This is my first Harry Potter fan fiction story so all reviews are welcome. I need to point out a few things first:

In this story, Hermione is 4/5 years old and the story is told from her perspective.

This is an alternative history whereby muggleborns can be taken from their parents at the first sign of serious accidental magic. It was loosely inspired by To the Victors by FreyaFallen but it's a very different story.

Hermione is fostered by the Malfoys who are pureblood supremacists but this is NOT about child abuse or anything too dark.

Years later, when she looked back and tried to pinpoint where her life had changed utterly she was never sure whether it was the owl at the window or that funny little man turning up at the doorstep. Or maybe it was the day in nursery school where a storybook she wanted suddenly appeared in her hand. That was the first time she could remember anything strange happening, which seemed about average when she spoke to other muggleborns, although she was pretty sure her magic had always been there, at her fingertips, just waiting to be used.

She could never even remember the name of the book or why she had wanted it so much. All she knew was that one minute it was on the shelf in the bright, colourful classroom and then suddenly it was in her hand. The teacher's attention was caught by another girl who had also wanted the book and who was now throwing a tantrum but she could never understand what had happened or how Hermione had managed to grab a book from several feet away.

The odd thing was that her life was not very unusual up until then. She lived in a nice house in a pleasant suburb of London with a bedroom full of toys and books, with pictures of animals and cartoon characters on the wall. Her parents were dentists and had a small practice nearby where they fixed peoples teeth but they were kind, funny people who chatted away to their patients and tried to put them at their ease. She liked going to the library to look for more books and even though she couldn't read she would sit and look at the pictures, trying to make sense of the strange symbols on the page.

After the book incident though, strange things started happening. She soon discovered she could make a storybook come off the shelf of her bedroom into her hand, just like at nursery. Her parents didn't believe her at first until she tried it with one of her daddy's books in the living room. That was a bit heavier though and it fell to the carpet with a soft thud. Still, they both looked a bit alarmed and later on she knew something was wrong when they stopped talking suddenly when she entered the room.

One day she sent her daddy's favourite mug crashing to the tiled floor of the kitchen while they were having breakfast. Both her parents told her it was an accident but they looked a bit worried too. They both knew their daughter hadn't even touched it. This was puzzling as she'd never really seen them worry about anything; in fact they always knew how to cheer her up so that she didn't worry. Then, while jumping on her bed, she decided to jump off it, just for fun, and realised she could float. Just for a few seconds but still, she definitely knew she had floated above the ground instead of hitting the floor straight away. It was exciting and scary, all at the same time.

A few days later Hermione was pretty sure she saw an owl at the window with an envelope in its beak. She had never seen an owl before and could not understand why it would be delivering the post. Didn't the postman do that? It was a Saturday and both her parents were at home that morning. They were surprised at the unusual delivery too but sent her off to play straight after breakfast. Normally she went out to play on a Saturday but as it was raining she entertained herself with books and toys which she didn't mind a bit. She was at big school now and was already learning a few letters so she could read all these wonderful books on her shelf one day. Her parents were having a whispered conversation downstairs and she wondered if it was about the strange letter. The owl letter. She could make out the words "ministry of magic" but nothing else.

That evening, just after dinner, there was a knock on the door and her father led a man dressed in a dark grey suit into the sitting room. He wore a bowler hat and had a little moustache and none of the Grangers had ever seen him before. He cleared his throat and explained that he had some news to tell them and that all three of them needed to be present. That was the first time Hermione realised why all those strange things were happening. She had been practising accidental magic without knowing it. She was a witch.

oOo

None of the family quite knew what to make of the news after that. But for Hermione it explained quite a lot. She began to feel different from the other children. When she jumped off the swing in the playground and floated a little she knew the reason at last. But her mummy told her not to do that anymore, that people were watching them now and they had to be careful. And something else was bothering her too. A crow was perched on the top of the swing and it seemed to be watching them both.

Soon it was her fifth birthday and all her new friends from school were invited as well as some older friends from nursery school. There were balloons and games and cake and everyone was enjoying themselves. It was a lovely day and a chance to feel like a normal little girl again and not a witch. She tried very hard not to make things happen but when a balloon burst near the end of the party suddenly she wondered if that was her accidental magic again.

"Did you make that happen?" one of the boys piped up.

"Course she did – she can do magic!" came a reply from the back of the room. "My sister saw her float when she jumped off the swing!"

After that, nothing was the same. She kept seeing that crow out in the garden; at least she was pretty sure it was the same one from the playground. Sometimes it was perched on the railings at school, looking like it was watching her. She thought it was her imagination until her daddy started noticing it too and became convince that it had followed him home one day.

At school, children kept asking her to do a magic trick until she got fed up and tried to make her pencil case float during one boring break time on a rainy day. She was not even sure how to do something like that on purpose and kept staring at it, trying to imagine it up in the air. One end of it flopped a bit but that was all, and it still made her more tired than she'd ever been before. Her disappointed classmates soon found other entertainment but she was left wondering how she could learn how to actually make these tricks happen when she wanted them to.

When she got home there was another letter on the table, a much longer one this time. Somehow she knew it was from the owl again.

"Hermione, you really have to stop doing these things," her mother told her, "That Ministry of Magic has been in touch again." Hermione thought her mother actually looked scared this time, which made her scared too.

"But I can't help it!" she protested, "They just happen!"

She heard them whispering again later on when they thought she was up in her bedroom. They were talking about the Ministry of Magic again, and something called the Muggleborn Re-Location Act and other big words. What was going on?

A vase got broken that very week but it was the Football Incident a few weeks later that brought everything to a head. That may have been the day that changed everything. There seemed to be a few of those.

Hermione did not like Martin Simmons very much in the first place and neither did a lot of children. He was stupid and cruel and his parents never seemed to notice either of these things. One day Hermione was playing outside while he kicked a football against a wall. Just as she was thinking of going inside out of the cold he turned around and started making fun of another child who was asthmatic and getting out of breath from the game they were playing.

"Leave him alone! He can't help it!" Hermione shouted.

"Shut up, weirdo!" he retorted, making her blood boil. "What are you going to do, turn me into a frog? Everyone knows you're a freak!"

With a sneer he kicked the football at her. She could never quite explain or believe what happened, at least not yet. Neither could anyone else. She instinctively raised her hands to protect herself and the ball somehow changed direction and flung itself directly at Martin's head, sending him reeling backwards. He didn't fall over but his nose was bleeding, which sent him into a fit of crying as he ran home to his mother. Worst of all, when she ran back towards her own house she could see that crow watching her from the garden wall.

After that, everything was chaotic. Mrs Jones next door was minding her that day and got involved in a blazing row with Mrs Simmons who blamed everything on Hermione. Her parents were furious too when they got home that evening but most of all they were scared. She did not know it then but more letters had arrived in the meantime, telling them things they did not want to hear and the man from the Ministry visited them at the surgery too.

She did not know back then how hard they fought to keep her. She had no idea that her daddy had brought one of the letters to a solicitors office only for the writing to disappear when he produced it from the envelope. He brought it to a police station and the same thing happened. He tried faxing it to both places only for a blank sheet to emerge at the other end. He made several photocopies of each letter, which just produced more blank sheets. Every time he tried to show the letters to anyone the writing disappeared and somehow always reappeared afterwards.

He tried several books and encyclopedias but none of them could tell him anything about the Ministry of Magic. He contacted his local M.P who had never heard of it and out of desperation he even tried the Houses of Parliament but couldn't get through to anyone who could help him.

By the time that stupid man appeared on their doorstep he'd had enough.