Chapter One: The Night of the Banshee.

Disclaimer: I own none of the material written by J. K. Rowling, or her publishing company, or Warner Brothers.

OOOO

"If I teach you anything, little one," Her mother had intoned in a serious voice one night as they tucked into the bone soup, leftover bones boiled in water, "It will be this. All you need in a world like our's is a proper head on your little neck. Learn the rules, make up rules of your own, and then you will be up in those halls on the hill. Mayhap not scheming with the crème de la crème, but a librarian, or lover to a wizard. Safe and fed, if not at least a bit happy."

Hermione Granger often wondered about happiness, even at the age of six. Her mother was, for all the misery her station brought in life, not an entirely unhappy woman. Men would come to visit her. Handsome, ugly, smart, stupid, strong, weak, cruel, kind, powerful, beloved by the public, and even the despised. All of them rich, and most of them magical. Bryony Granger was a muggle widow, a single mother, in a world restructured for a magician's pleasure. What good was a muggle woman with no husband when mudblood slaves could perform a day's honest work with a flick of their second rate wands? She was pretty though, oh so very pretty. With long, honey-brown hair that felt of silk. Deep brown eyes the same colour as the bottle of cognac that sat on their fireplace, a gift from an ardent admirer when Hermione had still been but a highly observant toddler.

What she loved, perhaps envied was a better word, most about her mother was the woman's smile. A thing that could fill a person with brightness, love, and a feeling of importance. With only a quirk of her lips Bryony Granger could make someone feel like they mattered to the world. That they need not feel alone, or unimportant. It was also her most dangerous weapon, a means of luring men into the brothel they called a home. A steady means of putting food on the table, though the two Granger girls still lived rather frugally. 'I am saving up for a present,' Her mother often smiled, tickling her daughter in the ribs, 'A gift so that you can have the sort of life you deserve my little faerie.'

On her sixth birthday, Hermione Granger, much to her glee, inherited that very same smile. Not by natural means though. It was a cold night for September. Windy and rainy as they both slipped carefully down the streets of west London. Despite having put away so much of her income for the prior year, Bryony still dressed lavishly. Gifts from her many suitors. Even Hermione had been blessed with a pretty, black and white pea coat, and several silky outfits. Men had begun to realize that perhaps her wellbeing was the key to her mother's firmly locked heart. Not often did the older Granger allow men anywhere near her daughter, so they would stop by as she played on the street, leaving presents when they left. "No eye contact," Her mum hissed as they slipped passed a tramp covered in filth. Blood trickled down his face from a bulging crack in his hairline.

Finally they arrived outside of a dilapidated building. Perhaps it had once been the home of offices for successful muggles, the likes of which had not existed in west London since 1948. Despite her fear at being tugged into such a space, Hermione held tight to her mother's hand and followed obediently behind. She trusted the woman totally, completely. Through dark halls with flickering lights they scurried until finally arriving at a chipped, unmarked door. Bryony knocked quickly, a sharp pattern that Hermione's clever ears picked up easily. The obstacle creaked open sharply as a tall, grim looking old woman with slate-grey hair peered down her nose at them. She wore nice enough clothes for being a muggle, Hermione noticed carefully, wondering if she was perhaps a prostitute like her mother.

"You took your sweet time getting here girlie." She hissed at her mother, "I am not a patient woman. Patience is what gets the Aurors and CWO's knocking on your door."

"Do you want the rest of the money or not?" Bryony sneered, "I can find another muggleborn at the snap of my finger without any of this trouble for half the price."

"Trained with tarot cards and half-fabled whimsy from children's books." Sneered the crone. "This mudblood is the only safe option available to you. Unless you want your daughter to get a Smashing Hex to the face instead of a pretty little face?"

Though her mother still fumed with palpable annoyance, they slipped inside to a sterile little operating room of sorts. A silver bench which gleamed under the harsh light soon became Hermione's seat. Her mother carefully counted out the remnants of her savings to the muggleborn woman. "Its not just the smile and the hair," She hissed in a low tone, "I need to be sure-. Accidents draw-."

"-cost extra!" Hissed the muggleborn, snapping a careful, predatory look on Hermione's small form.

"I'm paying you enough. An act of charity," Bryony hissed, her voice suddenly rising, "She's a little girl. I need your help. Are you willing to tell me you would have survived to this point of your life if no one had ever helped you? In this awful nightmare of a world?"

With a tight jaw, the muggleborn finally nodded stiffly, "Fine. But after this we are done. You keep the chit's outbursts under control. Our kind don't need much more scrutiny than we've already got." With that she turned firmly around to stare at the child with scrutinizing eyes. From her pocket she withdrew a wand, and Hermione gasped slightly at the sight of it. Playing in the streets of east London she had seen wands before, but only when Aurors used them to beat up innocents and bully the weak. This one was shabby and worn, clearly scrounged from some illegal, secondhand source. "Open your mouth wide," She ordered firmly down at the girl.

Hermione only opened her mouth when her mother gestured that it was perfectly okay. "Reducio," The muggleborn breathed out coolly. The little girl only allowed her fluttering heart to experience proper joy when a mirror was held up by her mother's elegant hand. Finally she had what she had always so coveted, so envied; Her mother's smile. "This hair is going to be trickier," The woman snapped out in a harsh tenor, clearly aggrieved at facing such a challenge.

"Leave the curls," Bryony Granger smiled in response, setting the mirror aside, "She'll be a right stunner with these curls one day."

"I am going to have to vanish it entirely, evanesco!" Instantly Hermione shook with alarm as her frizzy mane disappeared into nothingness. Only moments passed before glossy curls began to erupt from the bald patch of skin she called a scalp. An itching rushed over the skin until finally abating. There were so many curls, nearly as uncontrollable as before, yet now they simply retained enough integrity to avoid any of the former frizz. "The last will be much more alarming," The muggleborn cracked her fingers, ignoring how Hermione preened beneath her long-promised birthday present. "The Trace could be thought of as an Auror's favorite spying tool in hunting mudbloods. She is not a threat yet, I suppose, if you have managed to cover up the outbursts so easily. Her control has kept her well hidden from the collection agencies. That is the only reason you have not been separated yet."

She dug through drawers until withdrawing a stoppered phial. With several lithe movements the woman expertly spread the liquid within into a circular shape on the floor. "I need her to sit within the circle for purposes of stability. This is dangerous work. The ritual to reverse the Trace is a very newly discovered trick from insurgent groups in the east, and I still need practice yet. The theory behind it utilizes Dark Magic. The effects will be quite noticeable." Just like that Hermione was prodded gently into the circle by her mother. Carefully the mudblood began to chant, flicking her wand in sharp patterns whilst removing various tools from her cupboards, boxes, and bags. Hermione jumped in shock when a golden aura of light circled around her body.

Disembodied hisses and snarls filled the air as the muggleborn manipulated magic with her wand in one hand and an odd-looking knife in the other. Then finally there was a loud roar that shook the building as the red circle surrounding Hermione erupted violently into flames. Her vision went black shortly after.

OOOO

After that night she changed immensely, and so did everything around her.

Children desperately wanted to play with her. Adults wanted to help her with all of her problems. The teachers at the local muggle education center were suddenly quite kind to their pretty, yet still rather swotty, pupil. Hermione realized what doors were opened to a girl with a pretty face, and what was expected of a pretty girl too. By the time she was seven the girl had grown sick of it all. More likely to sit in a hidden spot with a good book than to cater to the whims of sycophants. She had seen both sides of the spectrum. Those who detested an ugly girl who had been far too clever for her own good, and those who longed to suck a pretty girl dry whilst ignoring her intellectual potential.

When she was eight Hermione cut her glossy curls to the chin, like so many of the rebellious muggle girls of east London tended to those days. Wore only black. Listened to the contraband music known as punk. Her brilliant brain was like a sponge and she focused primarily on teaching herself the arts of math and science from forgotten textbooks. Such valuable fields had fallen out of favour in east Britain as simple slave labour became the only way to make a living wage. Still, the romantic elements of her soul that had not been crushed carried a passionate fire for poetry. Her clever brain picked apart the words of long dominated countries that could still be found in the penny markets and thrift book stores of east London.

On one morning, in 1988, Hermione dallied by the Thames River. Somewhat far from home, yet entirely too engrossed in her latest book to particularly care about the encroaching evening. Her mother had been forced to take a 'gentleman' caller, and the girl hardly wanted to listen as her poor mother was rammed into by a fat Pureblood from the Serpentine Palace. "You always got your nose in some book, aye girlie?" An Auror, who often patrolled by her little spot wondered on that particular day. She shivered uncontrollably as the deeply repressed memory rattled her to the bones. Hermione and her mother had never discussed what she was after that night. It would mean a lifetime of slavery if she did. "What're you reading today?"

"The Second Sex," She answered him obediently, catching a glimpse of his face in the process. Muggles were taught at a young age not to disobey, or ever question an Auror. He was tall and powerfully built, with golden hair and strong features on the right side of his face. A mask covered the left. It was obvious to Hermione that he had fought on the islands at the very least, perhaps even the continent. Never before had the child managed to catch such a clear glimpse beneath his hood.

For a moment the girl considered the circumstances very carefully. Her mother, hardly vocally supportive of governmental propaganda, never quite criticized Hermione's outspoken embrace of defiant counterculture. Still, even Bryony Granger was patriotic to some degree, aware of what was lurking outside of the Shield. Soldiers had no choice where they went, or who they served, but they did venture beyond the safety of this last bubble of safety in what had once been Europe to protect them. "Do you believe that women are sinful, shameful, sir? That we are the weaker sex, and thus we should be respectful of our position as servants to mankind?"

He chuckled as he neared, plucking the faded muggle book from her hands and giving it a swift glance. "I reckon you better not let Bellatrix Lestrange or Melinda Weasley hear you say that. Yes, Riddle lords over the east and Dumbledore over the west, yet some of their strongest supporters are women." He flashed her a grin which had doubtlessly been a devastating thing in his youth, before the horrors of war disfigured him so permanently.

She gave him an approving nod. "I believe that women have let men erase them from history. Write us out. Its time to stop it in its tracks. Time for us to stop the men from writing the history in the first place-!"

For the first time in her life, as Hermione made those proud, ferocious declarations, the Shield vanished from sight. Following their mutual decision after Dumbledore's momentary victory over Grindelwald, and shortly after American forces invaded France, Tom Riddle and Dumbledore joined forces to perform an incredible feat of magic. Together they erected a bubble over the entirety of the UK as chaos broke loose and the USSR clashed violently with the MACUSA. For decades it had stood strong, growing even more impervious to attack as Riddle came into his prime. Only with express permission from one of the two Grand Sorcerers could anyone exit or enter British, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish soil. At every moment of every day American and USSR forces on brooms launched attacks on the Shield. Entire legions of foreign military forces prepared to exploit any weakness and attack the land below. Her mother always reassured her, on nights when the booms and bangs echoed from many kilometers up in the sky, that the Shield would at least keep them safe.

Now Hermione rocketed to both feet, peering up into the rapidly descending evening as London burst into a fury of fire and death. The forces descended on brooms, mighty flames in the shapes of angry creatures bearing downwards. The Auror had her hand in his within moments. "Come with me, girlie," He started a firm pace, "And keep up. We need to find cover." The young girl had always wondered at the logic behind Britain's foes stationing so many troops outside a completely impregnable country. Now, as that one flimsy strength was ripped away she found herself utterly and completely exposed to the terrors of war. Lightning struck down from the skies above, yet rain did not accompany the homicidal spatters of electricity. The strange fire from before was already ravaging the shabby old muggle buildings of west London with gusto.

Despite the stitches in her side she still kept up at a mad, frantic pace with the Auror as they slipped deeper into the city. Rubble cracked, flashes of spellfire struck the earth about them both relentlessly. A woman and her little babe cowered in an alcove as Hermione and her unlikely protector passed them by. Only for a spell to strike that ripped them both into tattered shreds of bone and blood. "Avada Kedavra!" The Auror suddenly twisted around and with deadly precision managed to strike a flying assailant with his green spell. Hermione observed in horrified fascination as the wizard's broom halted suddenly and he was pitched forth. The force of his travel through the air ripped both of his boots off before he was slammed head first into the street and slid for a sickeningly long time.

The Auror continued to skillfully engage with the remaining aerial opponents. More and more now began to target him in response to the threat he clearly posed. It felt as though they were in a bubble, surrounded by pure energy. The sidewalk began to crack and the air burned as it struggled to enter her gasping lungs. In the blink of an eye a sudden gust of wind knocked her away from his side like a rag doll and out into the open. Most of the wizards did not seem to care to attack a child, though one certainly homed in on her. No longer was the Auror in a position to protect or save her, and amidst the burning rubble there was no one else around who could possibly help either.

A spell of red light was barely dodged as the child threw herself down an alleyway. This time something managed to snag her ankle, and Hermione screamed in rage and horror as she was dragged across the pavement by an invisible force. The soldier, once on a broom, now stood before her, plastered in battle armor and a shroud of strong magic. Wand levelled downwards at the space where she now rested before him. The Auror struggled towards her only managing to lose ground against his many enemies. No one was there to save her. Protect her. In the cruellest, most unforgivable manner Hermione Granger realized what the world truly held for muggles beyond the flimsy shelter of the Shield.

Thank goodness, it turned out, that she was in fact a witch.

Her brain stopped thinking. Her heart stopped racing. Her ragged pants for breath ceased rasping out of her throat.

She stood to both feet defiantly as instinct took a firm hold of her entire body. For the first time since her mother paid a fortune for the Trace to be removed from her person, Hermione Granger recollected the events of that night. Energy tingling from her head to her toes. Sparks flickering from her fingers. Light pulsing, and the boiling of her blood. The recollection of her magic fighting against the ancient bounds of the Trace had bestowed upon her a very strong sense of control. Now she simply allowed it all to take charge. This was a part of her, something ingrained in her genes. Like that old building from so long ago a large crack shredded up through the foundation of the ancient apartment complex behind her. The entire structure began to rumble as the muggleborn rose several feet into the air, eyes rolling into her head.

Hermione felt as the magic willed her mouth open, and with a long, unnaturally echoing sigh, a clear force ripped through her, surging out in a massive wave. Foreign soldiers, caught entirely unawares, were tossed from their brooms like ragdolls. Windows shattered. The earth trembled, and all of west London shook. Ever higher she rose, neck tilting upwards. Rain, like nothing Britain had seen before, and was that a sight to see, wrenched from the skies above. A tsunami of roaring water gushed violently down on the beastly, magical flames from before. Nearby the Thames River rushed upwards only to collapse back down in tandem as she finally lost consciousness.

OOOO

When Hermione awoke again, it had been under the shelter of rubble. The Auror kept watch over her under that masked face of his. "So. You are a witch, are you girlie? Any other secrets?"

She simply smiled bitterly at him, "Will you turn me over now? So that I can be sent to the labor camps and used up into a husk?"

"Never," He smiled sincerely, "You saved my life girlie. Somehow, miraculously, I nabbed the strongest young witch in all of Britain."

"Don't be ridiculous," Hermione snapped carefully, contemplating his words, "I have no training. Surely whatever I accidentally did you could replicate tenfold."

He peered at her in an evaluatory manner, "I most certainly could not. You single-handedly halted the invasion of west London with nothing more than your accidental magic. You have been asleep for nearly three days. They are looking for what caused the outburst. We need to be careful." The Auror paused, "Clever of your parents to pay to have the Trace severed. Grand Sorcerer Riddle certainly would have you in his clutches already if they hadn't. You are a witch of incredible promise. What I witnessed was the stuff of folklore and legends." The child was uncomfortable with this revelation. Tongue running over her teeth she tried to ignore the headache that throbbed in her temples. Peeking from beneath their makeshift hideaway Hermione noted that the Shield had risen back into its rightful place. Strong as ever. "Dumbledore is getting old." The man confided, "Grand Sorcerer Riddle is powerful, yet certainly not powerful enough to hold the Shield up on his own. Its only a matter of time before Dumbledore dies at some point, and chaos engulfs this country without any reprieve." The hint was firm despite being so subtle. She understood implicitly that Dumbledore's failing prowess meant nothing good for a child of her allegedly uncommon might.

They sat together for a long moment. Both very aware that, at best into her early adulthood, such safety and security would be a thing of the past. "Time to get you home to your parents girli-."

"My mother." She snapped suddenly, touchy as ever about her dead father, "And my name is Hermione. Hermione Granger. I can make it back to the red light district on my own."

"I'm hardly letting that happen, girlie," He smirked, standing up and slipping from the enclosure, "You're special, and the Rowles haven't had this good of a taste for power in a very long time." So it was that Hermione Granger and Cirrus Rowle made their way together through west London. Already muggle laborers had been thrown at the broken buildings, and muggleborn slaves, clasped in chains attached to Aurors, repaired what they could with their secondhand education and wands. "Your mother," He asked in an odd voice as they neared the destination, "Lives in this area?"

Despite Hermione's concern that the aforementioned woman had been crushed underneath rubble by a Blast Curse, struck by lightning, or consumed by what Rowle called Fiendfyre, she paused to answer him in a biting tone. "She is a prostitute. A muggle prostitute. Licensed, though I know from experience you Aurors don't care about those sorts of things when you brutalize and demean innocent people on the streets."

"You should be careful how you speak to Aurors." He cautioned in answer, "Not all Purebloods are as mentally stable or forgiving as I am."

"I'm a mudblood," For the first time in her life, in a guarded whisper of course, Hermione admitted it aloud, "We hardly last long in this world. I'll at least say whatever the fuck I want to say before they cut my tongue out."

"Why not keep your head down and escape to the east?" He wondered in an equally low tone. "You have much potential. If you went to Dumbledore he would surely make an exception for a witch with such raw power."

"I don't want to waste my life as some old man's tool," She responded morosely, "I would rather die than become a mudblooded pet to the man who let Tom Riddle take control of half this country."

"There are other options, harder ones, of course, but still attainable. Especially for a little one as clever as you." He left it at that, drawing at her still hopeful heart carefully. Her mind wondered carefully at what Rowle could possibly mean by such a thing. Their conversation did not continue however. Somehow every building in the square was demolished but for the ramshackle one that housed their apartment had been left relatively untouched. Standing in the doorway with other women, plastered in ash and blood was her mother, diligently stitching up a wound on another prostitute's shoulder.

"MUM!" Hermione cried, running eagerly towards the distraught woman. Before she knew it her mother had wrenched her into both arms for the tightest hug Hermione had ever been given. The prostitutes who had known her since she was a babe all cloistered around the two Granger's protectively, cooing her name rapturously and glaring distrustfully at the Auror in equal measure. "I thoug-thought I'd never see you again!" She sobbed in the woman's neck. Her mother simply cried with broken joy. Finally, the two women grew aware of their depressing surroundings once more.

While they had been preoccupied, Auror Rowle had taken it upon himself to whip his wand out. The prostitutes with injuries were healed to the best of his ability, and then he turned to the destruction at large. With simple flicks of his wrist entire buildings in the red light district were put back to order. Fires doused. Rubble cleared. Any buried survivors and corpses falling free from perfectly restructured buildings. "Wizards do not usually utilize their magic for the good of muggles. Especially not the muggles who live in the red light district," Her mother stared at him defiantly in his unobscured eye.

"You'll find I'm not your typical wizard, Missus Granger," He simply grinned, the handsome half of his face brightening up in a teasing way.

OOOO

In the weeks and months following that encounter, Auror Rowle became an important fixture in the Granger household. Her mother had begun to warm up to him after hearing how he protected Hermione from certain death. Neither of them told Bryony about Hermione's outburst though; They had silently agreed to never risk mentioning it aloud again. She began to invite him over for dinner every so often, and once the woman grew more certain of his character, Hermione was pushed into little classes with him. Her private muggle studies went somewhat to the wayside as the man pushed her intellectually. Every time he visited, quite frequently in fact, a new book would be tucked under his arm for her. Then, after he spent some time speaking with her mother, the two had grown increasingly close, Rowle sat with her and discussed what she had learned.

He had taken to slipping his heavy robe and mask off upon entering. Hermione hardly minded that he had awful burns on the left side of his golden head. If the way her mother fussed over him was any indication, she hardly perceived him as being any less handsome. She watched as he lit his pipe up with the tip of his wand. "So," He puffed out with a mischievous twinkle in his remaining eye, the patch stretching on his missing one, "What do you think of magic, girlie?"

Hermione paused cautiously, he often threw little challenges like this one her way. "I feel that 'magic' is as fundamental as it gets. Wizards have at their disposal a fifth study of science. Muggles have four, and are firmly under the thumb of your kind. Instead of pooling that knowledge together, making true sense of how the world functions, they simply run about causing more chaos and bloodshed." She smiled, eyes dark, "Wizardkind is lazy and bigoted. Whatever books you can give me are half-baked at best, and not to be depended on entirely. So many questions left unanswered for all of Grand Sorcerer Riddle's purported ambition." There was a pause, "For instance, many times over Waffling makes observations that directly have a relationship to Newton's Laws. Yet he makes no connection whatsoever."

"You are correct, at least I imagine you are on these Newt's Laws," Rowle grinned at her, his mutilated face quirking twistedly. "However, you are entirely wrong on one point." A puff of his enchanted pipe sent the smoky form of a dragon circling about his head. "You are a witch, and you possess at your fingertips all five branches of 'science.' You need only stoop to take that knowledge, Hermione Granger." His support changed her entire world, and Hermione wasted no time beginning to apply basic magic to simple principles of physics. Measuring for correlations, struggling to define vague variables, only to realize how little she knew of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.

She hardly should have been surprised over the passing months at how close her mother and Rowle grew to one another. Whispering when he visited, her mother sneaking out only to return on the arm of the Auror. Bryony stopped working too, though somehow they remained in a better financial situation than ever before. Hermione was intelligent enough to suspect what was going on, though respected both adults enough to say nothing. Besides, the household was happier with Cirrus Rowle in it. He'd pull her away from her books sometimes for fishing trips on the Irish coast, which often turned into sessions where he let her practice magic with his wand. Hermione wondered quite often if that was what it felt like to have a father. Her mother smiled all the time instead of periodically, and the mean men who had frequented their home before learned quickly to steer clear. That hardly stopped Hermione from worrying though, for it was common knowledge that Grand Sorcerer Riddle had outlawed any domestic relations between muggles and wizardkind in West Britain.

Cirrus seemed to be a man above the law, that kind of wizard possessing not just magic, but family as well. When her mother became pregnant perhaps that was why she did not visit a mudblood for a Vanishing. Instead they moved into a luxurious flat, as least as luxurious as muggles were allowed. A year later, when Hermione was nine, she woke in the middle of the night. The air crackled with ozone and the scent of rotten peaches mixed with rust. Slipping upwards, creeping through to the main hall she listened carefully.

"Please-no," Her mother was sobbing, "-irrus would not have w-. I loved him!" The thud that echoed was too sinister for comfort. Hermione peered hopelessly across the hall at her baby sister's room. She forced herself to separate emotion, her logical brain not willing to contemplate the likely horrible fate of her mother. In her upbringing she had encountered many orphans. The few that survived were the ones that embraced death, accepting its permanence in their lives. Stiffening, preparing to run into the nursery, snatch her sister up, and dart out the ancient fire escape, Hermione was frozen by the sudden eruption of voices.

"Find where the muggle cunt was keeping the babe." A rasping, masculine voice barked lowly. "Halfblood or not my aunt wishes no harm to come of a witch with Rowle blood."

"Yessir," A deep baritone piped up. Loud crashes began to rip through the flat as the men both tore it asunder hunting for her sister. She shook with indecision. Wondering whether it was best to risk her life when they could catch her at any moment, or allow the worst to happen. The idea of her baby sister being snatched was so repulsive, so terrible, that Hermione began to tiptoe from the shadows. Only they beat her to the punch. Two men slipped into her view under the moonlight. One a brawny Auror with unremarkable features. The other was a tall man in luxurious robes. Blunt features, a hard nose, and long, pale blonde hair knotted back in a neat braid. A sinister smile plastered on his face as he peered into the darkness that protected her from view.

Slowly he began to slip her way, and she pressed herself against the wall in pure terror. "Mr. Yaxley," The brawny Auror grunted carefully, unwittingly saving Hermione's life while pushing in the nursery door, "I found her."

"Excellent, Monroe," His voice whispered down as they slipped into the pink room where Sylvia Granger slept peacefully. Still Hermione could not move her frozen limbs. Not even scream as she listened to the creaking of intrusive footsteps in the most sacred of sanctuaries. Loud cracks signalled the apparition that she had experienced several times on Cirrus' arm.

Finally the nine-year-old breathed, gasping for air as she darted for the nursery door. The crib was empty, and one of the men had started a magical fire in the middle of the floor. Not quite as hungry as the Fiendfyre she somehow quelled a year prior, yet still rabid enough to be of concern. She shut the door quickly, hoping it might serve as some sort of temporary barrier. Racing down the steps the girl was shocked to find her mother still, somewhat, alive. Yaxley had done it. Hermione knew in her gut that the terrifying nightmare of a wizard had cut her mother from the pelvis up. Left her struggling to keep her organs from spilling out on the floor. "Mum," She sobbed, staring helplessly at the wound. Ignoring the smoke that began to swirl in the air.

"Her-Hermione Granger!" Her mother smiled with wet eyes, placing a bloody hand on her firstborn's face. "The love of my life. The light that carried me through darkness." Those eyes started to fill Hermione with a bright feeling, hope in the face of chaos. "I was wr-. S-." She struggled to gurgle through the bubbling of blood up her convulsing throat. "So wrong. You are special. Cirrus said so. Powerful. Find her. Find Sylvie. Promise me." Those amber eyes flashed dangerously, "Become powerful enough to keep her safe. Promise. Th-that you'll never settle. That you will take what is your's."

"I swear mum," Hermione sobbed brokenly, throwing herself on the woman's bloody body. "I promise I'll find her. I'll find Sylvie. Don't leave me. I can't do it alone." She hyperventilated with closed eyes as the woman's body jerked violently to the side. Intestines and guts trying to spill from the cursed wound that ran the length of her torso. Even with her lack of training the girl could feel the hatred, disgust, and fury that had fuelled the death spell. When Hermione looked up the eyes that she had always loved were closed.

Shut tightly forever.

Many would discuss what happened next for years to come. The Night of the Banshee, they called it, when half the windows in Harrow inexplicably exploded and an earthquake rattled the entire town. All Hermione Granger remembered was the agony of losing the center of her universe.

OOOO