Perceptual Distortions

A/N: A time-turner story with, hopefully, a difference. Hermione will be travelling into the past but this will not be a very sappy affair, thankfully. There may be a little romance but please don't hold me to that. It is semi-MWPP era. The other main character will be... Barty Crouch Jr. due to a lack of BCJ stories and the fact David Tennant is inspiring. It could get darker in later chapters (Actually, by could I mean it WILL get darker later) and may not be suitable for more... fluffy people. This is only the first chapter, the prologue of sorts, so please don't read it and run. Give me a chance to prove myself!

Hermione felt a certain inevitability when the first drops of rain fell from the heavy sky to land upon her black-clad figure. She felt, for once, glad of the Universe finally behaving in the way she wanted it to. Hermione couldn't remember feeling more awful, couldn't remember wanting to cry so much, than on the day of the funeral of her maternal grandmother, Katherine March, and the fact that the weather felt as miserable gave her a sense of satisfaction she couldn't have imagined feeling again.

It was comforting to know that other people felt as despondent as she did. The fact that the heavens opened and people, all over the country, would be muttering under their breaths gave her grandmother the perfect send off.

Katherine March was, by no means, born into the role of 'Granny Dearest'. Her hair, dyed an auburn, was well taken care of and free from the archetypal perm of the older generation; an unforgivable crime in the eyes of her peers. She refused to knit, drink enough tea to sink the Titanic and care about what that new family next door were up to. In short, Katherine March was, first and foremost, a person and she quite liked it that way.

Katherine was not so much a woman as a force of nature, as her legendary battle scars would tell. Her daughter, Jane March, was a respectable woman who married a respectable man producing a very respectable family. A fight, over an issue long forgotten, tore the Grandmother from the newly formed Grangers and it was only a cancer scare that really brought the family back together.

As a child, Hermione would wander the intimidating bookshelves containing the marvels of Literature from across the world. For all of Katherine's crotchetiness, the old woman would have sacrificed her life to protect her books. That is not to say she preferred them to her family, no, she loved her family with every fibre of her aching heat but, nevertheless, her books were incredibly important to the life of the true eccentric.

Katherine had tried to disguise her happiness whenever Hermione would pick a book at random and read it. Not only read it but understand it completely, a feat deemed impossible by many of her gossiping contemporaries whom only saw a book as a way of impressing inquiring guests. Not even a woman of Katherine's acting skills could hide the fact that she was suitably impressed with the prodigal talent of her granddaughter's.

And so their relationship grew, based on the fact that being a bookworm is hereditary. (It just skips generations.) Katherine stood as a second guiding figure, someone Hermione could run to if she was in trouble. Hermione did genuinely love the woman and it broke her heart to leave her for Hogwarts every year.

Katherine was supportive from the moment Hermione discovered her true role in life. David Granger, Hermione's father, suggested that this was because Katherine had the heart of a true poet and was taken into the world of magic by her imagination. David and Jane were scientists, cool, logical, rational. The world of magic only existed in seeing a drill create a perfectly symmetrical hole in the tooth of their patient. Their more capricious thoughts had been fully squashed by entering one of the most competitive fields of medicine and embarking on a course of two point four life.

Hermione loved her parents but she couldn't always agree with them. She knew they loved her but couldn't understand her life, couldn't understand her world. A world of danger, of dragons, of death, of magic, of elves, of war. It was foreign to them and so they tried their single best to support Hermione's decisions regarding her world. Katherine, however, asked Hermione to recount her tales during their summers together. She didn't want to hear half-censored attempts to hide it, she wanted to see the life Hermione had chosen.

Hermione let her read the books Hermione herself had poured over. The entire "Hogwarts" section of Hermione's mobile library became beloved friends to Katherine and took the place of honour; beside her bed side table. Old transfiguration books, from first to seventh, became necessary reading in order to fully understand the world of her granddaughter's. Stories of Harry, of Ron, of Hogwarts, became the common currency for a cup of tea during the summer. Hermione hadn't told anything this detailed to her parents but her grandmother insisted in hearing it all. She wanted to live this life, she wanted to see it. She wasn't a witch, by any stretch of the imagination, but Hermione would have guessed that Katherine knew more about the Wizarding World than many students at Hogwarts.

But now she was gone.

It was not the Death Eaters who got her, nor was it an escaped troll. A dragon did not come during the night and a hoard of Dementors did not swoop. Katherine March was bested by time and by age. Her heart could not handle living any longer and so it stopped beating. Her hands became weak and soon she was stuck in bed, unable to move. The true fate of all the great eccentrics is a normal death.

Hermione thought it was fitting that those figures from the Wizarding World came to send her Grandmother off. Harry Potter, saviour and hero, stood beside Rubeus Hagrid, half-giant and dragon enthusiast. Remus Lupin, a werewolf, dropped a single rose into the coffin in memory. Weasleys and other friends of Hermione's, dressed in full wizard gear, stood solemnly above the grave. Finally, Hermione thought sadly, Katherine March would finally get to see the world she had craved to see.

"Goodbye, Granny" Hermione murmured, throwing a magically purpled rose on top of the casket.

The people attending the funeral went back to the Granger household to try to embark on the very Irish-influenced after-funeral party. Katherine had insisted on it during her final hours, in order to honour her own heritage as a daughter from Ireland. Instead of being sad about the passing of another person, the Irish would, instead, celebrate their life with copious amounts of alcohol and storytelling. A seemingly more productive way of honouring the dead than focusing on the fact they have left.

Hermione sat between Ron and Harry, each of whom had placed a comforting hand inside her own two. Her mother was telling a story about growing up with Katherine's liberal, independent influence. Jane was smiling, tears running down her face, but a smile plastered across it, nevertheless. Hermione couldn't help smile at the story, her heart aching for the woman who had left.

Everyone, it seemed, had a story to tell about the cantankerous Mrs March. Even Harry and Ron volunteered one about meeting the woman for the very first time. Hermione couldn't bring herself to speak so she sat and smiled instead. She excused herself from the party and went upstairs.

The room where Katherine had spent her last few weeks still screamed of the woman herself. Books lay haphazardly across the bedroom floor; Hogwarts: The Reality lay beside Don Quixote. The Rise And Fall Of The Dark Arts was covered by a collection of Oscar Wilde poems and plays. Her life was contained in the pages of tomes.

The room smelt like her grandmother, very assertive and supportive. Hermione was completely at loss to understand how the room smelt of assertion and support but she knew that it did. The window was open and so the room was cold. An abandoned treasure chest of jewellery sat on a dresser. Hermione gave a weak smile at the jewellery box, shaped like a Pirate's treasure chest, and opened it.

There was nothing of value, nor many things of taste. Plastic jewellery, dyed lurid colours of red and blues, sat upon antique necklaces. Hermione's favourite piece, a silver locket with an engraving of a sand glass, was sitting out of the chest and on top of a note.

Dearest Hermione,

It's over. If you can read this now, then, I know that my life has finally come to a crashing end. This parchment is charmed, you see. I met a witch a long time ago and she gave me this necklace and this parchment to give to you whenever you were old enough to handle what lies ahead. I feel that, by age seventeen, you are more than capable of handling the future... or the past.

The locket is a time turner, Hermione, but I think you already knew that. It has been transfigured to look locket-esque but I can assure you that it still works. It has been preset and, I'm sorry to tell you than whenever this message vanishes, it will activate. It is necessary that you go back into the past and face your life.

I'm sorry for leaving you without telling you. I really do love you and I really do love my beautiful Jane. David is a brilliant man and I never stopped counting my lucky stars that Jane found him. I do love you all so much and I'm proud of you, ever so proud.

Accept my apologies and I want to wish you good luck.

Yours, in love, life and death,

Katherine March.

"No!"