Author's Note: Welcome, everyone, to my new fic. Some bookkeeping before we being:

This fic will NOT feature any underage/adult relationships. Hermione is 32 in this, and sees her eleven-year-old body more as a disguise than her actual appearance. I won't judge anything anyone reads, but I personally am too old to write a relationship between an actual teenager and an adult. (When I was a teen, I would've been all over that, but now as an adult I would not be able to). I think most fics hand wave that issue away by writing the teenagers as adults or the adults as teenagers, but I decided to go a different route and make Hermione an actual adult, with an adult mindset and (sometimes) an adult body.

The romance itself will not be the focus of this fic. In the past, I've written fics that sort of danced around romance without ever actually having any. This time I'm going to make it more of a focus, but it still won't be the main focus.

In terms of canon, that will quickly be flying out the window. Assume that everything happened as it did in the books up to (and but not including) the epilogue. However, things will start to diverge from canon pretty quickly. You may see the canon timeline try to re-establish itself from time to time, but it will quickly get slapped down. I will also not be quoting anything from canon, in fact I will not even use the books. (I, ah, don't actually own them. I'll be using HP lexicon to keep things straight).

Finally, a quick warning about Hermione. Here she is jaded and bitter, just coming off of a terrible job and a bad marriage. In no way am I saying that this is what "should" have happened or making any value judgement on the HG/RW ship. What's happening here is an AU take on what could have happened if their relationship had not gone as we see in the epilogue. In this universe, they are too incompatible to have a good relationship. It may seem that I'm being hard on Ron, but I promise this is not going to turn into a Ron-bashing fest (not that there's anything wrong with liking that).

If all that is acceptable to you, then I hope you will read and enjoy! I expect updates to come once every one to two weeks.

Neville Longbottom entered the compartment, looking helplessly lost. "Have you seen a toad anywhere?" he asked, looking so tiny and sad that Hermione immediately wanted to both hug him and punch him.

"He's probably dead," said the girl with thirty-two years of bitterness and rage shoved into an eleven-year-old body, and flicked her newspaper open again.

Hermione heard sniffling coming from the compartment's entrance. "Oh very well," she said, lowering the newspaper again. Her wand was in her hand with barely a thought. "Accio Trevor," she said in a firm voice. A moment later, Neville was hit in the back of his head by his toad.

"Thank you!" Neville said, gratitude shining on his face. "Only… how did you know his name?"

"I read a lot," Hermione said, and returned to her newspaper.

Neville, poor wonderful Neville, accepted this and turned awkwardly to leave the compartment.

Hermione sighed. "Why don't you sit with me?" she offered reluctantly. He was just so helpless. She felt bad for the kid, and honestly pretty embarrassed given the cool and confident man he'd later turn into. It was like seeing someone's embarrassing baby photo. Except… real.

"Thank you!" Neville said, face shining with happiness. "I'm Neville. Um. Neville Longbottom. Um. First year."

"Hermione Granger," she said politely. "Also a first year." She could see him trying to place her name. "My parents are muggles," she said helpfully.

"Oh!" Neville said, surprised. "You're muggleborn?" Yep, there it was. She'd only been on the train an hour and already it'd started.

"Born and raised," Hermione said, staring at him in a wordless challenge.

"Oh, that's… great," Neville said weakly, bright red with embarrassment. "I didn't think… you just knew that spell…"

"Yep," Hermione said, giving him nothing. She enjoyed watching him talk his way deeper and deeper into the hole he'd dug. Even if it was sweet-hearted Neville. It wasn't his fault. Hermione knew exactly who was to blame.

The entire Wizarding World.

"That's really impressive," Neville finally settled on. "Do you think you'll be in Ravenclaw?"

Hermione hesitated. "Probably Gryffindor," she said. Too muggleborn for Slytherin, too bitter for Hufflepuff, too tired for Ravenclaw… Plus Gryffindor was where the action happened. She'd need to be in close proximity to Harry if she wanted to be kept up to date on events.

"Wow," Neville said. "I'd love to be in Gryffindor." He sighed wistfully.

"Then you'll be in Gryffindor," Hermione said, as if that settled the matter.

"No, I'm not— I'm not brave like that," Neville said. His downtrodden expression wheedled its way into Hermione's heart.

She felt bad for the kid, she really did. For the first time, the enormity of what had happened hit her. She would have to live the next twenty-one years of her life all over again.

Oh, who was she kidding? She had no patience for that. Her old life was dead.

"The hat doesn't just look at who you are, it also looks at who you aspire to be," Hermione said wisely. Maybe she could help Neville out more this time around.

"The hat?" Neville asked, confused.

Oh fuck. That's right, people didn't actually tell their kids how the sorting worked ahead of time. Holy shit, Hermione had forgotten completely what it was like to be an eleven-year-old enchanted with the magic and mystery of Hogwarts. "I've said too much," she said, and pulled her newspaper back in front of her face.

She ignored Neville's lonely sigh and instead focused on reading the paper. She also ignored the compartment door opening.

She had a much harder time of ignoring the reedy voice of Draco Malfoy saying "Ugh, Longbottom. Have you seen Harry Potter anywhere?"

"N-n-no," Neville stuttered out. Neville had known Malfoy from before Hogwarts? "Sorry, Malfoy."

Hermione peered over her paper at them.

"Is that the Financial Times?" Malfoy asked her. "My father reads that." He looked reluctantly impressed. Amazing how little it took. There was no reason to think she understood what she was reading, after all. But Hermione should have known Lucius Malfoy would be a weak point of Draco's, perhaps even more than it was a strength.

Hermione couldn't resist messing with him. She scoffed. "The Financial Times is a Muggle publication," she said, voice dripping with scorn. "This is the Financial Times Wizarding Report, the magical and thus far superior version of that paper." She eyed him critically. "You should make sure to get it right in the future. You don't want anyone thinking you're a mudblood, after all."

"I- As if anyone would," Malfoy huffed, and then quickly left the compartment.

Neville was staring at her with wide eyes. "I thought— you said— You're not supposed to say that word!"

Hermione was way too old for this. She gave Neville a weak smile. "Sorry. I ran into him in the alley and he was going on and on about how inferior muggles are. I just can't stand him, so I wanted to mess with him a little."

Neville bought it. The poor kid was like an open book printed in that special huge font for old people. "He can be pretty rude sometimes," he sighed.

"How do you know him?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Er- his dad and my gran are both on the Board of Governors," he admitted sheepishly. "We would both get dragged to meetings sometimes. Please don't tell anyone. It's so embarrassing."

Hermione hadn't known that, either. "What's so embarrassing about it?" Neville's Gran, the severe old lady who wore a bird on her head was on Hogwarts' Board of Governors? Actually that made perfect sense. The world was run by the wealthy, after all.

"I- I don't know," Neville said, looking uncomfortable with her questioning. "I guess I just don't want people to think I'm the same kind of person as Draco."

That was a good enough reason for her. "Don't worry," Hermione said. "I promise you no one will think that."

Funny, Neville didn't seem reassured.

Hermione stood patiently in line with the other students, listening to Professor McGonagall give her usual spiel. She hadn't been to Hogwarts in years. It was truly magical to be back. Everything was a lot bigger than she remembered. (Or she was a lot smaller. She ignored that thought.)

She ignored Harry's spat with Draco. No need to interfere there. Being obsessed with Draco Malfoy was Harry's only hobby in school besides Quidditch. It would be a shame to take that away from him.

The ceiling was as beautiful as she remembered.

"Is that real?" someone whispered excitedly.

"It's enchanted, you dolt," she responded automatically. "Oh, um, I'm sorry," she added awkwardly when Hannah looked like she was going to burst into tears.

Hufflepuffs, honestly.

"But where's the troll?" someone else said, and for a moment Hermione was confused. Was that already? No, that was definitely on Halloween.

And then the Sorting started, and Hermione contented herself with remembering the names of the classmates she'd forgotten about after graduation. Wow, there were so many. She'd gotten to know Susan pretty well, actually, since they'd both worked in the Ministry (different departments), but Justin had really disappeared off the grid, hadn't he. Or had he died?

"Granger, Hermione," Professor McGonagall called out.

Hermione obediently made her way up to the hat, hoping her rudimentary Occlumency was enough to keep her secret reasonably safe. Not that it mattered too much. She'd have to tell Professor Dumbledore eventually.

"Ah, a time-traveller," the Sorting Hat whispered in her head. "Haven't seen one of those in a while." So much for Occlumency then.

But you've seen them before? Hermione thought back.

"One or two, over the years. Although I've never met one who didn't know how they did it."

I'm pretty sure I know how, Hermione thought darkly. It was Jackson's fucking experiment. The details, however, were lost to her. She had no memory of what exactly had happened to send her back in time. She suspected she'd lost only a day, but she genuinely couldn't be sure. Technically, it could've been years. But Jackson had been working on a highly volatile experiment in the Time Room, and Hermione had been placed on it as well. Because, and she quoted, "You muggleborns need to stick together! After all, no one else is stupid enough to risk working with you!" Cue laughter from all her colleagues. Except maybe they'd been right, because trying to get equipment purchases approved turned out to be almost impossible for them. Their funding was practically zero, and hadn't they both agreed that without the expensive safety measures the experiment was too volatile to safely be worked on? The sheer injustice and short-sightedness of it made her blood boil. An experiment going wrong would fucking affect everyone, not just them! Her idiot superiors were putting the entire building at risk, just because they couldn't see past their own fucking noses.

But then again, it seemed that the only risk had been to her. Hermione had already checked — Jackson hadn't traveled in time, nor had any of her coworkers.

"I'm afraid I can't see whatever it is that you're thinking about."

DoM's privacy spells, sorry. We're not allowed to share the details of anything classified Hippogriff or higher, and all ongoing experiments are automatically classified at least Nundu. The DoM classification system had between seven and eleven levels, depending on who you asked. She was cleared for all but the highest level, Dragon, which was only available to the head of the department and the Minister.

"While I find any details of the Department of Mysteries fascinating, I'm afraid I must sort you at some point. Or re-sort you, as the case may be."

How does that work? Would she just get sorted into Gryffindor again automatically? She liked to think she was more complicated than the average eleven-year-old.

"As you correctly surmised earlier, I do not merely look at who a student is, but also who they hope to become. So who do you, Hermione Granger, want to be when you grow up?"

Hermione knew the answer immediately. I want to be more than just another muggleborn, just another woman trying to do men's work. That was something else she'd heard so many times. It wasn't enough to be a muggleborn, she had to go and be a woman as well. There was a law that said that DoM employees weren't allowed to work on experimental magic while menstruating because their magic was "too volatile" to be "trusted." Yet people were allowed to work while fucking drunk out of their minds. There was no evidence anywhere that menstruation affected magic. Literally none.

And DoM had actually beenbetter than the private research group she'd worked for. At least while working for the Ministry she couldn't be fired because of her blood status.

"Ambitious, then?" the Hat asked her. I can't handle being in Slytherin for seven years, Hermione replied with a grimace. I hate almost all of them.

"Perhaps not a good fit for you. Shall I do the cliche thing and Sort you into Gryffindor?"

Not Ravenclaw? Hermione asked. That's where the Hat had wanted to put her the first time.

"Ravenclaw is for those who value learning solely for the pursuit of knowledge. I believe your goals have long since shifted to bringing society to its knees."

Hey, not exactly, Hermione defended herself. It's more like I want to see the system burned down and then rebuilt into something that isn't a pile of shit moulded into the shape of a cake.

"Hmm. Better be… GRYFFINDOR," the Hat proclaimed, and that was that. Her (second) future had been decided.

Professor McGonagall looked quite pleased as Hermione handed her the Hat back.

Hermione took her seat at the table across from Percy, who gave her a polite nod, and then her attention finally drifted over to the staff table.

Her professors looked so much younger than she remembered, and so much less battle-scarred as well. The only exception was Professor Quirrell, who was—

Not wearing a turban.

What. The. Fuck.

Hermione barely paid any attention to the rest of the Sorting, too distracted trying to figure out what this meant. She knew the theft from Gringotts had been unsuccessful. She'd arrived in August, after the attempted theft, but she'd gone back through the newspapers to verify that everything she (vaguely) remembered was the same. The papers were clear (in their own way) that the stone hadn't been stolen. Surely they would've had to report it if it had?

So why wasn't Quirrell being punished by hosting Voldemort on the back of his head? How had she managed to change that? True, there'd been a few extra visits to Diagon Alley this time around, to say nothing of her clandestine trips to spy on her former/future colleagues… And of course there were the investments she'd made, because she wasn't an idiot and she was hardly going to let an opportunity like that go to waste. But surely nothing that had managed to change the future so drastically that Voldemort hadn't come to Hogwarts?

She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"—about you?" Ron was asking her, his tone polite even as he shoved potatoes in his face. It was hard to look at him. She had to keep reminding herself that he was a different person now. He wasn't her husband. And he was never fucking going to be, if she had any say about it.

"Sorry, what was the question? I was distracted," Hermione said. That's right, she hadn't gone up and down the train alienating all of her future classmates this time around. The only person she'd met was Neville. And Malfoy, technically.

"Hermione, right? What's your family?" What an adorably tactless question.

"My parents are muggles, but I have a close cousin who's a witch," she lied. "So I've known about all this for a while." There, that would explain away her knowledge of the Wizarding World. She was bound to slip up trying to hide it, and she truthfully didn't feel like bothering.

"I wish I had a magical cousin," Harry said wistfully.

"Do you have non-magical cousins?" Hermione asked politely. Baby Harry was so cute. And really skinny. God, how had she forgotten how thin he used to be? His relatives had a lot to answer for.

"My mum's family," he said, face turning red.

"Your cousin was telling muggles about magic?" Ron asked. Was it just her, or was his tone disapproving? What a fucking pureblood.

"Obviously she knew I wasn't a muggle," Hermione said frostily. "She noticed my accidental magic and talked to me and my parents." She was immediately pissed, in the way that only Ron knew how to do. Well, Ron and her coworkers. At least her coworkers didn't rile her up on purpose. At least her coworkers didn't keep a mental list of all of her triggers and bring them up whenever they managed to stop fighting for a fucking evening. At least her coworkers weren't idiots who would rather sit around all weekend listening to Quidditch matches than do anything that might, god forbid, expand their minds or teach them something new. What was the point of listening to a Quidditch match, if you couldn't even see any of the fucking action?

They had not had a happy marriage.

"Oh," Ron said stupidly.

Harry seemed put off by her rudeness to Ron, and was now talking to Sir Nicholas the resident horrifying ghost. She ignored them. Ghosts were only echoes of a person, caused by a strong magical presence that didn't fade after death. They were incapable of changing like people were, doomed instead to always repeat their same old patterns, their same old grievances.

And then Ron put a rat on the table.

Hermione stared at it. She'd completely forgotten about Peter Pettigrew. Of course she had, she hadn't thought about any of the so-called "Marauders" in over fifteen years. But maybe she should have. Sirius' imprisonment should've been a warning sign for her, an indication that there was something rotten within the Ministry. How else could an innocent man get locked away for life without even a trial? Of course, Sirius was also a pureblood and a member of an Ancient and Noble house… How would the likes of Lucius Malfoy responded to being locked away like that? Not well, she should think.

Perhaps there was an opportunity here. But first, she would need to safely contain Pettigrew and think about the best way to approach this. Her mind drifted to Rita Skeeter, yet another unregistered Animagus currently out there causing trouble. As much as Hermione hated her, she couldn't deny the advantages of being on the beetle's good side. Yes. This could work out favourably for both of them.

Hermione glanced around to see who else had noticed the rat. Quite a few people, actually — and they were all giving Ron varying looks of disgust. She glanced up at the staff table. Professor Snape was giving them a particularly acute look of loathing, but that was nothing new for him. She avoided looking at Professor Quirrell. Professor Dumbledore was… Had he been drinking? She'd never seen his cheeks so rosy before. And there were multiple bottles of wine within reach. Strange that she'd so easily forget about her Headmaster's drinking habits. Although unsurprising. After his death, most people had only remembered the man they wanted to remember.

The conversation around her had meandered to their classes.

"What classes are you looking forward to, Hermione?" Neville asked her shyly. Hermione felt bad for ignoring him all evening.

"Charms, I think," she said. Transfiguration had been her favourite class in school, but after graduating she'd gotten her mastery in Experimental Charms with a focus on Non-Abelian Arithmetic Transformations. There was just something so satisfying about taking something that had once been mysterious and strange to her, and turning it into neat equations that could be manipulated to achieve whatever effects she wanted. Well, most of the time. Some of the time. When she was lucky, at least.

Oh Merlin. They'd be learning the levitation charm in class. Briefly she debated the merits of skipping ahead a few years, or just claiming to be some sort of prodigy and going for a mastery immediately. But she needed to stay here so she could keep a close eye on Harry. She owed him that much.

"What about you, Neville?" Hermione said.

Neville looked both pleased and anxious to be asked. Bless his soul. "Er— Herbology, I think," he managed. "I used to hang out in the greenhouses a lot at home."

"Wow, you had greenhouses?" Dean asked, looking excited by the prospect.

Neville immediately turned bright red. "Just— just a few small ones. My gran likes having fresh ingredients for her potions… Um… It's cheaper than buying…"

"Cheaper if you can afford greenhouses," Ron muttered, still deeply insecure about his family's poverty. Actually, now that Hermione thought about it, she couldn't put a finger on a time when that insecurity had gone away. Was that one of the reasons Ron was always complaining about her expensive books and research materials, why he was always so resistant to spending the evening out at a play or a nice dinner? She didn't like this new understanding. It made her feel softer towards him, when she'd been trying so hard to keep a good well of bitterness going.

Neville looked down at his plate, clearly ashamed of himself.

There it was, the bitterness was back. "Greenhouses are just enclosed gardens," she told Ron with a haughty sniff. "And gardens are hardly expensive at all." She knew very well that his mother gardened. She also knew she was making things worse, but she couldn't help herself. Getting under Ron's skin was second nature to her now.

Ron gave her a nasty look. She was used to it, but it still stung. "Do you garden a lot?" he asked mockingly. Even Harry looked surprised by the anger in his voice.

"No, plants hate me," Hermione said with a sigh, annoyed at herself for provoking another spat. "I kill basically everything I touch." Sort of true. She just wasn't very interested in practical magic. Anything that got her hands dirty, basically. She'd never been particularly fond of potions, either, but perhaps that had been in part due to the instructor.

"Maybe we could work together in class," Neville offered timidly, as if certain she would say no.

Instead she smiled at him. "That sounds great!" Oh god, first year classes. But when she glanced over at Harry and saw how shyly he was eating his food, she knew she'd have to stick around.

Classes were just as tedious as Hermione had predicted. They were still all theoretical for the moment, so she sat in the back of the class staying quiet and seemingly taking studious notes. Actually she was working on personal projects, including working on some papers that she'd had in progress when she'd disappeared. She was hoping she could submit them under a pseudonym, and maybe even make a name for herself (or an alternate identity) as a researcher. She'd have to stick to stuff that wasn't DoM classified, but she had some stuff in the backlog that would be a good fit.

Then in Transfiguration, they were asked to transform their matches into needles. Hermione waited what felt like an appropriate length of time and then transfigured her match. Professor Mcgonagall immediately descended on her, giving her embarrassingly effusive praise. Ron shot her a nasty look, and Harry seemed discouraged by her success.

"My cousin has a mastery," Hermione explained awkwardly. She'd forgotten that most students only managed it partway in their first class.

"I hope you haven't been practicing at home," Professor McGonagall said, immediately turning stern.

"Oh no, definitely not, she just likes talking about the theory," Hermione said quickly.

Professor McGonagall nodded, but her classmates only a little appeased by this explanation. She wasn't even raising her hand in class anymore! Why did they still hate her?

Well, Neville didn't, at least. Although he was looking at his match with a hopeless expression. Hermione sighed, and resigned herself to spending her Hogwarts years helping him.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was different than she remembered, in that Professor Quirrell didn't smell horrendous and stutter all the time, but that only marginally improved the class. He spent the time going over the syllabus and doing the introduction, and that seemed to line up about with what she remembered. Her classmates seemed to like it well enough, but Hermione barely paid attention, instead too nervous about how she might've fucked up the timeline.

Her first potions class, however, was even stranger.

Professor Snape did the roll, as all their professors had done, although he alone gave no reaction at Harry's name. Poor Harry looked relieved at that. Professor Flitwick had literally fallen off his chair, much to Harry's embarrassment.

Then their professor started off the class with a pop quiz, to which absolutely no one raised their hand.

Professor Snape looked over at her, but she merely stared back patiently.

For a second, she would've sworn he looked confused, but then he was turning to Neville and asking him to answer, and Neville was stuttering and just generally being the disaster he was. Again, Professor Snape looked back at her again as if to rebuke her for not helping, but she knew better than that. Instead, she waited until the worst was over and gave Neville a reassuring pat on his shoulder.

A few more questions later, with students called on at random, their spirits were effectively quashed. Even the Slytherins hadn't fared better, and Malfoy had looked slightly constipated when it seemed for a moment that Professor Snape might call on him.

In was in that depressed state that the class began brewing, interspersed with their usual beginning-of-the-semester lecture on safety. Professor Snape had always liked to take a, ah, practical approach to teaching safety measures. By letting them fuck up on a simple potion and seeing the effects first hand.

The class was halfway over when Hermione suddenly realised what was bothering her.

Professor Snape hadn't so much as looked at Harry Potter. He hated Harry, that much had been painfully clear all throughout school. But hadn't the harassment started immediately? Or had it taken a few lessons?

Yes, that must be it, Hermione reasoned uncertainly. It would've been strange for a professor to immediately start bullying a student, wouldn't it? Surely it would take a bit for Professor Snape to realise that he wanted to bully Harry?

She felt distinctly uneasy at that explanation, but she really couldn't remember what the first few months of Hogwarts had been like. To her, they'd passed in a blur of excitement and loneliness, and she could barely remember what had happened to herself, let alone what had happened to Harry and Ron before Halloween.

"Ah, I see Mister Longbottom has given us a wonderful example of the dangers of sheer idiocy in potion making," Professor Snape said, appearing suddenly at their table.

Hermione sighed when she saw that Neville's face had gone white with terror. Some things never changed.

Meanwhile, Neville's boil cure and turned a sickly yellow, despite Hermione's best efforts to steer him gently in the right direction.

"It doesn't look dangerous," Seamus said doubtfully, twisting in his seat to get a better look at the action.

"Five points from Gryffindor, Mister Finnegan, for blithering on about things you don't understand," Professor Snape said in satisfaction. "Can anyone tell me what Mister Longbottom did wrong here? Anyone? No? How about you, Miss Granger, since you seemed so intent on helping him during the lesson. Unable to stop yourself from showing off, were you?" He sent her his usual glare, the one that promised any rule breakers a lifetime of detention with Filch.

Hermione let his vitriol roll off her back. She'd had six years of lessons with the man, and had long ago stopped caring what he said. Instead, she glanced over at the potion, and gestured at the ladle. "May I, sir?" she asked.

Professor Snape looked surprised. "You may," he said grudgingly. The rest of the class had abandoned their own potions in favour of watching the excitement. There would be many more ruined potions by the end of class.

Hermione stirred the potion once, then ladled some up and let it fall back into the cauldron. "The horned slugs were not stewed all the way through," she said. "And the ginger root was diced too large." She hesitated, unsure of what was something reasonable for a first year to know. In the end, Professor Snape was right. She couldn't resist showing off. "Also the nettles he used were contaminated."

"And how do you know that?" Professor Snape said, glaring at her suspiciously.

Time for Hermione to revert to form. "All these effects are described in 100 Common Potions Mistakes, which was listed as supplementary reading in our textbook," she said primly. She'd re-read all her basic textbooks and supplementary reading over the summer to refresh her memory. It turned out they were a lot easier to understand when you'd had twelve years of magical schooling. They'd also been exceedingly boring, but she was an expert at forcing herself to read through boring material and retain what she'd read.

Professor Snape nodded reluctantly. "Very well," he said, and moved on with only a sneer for Neville.

Hermione was surprised. She'd expected to get points removed for showing off. But then again, she'd hardly cultivated a reputation as an insufferable know-it-all this time around. Or at least she didn't have a reputation for constantly raising her hand in classes.

Still, she was thoughtful for the rest of the day. There was something about that potions class that nagged at her, but she couldn't think what it was. It was frustrating how little she remembered of Professor Snape's behaviour during her first few months of school. It all sort of blurred together in her mind.

But Hermione soon put thoughts of it aside, because it was the weekend, and that meant she could work on her other projects without the added stress of first-year classes.

Finally, she could get some peace.

Both twenty one years after, and hours before, her first flying lesson, Hermione still didn't like flying. Granted, she was much better at it than she'd been at eleven, but she vastly preferred to Apparate everywhere. It had been quite the point of contention between her and Ron, actually, that she'd never bothered to fly with him.

But he'd never bothered to read any of her favourite books, either, so she rather thought they were even in that regard.

Still, Hermione was much less anxious about flying class this time. While everyone at the breakfast table gossiped about it excitedly, Hermione was doing some reading for history. The texts were more illuminating now that she'd spent time in the Ministry. As a young girl, she'd always been confused by some of the actions the Ministry had taken. Didn't they know they were angering the goblins? Didn't they know their actions would lead to war?

Yes, and yes, and that was the point. Hermione understood that better now. The textbooks weren't a chronicle of two equal factions undergoing disagreements, they were the chronicle of a government who had so suppressed its people that they had fought multiple civil wars and attempted rebellions. Eventually the goblins, who had cared more about freedom than the Ministry had about subjugating them, had successfully formed a small nation state of their own, presumably located in wizard space (goblin space?) deep underground. The Ministry recognised it as a sovereign nation, and even had ambassadors. Tensions, however, remained high. Each side felt that they'd been cheated, and that made diplomacy hard.

It was ridiculous. The goblins had wanted to disappear into their own state and operate as an independent entity, with the only contact being international trade. The Ministry had decided that if they couldn't tax the goblins directly, they'd tack on ridiculous tariffs to discourage British citizens from doing business with them. The goblins, furious at this, had flooded the market with freshly mined gold, collapsing the value of the gold coins the Ministry used to use and causing a currency crisis. Wizarding Britain had fallen into a recession, at which point the goblins had opened up their own bank, offering loans in a stable currency that was fixed to the pound. People, having lost faith in their government, flocked to Gringotts, heedless of the additional power this gave the goblins.

The Ministry, however, was well aware of the risk, and were willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent another collapse. In exchange for security measures that limited what goblins were allowed to do with wizarding money, Gringotts became the official bank of the Ministry of Magic. If you got paid by the Ministry, you had to go through Gringotts. If you wanted a government-backed loan, you had to go through Gringotts. Hell, even if you wanted to simply invest in a business that received any money at all from the government (which almost all businesses did, either as loans or small business grants), you had to go through Gringotts.

There were no other banks in Wizarding Britain. What was the point? Gringotts would always get the majority of the business. The remainder simply wasn't profitable enough, no matter how much people complained about goblins.

Hermione thought this was an untenable situation. The Ministry and the goblins had been teetering in this unstable equilibrium for decades, but all it would take was the slightest disruption to send the whole system crashing to the ground. The Ministry was very lucky that Voldemort had had too many wealthy supporters to be willing to tank the economy.

"Are you looking forward to flying?" Lavender asked Hermione politely, distracting her from her reading. They weren't good friends, but Hermione hadn't gone out of her way to alienate the other girls like she had the first time. So what if they liked hair and talking about crushes? Other girls with different interests from her were not the enemy. No, she knew exactly who the enemy was.

"I think so," Hermione said, with a friendly smile that was only partially fake. "What about you?"

"Oh, I don't know. What if I get bugs in my mouth?" Lavender said worriedly.

"Once when I was flying I ate a whole butterfly!" Ron boasted. There were answering noises of disgust and awe up and down the table.

Neville looked particularly green. "What if I hit a bird and fall off and die?" The owl next to him dropping off a package gave him a reproachful look and flew away.

"Can that happen?" Harry asked Ron nervously.

"No, of course not!" Ron said. "Oh, well, I guess it has happened a few times… Birds during Quidditch games, I mean. No one's died from it!"

"But there were injuries!" Seamus said excitedly. "One bloke almost lost an arm!"

"Oh no, I need my arms," Neville moaned. He unwrapped his package and pulled out a Remembrall. Which immediately turned bright red.

Hermione looked at it in surprise. She'd forgotten all about that. Poor Neville had been bullied so much because of it that he'd stopped using it altogether after only a few weeks. Cautiously, Hermione looked around for Malfoy, but he was over at the Slytherin table being pestered by Parkinson. Probably for the best.

"Oh Neville, you've forgotten something," Lavender said. "Do you remember what it is?"

"No," Neville said miserably.

"Not very useful then, is it?" Ron said, and shoved some bacon in his face. Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him, but was gratified to see Lavender doing so.

"I don't know," Neville said. "Maybe it'll help me remember." He shook the Remembrall hopefully.

Malfoy had finally untangled himself from Parkinson enough to come over and bother Neville.

"You have a Remembrall?" Malfoy said mockingly. "What, too stupid to know you can't remember anything? Even I could've told you that!"

Neville shrank into his seat.

Hermione looked around for a teacher, but Professor McGonagall was already swooping down on them.

"Mister Malfoy, I believe the Slytherin table is on the other end of the hall," she said coldly.

"I was just visiting," Malfoy protested, but acquiesced when he saw her look. "Fine, whatever," he huffed, walking back over to his table dragging his feet.

Professor McGonagall looked down at Neville, cowering in his seat, and sighed. "Buck up, Mister Longbottom," she said, and gave him a last lingering look before she left.

"What a slimy git," Ron muttered under his breath.

"He's awful," Lavender agreed. "He thinks that just because his family is super rich he can do whatever he wants."

Neville somehow managed to shrink even farther into his seat.

Hermione glanced up at the head table. Professor McGonagall was telling Professor Dumbledore something, clearly upset. And Professor Dumbledore looked almost amused, shaking his head slightly with a small smile on his face.

Reluctantly, Hermione found herself looking at Professor Quirrell. He looked a lot better without the turban, truthfully. He had thick brown hair that balanced out his face nicely, and his skin looked much healthier than the waxy pale it'd been while he was possessed. He was engaged in conversation with Professor Burbage, and they were laughing about something together. Hermione didn't like that at all.

Finally it was time for the flying lesson Hermione had been looking forward to. Not for the lesson itself, but because of the opportunity it presented. Ron had settled into the habit of bringing Scabbers with him everywhere he went, but he'd finally left him alone in the tower so that he didn't drop him while flying. All Hermione had to do was slip away when…

"Argh!" Neville cried as he hit the ground with a sickening crunch. "Oh Merlin," he groaned piteously.

Immediately everyone started to crowd around him.

"Back up, everyone," Madam Hooch said sternly, then crouched down to look at Neville. "Just a broken wrist, it looks like. Up you get. I'll take you up to the Hospital Wing, and Madam Pomfrey will have you fixed in a heartbeat." Her good cheer hadn't been diminished by the first serious injury of the year.

"Madam Hooch?" Hermione said, stepping forward. "I can take him, Neville's my friend." She looked up at the instructor earnestly, her still baby-cute eleven-year-old face finally coming in handy. She was also appealing to a teacher's desire to never leave a group of eleven-year-olds alone together without supervision.

"That's sweet of you," Madam Hooch said, and gingerly pulled Neville to his feet. "Do you know where it is?"

Hermione nodded. "I went there last week for a headache."

"Off you go then," Madam Hooch said, gently pushing Neville towards her. "Everyone else, back to your brooms, now!"

Hermione walked with Neville back to the castle.

"Thanks, Hermione," Neville said shyly. "I feel so stupid."

"Have you ever flown before?" She asked curiously.

Neville nodded. "Just a little. My grandmother made me learn but I was never any good at it. I just got so nervous that I'd mess up again that I— messed up again."

His downcast expression was heart-breaking. "That's okay, you're allowed to mess up," Hermione offered.

"But everyone laughed at me."

"So what? They just like laughing. If they weren't laughing at you they'd be laughing at someone else. I know it stinks that it's you, but it doesn't mean anything." Hermione hesitated for a moment. "Kids can be very cruel sometimes, without even realising it."

"And sometimes even with realising it," Neville added darkly.

Hermione nodded, sad that Neville had already figured that out. "Yeah, sometimes."

"I'm really glad you're my friend, Hermione," Neville said. Not shy this time, but defeated, as if he knew his only alternative was complete loneliness.

"Me too," Hermione said, and felt horrible all over again for the behaviour of her younger self. Even when she'd been completely friendless, she'd preferred aching loneliness over being kind to Neville.

She dropped Neville off with Madam Pomfrey, who immediately got to work. True to form, she had him fixed up almost immediately, but then something gave her pause.

"Mister Longbottom, would it be alright if I gave you a checkup right now?" she asked. "Your grandmother gave me permission to act as your healer while you're at school, but we can schedule another time if you're busy."

"Now is fine," Neville said in confusion. "Um," he turned to look at Hermione.

"I'll see you later, alright?" Hermione said, pleased with the opportunity.

"Okay. Thanks again, Hermione!"

Hermione waved back at him as she left, already going over her plan. She'd taken some time over the weekend to spell a cage unbreakable, so that Pettigrew would be properly trapped in it. She quickly retrieved it from her dormitory, then cast a Disllusionment charm and De-scented charm on herself and snuck into the first-year boy's dorm, not worrying about attracting notice with the floating cage. No one was around.

Scabbers was asleep on Ron's bed, easily identifiable by the pile of messy clothes around it and the Chudley Cannons posters on the wall. Hermione crept over, casting a silent Stupefy on the rat so that he'd stay asleep. And then she bundled him into the cage.

She basked in the thrill of work well done. Peter Pettigrew was asleep, ready to be turned in in the most dramatic fashion she could think of.

And then the door opened. No one appeared, but then Hermione saw the slight shimmer of air that meant someone else was Disillusioned as well.

There was a moment of shocked pause, and then both of them shot Finite Incantatums at each other at the same time.

Hermione was clever, she knew to aim for the place where the person would be forced to dodge amid the clutter of the boy's dorm. Except this careful deliberation had cost her the opportunity to dodge as well.

Both Disillusionments fell, and Hermione was left visible, holding the cage and staring at Professor Snape.