I have been working on this since the summer and just in time for Halloween...
My take on the "Hermione goes back in time and meets Tom Riddle in his youth." No, not one of these fics involving a time-turner, as there are plenty of those. I think those are overused tbh.
Hermione gripped her wand tightly as she stared down Lord Voldemort. Those blood-red eyes of his shone with victory as Hagrid carries the limp body of one of her best friends. His arrogance coming off from him in waves, so strong that the blood reached to her face. It was so suffocating that she had to restrain herself from casting an Unforgivable at him. If she could cast the Cruciatus Curse at someone and enjoy it, it would be him.
Feeling the victory from his followers that were gathered behind him had made Hermione's intestines curdle in disgust as her jaw clenched. Besides her, Ron was seemed to share her thoughts, for he was fingering for his wand.
No, the fight was not over. Voldemort might have killed Harry, but that didn't mean that they would stop fighting. And Neville had just proved that. When he sliced off the head of Voldemort's snake with the sword of Gryffindor.
"Protego!"
Hermione deflects the curse that Bellatrix had aimed at Luna. Voldemort's right-hand witch curling her lips in a nasty smile as she sizes her up. Her dark eyes lit up like a predator having set its eyes on its prey.
"Oooh, so the Ickle little Mudblood thinks she can fight me," Bellatrix taunted, turning that bone-like wand over in her hands as she leers at her. "Me, who trained under the Dark Lord himself?"
Voldemort was a few feet away. Holding his own against Professor McGonagall. The latter being joined by Professor Slughorn and Shacklebolt. Everyone else fighting beside them.
He was wrong. The fight did not end after the death of her friend, whose body disappeared before the battle within the school grounds renewed itself. For here they were.
Hermione gripped her wand tightly as she thinks, No, I will fight you. "I will fight you," she spits out loud, seeing Bellatrix shaking her head. "And I believe that me being a Mudblood should make no difference whether I can take you on or not!"
"I think the three of us can take you on," Ginny asserted, stepping alongside her. Her hand was on Hermione's shoulder. Besides her, Luna takes on a dueling stance. Glaring at Bellatrix as she aims her wand at her.
Bellatrix cackled madly. "I like to see what the three of you have," she exclaimed. "What you have that can take me down."
She aims another curse that's blocked by Luna this time. Then it begins.
"Protego!"
"Asphixia!"
"Confrigo!
"Crucio!"
"Reducto!"
Every spell and curse that she had shot their way, they responded with their own defensive spells. It was like a dance, this duel. A dance of aiming spells and curses and ducking around the other to avoid them.
Hermione has to wipe the sweat off her brow for a few seconds and reacts just in time to block an Imperius Curse that Bellatrix aims at her.
Then, in that second, Bellatrix shows her rotted teeth as she grins at Ginny. Twirling that wand in her hand.
No, no. Hermione didn't like that smile. No, please, no.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Everything had seemed to be in slow motion. Hermione felt her eyes widen as the green light starts to shoot from Bellatrix's wand. Heart pounding in her chest, the blood pumping in all parts of her body, Hermione pushes Ginny out of the way.
Putting herself in the path of the Killing Curse. Allowing it to hit her in the chest instead of Ginny.
The last thing Hermione hears is Ron's agonized and pained, "Hermione!" before she falls to the ground.
Hermione had often heard what happens when someone dies. That one would see their whole life flash before their eyes before death enfolds them in their eternal embrace.
For Hermione Granger, that is not what happened.
The moment Bellatrix Lestrange aimed the Killing Curse at Ginny, Hermione could feel the blood pumping in her hands and throat as she jumped in front of her. The last thing Hermione saw was Bellatrix's maniacal grin as she heard Ron's agonized and pained scream of "Hermione!" before everything went black.
With a gasp, her eyes open. Her senses coming back to her slowly as the bright white light fades out. The moment she sees her surroundings, Hermione tilts her head and narrows her eyes. She was standing in the Great Hall. Intact, with all the tables in place and the windows not even shattered.
As if it wasn't destroyed by the battle waging within the school.
"Hello there."
She turns to the source of the strange voice, and Hermione has to take a step back. Clenching her hands into fists, swallowing, and trying so hard to breathe from that foreboding aura filling the room. Right at her line of sight stood a being that had to be around seven-foot, its face obscured by the hood around its face. Black plums of smoke gathering around its feet.
It had reminded Hermione of those specters of Death that she had seen in illustrations in some of the books she had read.
Perhaps he was Death himself, for why else would she see him after Bellatrix had struck her with the Killing Curse.
"Are you Death?" Hermione asks, warily taking a step forward.
There rang a dark, amused chuckle before Death answered, "It's only one of the names mortals give me. Some refer to me as the Grim Reaper, though Death is what I prefer."
She remembered from that reading of the Tale of the Three Brothers. Where Death appeared before the Three Brothers after they defied him by building that bridge. Only she had decided to embrace Death rather than defy it.
"I didn't defy you," Hermione asserted, standing her ground. "A friend of mine was going to be killed, so I took the Killing Curse in her place. I couldn't just stand there."
"Ah, yes, the noble and chivalrous of Gryffindors sacrificing themselves when it's not their time," Death chuckles in amusement. "Still, I have to maintain the balance and those that go before their time, well, I don't always send them to the afterlife."
"Then where do they go, then?" Hermione asks, throat dry.
"I send them to a different era in time," was his answer. "Some forward in time, and some in the past. On a different plane of time, of course. That requires some reset about what makes you."
"Reset?" Hermione felt the heat licking in her throat, as she did not like what that could possibly mean.
"You'll still be what others coin as the 'Brightest Witch of her Age,' even if it's at a different point in history. However, your memories and relationships shall have to be cleansed to not upset the stream of time. You'll make new relationships and learn new, different things. Even if they are not so pleasant."
Her memories. Her relationships. Hermione took deep breathes as the blood reaches her face and hands. Ron, Harry, Ginny, Luna, Neville, her mum, and dad. The knowledge that could be used to help people if they had it at the time.
No, this should not be it. It cannot. It will not.
She was not going to allow Death to take those things away from her.
"Like Hell," she spat.
Death holds up a hand and says, "Unfortunately, I don't extend the privilege of bargaining with me to everyone who meets me."
At his final word, her senses slowly leave her.
All sound fading into silence, with the room fading into black before her very eyes.
On the nineteenth of September 1926, in King George Hospital within London, Jonathan Granger and his wife Emmeline welcomed their first child. A girl who they name Hermione.
Yep, Hermione will not remember everything that she learned, and the relationships with Harry, Ron (poor guy), Ginny, and Luna will be erased. From an author's point of view, it allows me to have more fun this way (*cackles evilly*).