AN: So far, there have been three new reviews. One is from Fumes43, who helped beta the previous chapter and felt compelled to wax further on it, for which she has my thanks. One is from MariusDarkwolf, whom, like Fumes, laments my cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter. To both of them, I say: sorry. It was the only way that the chapter was ever going to be uploaded on time. It was necessary, and I've been planning that twist for a while now. New reviewer ChoboChan says general nice things, which is pleasant of them and they have my thanks, and as for why Hermione's dad is possessed, that'll be addressed here. Finally, there's one from new reviewer Socar37. He makes some cogent observations – Harry is healing a little, but probably not enough to survive the Battle of Hogwarts – and likens my version of Hermione to his daughter. I pray to whichever gods are listening that she's not quite as, you know… stabby as Hermione is in this fic, but whatever. If my characters feel human, then I'm doing this right.

DISCLAIMER: I am not JK Rowling. I'd be terrified if she read this and thought that I was claiming her characters as my own, because that woman can afford assassins. I should also point out that this chapter contains strong language and a boatload of exposition. You were warned.

The time is 5 p.m., according to the grey clock on the grey concrete wall of the grey rec room in this grey holiday camp in this grey country. The only thing that isn't grey is the sky, and that's because it's already pitch dark. The date is 26th February, 1983. I am in Albania, trying fruitlessly to concentrate on a letter home. This team-building exercise was a gigantic mistake. I don't know why Graeme commissioned it. Oh, wait, yes I do. It's because he couldn't have a decent idea if one cockslapped him into next week. Sod it. I'm going for a walk. At least it's stopped raining. Not that it could really be said to rain here; there's nought but a dull, soul-sucking drizzle that reminds me of the romantic heartland of the north Surrey commuter belt, where circumstances force me to call home. It seems obvious in retrospect. Proper rain might be an interesting activity, which I think are illegal here.

Graeme, bless his knee-length reinforced hiking socks, has decided we're going for a ramble tomorrow. Since I know for a fact that he once got lost in his own practice, I'm going to scout out the woodland area of the walk so that we don't end up being shouted at by more angry, gun-wielding Soviets than strictly necessary. After about an hour of traipsing through increasingly grim woodland, the only company a compass and whatever insects escape being trodden on, I remember that my own sense of direction isn't that much better than his and realise that I have become thoroughly lost. And now the drizzle's come back, seeping through my cagoule like rising damp. I wish I was home.

You see, I have a young family. My daughter's two and charging around the place like a mad thing half the time, and Cora's worse if anything. I remember how we met… D&D Soc meeting, she was an elven ranger and I was a skinny human druid. Oh, the stories we told… since you asked, the Epic level quests were always the best, and no you don't get to find out if what I did with my +5 Staff of Penetration. I want to go back to her so much… this place is killing me, the damp and the concrete and the boredom and fucking Graeme and the evil ghost creatures hovering around medieval tiaras. I hate it. Some team-building exercise this turned out to be.

Hang on, what was that last thing agai-

CRACK!

…

A quick check of my watch reveals I've been out of it for about three hours since seeing that ghost come at me. Everything seems fine.

"Oh, little wizard, such power… I will bend you and break you and make you mine…"

What? Who the hell are you? And I don't like the way you said that last line, it sounded really pervy. Haven't you heard of AIDS?

"What on Earth are you talking about? Anyway, this is irrelevant. I will have your magic, Ioan Granger… consultant dentist from… near Surbiton… who likes to tell stories…"

Wait, wait, back up a minute. Magic? Me? Magic doesn't exist outside of Dungeons & Dragons and the weirder anime serieses. Series? Series.

"You're a Muggle, then."

If by that you mean someone who can't do magic, then yes. So is everyone I know, because magic doesn't exist.

"… Well, tits."

(Have a screen break. Have a KitKat.)

Hermione stepped forward and walked into Harry's outstretched arm, pushing against it. "Dad?"

"Yes, Hermione-chan… and then again, no. I wear the vessel, the reeking shell of that pathetic Muggle-"

"Don't call him that. Don't you dare call him that."

"Why ever not, Hermione? It's not like he can hear us… you might as well put on Potter's robes and claim you're him. His power over this body is long since gone… has been ever since you left for school. Your sort should know better than to come here." Unwilling tears were forcing themselves from the corners of Hermione's eyes as the half-living man continued. "I am in control. He let me take it, in the end… he said goodbye to you at the station and gave himself to me, his sworn enemy. Is that not pathetic? Is that not the antithesis of what you believe, that your Daddy was invincible, that no man could best him? Your weakness sickens me. Muggles truly are degenerate."

The girl stifled a sob, her shoulders jerking slightly as she did so. "You're wrong."

"And what makes you say that, little child?"

"Because you have to be, otherwise what's the point?"

"Ah… I forgot how much of a sense of fairness the host instilled in you. Let me remind you of something. Life is not fair. The world is cold and dark and needs the powerful to rule it. And I am powerful, and deserve power over you."

"You deserve nothing, you're evil!"

"Silly girl. There's no evil, nor good. Only power, and those with the will to seek it. And I will have power… with the Stone. And you will give it to me."

"… No." She trembled like a leaf in body and in voice, but there she was, defiant. Harry stiffened his arm against her chest, his eyes hard behind the thick glass of his spectacles.

"Then let me offer you a choice. You give me what I want, or your friend dies."

(There's going to be a lot of back-and-forth between scenes, so there won't be many references in the screen break captions)

June 25th, 1984. Hermione is four today. We're having a party for her with the people from her playgroup, and frankly I'm don't know what I'm more terrified by; the fact that my daughter's going crazy on her annual overdose of sugar, or the fact that my wife seems to be going the same way on a box of cheap red someone's hooked up to a soda streamer and written Vimto on. On the one hand, my cousin Utz just sent another batch of horrible porcelain figurines and he gets all upset when Hermione kicks lumps out of them in fits of pique and good taste. On the other, Cora's put together a drinking game based around Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars, and everyone's getting in on it. Frankly, I'm surprised she can read the subbing script. I consider joining her, but elect to stay in the kitchen with the hidden bottle of cheap-as-hell rhubarb vodka that pacifies the creature in my head. Ghastly stuff, but it's the only thing I've found that works.

…

September 10th, 1984. Hermione's first day at school was today. I've never felt more proud. She's smart, really smart; that's not just parental bias speaking, we had a man around to test her and he was astonished. I could not feel more middle-class if I'd just bathed in a vat of hummus. I hope it goes well for her, because we're having to get Eliezer from across the road to babysit. Cora roped me into going to a fancy dress party. Say what you like about the creature in my head, he gives me some cracking costume ideas. Some of his memories are bleeding into mine, and I say things without quite knowing what they mean until after I've said them. Marius from the practice reckons I can write a book. I'd settle for an anti-psychotics prescription myself.

…

December 4th, 1984. I had an appointment with Dr Alderman today. We both spoke to him, me and the demon. I found his name out, too. Lord Voldemort, he calls himself. That can't be real, though, because I'd have heard of a hereditary seat in the Lords with a bloody stupid name like that – Thief of Death, according to The Idiot's Guide to French I had a look through after the appointment – and besides, there's this old man who keeps calling him Tom. He keeps demanding to be let out, you know. Lord Voldemort, that is. Sometimes… sometimes I think about doing it.

…

November 23rd, 1985. I did a very bad thing. There's this awful man on the books, Major Terence Warburton-Bloodnock. He's about ninety years old and seems to survive solely on cheap whisky and racism. On the table he said some things about Cora, the usual for him, hurtful and spiteful and sick. And Lord Voldemort heard, and I, well… I let him out. Some of my memories had bled through into his mind, if he has a mind that isn't mine, and he found out about dentistry. The Major was in for a double root canal and a filling replacement. I was… I was scared. Lord Voldemort grabbed the drill, forced his head back and just rammed it in. Bastard even gave the Major a placebo in place of the local anaesthetic. I heard him scream. Cora chewed me out later on – he might have been a shit but he always paid up – and I thought about telling her that it wasn't me doing that to him but I was scared again. I hope she never finds this.

…

February 5th, 1987. Lord Voldemort can hurt me now. He finds things, bad memories from when I was young, and he hurts me with them. I've started half-inching the painkillers from the practise to shut him up. Dr Alderman thinks it's not a good idea, but it works and it not-working is bad, very bad. He wants a body of his own. He wants control. I can't do that. Not to my girls. Doing that means dying.

(Screen break)

Harry jumped in front of Hermione with a speed that belied his under-nourished body and baggy-looking robes. He spread himself as wide as he could, forming a target in front of his friend with his entire body.

"Take me instead. I'm worth nothing. Don't kill her, please don't kill her-"

"It moves, it breathes, it speaks! Well then. Wish granted. Fiat Pilum Cernnunensis!" The half-man thrust his hand out, palm splayed, and a spear tipped with a stylized thunderbolt shot out from his sleeve like a conjuror's dove, aimed straight at the boy's chest. Hermione screamed and yanked him back.

The spell bit through Harry's shoulder in a blaze of searing white and purple light, the colours of a lightning strike, and he went down screaming. There was no blood, mercifully, or perhaps not, depending on how one looks at these things; the electricity from the spell had cauterized the wound, filling Hermione's nostrils with the scent of overcooked gammon and her throat with barely-repressed bile. Harry had a ragged hole through his shoulder that the girl could actually see through and he rolled into a foetal position, clutching at the wound.

"Haha! A fine idea, Miss Granger! I shall take care of him at a leisurely pace, perhaps with some firewhiskey or the Muggle's beloved rhubarb vodka in a glass at my side! So now, when you look into the Mirror, you will retrieve my stone for me or little Harry there dies slowly."

"… I'll do it."

"NO! Hermione, no… please, don't do this, don't give in…"

"I'm sorry…"

Blearily, tearily, she stood in front of the Mirror of Erised and looked deep within. Her parents were there, arm in arm, and so was she, sleek and graceful as always. Her reflection then moved, slipping something into its pocket, something that had never happened before. The real Hermione's eyes widened as the reflection winked cheekily and pulled out her long, tiger-striped wand in one hand and the little bronze cylinder in the other. Hermione nodded, feeling the weight of the something in her inside pocket as her… no, that thing wasn't her dad, it wasn't… tugged her out of her reverie.

"What did you see, little girl?"

(Screen Break)

June 8th, 1987. I think he's winning. After we'd turned off the lights, I felt myself try to take Cora again. She didn't seem to mind but wondered what had brought it on. How can I tell her that it isn't me doing these things?

…

November 26th, 1987. Little things are changing. How I act around the girls. How I look at them, how I talk to them. I feel… cold. Like he's taking everything away and building himself a new body. I told Dr. Alderman about the nightmares. He thinks they're important, and he wants me to write them down and give them to him. That won't be difficult. I wish it was.

…

May 4th, 1988. There's a new woman at the practice. She's skinny as a rake with these piles of grubby-looking black hair, like if Medusa was a Goth. Ruby, her name is. He took a shine to her… he promised to be good to her if I let him out. And he was. He's a better dentist than I am. Said it would be worth it in the end, he did. That sounds… ominous.

…

September 19th, 1988. Ruby came back, and she and Him started talking. He was a perfect gentleman with her, which is odd, seeing as how he despises Muggles most of the time. Perhaps he's in love? Haha… that's stupid. I don't think the bastard's even capable of it.

…

March 22nd, 1989. We had an inspector over from the union to talk about fair practice, and it would be on one of the days I'd agreed with Him – via Dr. Alderman – that he could run the practice. The union, of course, sends the most arrogant little witch they can find, a Catherine something-or-other, I forget. I mean, it's not like I was there, is it? Anyway, He was giving her the tour and showing her the records and I could feel this… energy in the back of His head. My head. Whatever. It was this great sea of it, all tangled up like boiling spaghetti. And I watched some of it straighten out and the woman just… stopped. Like a clockwork toy that needed winding. He let me back in time for me to watch her die. I called an ambulance anyway, for all the good it did. I have to tell Dr. Alderman this. But I can't tell Cora.

(Screen Break)

"What is it you see!"

"My father… and he gave me something." Harry tried to get up but the not-Ioan conjured some ropes. He went down, bound and gagged and in the middle of a vicious flashback.

"Then give it to me!"

"You don't want to know what it is?"

"I know what it is, you stupid little girl. Now GIVE IT TO ME!"

"OK… I'm sorry, Daddy." Hermione's face was streaked with tears. "I'm so, so sorry."

She spun and raised her wand, hand gripping the little cylinder and pressing. The spell shot out from the big man's hand and the little striped stick leapt into his hand. He laughed over the sound of tearing cloth-

Wait, what?

The little button had released a little blade, a few inches of brass that had been honed to an almost impossible edge by a desperate man. It was a bullet knife, a relic from the Great War. And bullets kill.

There wasn't a great deal of blood. There didn't have to be. The little knife just stayed in the not-Ioan's chest, the occasional spray of crimson spattering the inside of his white Healer's robes. The ropes around Harry dissolved as his captor keeled over, landed on the flagstones with a crack, and was still.

The Boy-Who-Lived sprinted over to his oldest friend and held her in his skinny little arms where she stood. Her breath catching in her throat was the only noise in the silence of the room.

(Screen Break)

July 31st, 1990. Christ. Oh, dear sweet Rassilon, he's got me. And I don't know how to get out. Leaving? Out of the question; Voldemort's too strong now. Even now, he's letting me write one last entry. You see, he dictates the terms now. On his time and his alone does this body work. Understand, it wasn't easy for him. God, but it wasn't easy. Oh, there was a battle. Over my mind of all places – you of all people should know what a lacklustre prize that is! Don't worry, there's a contingency plan. But… it's not going to be easy to implement, and it'll hurt everyone involved. You know, Evan – my doctor – reckons that you should read this, but there's a problem. I left you a message in code; all the capital letters in this entry before this entry spell it out. Hermione has the means to deal with Lord Voldemort… I would say I hope she never has to, but we both know she will, and if you're reading this then chances are she already has. It's been the best time a man could have, angel mine. I-

The last diary slipped from Cora Granger's hands as she screamed and screamed and screamed.

AN#2: I did say all would be revealed… I just hope it's to your satisfaction. Well, not so much satisfaction as, well… oh, let's start again. I wanted this chapter to do two things; explain why the Dark Lord chose Ioan, and make you feel. For everyone who has stuck through this… it ain't over. But the first book of Action Girl almost is, and it's been a hell of a ride. Thank you for watching, and I love you all.