A/N: Hello, loves! One longish author's note coming up. I'm back with a new username and fic. After a bit of an issue with real-life people being incredibly problematic, I decided to cut ties with my old pen name and come up with a new one. So, a new pen name means a new fic! This is quite a bit outside of my comfort zone, so I'd appreciate any constructive feedback you give me. This will eventually be Dramione, but it's going to take a while to get there. Sit down and stay a while; hopefully, the premise is enough to keep you reading. This is an AU fic, so I'll be playing fast and loose with canonical elements. As this is the preface, this chapter is significantly shorter than subsequent chapters.
Beta/Alpha love to Luca Agneta and mamaHD, without whom this fic would still be hiding in my documents untouched. They are absolutely wonderful and have helped me more than they know.
I wrote this chapter to JFDR's "Instant Patience." Give it a listen as you read if you feel so inclined.
Fairly puzzled by / How we are fate's production
Written in the Scars
Ordior●Preface
Hermione Granger is born flawlessly to Muggle parents on 19 September 1979. She enters the world screaming plaintively, as though she knows that she has been brought into a world of turmoil and craves the safety of her mother's womb once more. Her already messy mane of tightly-curled locks is plastered to her olive skin, trying to soothe her melancholic cries.
The doctor hands her to waiting nurse to clean up, a severe-looking man whose scowl displays his dissatisfaction with his current career choice. The scowl deepens when he is handed the small child, but he takes the child away without comment. His greasy hair, tied back into a haphazard, low ponytail held in place by a small piece of black cloth, trails him out of the room. He returns minutes later, the babe cleaned and swaddled in a small purple blanket.
As the doctor hands her to her mother, he beams and asks expectantly, "Name?"
Her mother cradles the baby in the crook of her arm and stares at her wondrously. Her father coos and runs a tentative finger over the babe's arm. Tentative, like he might break her or she might disappear if he does not take the utmost care with her. The doctor clears his throat quietly, and the trance breaks. Mother and father look at one another and answer simultaneously, "Hermione Jean."
Pleased, the doctor backs away, leaving the parents to fawn over the newborn.
Brown eyes blink up at the duo, squinting in the light of the sterile hospital room. Despite her birth only minutes before, the little girl has a peculiar awareness in her eyes, almost like she is witnessing a scene she has seen a hundred times before.
Mother and father laugh at the serious expression. The baby has not uttered a sound beyond its scream for breath upon entrance into the world. Preternatural silence surrounds her as she breaths out, slowly, evenly. She surveys the room around her with nary a blink. Her parents pay no heed, lost in their joy at the newest addition to their family. She is perfect. She is theirs.
Though they do not realize it, she is not the daughter they anticipated.
Several hundred miles away, in a stone castle standing near a lake, a robed woman stands arranging and rearranging teacups on shelves. The teetering stack nears the ceiling, but she pays no heed to their disarray. Surrounded by the dry heat of her cloying incense smoke and illuminated by a single low lamp, the woman hums a tune in minor key. She nears the melody when she freezes, and her eyes become blank.
She straightens her spine and stalks to the window, pushing aside heavy velvet curtains to gaze across the lake with unseeing eyes.
In a rasping voice, barely audible, she utters, "Born this night is one who will crumble empires and put a stopper in the tide of blood. Fool be those who cross her. She will crush her enemies with a storm of fury and fate, for she is not of this world. United by fissures wrought by hate, she will forge the bonds that destroy pestilence."
Her voice trails off into the dark corners of the room where the light does not reach. Slowly, she seems to come back to herself and begins to hum the same tune as before. If her sudden missing memory and changed location bother her, she gives no indication. She removes her hand from the curtain and allows it to drop back into place. The heavy fabric effectively mutes the bright moonlight that had washed over her lined face.
She resumes her task with the teacups.
In the same castle, a gentle wind weaves in through an open window, disturbing the calm quiet. Dust motes dance in the moonlight of an open study where trinkets sit on shelves cluttered with books and debris. Portraits of men and women line the walls, and a phoenix slumbers on its perch near the center of the room.
On a low table near the wall, a book of parchment bound in leather flips open and a quill rises into the air as if by an unseen hand. The quill hovers over the book, then flits forward to dip into a pot of black ink. The quill pauses for just a moment, as if listening to something the breeze whispers to it, before it lowers to the page and scrawls across it in an elegant hand.
Hermione Jean Granger.
The quill lifts from the page and pauses once more, admiring its handiwork. Then, it deftly rises into the air and deposits itself once more on the desk. Upon the quill's contact with the pitted wood, the name on the parchment glows bright gold before settling back into the dull black of the ink. The parchment book flutters back closed.
The breeze dissipates and quiet resumes in the castle.
A thousand thanks to anyone who decides to continue reading this story! Updates will likely be sporadic; I have no set schedule as I'm super busy. Though I have three chapters prewritten, I don't want to post them all in rapid succession in case I don't get to write for a while!
