Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. All familiar characters and places belong to my queen JK Rowling. My OC is mine.

Summary: Hermione awakes after the final battle to find herself holed up in the home of the Blacks with teenagers Bellatrix, Narcissa, Andromeda, and their parents. Further, they're telling her she isn't 18-year-old Hermione Granger at all, but 11-year-old Pandora Black! Follow Hermione/Pandora as she tries to figure out exactly who she is and how to avoid allowing a not-so-nose-less Dark Lord know more than he should. It's time travel- or is it?


Some say that in the wake of death, there is silence. Hermione couldn't attest to that as she had never died, and anyway, if, in the wake of death, there was silence, how was it that no one had ever written that fact down. One could argue that it was because no one had ever died and lived to tell the tale, but, in Hermione's opinion, that was just lazy research, for she knew at least six people who had died and were roaming the halls of her school blabbering to their dead hearts' content. Had no one asked them what it was like to kick the metaphorical bucket (a phrase she had adopted from her very elderly uncle who had decided that adding the word 'metaphorical' would ease a tremendous amount of confusion to which she had been confused as of where the confusion had arisen in the first place)?

What Hermione could attest to was that during death, there was no silence. There was only jumbled noise that consisted of shrieks and catcalls- falling walls and the crunch of bone. Images of blood darkening fiery red hair and the pale face of her best friend clutched to the chest of a shuddering half-giant danced about her vision. Then came the cry of jubilation, the shriek of relief. She knew rage, despair, giddiness, and the taste of copper on her tongue. The sizzle of magic was in the air and spells whistled by her head, all a symphony of deadly colors. There was a red and green explosion, accompanied by the thud of a body against the cobblestone.

Then pain- a twisting behind her eyes that spoke of something being severed, something vital. There was the screaming of her name- "Hermione!"- and all was dark.


Thus the contemplation of after death. For, undoubtedly, the journey to the after-life did not begin with her eyes snapping open to be greeted by the large pointed nose of a pushy house-elf hovering over her face. Nor did she think it consisted of the poor creature reaching out with bandaged fingers to repeatedly shove frantically at the mattress beneath her to bounce her awake.

"Up," it whisper-shrieked, yanking its hands back and tugging harshly at its floppy bat-wing-like ears, its large tennis-ball-sized eyes (an otherworldly shade of crystal blue) wide with fear. The elf was wearing a drab towel (that might have once been white) tied over the swell of one bony shoulder and a fraying lattice crocheted doily nestled over where Hermione assumed its sutura coronalis was located. "Up! Missy must get up, or Mistress will be angry! Up, Up, Nimmy says!" Hermione could not contemplate the elf a moment longer before the creature was throwing back the heavy emerald duvet that, Hermione noticed in a glance downward, was accentuated by golden spirals curling around the profiles of expressly rabid dogs.

Despite Nimmy's insistence that Hermione rose at this particular moment with a certain amount of haste, the creature did nothing physically to move her along. There was no pulling of the hand or ankle, no tugging of the arm. Instead, the magical being began to pace by the massive dark wood bed, wearing the plush green carpet thin in its worrying and shooting the heavy door looks of trepidation. Hermione fancied herself an intellectual, and all brains worth their salt would say that if one found themselves waking in a strange room, in a strange bed, with a peculiar house-elf, the more prudent course of action was to get some much-needed answers.

"Where am I?" she asked. Or rather, she thought she did. Or she was supposed to have, but the voice that left her was not her own. It came out high- so very high that she briefly thought she had been slipped a Volubilis potion brewed especially to give the drinker the voice of a prepubescent girl. She smacked her lips briefly, searching for the taste of honey or mint that might hint if she had been given anything of the kind in her time spent unconscious, but she only tasted the familiar staleness of sleep. Nimmy jerked to a stop in surprise, narrowing her eyes with a mixture of concern and suspicion.

"Nimmy does not think that is very funny, Missy," the elf squeaked, indicating to Hermione that this elf was the butt of far too many jokes and that she had to be young. After all, older house-elves tended to croak. A brief picture of Kreacher arose in Hermione's mind's eye. As it was, the idea that the elf seemed to think Hermione was pulling its thin little leg was cause for worry.

"I'm not joking," Hermione insisted, "Have we won? Where's Harry and Ron?" She was beginning to panic. Which, of course, was another valid reaction any intellectual would have. She cast her eyes about the room, taking in the lavish quarters with unease. It was too dark, rigid, and reminded her of the severity of Grimmauld Place, despite a lack of shabbiness resulting from neglect. The elf did not allow Hermione long to take in the room. She snapped her bony fingers and then shuddered away from Hermione with unbridled horror before disappearing with a crack.

"That can't be good," she muttered to herself as she threw her legs over the side of the bed. A chill of fear ran down her spine when she noticed that her feet were not her feet. They were smaller and lacked the calloused, cracked quality that she had gained on the run with Ron and Harry. She had not realized how essential lotions were until blood stained her socks. Hermione began tracing her hands atop a body that was definitely prepubescent and trying to determine how that was possible (a de-aging potion? an unknown spell gone awry?) when the door behind her was thrown open with a loud bang. Startled, Hermione whirled about-face and gasped. Huffing in the doorway, seeming to swell and dominate the space, stood Bellatrix Lestrange. Only, not really. She was young- no older than seventeen- her hair, while still running about her face in thick black ringlets, was less brittle and her face lacked the creases of tribulation. Her teeth, bared as she gasped for breath like she had been running, were no longer stained a dingy yellow but gleamed a pearly white, rivaling Gilderoy Lockhart's "Best Smile Award". However, Bellatrix's eyes were just as dark and still glinted fanatically, reminding Hermione of another time she met that gaze in a more horizontal position. Reflexively, Hermione reeled back, her hand coming up to cup her forearm protectively.

"Y-you're dead," Hermione gulped to the older woman. "I watched you die. Molly killed you." Bellatrix's gaze twisted into an alien expression Hermione couldn't quite name and glanced behind her to the familiar house-elf that stood huddling at the back of her skirts. The creature nodded frantically to her Mistress as though answering a silent query. Bellatrix turned back to Hermione and then slowly stepped into the room, inching toward her as though approaching a skittish animal.

"Poppet," she spoke slowly, carefully, and Hermione stumbled until her shoulders pressed into the cold windowpane behind her. Bellatrix's voice was high and soft, vibrating with an undertone of anxiety that she tried to mask with the false soprano often adopted when babbling to particularly small children. "Come here, now. Come here, Love." She held her hand, no longer gnarled from her years in Azkaban, aloft and beckoned to Hermione, who had begun glancing rapidly about the room trying to locate her wand. Being unable to find it, Bellatrix's continuous shuffle towards her threw Hermione into a panic. Seeing no other option, Hermione hurled herself at the other girl, her fingers hooked like talons, but it seemed Bellatrix had expected this. She caught Hermione about the waist and held on tight, even as she bit, scratched, and howled like a wild cat.

"Get Mother, you insufferable little beast," Bellatrix shrieked over her shoulder, presumably to Nimmy. Still, Hermione couldn't worry about that because Bellatrix was hauling her bodily toward the bed as though she weighed nothing at all. When she hit the downy fluff of the mattress, Bellatrix laid her body over Hermione's thrashing form, wrapping her elegant fingers about the thin bones of Hermione's wrist and pressing her legs into Hermione's thrashing lower limbs.

"Help me," Hermione screeched, bucking her hips in an attempt to dislodge the weight atop her. "Someone help me, please!" All the while, Bellatrix was shushing her, soothing her until Hermione's screams dissolved into wordless tears. When her body grew weary, and she could do nothing but await whatever fate lay in store at the hands of the madwoman, Bellatrix slowly ran her fingers through Hermione's hair, her fingertips sliding softly over her scalp.

"Shush now, Poppet," she whispered. "Mummy's coming and we're going to get you all better. You'll see." It wasn't long until Hermione succumbed to the shock of fear or exhaustion, or perhaps just plain incredulity, and her eyelids slid shut, blocking out the sight of those dark eyes. She floated in a hazy in-between state, happy for the semi-escape even as she waited for the sickening caress of "Crucio" or "Avada Kadavra".


"She's been bad, but I don't think she's ever been this bad before, Mother." Bellatrix's voice was soft and far away. "She attacked me like... like she didn't know me, as if I frightened her."

"What else." The voice was sharp, impatient in her concern and presented itself in a way that left no room for nonsense.

"She said I was dead," Bellatrix went on, her tone colored with confusion. "Said a 'Molly' did it. I don't know any Molly, save the Prewett chit-" There was a sharp smacking sound before Bellatrix spoke again. "-girl. The Prewett girl."

"A bad dream, perhaps?" A new voice. Male, aristocratic- pompous.

"I don't think so, Father," Bellatrix murmured. "Nimmy said her magic was all jumbled again, twisted up in some places and torn apart in others. Further, she asked where she was. Like she didn't know, like she had been… off anew."

"Her situation, then," the male mused. "Naturally, he'll want to know, will want to question her." There was a noise of discontent.

"Look at her, Cygnus," the women spoke piercingly, impatiently. "She's not been in this state for quite some time- not since the mudblood. When he last questioned her, she was bedridden for nearly six months. The chances of her coming out even remotely intact are low."

"We don't have much of a choice, Druella," the man snapped back. "He'll want to know and, if I keep it from him, we all will pay for it. Besides, it's for the cause. Once she's in her right mind again, she'll be pleased to know she was of such service."

"And how long until she's in her right mind exactly?" Druella hissed, fighting and failing to keep her voice low. "Last time, she was screaming for a baby she didn't have for weeks. No dinner parties, no balls- she even missed Narcissa's departure from the platform. She has Hogwarts coming up in a month and I'll not have the women at the foundation wondering why she hasn't gone." Druella huffed. " Imagine the embarrassment. They'll ask after her health and then spread nasty little rumors that we're hiding her away because she's a Squib." The last word was said with significant distaste- like it was a foul curse word.

Hermione tried to stay still, but the overwhelming pressure of her bladder was screaming for her attention and she couldn't stop shifting to alleviate it. Silence permeated the room and, knowing she was had, she groaned, not entirely feigning the discomfort. She blinked open her eyes and raked her gaze over the three people.

Druella Black was a strict-looking woman with pale hair pulled into a chignon that reminded Hermione partly of Professor McGonagall's severe bun. Her face, while sharp and pointed, bringing Draco Malfoy to mind, was beautiful. Her lithe body (impressive when one knew she had birthed four daughters) was wrapped in cerulean robes that flowed about her legs like the petals of a not-yet-bloomed flower. All in all, she was the spitting image of Narcissa Malfoy- or more accurately, Narcissa was the spitting image of her mother.

In contrast, Cygnus Black was a dark horse. He had perfectly coiffed onyx hair that matched his dense brows, which sat over hard, heavy-lidded eyes. He appeared precisely how Hermione had imagined a villainous duke would look, complete with caped robes and a scabbard attached to his hips. Hermione barely had time to wonder why he was carrying around a sheathed dagger when he yanked on it, pulling out a black wand from its depths, the handle looking precisely like that of a gilded knife. Had she not been so frightened (and most decidedly confused), she would have rolled her eyes at the ostentatiousness of it. When he waved his wand in a complicated movement, she cringed back against the headboard and whimpered.

With a pulling feeling, as though he coaxed something fathomless out of her, reddish-orange runes glowed across her body. They swirled from head to foot so fast, Hermione didn't have a chance to read them. Had this been purely academic, had she not been fighting vomiting all down her front, she would have probably been impressed at Cygnus' rapidly dashing eyes as he made out the characters curling about her like a strangling snake. With a dismissive flick, the runes dissolved, sinking into her skin with a warmth that made her shudder to her bones.

"Bella is right," he said, frowning thoughtfully. "Her magic is confused. It's doing as it did the time before, wrapping around her mind and coating it with a sort of sticky protection. Her core remains the same as far as I can tell, however. Perhaps He can offer us a better answer, maybe even undo it once He has what he needs." As Cygnus spoke, Bellatrix, her left cheek a startling pink that could have only come from a good smack across the face, crawled onto the bed; her dark robes trailed after her like a mock wedding train. She reached out, ignoring the way Hermione flinched, and clutched her quivering digits with icy fingers.

"See there, Pandora," she whispered sweetly, so similar to the way that her older counterpart had whispered gag-inducing filth into Hermione's ear as she straddled her torso those few short weeks ago. "The Dark Lord will fix you; he'll set you to rights easy as pie."

Hermione began to cry.


AN:

Should I say that I'm back? Am I allowed to do that, or are you all too angry at me? Listen, plot-bunnies are fickle creatures and they come and go as they please. I'll just tell you I love you. That should be enough for you heathens.

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Scabbard: a sheath for a blade or dagger, usually metal or leather.

Sutura Coronalis: the suture between the parietal and frontal bones of the skull.