A/N: Before we begin this little journey, a few words. Anticipating Life will be a chaptered story, but it will not be particularly long. The story is divided into five parts:the prologue, "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "King Lear," and the epilogue. The middle three sections may be divided into smaller chapter postings, depending on how fast I write, how long they are, etc. This takes place after Half-Blood Prince and takes all the books into account. I hope you enjoy. As always, please review and comment.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter very obviously does not belong to me. The more's the pity.

Anticipating Life

"Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose." Oscar Wilde

Prologue

It's true she is a fool for the written word.

She consumes poetry like fine wine; she bathes herself in novels and beautiful nouns. Sometimes, in conversation, someone will utter a seemingly innocent phrase and her mind will cling to it. The other will talk around her but she will be stuck, her being reeling around one or two or three words.

She tries not to let it show. She doesn't tell people the effect words have upon her. She doesn't read tomes of poetry or plays by Shakespeare where anyone can see. Facts and figures and now spells are so much more impressive, after all, and words are too personal and too painful to reveal.

And so now it comes to this.

Hermione stands before the shelves in her room and trails her fingers gently across the row of books, feeling the different spines and bidding silent farewell to each of them. On such a journey as the one she now faces, books are frivolous and heavy. She could, of course, use a shrinking spell, or perhaps a lightening charm. Then she could carry several books she wanted and some useful magic books, besides.

That seems like cheating to her.

So in the end, she chooses only one. One book that she will lug over English moors and Scottish heaths and who knows where else. One book that, somehow, must be enough.

She chooses Shakespeare.

She pulls his Complete Works from the shelf and hugs it to her chest, so tight it's becoming painful. If she has a large, book-shaped bruise there the next day, she won't be surprised. Neither will she care.

In this volume, she has love and death, war and betrayal, friendship and enemies. She has battles and swordfights and kisses and jokes and drinking and dancing and crying.

It will have to be enough.

Her pack is full now, so she picks it up and slings it over her shoulder and goes downstairs to where her boys are waiting.

They look at her and she smiles gently at them and together they leave.