Disclaimer: All characters, spells, and items pertaining to Hogwarts or any places in Potterverse belong to J.K. Rowling. I am making no money off the writing of this fiction…so don't sue me…
A/N: Greetings, Terrans and otherwise. All right, I've got five months and about three days to finish this thing, so I'll be working my poor fingers into a frenzy typing this between play practice and band festivals and sundry other extracurricular things. Please understand that if I had it my way, I'd write it in a month and post it just that quickly…so I'm sorry. This work of fanfiction is my telling of the events in fifth year, especially involving Hermione Granger. It's mostly from Hermione's point of view as well (except for the prologue)…so, read on and enjoy.
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PROLOGUE
On August eighteenth, 1995, at approximately five thirty-six in the morning, Lord Voldemort paid a call to a house.
He wasn't exactly welcome, but that was mostly all right—he wasn't welcome anywhere, except at his followers' homes—and even then it was a bit questionable.
It might be odd—the Dark Lord himself getting so deeply involved in what was really a routine operation. However—the bumbling fools were probably all still asleep at this early hour. Besides, no one in his ranks of Death Eaters possessed the finesse, the powers, the grace, of He-who-must-not-be-named, as the wizards referred to him.
Dawn broke slowly as Voldemort prowled around the house—a tiny cottage in a wizarding neighborhood in Inverness, containing exactly one occupant. He stayed a good distance away, walking the edges of the pocket-sized lawn and the side gardens, cloaked in an only slightly illegal spell of invisibility, inaudibility, and several other useful attachments. But who cared about the "slightly illegal" portion of the sentence—he was Voldemort, he'd survived everything, he was immortal. Laws were for those bound to die.
Finally, he zeroed in on what he wanted—that single occupant, currently still peacefully asleep on her sweet little bed. A twenty-two-year-old female pureblood, with a job at the Ministry as one of Fudge's own clerks. Quite helpful…
Quite suddenly, the patch of air that appeared to be empty filled with the tall, thin form of the most feared wizard on the planet—cursing softly and dropping to the ground. Stupid spell! Unreliable as always…Nott would have to be reminded of the quality Lord Voldemort demanded of the spells he asked for…
He shook his head. The doddering fool could wait. Meanwhile, his quarry's alarm clock was set to go off in twenty-three minutes—he needed to be out of Inverness and far away by then. Voldemort disappeared on the magic of a spell he invented on the spot—invisibility and vaporization, not quite as handy as the thieves' trick Nott had taught him, but still useful for his purposes.
With the vaporization, he walked straight through the wall of the female's bedroom. She lay there smiling in her sleep…how sickening…well, in a few hours she'd never think of smiling again. Voldemort placed another charm on her, one to slow time for her only—so she'd sleep one minute for every ten in the real progression of time. Another handy little charm—his own invention, of course—the most brilliant of spells were always his brainchildren…
Smiling himself, mouth curling cynically at the corners, Voldemort Apparated to the Riddle House—it was as good a headquarters as any, empty and decidedly haunted, according to the villagers—and now locked up for good with the loss of Frank Bryce the year before…
The female came with him, still in her state of extended sleep. She collapsed to the floor, no longer smiling , but it would take her about a minute in real time to realize she'd fallen, and much longer—so much longer—for her to actually figure out what had happened. And that her life would never be the same.
At approximately five forty-two in the morning on August eighteenth, 1995, Isabelle Yvonne Stone's first life ended.