week, and it was only Wednesday afternoon. She had never really minded being needed. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was good to feel useful, and she had never resented how often it seemed her services were required. Knowledge was power and with power one assumes accountability, responsibility. Hermione Granger was nothing if not responsible.

But this week she was beginning to feel a deep pinch of frustration. She had always attached a great deal of self-worth to her ability to be relentlessly productive, to being efficient where others were undisciplined, to valuing attentiveness over a carefree existence. Heretofore nothing else about herself — certainly not her looks or her congeniality — had yielded greater personal satisfaction nor produced such glittering jewels of inner pride than her fastidious magical abilities and their successful application to real-world problems.

But slowly, surely, much to her foolish dismay, the shine was wearing off...

Lately, there seemed to be an unstoppable treadmill moving under her feet and she desperately wanted to get off but had no idea how or when or if such a thing were even possible. In spite of her more upstanding self, she found her mind wandering as she idly tapped her quill on her desk, contemplating the appeal of forbidden and socially abhorred spells that could freeze time, even just for a few moments…

She was too young, too ambitious to feel so horribly burnt out. She had twenty, thirty, maybe forty years of work ahead of her and already she had sprinted herself into bitter exhaustion.

Or maybe it wasn't that at all.

"When will I see you again?"

"I don't know."

The specter of the dream passed by again, like a cloud moving over the sun, dragging behind it a cold mist of loneliness and shame. Why should such a thing seem so real to her when her actual life was right here, tugging at her sleeve, begging her to pay attention?

"Hermione, are you okay?"

She looked over to her deskmate, none other than Justin Finch-Fletchley, who had recently completed his sadly interrupted magical education and joined the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures just last month.

Hermione heard that the Reform efforts put forth by Kingsley Shacklebolt immediately following the war had included initiatives to reach out to Muggle-borns who had distanced themselves from the wizarding world and who looked upon the Ministry with a tainted eye following the creation of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission and the subsequent persecution of Muggle-borns. Apparently, not even the arrest and imprisonment of Dolores Umbridge had been enough to regain their trust and pointed efforts had to be made to mollify the suspicious Muggle-born population and cajole them into re-integrating.

One such initiative appeared to be recruiting more Muggle-borns to the Ministry to help bolster confidence and prove that the Ministry was in fact a fairer and non-discriminatory institution under the stewardship of Shacklebolt.

Hermione was certainly happy to see a familiar face in a Department mostly staffed by the old guard. After the war, it seemed that most new Ministry recruits were far more interested in Magical Law Enforcement than any other positions the Ministry had to offer. The war seemed to have profound moral implications on the younger generation of wizards and witches, many of whom seemed to have also gotten a taste for beating back Dark Wizards during the Battle of Hogwarts.

That said, Justin wasn't exactly the type of partner she'd had in mind. She ended up proofing most of his reports before they were turned in, almost as though she was back at Hogwarts correcting Harry and Ron's homework. But at least he was kind and generous, as any good Hufflepuff should be. Also, he'd previously been a member of the D.A., a group that would always have a dear place in her heart. They had a good chuckle when he first arrived, recalling the time he and Ernie Macmillan helped turn Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle into slugs — though their mirth quickly faded upon remembering the unfortunate fate of one Vincent Crabbe, and yet another memory was folded away into her imaginary Hogwarts trunk, along with so many others from her school days — childish, frivolous memories now clouded by the shadow of death.

"I'm fine," Hermione said, answering him at long last. "Just had a funny dream is all. I've been distracted." She shook herself, smiling at how girlish and silly she must have sounded.

"I can tell," he said. "You haven't even opened your mail after lunch."

"What?"

He pointed with his quill to her inbox.

Hermione felt ice slide down her stomach. A thick midnight blue envelope. She was suddenly inclined to whip out her wand and perform every counter-curse she could remember.

"I don't think it's going to bite you," he said, his meaning quite literal. Just last week one of the department managers had gotten a nasty bite from a fanged letter mailed by a disgruntled sender. "It's just from the Reform Department."

Of course. She couldn't believe she hadn't realized it before.

The Albus Dumbledore Department of Magical Reform — named in honor of the beloved felled Hogwarts headmaster and colored-coded to match the shade of blue he was most often seen wearing — had been formed shortly after the war, as an independent Department of the Ministry. Kingsley Shacklebolt wisely thought it best to give the Reform Department space to formulate its own legislation while still operating under the auspices of the Ministry, for it was certain to be both a vital and controversial part of wizarding rule for years to come. They even operated out of their own satellite office, separate from the main Ministry building.

But what in Merlin's name could the Reform Department want with her?

She picked up the letter, seeing her name written in twinkling gold ink, turned it over, and removed a single piece of clean parchment.

Dear Ms. Granger,

I hope this letter finds you well.

I would like to invite you to lunch in my office tomorrow to discuss a matter for which we believe you can provide indispensable insight.

I have already cleared a two-hour period between 12pm and 2pm with the head of your Department to allow you plenty of time for travel.

Please reply via owl once you have received this letter to confirm your attendance.

Best regards,
Dharma DeLoughrey
Chair of Educational Reform
Albus Dumbledore Department of Magical Reform

Hermione made a face. Seeing the words "education" and "reform" in such close proximity conjured unpleasant images of Dolores Umbridge and her clipboard, waddling condescendingly in her pink Mary Jane pumps.

She banished the thought. Dolores Umbridge had never thought anything Hermione had to say could be indispensable. In fact, Hermione suspected Umbridge would have liked nothing better than to dispense with her at the earliest acceptable opportunity, thorn in the side that Hermione had proved to be.

She folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. On any other day, she would have summoned an owl and replied straight away, fearing a tardy response would make a poor first impression. But a very distinct feeling of ambivalence bore down on her. She imagined herself playing a game of hide-and-seek with a faceless opponent. Something funny was going on, and she could not figure it, couldn't flush it out.

She sensed this letter served as some point of bifurcation, and that once she replied she might not be able to alter events that were to follow, might not be able to return to this point in time ever again.

Hermione rolled her eyes, admonishing herself for such silly superstitious sensibilities, cold reason pulling her comfortably back down to earth. How could a simple owl confirming a lunch meeting affect one's life in a way which could not be undone?

With that, she summoned an owl and harshly scribbled a very sensible reply in very no-nonsense scrawl:

Ms. DeLoughrey

It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I'd be happy to assist you with any matter that would serve the aims of the Reform Department.

I will Apparate to your building promptly at 12pm.

I look forward to meeting with you.

Warm regards,
Hermione Granger
Junior Associate
Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures

She tied the letter to the barn owl with fierce efficiency, earning herself an annoyed cluck from the creature.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said sincerely.

The owl merely blinked at her and swept away, and as she watched it go she could not help but feel as though the world was spinning out of her control in some indetectable way and that, no matter how much she told herself that her recent malaise was merely a novel concoction conceived wholly and absolutely inside the steamy cauldron of her admittedly complicated psyche — the type generally possessed by talented young females — brewed with delicate and volatile ingredients such as an overly-eager work ethic and a secret yearning for adventure and the adrenalized clarity that bloomed in the aftermath of such exhilaration, she could not deny that she lived in a magical world where simple dreams could have very deep roots in very real and very serious machinations which she might be destined to play a part in.

Stranger things had happened, after all.

A/N: I'm not the biggest mythology wonk, so forgive me if I get anything wrong.