Elena was doing her best to overcome what she was sure was a panic attack; she had never suffered one before, yet she could remember having them as Hermione, locking up each time her mother forced her to join a club and attempt that farcical ritual known as making friends. She closed her eyes and attempted to centre herself; this bleed through of Hermione’s feelings into her was becoming increasingly regular, and increasingly inconvenient.

  “Focus on what is here and now,” she reprimanded herself. She catalogued the sun spilling through the window, the books in her room, her desk, her chair, the warmth upon her skin where the light touched it. She knew how to quell a panic attack through grounding techniques, though neither she nor the old her had ever employed them; one had not needed such measures, the other had not known they existed.

  Having a panic attack over some eldritch entity whose shape she could not discern, one that had bound her into some infernal bargain, was at least more defensible than trembling over the prospect of social pleasantries. Either way it was weakness, and she could not afford weakness now, nor ever, if the future proved faithful to her knowledge of it.

  Her treasonous hands refused .

  It took several minutes, yet she eventually wrestled her body back into stillness, suppressing its instinctive recoil from a horror beyond comprehension. Or perhaps beyond interpretation. The distinction mattered.

  She reviewed the fragments uncovered during her first attempts at Occlumency. She had been in her study. There had been a sharp pain. Had she been killed? Or had she killed? The memory fractured before resolution; she had not been permitted to see further before it made its appearance. It was equally plausible that her mind was shielding itself from the knowledge of its own death. Perhaps the final moments had never consolidated into long-term memory. Or perhaps something had been removed.

  There were more questions than answers.

  Her mother knocked gently on the door before entering, a concerned look on her face. "Hermione, can we talk?"

  Hermione looked up, her thoughts still distant. "Sure, Mum. What's on your mind?"

  Her mother sat beside her, though there was a stiffness to her posture that Elena did not recognise, as though she were bracing herself for something unpleasant. “Hermione,” she began, and for a moment the word sounded fragile, “I owe you an apology.”

  Elena tilted her head slightly. An apology was not what she had expected.

  “I did not see how badly you were struggling,” her mother continued, the words gathering pace once begun. “You never told me how cruel they were being, not properly, and I assumed you were simply withdrawing into your books again, that it would pass as it always had, and I told myself that children are unkind at that age and that you were strong enough to endure it.”

  Her hands tightened together in her lap.

  “You were not,” she said quietly. “And I should have realised that.”

  Elena felt an unfamiliar tension creep along her spine.

  “We nearly lost you,” her mother finished, and this time there was no mistaking the tremor beneath the words.

  “Lost me?” Elena repeated, because there were only so many meanings that sentence could possess and none of them were comforting.

  Her mother reached into her pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, worn along the creases from having been opened and closed too many times. She held it for a moment as though reconsidering, then placed it into Elena’s hands.

  “I found this the day before your birthday,” she said.

  The handwriting was unmistakable.

  ...

  Is this why she was here? Had this little girl really been bullied so badly and failed by all of these adults that she'd taken her own life, that none of them had seen it, none of them had stopped it, none of them had thought perhaps the quiet child locking herself away wasn’t resilience but surrender? And what was she then, some bloody parasite that had taken over the corpse and was now puppeteering it in some macabre attempt at a second chance?

  Answers. She scoffed internally; she had wanted answers, so she had them, and she did not care for them at all. She had thought it before, that ignorance was bliss, but she had never felt the truth of it so viscerally as she did now. The thought made her sick; some child's suffering had facilitated her second chance. What was she supposed to do with that knowledge?

  She rejected the idea outright that someone she had grown up idolising, someone she had seen as a role model, had been beaten down by a pack of prepubescent bullies badly enough to end it. Absolutely not. That did not reconcile with the girl who had faced trolls and basilisks and Death Eaters with nothing but intellect and sheer bloody will.

  And these parents? These teachers? They had just let it happen? Stood by while she suffered and expected her to stiff upper lip that shit like it was some character-building exercise?

  Her hands clenched around the note, fury at the very notion flooding her mind and bleeding outward into the room itself. Magic answered without hesitation; books tore themselves from desks and shelves in a violent burst of power, parchment scattering as wood rattled against plaster.

  Stolen story; please report.

  She was still angry, but in control now. How did she deal with this? Did she accept the apology or spite the woman who was now her mother, someone she'd have to deal with for many years to come, the woman who had been brave enough to apologise whilst the others had been happy to remain bystanders? She tried to occlude, but being at best a beginner made it difficult, though luckily her mother seemed content to wait while she comported herself.

  “I do not remember writing that, but I can acknowledge where it would have come from and why you were scared.”

  Her anger was now more akin to a banked coal, simmering in the background, and it was evident she had not hidden her feelings from the look of absolute heartbreak on her mother’s face.

  Mrs. Granger watched her daughter with a pained expression. “When I found this, I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. But then, as if by a miracle, you seemed to get better. You found new strength, new purpose, and then we found out you were a witch. I'll be honest with you, I wasn’t going to let you go and learn magic, but if this is what brought you back, then we’ll embrace it, even if it terrifies us. I didn't want to bring it up and risk upsetting you, but I can't keep this from you any longer. I need you to know how much we love you, how much we care.”

  A miracle.

  Their daughter was dead and she had taken her place. For a moment the thought curdled into something hateful, but she did not truly blame Hermione’s mother; it was a difficult thing to confront one’s own failures as a parent, especially when those failures felt so existential. Emma had at least tried, and her father, when he had realised she was being bullied, had been livid. This was not neglect. Perhaps it had been good intentions combined with the old Hermione’s determination to hide how bad it truly was; her memories somewhat confirmed the latter, that constant undercurrent of fear, of being found out.

  She would forgive Emma. There was love here, and nothing in this had been born of malice.

  “It’s okay, Mum. It was my fault for pretending and trying to hide it. I’m not sure why I wrote that; again, I do not remember it. But you remember what I told you at the book store? I will not let them beat me.” She then pulled her mother in a hug as she seemed to weep in relief at her words.

  The two sat there for a while, seeking solace in the gesture. Was this the price of her second chance? To take up all the grievances of Hermione and to look after her family for her whilst fighting the injustices of this world? The note had been rather obvious, Hermione was sorry she was leaving her parents, she had known it would hurt and she had held on for as long as she did for them. She would not betray Hermione's last wish, she wanted her family happy, they would not be happy with Elena nor would they be happy with the old Hermione. She would need to be the best of both of them, a new Hermione. A better Hermione. She'd make them her family, and god help anyone who tried to take their happiness from them.

  It had been a rather gruelling morning, but also cathartic, and whilst she was not truly settled into the situation yet, she had made her choice. She was Hermione. She could sit here and chase more answers, answers she was not sure she was ready for, or she could make herself ready and prepare for the known threat. Voldemort was real. The books on the matter described what had happened and matched exactly what she knew, but with an adult lens she could see that for all the words they contained, they held nothing of substance. It was hearsay, imagination, and precious little evidence.

  Hermione spent the rest of the day reading, specifically the history texts. To know the past was to understand the present. Even if Voldemort was vanquished here, the wizarding world had still been infiltrated by insurgents who believed blood was more important than merit, and most of them had escaped capture. That meant that whilst Voldemort himself might not exist, the conditions that had allowed him to rise still did. The stage was set for someone else to seize power.

  She had been sent here. A deal had been made. She was not here by happenstance. There was a reason, but that begged the question, what would have compelled her to strike a bargain of such magnitude? She liked to think she knew herself, but she was not Elena. Since the moment she had awakened here she had been different, more volatile and more immature, and she attributed some of that to being a child again. Yet the old emotions of the body’s previous inhabitant bled through and coloured her thoughts. So did she truly know herself at all?

  Why take the position as the heroine of the story if not to make things better? That was her working hypothesis, and she was confident in it. If she had wanted power, there were many other paths she could have taken.

  Assuming she had been given a choice.

  The next few days allowed her to fall into a routine. She would get up, greet her family, and study as though her life depended on it, which it probably did. In doing so, however, it became evident that theoretical knowledge would not be sufficient. She needed practical experience if she hoped to stay meaningfully ahead of her peers, and with no requirement to attend school and a wand now in her possession, she had options.

  After her parents had gone to work, leaving her some money in case she wanted something from the shops, her father leaned close and whispered about getting some sweets as though it were a swear word. Judging by the look her mother gave him, it may as well have been. Once the house was quiet, she carried out her plan.

  With a steady breath, she raised her wand and summoned the bus.

  There was a thunderous bang, and the triple decker purple bus materialised before her. Stan Shunpike, the conductor, greeted her with a wide grin.

  “Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Where to, miss?”

  “Diagon Alley,” Hermione said confidently, stepping aboard.

  Hermione later exited the bus looking thoroughly ruffled by the absolutely abhorrent form of magical transport. Was all magical travel this ridiculous? She very much hoped not. If this was the standard, she would devise something better, or die trying.

  She headed back towards the bookshop. With the money her father had given her, she could afford texts of a different nature, perhaps something on customs or the broader workings of wizarding society. If she intended to navigate this world properly, she would need to understand more than spells.

  As she made her way through Diagon Alley, a low conversation between two wizards near a shop selling enchanted objects caught her attention. She slowed without appearing to do so and listened.

  “I hear the Ministry’s been cracking down on underage magic lately,” one wizard muttered.

  “Yeah, they’re leaning harder on the Trace,” the other replied. “Still not as foolproof as they pretend. It only activates properly once the students cross the lake to Hogwarts. Before that it’s just the general detectors, and those can’t tell who actually cast the spell.”

  He gave a dismissive snort.

  “Not surprising though. Lot more Muggleborns this year compared to previous ones. Won’t affect our lot. You can’t detect magic behind heavy wards, not proper ones. Same sort they’ve got at the Leaky Cauldron. Only thing that place is good for is keeping the filth out.”

  Hermione grimaced at the remark. She would need to grow accustomed to that strain of thinking if she intended to move through this society without constantly reacting to it. It was ugly, but it was predictable.

  The information about the Trace, however, was far more useful. If it only activated properly once students crossed the lake, then until that point enforcement relied on broad detection wards that could not identify a specific caster. She did love a good loophole.

  There was much more to explore here, far more than just Diagon Alley, and without school to eat into her time she could spend a whole year immersing herself in this world and perhaps even hide that she was Muggle-born. There had, after all, been a Hector Dagworth-Granger. Slughorn had once assumed a connection without prompting.

  She would take any advantage that was freely offered.