Prologue
Hermione sat in her bed at Hogwarts surrounded by books and parchment, muttering under her breath agitatedly. The war had been won, at the cost of too many lives and now Hogwarts was rebuilt, and the students were back. Ron and Molly had been insisting now that the war was over it was time for Hermione to accept her place in the magical world and become his wife. Apparently, it didn't matter to either of them that she did not want to marry Ronald in the least, everyone knew they were mean to be together and it was time she accepted it. Bugger that. So instead of enjoying the warm fireplace in the common room and taking time to catch up with all her surviving classmates she was hiding in her room, immersing herself into figuring out the object she had received over the summer in a strange package from the deceased headmaster. The object was a strange cube, it looked old, the metal tarnished and bronzed, it twisted like a muggle rubix cube and had strange and complex runes that she didn't recognize in each little square. The package from Professor Dumbledore had only contained the strange cube and a cryptic note.
'Inside you can find,
Where your fate lies,
You are not from here,
But from the land of pointed ears
and when you land where the voices sing,
You must stop the man from attaining the ring.'
Bloody helpful that note was, she rolled her eyes and continued to write down the translations for all the runes she could find. She had been doing this since she received the object, and she was almost through every book she could locate on ancient, outdated runes. Flipping through the pages of the last book trying to find the last set of runes she needed to translate before doing the arithmancy to find out how to spin the interlocking blocks to see what was inside the blasted thing. When she flipped to last page with no success, she let out an irritated huff and considered throwing the ancient runes book across her dormitory out of frustration. Tugging on her hair Hermione seriously considered asking Harry if his master of death powers would allow him to bring back the old coot so she could murder him again, he had to know a puzzle like this would drive her overly inquisitive mind to the breaking point if she couldn't figure it out. Taking a deep breath and counting to ten she pulled out her parchment and regular old muggle pen, she didn't have to use the annoying quill for this since it wasn't schoolwork, she chewed on the cap and began the arithmancy. Maybe if she could figure out where everything else went, it would be obvious where the unknown runes were supposed to go.
Yawning Hermione cast a quick tempus charm before holstering her wand back to her wrist, after the war she refused to every be separated from it again. It was 2am but she was so close to figuring out the strange cube so she didn't put her pen down and kept writing instead of going to sleep like she should. Her eyes lit up as she wrote down the last piece of information and she let out a gleeful yip before quickly tying her hair up with the elastic around her wrist to keep her wild mane out of her face while she delicately twisted the interlocking blocks on the object. Getting to the last one she twisted it a little hesitantly, this is where her calculations might have been wrong due to the missing information. She was to invested to give up now and as she carefully put the last piece in its place she heard a click, the cube fell open and she peered inside.
