Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters. Just borrowing them for a story and my own imagination.

Chapter 1

Hermione Granger sat on her bed thinking back to her dream the night before. It was always the same, and always just so real. She could smell the smoke even after she woke up.

The dreams started after the battle at the Ministry when she had almost died at the hands of an unknown curse. She had been kept in a healing sleep while the healers at St. Mungo's had spent days casting countless spells to bring her back. It had been close, they told her, they just barely got her back.

While she had at first dismissed the dream as just a strange figment of her imagination, it had soon started to worry her when it began to reoccur almost every single night. She wanted to research it, burrow into her books for solid answers, but so far, her search into her own stash had yielded no results. She needed access to a more expansive library, like the one at 12 Grimmauld Place.

Her musings were interrupted by the raised voices of her parents, arguing downstairs. This was nothing new. In the year since her near-fatal injury, arguments in the Granger household were commonplace, fear and worry for their daughter's well-being plaguing them. This had only increased following the death of Dumbledore, and Hermione knew it was time to get her parents somewhere away from the mess.

The voices from the kitchen continued shouting, while Hermione finished packing the last of her belongings into her old school trunk, before shrinking it and putting it in the pocket of her jeans. She took a moment to take one last look at her childhood room - which was now completely barren save for its modest furniture - before she quietly headed down the stairs.

Her parents sat facing away from the kitchen door, so they didn't notice her as she walked in, nor did they notice the cushioning charm she had cast on the kitchen floor, before rapidly sending two silent Stupefies in their direction.

Somehow, she managed to not cry, even as she carefully erased her entire existence from the Grangers' minds. She was thorough, the process taking her hours, until the sun had set and darkness began to fill the room. When she was finally done, Wendell and Monica Wilkins were asleep in their bedroom, dreaming of their long-awaited plans to move to the sunny beaches of Australia.

Hermione took one last look at her resting parents, before apparating to the alleyway behind the Leaky Cauldron. She entered the inn and requested a room for the night and an owl. She penned a quick letter to Sirius, asking if she could stay with him for a while, leaving out what she had done.

After sending off the tawny owl, she lay in bed, trying to ignore the pain in her heart. Instead, she thought of Sirius and his unbelievable return to the land of the living.

It was about a week after she woke up in St. Mungo's that Hermione was finally able to see her friends and find out what happened after her injury. Harry had already returned to the Dursleys for the summer, so it was from Ron that she heard about Sirius. She was horrified at the news, but she was more intrigued by the prospect of the Veil and what it could really do.

So, with nothing else to do while she lay recovering in her hospital bed, she decided to do what she did best. Research. To do that, she recruited the one person she knew who would possibly have any idea of where to begin. Remus Lupin was surprised when he was asked to visit his old student, but once she explained her hypothesis and its possibilities, he was eager to help.

Over the course of the next year, in between helping Harry with Dumbledore's mysterious tasks and her own persistent dreams, Hermione and Remus began looking into the Veil and its mysterious history. While the books of the Hogwarts Library were mostly fruitless, Hermione was able to find an old grimoire in the Restricted Section that helped confirm her theory. She presented her findings to Remus, who was able to narrow down his search in the Black Library and finally find what they were looking for, but their plans were interrupted when the Death Eaters infiltrated Hogwarts.

Harry had once again returned to the Dursleys when Hermione & Remus decided to act out their plan. They contacted Kingsley, who was skeptical at first, but eventually agreed to let the pair in to see the Veil. They had expected more resistance, but after the death of Amelia Bones, the Department of Mysteries had grown lax under the control of Pius Thicknesse, so sneaking in took less effort than planned.

The ritual was short and sweet. Hermione used an old shirt of Sirius' that he had once had a nosebleed all over to bind Sirius to Remus. That had been the hard part since only living people could be bound and they hadn't been one hundred percent sure that Sirius was still alive when he passed through the veil. But the blood on the shirt had glowed bright gold before sinking into Remus's skin over his heart.

Once that was over, Remus was able to use the summoning chant from the book to pull Sirius through the Veil and over to their side. A simple Rennervate woke up Sirius who immediately pulled his wand to hex the long-gone Bellatrix, only to be pulled into a crushing hug by the overjoyed werewolf.

Hermione and the Marauder pair were greeted outside by a stunned Kingsley who agreed to keep things a secret until things had settled down. They parted ways, and Hermione returned to her parents' house where she began her preparations to get her parents to safety.

Author's note: I just wanted to give a big thank you to wolfy48 for giving me the motivation to finally come back to this story. I had basically abandoned it because I thought no one was interested. Thank you so much!