It was amazing what could happen in the blink of an eye. After the Light lost their hope now that Harry Potter was dead - Hermione found it so pathetic that everyone believed the world was coming to an end with the death of the Boy Who Lived; didn't they realise her father was going to build them a grand utopia, for all of them without the disease that was the muggle world destroying their culture even more? - Voldemort and his Inner Circle spent much of the day and night working on reorganising the staff at Hogwarts while Voldemort prepared to conquer the Ministry and bring it to heel.

With Potter and Dumbledore dead, and the Light's hope fizzling out because of their stupid dependency on heroics, nobody predicted there would be any problems.

It was well known the Ministry of Magic was corrupt and incompetent, thanks to the way Lucius Malfoy and others like him had been chipping steadily away at the Ministry although Malfoy had only needed to do the bear minimum; the organisation had been a cesspit of corruption for centuries, and right now Lucius and three other senior members of the Inner Circle had taken temporary command, but for now she and her father and Draco and Bellatrix were heading back to their home base to celebrate, but just as soon as they arrived, they found themselves staring at a tall blonde girl wearing a Gryffindor uniform. She was smirking at them maliciously, her eyes, her startlingly familiar emerald green eyes so terrifyingly familiar glinting with anticipation. In her hand was a bottle of brandy that Hermione knew was kept in her father's study; from the level that was left, the girl had been drinking from it, and yet she was just about sober.

Hermione barely had a moment to study her face, study her ill-fitting uniform, and she couldn't place her. Her father had taught her the mind arts, combined with her photographic memory, she had a good eye for faces and she did not remember seeing this girl ever at Hogwarts. Besides how would she be here?

"Who are you?" Hermione demanded.

The girl smiled at her before she turned to face Voldemort, who just stood there, staring calculatingly at the strange girl while the girl just stood by unconcernedly. "Voldemort, of course, I knew you would succeed if you stopped playing games and focused on your goals," she said with a warm smile, although it was marred by the ice in her green eyes.

Startlingly familiar green eyes…

"Who are you?" Bellatrix demanded.

"Sorry?" The girl blinked in surprise before she laughed. "Oh, you mean my new appearance. Just call me…., actually what should I call myself now? Rose? Jasmine? Holly? Hanna? Harley? Yeah, Harley. Yeah, that's my name now, Harley. I saw the way you killed Dumbledore. Thank you."

"Thank you?" It was a credit to his curiosity that Voldemort hadn't yet tried to kill this strange girl. "What for? I always assumed Gryffindors, well some of them, idolised the old fool."

"Idolise him?" The girl repeated. "Nah. His key strategic weakness is that he underestimated everyone and believed too much in his schemes for the Greater Good. Besides, he made my life difficult by living, so I'm grateful you killed him and saved me the trouble. Say something nice."

"What?" Draco asked.

"Say something nice," the girl's friendly demeanour just vanished, and she gazed at them coldly. "I've had a horrible week, thanks to you, and I want all of you to say something nice."

"What do you mean, you've had a horrible few days?" Hermione said angrily, aggravated by this stranger.

Harley sneered back at her and she took a generous swig from the decanter, throwing her head back before she let out a loud, obnoxious gulp. Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione noticed that her father was getting more and more angry himself.

"Oh, okay then, Little Miss Know it all, slag, slut - actually I can hardly talk there," Harley said, "I'm only trying to celebrate something I've planned for a long time."

"A long time?"

"Oh, come on, Hermione, Voldemort, do you really think you're the first person to look for immortality? I've been looking for it a long time, and once I was someone else, and now I'm someone else. I've even chosen a new name. Well," the girl chuckled as if she was sharing a joke, "I couldn't very well keep calling myself Harry Potter, now could I?"

"Potter?" Draco repeated. "Potter's dead!"

"My original body, yes," Harley said, "but that's the beauty of essence transfer. You really should have done more research, Voldemort. This is doing wonders."

"Essence transfer, but-," Suddenly Voldemort gasped. He grasped his head, moaning in pain.

Bellatrix started panting hard, and Hermione felt a terrific pain that left her breathless, but the pain continued to spread all over her baby. No, her baby. All the time Potter - Harley - looked down at them as they collapsed to the ground, whimpering in agony.

"You recognise what essence transfer is, don't you?" Harley's question was rhetorical she kept her tone purely conversational. "The transfer of a magical soul to a whole new body. Used as a simple method of immortality, which didn't resort to any weird new ritual, or risky spell or potion. Just moving the soul to a new body, as smooth as walking from one room to the next. I don't know how you missed it, but I didn't.

"Like you, I wanted to live longer," Harley explained solemnly while the Death eaters and their leader writhed around, with Voldemort experiencing the worst of the effects. "I nearly died several times as a child, and I wanted to live. You know it too, don't you, that survival is a choice. That's why you created your Horcruxes. Why, you mark your followers with a variation of the Horcrux ritual, and join their magic to your own. Me, I felt that exchanging my soul and placing it in a new body was much nicer, more efficient, and less complicated. It would also help me escape from the physical deficiencies of my original. And now, my original body has been destroyed. I am grateful."

"Now you know how it feels to be in agony, Riddles, Malfoy, and LeStrange. Exactly how I felt when you captured me, starved me, and forced me to suffer through dehydration," Harley said coldly as she chugged down some of the brandy. "You're looking much like a melted snowman, Voldemort. Not so high and mighty now, are you, but that's what happened when you make Horcruxes. Get a clue, they don't work, and since you marked your followers with a variation of the Horcrux ritual, their magic is being drained as well. I think you'll be dead soon," Harley added as if she were commenting on the weather.

Voldemort wheezed as he collapsed, his body transforming into a pile of robes and dust.

"Father!" Hermione screamed in anguish.

"Master!" Bellatrix shrieked.

"Oh shut up, the lot of you!" Harley said coldly, as she walked away, putting the bottle down on a small side table, and picked up an ornate dagger which was goblin-made. She drew the blade out and walked towards the Death Eaters. They quickly realised what she had in mind, but they were so weakened by now with so much of their magic gone, she had no problems beyond a few frustrating struggles that she killed Draco, unaffected by the blond boy's weak yell of pain, and Hermione's cries.

Bellatrix was the more difficult one, unlike most Death Eaters she had understood the value and need for physical exercise and was one of the reasons she had gotten out of Azkaban and adapted quickly to being out, but while her physical strength let her struggle for a moment, her lack of magic was becoming an increasing handicap for the former insane Death Eater. Finally, snarling with irritation, Harley drove the dagger into her eye, making her scream in pain before Harley got around her, and stabbed Bellatrix repeatedly.

Hermione gasped and whimpered in panic, and she tried to crawl away feebly. But she was stopped. "Now, now, 'Mione," Harley mocked her with the nickname she'd had at Hogwarts. "It's a shame you are dying now. I wish we could've had some fun."

"Fun?" Hermione's voice sounded like her throat had been filled with wet gravel.

"Sex," Harley smirked. "But…sadly I don't think you'd appreciate it in your last moments."

Despite being chilled and surprised by Harley's brazen desire, Hermione sighed. "Why don't you just kill me? You must want to."

"Oh, I'm tempted, believe me."

Hermione had enough of her analytical intellect to pick up on things. "You knew I was betraying you, didn't you? You wouldn't have done all this if you hadn't."

"You can thank the Room of Requirement. I found out it is extra-dimensional. It can allow time travel, but limited. You can go back a whole year, and live out the same year somewhere else, or you can drop information with your younger self."

Hermione gasped as she realised what Potter had done. "You got something, didn't you, a note telling you of what was going to happen? You knew I would betray you?"

"Not quite, Hermione. When I was 7, I learnt about the magical world. Dumbledore had gone out of his way to keep its existence from me, but there were signs; I lost count of the number of times I did accidental magic, and I used comics and TV shows and movies - whenever I could find them - and I gained a basic skill in wandless magic. Dumbledore planted a squib near where I…lived," Harley's sniff made it clear what she thought about that. "Finding some magical paraphernalia wasn't hard, and I realised I couldn't leave my muggle relatives. When I got to Hogwarts, I used the information I got and found the Room of Requirement, from there I discovered essence transfer…and more."

"More?" Hermione choked weakly. She was too dizzy, unable to focus; Harley's voice was all she could really focus on, but even then she was becoming weak.

"I found out I preferred being female to male," Harley replied. "I also got hold of my family tree. Isn't it interesting, that I'm related to Salazar Slytherin himself? And so are you. It wasn't long before I found out you were Voldemort's daughter."

"What?" Hermione whispered, if she had been in a better frame of mind, she would have hit herself for her lack of realisation. It was so obvious. "How? How can you be descended from Slytherin?!"

"Yeah. I learnt I had family, in America as well as here. I used the Room of Requirement as a time machine, and I gave myself notes about what to expect, and I watched you and noticed you were watching me. Over the years, my research, my transformations, and my time travelling told me not to trust you. I dated Weasley in the hopes of lulling you into a sense of security that wasn't there."

"So…you knew what I was going to do?" Hermione gasped.

"I did. And I saw an advantage. Trust me, I didn't care what happened to my original body, it had had its time, and I was prepared for the transfer to a brand new body," Harley said.

Harley went silent and Hermione cursed her under her breath when she realised Harley was just waiting for her to die. She realised the girl she had been told to befriend by her father was just as merciless as her father was.

-8-

Harley watched Hermione Riddle die without any regrets, any more than she regretted seeing the thing she was carrying died. Actually, that was cruel, too cruel for words. The child was innocent; it wasn't at fault for the crimes of its parents.

When she had received the notes from the future, warning her of the dangers ahead, her first incarnation had spent days going over the plans from the information at hand. She had long since discouraged herself from dating Ginny Weasley, knowing the bimbo was going to use love potions, but she had no choice before Riddle got her claws into her being. The hard part was making sure she was prepared for essence transfer, and now she had a fresh new body again while her original had died.

Harley made sure Hermione died, and slit her throat and stabbed her in the stomach for safekeeping, and she went on her way to explore the manor. She found many rooms, and soon she found a room that she knew only too well belonged to Hermione; there was a collection of books lining two walls, and she found pictures of herself and Malfoy.

She was about to leave when she caught sight of herself in the Gryffindor uniform. She went to Hermione's wardrobe took out some robes, and found muggle clothes. They didn't look like they'd fit, but they were better than the clothes she was wearing now. She had to leave the house and get to Gringotts, and from there…freedom.