Diary Entry of Hermione Jean

July 18

I had always scoffed at the notion that the world was either black or white. So when I was presented with the argument of light verses dark magic I never truly bought into it. I chose my side based on which would bring me the longest and happiest life. Admittedly that does indeed sound cynical and I would never dream of admitting it out loud. I would never be given the opportunity to explain my view point, so it's easier to allow those around me to believe that I see the world like the rest of them.

Except I don't.

It's all about the intent; a tickling hex is light magic. After all what harm could come from a small sensation that left you laughing? How about if someone held that hex on another human being for so long that the victim wasn't able to breathe? Would you consider that dark magic? I'm not trying to excuse dark magic that is indeed used for murdering someone else. I'm just pointing out that not all dark magic is what they claim it to be. There are different levels. The most that I have been able to figure out is that what is labeled as dark magic is simply the particular kind that seduces you.

Most muggles consider rituals to be dark magic, yet us magical folk say no—there are some light rituals. So where do you draw the line? Is it a blanket rule? Pick a spot on the map and just sever it into two groups? How do they decide?

Politics is one factor in that decision. What sorts of spells does the Ministry of Magic care about occurring? The ones that will result in chaos and usurp its power. As different individuals assemble behind the government, the more it changes. Some people are really concerned with having certain spells restricted, and others are more concerned about having those restrictions lessened.

Did you know that all wands are tracked? There you go panicking—don't worry that bill never made it to Wizengamot. Remember when you were underage? How they told us that if we did magic they'd know? Did you know that they had no idea who actually cast a specific spell? They could only track the location. Really it was only the muggleborns who could actually get caught and that was because of the fact that it was a logical guess.

None of this really matters. I mostly just wanted to get it out of my head. I wish that I could tell someone other than a book about this. I suppose that the idea that this is irrelevant is not quite true. You see, it's because of this idea that I'm stuck here. There is no going back.

Intervention

Hermione was sitting on her bed clutching the newspaper in her hands. She was staring at the headlines, unable to process it. The brunette didn't even realize that her hands were shaking. The room around her was empty, and even if it wasn't she wouldn't have realized that anyone was there.

"Sprite?" The name would have been something that she responded to, had she been able to think clearly. The tone was familiar and she was never able to ignore its owner. Her lack of a response told him that something was wrong.

He crept closer, walking silently out of habit. Even when his foot stepped on a creaky floorboard she didn't react. Her normally unruly hair had morphed a massive knot, half tucked in a braid and half wrapped around it. When he walked in front of her, he knelt in front of her.

"Sprite? Hermione?" He murmured, lightly touching her wrists. She didn't even look at him; her gaze was locked on the paper in front of her. He slowly began to ease it out of her grasp and even then she never acknowledged that he was there.

A quick glance to the page told him that a muggle family had died in a car accident recently because of one of the many attacks that had occurred. He scanned the rest of the newspaper, trying to figure out what could have upset her.

"You haven't moved for three days, we need you to eat something." There was no response.

"Hermione we need you to let us help you." Sirius said, disheartened when she laughed bitterly.

"Help me?" She asked, looking at his eyes. Her gaze was frigid and it felt much more like she was staring straight through him.

"How exactly do you expect to help me, when you can't even help yourself?" He swallowed and looked right back at her before answering.

"I'm not going to let you shut down. I need you, Remus needs you. Whether or not you can see how loved you are by the people around you, they are there. We owe you much more because we are your friends than to just let you miss classes just to sit and stare by yourself."

"What gives you the right to boss me around? How can you even—" She was looking at the ground.

"You really want to say something that you might regret?" Sirius asked her. He was glad to see that she actually listened when he saw her mouth slam shut as she stared at the floor.

"The fact that I care about you is the reason that I'm standing up here. Don't think that I won't take this to your uncle, despite your relationship with him."

"Thank you," she managed.

"You can go now." It wasn't a suggestion and he was so surprised to hear it from her that Sirius started laughing.

"Nice try Sprite, but I'm not going anywhere. We're going to get you cleaned up and then we're going down to the kitchens to get you something to eat."

Hermione started to shake her head as she tried to pull her hands from his grasp. Sirius wasn't having any of it; he managed to get a hold of her waist, and pulled her up to her feet. Her knees immediately buckled and he had to pull her up against him to support her.

"No Sirius. This isn't fair." Her voice was weak and she feebly pushed against him.

"Well next time you decide that it's a good idea to shut down, remember that not moving or eating for three days makes it difficult to walk much less try to fight against dashing men who have agendas." She started laughing, in that condescending tone of hers.

"Dashing men? Darling please, you're just trying to look good for all those girls downstairs. I know that you've had your eye on Dorcas Meadows." Sirius grimaced at the name.

"She certainly hasn't bothered to attempt to hide her affection for you." Hermione's voice had taken on a sarcastic bitterness and if Sirius didn't know any better he would have suspected that she was jealous.

"Sprite, since when have you started calling people 'darling?" He asked as he began steering her towards the girls' bathroom.

"I don't. You do! Molly always hated that you called everything with breasts that word." Sirius blanched at her coarse language and at the fact that it supposedly bothered Molly. The mother had never mentioned it before.

"The moment that she heard you call me it for the first time, she flipped. That's when you first started calling me Sprite." Hermione started laughing manically. Sirius watched her worriedly, and tried to ignore the fact that the statements she was making were illogical and hadn't happened.

"She didn't like that any better. In fact I'm pretty sure she regretted opening her mouth in the first place." Hermione said with a bell like laugh. Sirius didn't answer. There wasn't any point in attempting to reason with her when she was in such a state. As he guided her to the other room he somewhat regretted becoming an animagus. As a dog his senses were extremely sensitive and Hermione didn't exactly smell the greatest at the moment.

He wandlessly turned the faucets on in the tub, before gently lifting Hermione in and climbing in with her. His clothes stuck to him uncomfortably, but he ignored the feeling. While his family was a sore subject he had always been grateful that the pureblood mania had included private lessons at home. As a result he was at the top of his class without even trying. His mother had insisted that he learn wandless magic early.

"I don't know how to fix this," Hermione looked vacant, as if she wasn't sitting in front of him mentally.

"I mean I know how to fix a lot of things, but this?" Her voice lacked her usual inflection. It sounded dead to Sirius' ears.

"Sprite, you're not responsible for everything," he reminded her as he started washing her hair. His hands brushed against the pearl necklace that was always around her neck. As he touched it, her hand flew up to it as well. Their eyes anchored to each other's—forgetting everything around them, including how to breathe.

Sirius forced himself to let go and clear his head. He was afraid of stepping out of the room in case she slipped under the water, but he could afford her some privacy. He threw a spell out to alert him if she slid under the water as he turned around. Ten minutes later she spoke.

"I'm done." Hermione was standing in clean clothes by the mirror. Her hair was in a French braid down her back.

"You can do wandless magic?" She asked, although she didn't sound curious about it at all.

"Yes," he answered as he instantly dried out his clothes.

"One of the requirements of growing up as the future 'Lord Black.' Are you ready to head down for some food?" She hesitated in answering before nodding her head. She walked out of the room back towards her bed, to grab a muggle zip-up. It was a blue one that she wore nearly every day for the past few weeks. Pulling it on, she walked towards the door, and suddenly faltered.

Sirius stepped up to her and held out his hand. Hesitantly Hermione reached out and grasped it.

A Breath of Hope

It was August. In less than a month she would be back at Hogwarts, the one place she had always considered home. Most students thought of Hogwarts as a nothing more than a school, but a handful saw it as something more than that. There was a magic about that place that offered students a home for the first time. It left them feeling safe, and protected, as though nothing could ever go wrong in that castle. Hermione was one of those students, along with Harry. Even Riddle had thought the same, according to Harry, and after hearing about the orphanage in which he grew up in, she wasn't surprised by the news. Hogwarts was the one place where they didn't feel abnormal or underfoot. They belonged in that world. They were wanted for the first times in their lives.

Her childhood wasn't anything like Harry's, much less Voldemort's. To begin with, her parents were still married—happily—and they had originally enrolled her in a prep school. Upon learning about the fact that Hermione was a witch, her parents agreed to send her to Hogwarts in order to develop her control over her ability. She had believed them when they acted supportive, and asked her questions about her new life at school. Whenever she talked excitedly about the things that she learned each year over summer holiday, they would smile and nod along. It didn't take her long to realize that they often had no idea what was going on, or that they really thought of it as nonsense. She had tried to explain it further in depth, but their lack of enthusiasm made it clear that they weren't that interested.

Hermione hadn't found out until much later that her parents had only agreed to allow her to attend Hogwarts once they had found out that not doing so would result in very chaotic and dangerous magical outbursts. They were then convinced that she would have transcripts that ensured that she got into the best muggle universities, as long as she applied herself.

Well there's no doubt that she applied herself to satisfy her parents' wishes. She had learned through their various letters over the course of first year which news to share, and which to withhold. Hermione had begun to filter her life for her parents from the age of twelve.

She was eighteen now; seventeen if you didn't count the time turner use from third year. She did though. Quite honestly she'd never bothered telling anyone, well with the exception of Sirius who also told Remus. Harry and Ron didn't know though.

Hermione was sitting on her couch twirling her long hair. It was bordering on impractical as it was dangerously getting close to her reaching her waist. She just didn't want to cut it yet. That wasn't the real reason; the weight of it tamed her curls and kept them much more manageable. It also took away a great deal of the frizz. What she really liked about the longer style was that it drastically changed how she appeared. Since her face had thinned out and her hair had lengthened, she looked nothing like herself before Harry, Ron and she had gone on the run. The side-bangs weren't exactly in style right now, but she didn't care.

Her flat was located in Muggle London, not that far away from Diagon Alley. It was weird to refer to it as hers; it was weird to live by herself. She'd chosen it because she'd wanted to be able to get to everything rather quickly. Hermione had always assumed that she would move back in with her parents for a little while after graduating Hogwarts. Then again she'd always expected to graduate on time. It also helped that she felt less alone in the big city. Her book list was sitting on the coffee table in front of her, and she just so happened to constantly be looking over at it.

She needed to go get those books, and she knew that it was probably best if she did it sooner rather than later. There was just a part of her that was just…not into doing anything. It'd been like this ever since she'd gotten here. Actually it had started before—just after the supposed "Final Battle." It turns out that it wasn't so final.

Harry was thankfully still alive—thanks to Sirius showing up. That was surreal, and odd. If she hadn't seen him for her herself, and interrogated him she wouldn't have believed him. The Veil is apparently a gateway to another dimension where you have to complete a series of tasks before you are given the option to go forward to the next world or go back.

Sirius' task just so happened to last for about two years. Hermione didn't know what exactly he had to do; just that Sirius only had the one task. All he was willing to tell her was that he had been given an assignment that required him to find a solution to Voldemort. She had been so excited, thinking that he had brought them their salvation. He had started shaking his head when she had said something about how he was going to save everyone.

"No love, it doesn't work like that."

"What do you mean? You just said that you had to create a solution against Vold—you know who!" Hermione said correcting herself so as not to incur the taboo. She had watched as his eyes softened towards her, and yet she hadn't realized what he was trying to tell her so she just plowed onward.

"Since you're back that means that you succeeded." Her eyes were shinning as she spoke.

"Hermione!" She paused mid step and turned to look at him. Her smile was beginning to faltering.

"Love, there is no plan." She stared at him. Hermione took a step back and her jaw slowly started to lower.

"I don't understand," her voice had a quiver to it. Sirius stepped closer to her and cupped her chin. She stared at him, confused and scared.

"My task isn't going to work the way you think it is going to," He said. Her eyes slid shut as he pulled her closer to him. The evening had been so wonderful before this, and she had ruined it by managing to get too excited. That had always been her problem; blowing tings way out of proportion and now she had managed to bugger up the evening.

Her eyes went back to his, and she started to really look at him. He was still extremely attractive even as an older man. Even as she stared at him, she didn't notice that he was slowly leaning in closer to her. In fact she didn't realize it until he was kissing her. It was chaste, but delightful. Hermione let her eyes close as his hand caressed the side of her neck.

"What was that for?" Her voice was light and fluttery.

"For being a joy and allowing me to spend time with you." His answer made her smile softly at him.

"I'm going to say goodnight, Sirius."

"Goodnight Hermione."

That was the last thing that she remembered before waking up. The bedroom that she woke up in was not the one she was in when going to sleep. It was considerably plainer, although still decorated lovely. Sitting up was a terrible idea, she found herself moaning with her head in her hands.

"You're awake then are you?" Hermione rolled off the bed quicker than lightening, reaching for her wand. She didn't find it, and her mind was frantic. She was thankful that her instincts kicked in and she hid against the edge of the bed.

"What do you want?"

"Calm down dear, we're just interested in you getting better." The voice was familiar. She couldn't quite place it and she wasn't willing to look over the bed. She was scanning the room for anything that she could find to use as a weapon as she focused on the "we're." Plural so there were at least two people.

"What's wrong with me?"

"Concussion, a few other small injuries." Hermione gingerly reached up and touched her head. She winced at the slight tenderness that her fingers brushed again.

"What's your name?" The brunette asked.

"Minerva," the lady answered. Hermione found herself flipping around to peak over the bed. She saw a middle aged woman with orange-red hair looking at her concerned.

"Last name," Hermione whispered.

"McGonagall," she answered.

Hermione stared at the woman, trying to figure out just what was going on. Minerva McGonagall was dead. Yet this woman who looked eerily enough like her was standing in front of her claiming to be her. She had some changes—her hair wasn't grey, she wasn't wearing glasses and she seemed to be more relaxed.

It was her, but at the same time it wasn't. Hermione stared at her trying to figure out what was different. It hit her like a ton of bricks. She was younger.

"What year is it?"

Author's Note:: Hey guys. I'm sure a lot of you are surprised by the new format for Lacero Contrafaco. I've been unable to update it all summer because of writer's block and working two jobs. I decided to change it up in order to help jog my desire to continue writing it. It seems to have helped quite a bit considering I've been ignoring all the hmwk I should be doing instead. Please let me know your thoughts. The majority of the content is still the same, although there are some things that have changed.

Aalis