A/N: Just writing while I'm inspired, no promises about the timeline or length of this.

Disclaimer: I obviously own none of the rights to the Harry Potter universe or the cover image. The plot is mine but based on a song I heard recently.

"Stop Fang."

The beast moves quickly with a wiggle toward his mistress. His protective duty completed he rolls exposing his soft pink underbelly and substantial bollocks.

"He's really a big baby" she provides, rubbing thoroughly at the exposed belly. He shuffles back towards a cluster of blankets in the corner and settles with a 'whumpf' onto his throne gazing balefully back at me.

"So, tell me what's your story?"

She putters around the cabin putting away her market goods and sets a kettle over the simmering fire. She prods the fire back into life adding a couple smalls logs and begins gathering dried herbs from the rafters overhead, dropping a handful into the pot before replacing the lid. She glances back towards me invitingly when I fail to answer. I stay unmoving in the doorway.

"Orphaned." I reply stiffly. She may have saved my skin but I refuse to give more than necessary.

The corner of her mouth falls and the stilted conversation continues.

"Name?"

"Hermione."

.

.

"Age?"

"Ten and three quarters."

.

.

"Have you bled?"

"…"

"I'll take that as a no."

.

.

"Have you a place to stay?"

"…"

"Also a no."

.

.

"Well Hermione, I am getting older. A crone, if you will." She pauses with mirth in her eyes as she finally settles to look at me full on. "I have need of assistance and I get lonely now and again. Fang isn't the best conversationalist."

I let this settle in.

"If you have a trade then I would be happy to help continue that learning. If you take an interest in the healing arts I will also teach you how to live off the land."

This I can get behind. I am skin and bones from my travel. A knotted nest of curls and overgrown nails. My clothes alternate between hanging off my slim shoulders and gathering tightly in places where I have outgrown my britches. I had lost track of how long I've been on the road, stealing clothes from laundry lines and eating food from fields and orchards as I pass through. Winter is coming though, I had felt the stirrings and the icy hand of the mornings curling into my hiding places and chilling me to the core. The harvests had begun so food would soon be stored away and less plentiful for a passerby.

Life was a struggle.

I had learned this lesson after they had… I stop my mind from its train of thought. This is not the time to rehash my recent struggles. I am safe and warm. A bowl of hearty stew appears beneath my nose and a mug of some herbal concoction is placed on the table nearest me.

"And your life?" I ask, pulled from the fog of remembering.

"I lead a simple life, I tend to the villagers when they come calling and I keep my own company here in the forest. It is not a rich lifestyle – if that is what you seek then you are welcome here as long as you wish. But if wealth is your goal then it is best that you move on."

After my months skirting other towns, seclusion sounds idyllic.

"I can read, and write, and I'm a quick study." I supply when it looks like she has been pulled into her own thoughts.

Father and mother had been unique in their quest to educate me, the other villagers had not seen the merit in educating a child, never mind a girl. As if I needed more reason to feel apart from our village. My father had run the accounts for the nearby estate. As a learned man he had helped me to learn my numbers and letters. My mother and I would sit around the hearth practicing together. She would read books borrowed from the masters estate, her warm presence patiently stumbling through the tales that became the backbone of my childhood.

My mother had devoted her life to me, her only surviving child.

My father had resigned himself to a life alone when my mother had moved to town to care for an ailing aunt. The aunt had not lived long but my parents recognized one another as kindred spirits though their love had never burned bright. Their affection endured and I can never recall their being outright unhappy. My father was older and my mother had never married, happier to care for family and earn her keep as an occasional servant. They took solace in one another after several miscarriages and they had settled into what they assumed would be a childless life.

I am disrupted by Minerva continuing to speak.

"They scorn me as a witch because I live outside their expectations and yet they come to me in their direst need. People always fear the unknown when really they should embrace the unexpected. But I enjoy my life apart from them." Minerva continues, heedless of my internal musings.

Her similar train of thought seals the deal.

My heart throbs and for the first time in forever I feel a renewed sense of purpose.

"Teach me," I insist. There is nothing left for me from my past life.

I will stay.

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