I need to sort these.

Winning harry ✓

Saving pandora. ✓

Saving myself from persecution.

Finding out the facts.

Saving harry.

Saving my parents.

Befriending Luna ✓

Befriending Neville, and anyone else who seemed nice in the books.

Keeping Harry and Ron apart.

Keeping Harry from getting to know Ginny or Cho too closely.

Learning how to excel in school like Bill did (not how I did in the books.)

Check on other schools.

Check on goblins.

Check on Potters.

Free Sirius black.

Get peter Pettigrew captured.

Learn about the curio shop. ✓

Teach Harry about the curio shop if possible. ✓

But not too much

See if two of my teachers know magic.

Continue making friends in regular school while I still can. Writing them will give me Secrecy practice


Immediate goals:

Get Harry to meet the Lovegoods. ✓

Get Harry as many books as he needs to catch up with both

Normal school work thanks to Dursleys.

Magical work thanks to Dumbledore.

Work up a cover story. Try not to lie

Enlist the Lovegoods. ✓

Show edited list to Harry.

It was backwards. She was getting more of the long-term goals and fewer of the short-term ones. She decided at some point when her notes got ugly, she'd rewrite the whole thing as a list of goals, period. And the short-term ones would be the ones she put under as sub-items. Because she'd resolved to be less obsessive, she didn't correct the mixture of imperative verbs and gerunds. But it was a bit of a struggle.

Lists were dangerous if they put you under emotional stress. She was already the most organized 11-year-old she knew of. She decided to limit the number of goals she'd worry about on a given day. Besides, she needed to add some time for meditation. If Harry had already known how to clear his mind, clear his emotions, he might have been able to learn Occlumency, and that seemed to be a recurring problem. Both she and Harry were under emotional stress already, so meditating could help in a number of ways. It would help her learn to excel in a more relaxed way. She put "Meditation" as a sub-item there. It would help Harry with both magical and non-magical school, so Meditation went there, too.

She'd gotten strong, she realised with surprise. All four dolls were taking notes, all day, and Genius was organising them. Yet she felt no fatigue. It wasn't impacting her football during play break. She was exercising magically and physically and it showed. A stray thought caught her mind that she'd assumed Diagon Alley would be a place that the trace on her wand wouldn't send off a signal. But was that true? She was devoting the days before meeting up with the Lovegoods to getting a firmer grasp of the books. They were the resource that, probably, no one in the world but her had. They had to take precedence.

But after the meetup, she'd need more books, more studying, to figure out what she could get away with. Again, if she was willing to impose more than she was comfortable with, maybe the Lovegoods could work it so she could learn magic before Hogwarts. But was that, really, safe? Xenophilius and the Quibbler were gadflies. A normal pureblood family of their standing would have no issues teaching their daughter magic. But in their case, all the Ministry had to do was have the Daily Prophet investigate them - they hated the Quibbler, anyway. Then if Rita Skeeter flew over and spied on them, they might get a warning for Luna. But if Hermione was there? That would put her on the Ministry's radar.

Given what had happened with the house-elf, it was certainly likely that doing something where there was already magic - by an apparition point would be the only place she could think of, to be honest - would go undetected. It would be in a magical area, and it would probably be masked. However, again, staying off both Dumbledore's and the Ministry's radar would have to take precedence over wanded learning. She'd already gotten away with more than anyone in the books had. That was a somewhat chilling thought. She herself might be the expert on getting away with underage magic. It was possible she should be writing the books, not reading them.

Again, the fact that this wasn't somewhere a thousand miles away, but right next door, with some of the attributes of the Nazis and others of the feudal era, and with authority over her. It was amazingly stressful. The fact that she read about it in books mainly must not fool her. Alright. She had already decided the Lovegoods would mainly be asked for information. And thereby hangs a tale, maybe: what if Harry wrote Neville and asked for information? After approval by the Lovegoods, naturally. Neville could be Harry's source. The key question was, what sort of mail from Harry would cause Neville's grandmother to remark to Dumbledore about how Harry was writing Neville now.

So. How does the trace work. How would Neville's grandmother respond to him getting mail from Harry? It could be they'd have to enlist her help first, but that was rather bootstrap-y.


She dived back into the books. You really had to work backwards, but she had a very rough timeline.

A long time ago, Percival Dumbledore had a family with three children. The youngest, a girl, was abused - the book didn't say how - and lost control of her magic. Apparently, something that can happen. The father took retribution - the book didn't say how - and went to Azkaban for it, and died there. Unless the whole society had gone backwards since then, it was hard to imagine what he could have done to Muggles that would put him there. The oldest child, Albus, was away doing something. The girl's magic went out of control and killed her mother. The younger boy, Aberforth, was her caretaker. Albus had to come home, probably to take care of the estate. When he came back, the history writer Bagshot had a nephew visiting named Grindlewald. Hermione was a firm believer in gay rights, and she decided the euphemisms for Albus' relationship with Grindlewald, and with his companion, Elphias Dodge, were part of being in the closet. It was, after all, nearly a hundred years ago. The two became very close and travelled around together, for an unspecified time, doing unspecified things, probably adventures of some sort.

There was a fight, details unspecified, in which the youngest girl died, and possibly Albus helped her death. The book implied he'd broken completely with Grindlewald then, but didn't state it outright. Grindlewald went back to Germany and was somehow involved with the rise of the Nazis. Dumbledore eventually apprenticed under the alchemist Nicholas Flamel, and when he got to Hogwarts again, he taught transfiguration there.

Dumbledore opposed Grindlewal, probably late in the progress of the second world war, and they duelled. Did Dumbledore get the Elder Wand, which increased his power, and Grindlewald's home? fortress? was turned into a prison just for him. Meanwhile, Tom Riddle, a student at Hogwarts, was brought there by Dumbledore (still teaching Transfiguration, but probably also the deputy headmaster). He killed a student with a basilisk and possibly made a soul container powered by the murder. Then he killed his entire family except for an uncle, who he framed for the crime. He learned to make soul containers from the Potions teacher, who let the Slytherin house become a Death Eater recruiting and training house.

Dumbledore became the headmaster at Hogwarts and also presided over the Wizengamot, the wizarding court. He became the British Representative to the ICW, a kind of Wizard UN. he was elected Mugwump, which apparently was like Secretary-General. It didn't seem to rotate, which Hermione decided was really odd, and really bad.

Sybil Trelawney, who was related to the Lovegoods, made a prophecy at the Hog's Head Inn. That was a very odd place for Dumbledore to be interviewing teachers. He was possibly also interviewing Severus Snape around the same time. That person heard half of the prophecy before Aberforth threw him out. He brought it to Tom Riddle, who decided to kill Neville and Harry on the strength of it. Dumbledore had created a watch group called the Order. He told its members they had a spy, but didn't hunt him out. Instead, he let that announcement turn the members against each other. It turned out the spy was Peter Pettigrew, one of Harry's father's friends.

It was implied that Dumbledore cast a very difficult secrecy charm. Peter Pettigrew was the secret keeper, though Harry's parents and their friend Sirius let people think it was Sirius. Given how difficult the charm was, Hermione thought it was all but certain Dumbledore had cast it, and knew Sirius wasn't the secret-keeper.

Snape asked Tom Riddle, whose nickname was Voldemort, to kill Harry and his father and spare his mother. Hermione snorted at that. Then he went to Dumbledore and offered to spy for him. In the later books, Hermione thought it implied he'd told Voldemort what he was going to do.

At any rate, Voldemort did kill Harry's parents. Then something happened that killed Voldemort, but kept him around as a special, parasitic kind of ghost. Harry's godfather, Sirius, came to take him to safety, but the oaf, "just following orders," stole him away. Sirius let him borrow his motorcycle to get away faster. That, Hermione thought, already made it impossible that he'd betray Harry: even if he couldn't overcome a giant, it'd be child's play to simply kill Harry, and if Sirius were the spy and the betrayer, that's what he would have done. Probably getting away clean on the motorcycle, to boot.

Then Sirius went after the betrayer, who framed him. Meanwhile, Neville's unprotected parents were removed. Hermione suspected Neville's mother was Harry's godmother, but the books didn't say. The head of the magical police, the minister of magic, and Dumbledore railroaded Sirius into the demon prison. No trial, no questioning. It was a stark contrast to every other case. Any will the Potters made never came to light.

Hermione was certain that was all deliberate on Dumbledore's part. When you added it all up, Dumbledore's friend Snape had eliminated Harry's parents and the people likeliest to adopt him. He'd rendered both prophecy boys vulnerable. The spy Dumbledore hadn't bothered to find had eliminated the person who should have taken Harry. Sirius and the Longbottoms were both silenced.

And Snape had been rewarded - not only not tried, but given a prestigious teaching post at a young age. A post he turned into a sham and a shambles, except for his real agenda - recruiting Death Eaters and destroying Potions education. That wasn't a harsh assessment. He refused to teach, he encouraged dangerous sabotage, and when all else failed, he vanished potions when they were in flasks waiting to be graded.

It was clear to Hermione that Snape was rewarded precisely for doing Dumbledore's dirty work. Looking over the Potions, History and Muggle Studies classes, Dumbledore, too, was deliberately sabotaging Hogwarts. Some Teacher! she sniffed. All by himself, he was plenty to cure her overdone respect for authority figures.

At any rate, Draco, the Nazi student, had a father who took over the Hogwarts Board of Education and, using bribes, effectively took over the Ministry. Even with their leader dead, the Death Eaters continued to run Wizarding Britain, and clearly, that suited Dumbledore perfectly.

Harry was dropped off on the doorstep of his magic-hating aunt and uncle, and proceeded to be beaten and starved for 10 more years. The neighbours would have eventually said something, so Hermione inferred that Dumbledore had done something to prevent that.

He left a barely magical woman to report on Harry, but from what happened later in the books, Hermione realised her job was to watch for rescuers so Dumbledore could defeat them. On Harry's 11th birthday (Which hasn't come yet! she noted, and underlined), they further harassed the magic-hating couple by sending hundreds of letters. It had absolutely no purpose other than that. Eventually, Hagrid, the dim-witted muscle, went to fetch Harry. And further terrorise his relatives. On Dumbledore's orders, he told Harry basically nothing about anything. The information he was allowed to tell him was tailored to lure him into a future confrontation with Voldemort. That said, out of the kindness of his heart, he bought Harry a friend and a means of communication. Dumbledore might have advised him to buy a distinctive owl, so he could monitor Harry's communications, but Hermione didn't think so.

Not having been told anything about anything, Harry was dumped by his relatives in the station. Cue, thought Hermione, the Weasleys. Blatantly violating the laws, because they were purebloods, probably, Mrs Weasley shouted out "packed with Muggles, as usual!" which must have drawn attention to her, by design. Then she cued her innocent little daughter, who'd been brainwashed with years of Harry Potter books, to yell "Platform 9 3/4!"

When a grateful Harry got on board, the first person he met was Ron. Boo, hiss, she thought. If the train had really been full - and how that was possible was anyone's guess. The castle was basically empty and several places in the book indicated the war at the time of Harry's parents' deaths had more than decimated the wizarding community - Harry would have noticed that, immediately, but he didn't. After all, he'd barely made it on ahead of Ron.

But this blatant lie, of course, went right over Harry's clueless head, as planned. Ron proceeded to be unpleasant to everyone there, clearly in an attempt to isolate Harry. Hermione decided her image of Dumbledore was as a cult leader. She'd read as much as she could stand about cults, and he fit the profile perfectly. The first tactic is to isolate the targets so they only communicate with the sycophants of the leader, after all.

The only thing probably not coached was eating all of Harry's candy. That, certainly, would not endear him to a boy who was used to going hungry. But apparently, Harry was appropriately meek and beaten down - but don't forget, still capable of occasionally giving cheek to the Dursleys - to forgive Ron for that gross violation of charity and hospitality.

Cue the nearly-as-clueless Hermione, and the too-scared-to-enlighten-them Neville. While it was true that Ron recited his coached lines about Slytherin and Gryffindor, Hermione believed it was Harry's two encounters with the Nazi child that put him off Slytherin.

She'd already settled, to her own satisfaction, that Dumbledore or the scar were involved in the ridiculous Slytherin suggestion. After all, all of Harry's new acquaintances were in Gryffindor, and if the hat couldn't sell him on Slytherin, it would default there.

That Ron was trying to drive her away was a given. It was a pity Hermione couldn't get a Pensieve memory of what happened in the books, to see how much Ron actually did with the troll, but there you go. It wasn't going to happen.

The end-of-year confrontation, too, she'd already settled. Add love, you dimwit! she said to her book self after she had solved the poison and fire puzzle. The whole protection issue was key. She didn't know how to test it, but her working theory was still that, contrary to his claim, Dumbledore had actually weakened Harry's protection, though he was probably right that it came from Harry's mother. That whole "recharging" thing made a lot more sense if you looked at it as the protections on the Dursleys leaching power from the protection on Harry.

Probably he'd halved it or worse when he first messed with the wards around the Dursleys. Then he proceeded to further weaken it with yearly drainings until it reached some arbitrary strength there.

It would neatly explain why, for instance, Tom Riddle hadn't noticed anything special about Harry - no protection - by the time their second year ended. True, Voldemort had made a big deal later about the fact that he could now touch Harry - but he hadn't even tried for two years.

Dumbledore's behaviour in second year was equally damning. Hermione decided there was little to learn from it, except that Harry really did value her as a friend by them. It was ludicrous to think Dumbledore had anything to do with the phoenix and the hat giving the sword to Harry, since he'd chosen the entire year to watch and enjoy. That probably put paid to the phoenix being some sort of endorsement of Dumbledore's goodness, too. It was unclear in the extreme if it was bonded at all, and if so, to Dumbledore personally or to his office.

The third-year debacle had one out-of-character exception - Dumbledore allowing them to save Sirius. That said, Harry was showing signs of starting to completely distrust the headmaster, and she put it down to that. A worse interpretation was that it was another test, or even that he hoped somewhere along the line Hermione, Sirius, or Remus would die, and yet he'd look squeaky clean.

Dumbledore's sociopathy in their fourth year, and that of wizarding Britain, raised another acute question: did the Cup nonsense really apply? Any child could see the potential for social destruction there. If it was true, they'd both prevent the nonsense with Harry, and scheme to use it for their ends. It was comforting that Harry saw her, finally, as beautiful. There will, too, be kissing by then, if not before, she resolved.

Their fifth year might even be where she started with Harry, if she could figure a way to abstract everything back to their current time. If she'd had any doubts labelling Dumbledore the #2 villain to Harry - and Lucius Malfoy, the Nazi dad of Draco, was a strong contender - they were put paid by that year. All the villains -Snape, Molly and Ron Weasley, Dung Fletcher, Albus Dumbledore, etc. - deliberately destroyed Harry's godfather. Clearly, Dumbledore was still angry Sirius had beaten his frame-up and silencing, and punished him by making his last days as hellish as possible. His more intelligent minion, McGonagall, even conspired with a Ministry unmarked Death Eater to torture Harry, with the headmaster's approval. And even that ultimate betrayal of the students didn't save her. Dumbledore's narcissistic sociopathy truly knew no bounds whatsoever!

At any rate, Dumbledore's hubris condemned him to an early death in their sixth year, and meanwhile, his evil history began to emerge. Coupled with his outsized love for and protection of Snape, Hermione thought maybe Dumbledore simply enjoyed evil, and admired men who did it. It would also explain his love of Grindlewald, and the degree to which he seemingly used, but didn't respect, Elphias Doge.

At that point, as she'd earlier observed, he started to cooperate ... a little. But, being Dumbledore, he had to do it in a nearly useless, maximally sadistic way. He probably didn't care about Harry stopping Voldemort at that point, she decided. He was worried as a narcissist about his legacy.

She was completely certain that some sort of spell or potion had been applied to her all of their sixth year, so that didn't need to be pondered on. Dumbledore and the Weasleys had set their end game, and Harry and her were, basically, through.

She didn't believe Snape's memories for a second, either in sixth year or at the final battle. The sixth-year memories were very convenient. The battle memories were a final gaslighting of Harry. Over and over, she pored over Lily's words. Clearly, Snape called everyone BUT her a mudblood, on a daily basis. Hermione would have bet enormous sums that within Slytherin, Lily wasn't an exception. He helped his Death Eater friends torment younger students with dark spells, and even designed both prank spells (Levicorpus) and dark spells (Sectumsempra) for his, and their use.

Snape had always done the bare minimum to fulfil whatever weak vow he'd taken to give himself and Dumbledore deniability. Without the time turner, for example, Snape's interference in their third year would have certainly killed Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Lupin. Ironically, his behaviour might well have killed him, too. So the nonsense about vowing to protect Harry resulted in another snort from Hermione.

Given that purebloods, even after the wars, faced zero accountability, it would only make sense that Harry and Hermione would be controlled by spells or potions until it no longer mattered, and that was her working hypothesis. The sword in the pond was an obvious set-up, and either the locket was controlling all three Horcrux finders, or someone loyal to Dumbledore had spelt or potioned Harry and Hermione into becoming idiots. It was noticeable that whenever Ron was away, Harry and Hermione had cooperated like an extension of each other, and been, for the most part, terrifically effective. Their one faltering came in the face of an ambush by Voldemort himself and his super-powered familiar.

That Ron arrived "somehow" just after Snape left the sword under the ice in a pond. Vow to protect Harry, anyone? Hermione thought. That Harry would not take off the locket even to dive into the potentially deadly icy water. This from a boy that had never been shown to know how to swim, anywhere in the books.

It was all insane, and Hermione was 7 years younger than her befuddled self, and she could see it.

It was certainly valuable information that IF Voldemort built a body with Harry's blood and IF his scar was the final Horcrux and IF Voldemort killed him with a killing curse he didn't try to avoid, he MIGHT be able to come back from the dead. Though meeting Dumbledore was pretty small beer. We'll file that for consideration, she decided.

At any rate, she was sure whatever was controlling them when Ron was around continued into the indefinite future. Making it a Bad End. For a while, Hermione had been fond of Choose Your Adventure books, and this whole timeline felt like one.

The sheer evil of the Weasleys forcing Harry to name an actual child after two of his chief tormenters ... It really staggered Hermione. Then again, even so, there were still worse evils than them. The idea that they'd have to tip their bloody hats to Nazi terrorists after giving up their families, their futures, their lives? No. If it came down to that, if she managed to get Harry to marry her, they'd leave England and never look back.

I'm eleven, now, she thought. What would I be willing to do to those bastards when I'm not eleven? It was a sobering thought. But it was a little too dark. She was, in fact, eleven. She would have to go to the library and read about what people who lived in Latin America under Wizarding Britain-style fascists did, once the fear and terror and tyranny was over. Especially the young people.

The whole history was depressing. Well, history tended to be that way. The number of kittens you cuddled, or the gooing noises your baby made, didn't tend to make the grade.


That brought her back to the Lovegoods. Looked at objectively, they were a family not far shy of Hermione's acumen. It suddenly occurred to her that the best way to learn about the things that mystified her was to volunteer to research whatever they assigned her, and put herself out. That might obviate dozens of hours of ambling study.