Author's Note: A bit of a deviation from my normal style. I had intended to write a Dark!Hermione fic, but it turns out I'm just as much a goody-two-shoes as our favorite bushy-haired Gryff. Grey!Hermione it is, then.

The Houses Competition (or THC) Practice Round

Story Type: Standard (up to 3,000 words)

House: Slytherin

Class: History of Magic

Theme: Finding out something new, going on an adventure to discover something. Discovering yourself.

Prompt: 'I've never been interested in being invisible and erased.'

Word Count: 2000

Disclaimers/triggers: Time Travel, Snamione, Murderous!Hermione

Beta Love: StoryPlease, DeepShadows


I've been told that I was, to put it mildly, a bit of a pushover in my youth. That I went along, broke the rules, lied and stole for the benefit of two boys who were more than happy to revel in the glory while I stood by, the unwavering support.

But perspective is a bit of a funny beast. Tilt your head to the side and a role as the amenable friend, the emotional support, the pillar of (mostly) silent strength starts to look a little different. From a new angle, support becomes enabling. Breaking the rules becomes a manipulative gambit. Standing by while others reap the rewards…well, that just becomes letting someone else occupy the limelight. Such choices can be strategic, a way to bide time.

So while Harry and Ron enjoyed their plaudits and strutted their way into the Aurory, I bided my time and refined my plans. I may have disappeared into semi-academic obscurity for a time, but I've never been interested in being invisible and erased. No, indeed.

Give me enough time and you'll see me shine, one way or the other.

The past decade of work–and it has been work– has been enlightening beyond the methodical pursuit of my plans that has occupied my every waking thought each day. I thought I knew myself. Thought I'd known myself since Minerva and the first Time-Turner and that damnedable hippogriff, but it turns out that experience merely opened the door to knowing.

No, the true exploration began the moment they allowed me in here to play in the sandbox of time. And oh, how that sand glistened in the low light of my laboratory.

How it glistens still in a pendant that swings from the concealed chatelaine at my waist.

It's a quiet place, the Department of Mysteries. Cowled Unspeakables speaking only in gesture and hushed tones. Perhaps that's why the bang of my arrival in 1980 left me stupefied for a full twenty minutes. Long enough to be found by a concerned passerby, as it would happen. And long enough for me to buy him a meal in thanks for his assistance.

It hadn't been an awkward dinner at all, despite his attempts to read my thoughts. The meal was simple and hearty, and the long pauses in our conversation were a balm to the aches from hurtling more than twenty years backward through time. And the look of surprise on his face when he not only failed to penetrate my shields, but when I found the chink in his; that was sweetness itself.

He asked to dine with me again and I agreed, though he was certainly not a part of the plan. I told him I'd meet him in the same place in a fortnight and he agreed. Plans could be adjusted, after all, and together we could satisfy both our ambitions.

It wasn't until the ninth such dinner and fully a month (by his reckoning) into a formal courtship that he noticed the changes to my appearance, the slight idiosyncracies of my speech. Little things at first, but the man had never been anyone's fool, even at twenty. It took only moments for him to make the connection once he had enough puzzle pieces.

"When are you from?" he asked, setting his fork down with a click.

I merely smiled beneath my lashes and cut a slice off my roast duck. "Does it matter?" I replied.

He frowned at the broccoli on his plate before resuming his own meal. "I begin to think it matters a great deal, but that my knowing the particulars matters rather less at this juncture."

"I do enjoy a clever man."

We ate in silence after that. Watching him chew his meal and digest the facts already rattling in his brain proved to be more than entertaining enough. Conversation was unnecessary. Or so I'd thought until–

"What is my part?" The question was firm, assured.

"What makes you think you have one?"

Now he smirked. "You keep returning. You've allowed me to court you. Therefore, I have a role."

I chuckled low under my breath and rose, allowing him to help me into my coat. We moved in sync out of the cafe, through the ginnel and onto the street before I spoke again. "Yes, Severus. You have a role. A rather prominent one, actually, and you've already begun to play it."

"Have I indeed? Intriguing. And you know my…allegances."

I nodded. "I do. All of them. Light, dark, and grey."

I heard the catch in his breath, but his stride didn't falter. "And with what shade do you paint, Hermione?"

I shrugged. "With so many shades to choose from, why would I limit myself?"

"When you dip your brush in so many shades, the canvas inevitably turns grey."

Clever, clever man. "And yet, a colourless photograph is composed of hundreds of shades of grey. Mine is a long game, Severus."

"How long?"

"Twenty years or more before we're done, most of it decidedly unpleasant," I admitted.

He grunted at that. "Unpleasant for whom, you or me?"

"Yes."


We formally bonded three meetings later in a small kirk on the bank of the River Garry. Severus regretted obliviating the presbyter, but the act itself would have to suffice as far as sentiment went. That and a page torn from the kirk register, carefully transfigured into a key on my chatelaine and marking the union of Severus and Hermione Snape on March 2nd, 1981.

After, I began to explain my plan in earnest and break every rule concerning time travel that was ever drilled into my head. We had to avoid paradox for the next twenty years, but there were enough grey areas for us to craft a future we could live with. My plans changed and changed again, thanks in large part to my subtle Syltherin's dissatisfaction with the original tenor of my plans. My initial plans were too brassy; murdering Dolores Umbridge in the Forbidden Forest, for example, would result in nothing more than a one way trip to Azkaban. Tracking and destroying Horcruxes, too, was a dangerous proposition that threatened to destroy our hard-won victory in the future. No, Severus argued. We must work at the fringes of fact, and to do so we would need to work together separately to craft puzzle pieces that would eventually form a picture.

I returned to my time and he to his, which scant visits as time and circumstance would allow. Twenty years for him passed in just one for me. While he cajoled two madmen bent on mutual destruction, I gathered the information and allies we'd need when the war finally ended. And I ensured our plans would be well underway by the time we arrived at Hogwarts for the final battle.

My promises of unpleasantness were far more accurate than either of us had hoped. The suffering, the torture; those we had expected. He'd had a little time to make a numbing potion; not enough to block the pain, but enough to allow him to survive the repeated Crucios and beatings with his sanity intact. We'd worked together to strengthen his Occlumency so that neither of his masters could see the truth behind his actions. No, the worst of it was the isolation, the bone deep ache of being out-of-time with one another. He watched me grow up, knowing exactly how ruthless I would need to become; his actions helped mould that woman, though neither of us understood it at the beginning.

Worst of all, Severus suffered in silence and I suffered with the knowledge of his suffering. I wanted my revenge on the perpetrators of the chaos that ruled Wizarding Britain. I wanted to humble the egos whose wills clattered and clanged through the proxies that they sent to war. I wanted them to suffer as we suffered.

If the war had taught me anything the first time around, it was how to be hard. As I tumbled through time over and over again, I learned to temper my hardness. I discovered a soft place to land that existed only with Severus, only when we'd set aside our plans and our manipulations and rested in each other's arms for the few hours we allowed ourselves before I went tumbling away again.


By 1997, my fondest wish was realised. In 1994, whilst my teenage self received her first kiss beneath the Quidditch bleachers, I travelled back in time to the Gaunt house and cursed Salazar Slytherin's ring, setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to Albus-bloody-Dumbledore tumbling from the Astronomy tower. I suppose you could say both Severus and I had a hand in killing the man.

He wasn't the only one. Severus' associations managed to filch a single hair from Corban Yaxley's head. Shortly after Harry, Ron, and my teenage self fled the Ministry, I turned my wand on Dolores Umbridge before dashing to the atrium and bombarding the statue of Muggleborns in their "rightful" place. Riddle executed Yaxley the next week. Such a tragedy.

as, it was Harry who killed Riddle. In the Great Hall. With the Elder Wand. As was prophesied and very, very well documented. No shades of grey to manipulate there. And as my exhausted younger counterpart watched the last of the madmen fall, I healed my husband's wounds and apparted him to a safehouse near the River Garry. There we rested, restoring ourselves and preparing for what came next.

On March 2nd, 2001, we finally brought our vision of the new world into the light of day, where the stars of wars glowed dimly against the glare of our idealism.


"You make a wonderful Minister for Magic."

"I'm as surprised as you are, honestly. If I recall, you'd rather planned to fill the position yourself."

I shrug, sneaking another quick look at my husband in the mirror. "I may have, once. But there's one lesson I learned from watching Dumbledore: Public power isn't meant for everyone. Some of us are more suited to working in the background. That way no one pays attention to our methods."

He snorts. "Thank you, love. I do believe you just likened me to a magician's assistant."

"Hardly. You're the magician, distracting the audience with those lovely hands of yours while I do the hard work of pulling the levers and squeezing into tight spaces. Or, in this case, applying pressure to the right people. Best our constituents don't know that your wife does all your dirty work."

He's sober when he looks at me this time. "It's not all dirty work. You may paint in shades of grey, but there's always enough white mixed in your palette to keep the art from turning dark."

"Sweet man," I reply with a shake of my head. "I think I'm more content to be the power behind the throne. By the way, the draft of the Reconstruction Bill will be finished by week's end." I move to the mirror to adjust my robes. My revised plans had not accounted for just how much attention the press would pay to my attire; it's not the spotlight I initially envisioned when I ventured down this path all those months ago.

He nods. "The Chief of the Wizengamot has promised it'll be first on the docket in the new session, but you still have a number of very vocal opponents who will likely take considerable convincing."

I meet his eyes and pat the spot on my hip where the concealed chatelaine resides. "Not to worry. We have all the time in the world to finish our masterpiece."