It was the worst day of Hermione's life.

She stared at the black barrel lined with her face. He was saying something, other hand gripping her shoulder painfully, but Hermione could only hear white noise.

She was supposed to be able to trust him. He was her teacher. She was supposed to be able to trust him. He was nice to her, he always praised her when she got it right and he even protected her from the bullies.

And now…

And now…

And now…

She opened her eyes. This was why she didn't sleep anymore.

Eventually, even Hermione had to admit that studying was both boring and a waste of time when you had perfect memory. She couldn't help it, but it still felt like cheating. She hadn't been able to remember every page of every book before just by reading it through. She'd had to study, to work for it!

And besides, what was she supposed to do for fun now? Studying was her life!

Studying was… the only thing Hermione had left.

Without studying there was no distraction. No losing herself in the comforting rote of re-reading and taking notes, organizing her time and triple-checking her homework. While she waited for classes to start, she didn't have her textbook to distract her from the weight of a gun in her bag.

The police had come, of course. They interviewed a lot of people at school and called parents so they could speak with children. Hermione had been expecting that.

She hadn't been expecting the woman in a pointy hat that had knocked on her house's door.

Had she come to take her away, because she hadn't told?

The little voice wormed into her ear, inside her head. "Hmmm… How unusual... A great mind- like no other I've ever seen!" Hermione had walked up to the hat knowing it would uncover her secret, but the panic still stirred up inside her and she clenched her hands on the edge of the stool, knuckles white. She had to remain calm. She could face this! She had faced worst. "Oh! I see, I see… A great mind, but a strong heart too. Too smart for Ravenclaw, aren't you? You'll fit best in-"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Hermione stopped and stared. Rows upon rows of bookshelves filled with all sorts of books she had never seen extended into the single greatest magical book collection of the United Kingdom.

Hogwarts was the best thing ever.

Hermione Granger was the last person to go to sleep, reading a book well into the late hours of the night, and the first person to wake up, already down in the common room ready to go get breakfast with her head between the pages. Harry sometimes thought she just didn't sleep at all. So he wasn't that surprised to see the bushy-haired girl in the common room half-past eleven. He was surprised to see no books in her hands.

Hermione glared at him and Ron. "I almost told your brother, Percy. You can't go. You're only thinking about yourselves, not about Gryffindor! If you're caught..."

They tuned her out and hurried out of the room. Hermione, determined to keep meddling in things she had no business with, followed them out of the Common Room and insisted on keeping an eye on them. Lest they got hurt… or expelled.

What a bothersome girl.

Ron Weasly was a prat. A complete arse.

A kaleidoscopic blur was already leaping to her hand as Hermione planted her feet and pointed to the mirror. She discharged the S&W Model 29 into the wall well over six times, stopping when her thumb and wrists hurt too much to continue. Then she braced herself and pulled the trigger of a sawed off shotgun, obliterating the remains of the mirror and porcelain.

Sniffing and crying, yet feeling much better, she willed the weapon into a knife, sheathed it on its usual place behind her back, and grabbed her wand from her robes. "Reparo."

Thank God everybody was at the Halloween party, because she was making a racket.

"So you dropped your wand… and went for your knife."

More like she had thrown it away to hold the biggest shotgun she knew and fire, ineffectually, while screaming like the little girl she was. "I panicked."

"... Do you always carry your Potions' knife with you?"

She wasn't getting out of this one, as she? "Of course."

Ron waited until Hermione was well outside hearing range. "Mental. Absolutely mental."

There was no better bonding experience than facing potential death together.

And no better establishing character moment than stabbing a troll in his privvies.

After discovering she didn't need to sleep, Hermione spent her nights reading books. Eventually she re-read all the books in her room and started on her parent's moderate collection. One day, she would probably have to move on to their collection of dental texts and periodicals. She told herself that she'd be the first person to read and know every book in the world.

Then the letter came and Hermione discovered there was a whole new world of books out there. The nights at Hogwarts were filled with a plethora of wonderful new books, the days learning and doing magic. After Halloween, spell practice started making its way into Hermione's nights. But that was okay. Now she spent time with her friends during daylight, and besides, magic wasn't just theoretical.

There! On the professors' box! She should have know, she should have know! But there were two. Snape and Quirrell, both fixedly looking up and muttering. Which one of them was jinxing Harry? Maybe they were counter-cursing? Above, Harry's broom bucked ferociously. Hermione pulled her face away from the scope and rose to a crouch. She didn't have time to second-guess.

A sniper rifle wasn't the appropriate gun tool for this job. What she wanted… was a grenade launcher.

"It was Snape! I'm telling you, it was Snape who cursed Harry's broom!" Ron accused, out of breath.

"You can't be sure about it, Ron. Professor Snape wouldn't try to kill Harry." She tried to appeal to reason.

Harry shook his head. "No, he hates me."

Hermione groaned. "Not enough to go and murder you in front of the whole school!" She turned to Ron. "Do you even have any proof?"

The ginger puffed up his chest. "As a matter of fact, yeah, I do." He leaned in closer to his friends. "After you ran off, I had a hunch so I asked Hagrid for his binoculars. And when I looked at Snape, he was staring at Harry and mumbling stuff under his breath! That's how you curse people!"

"That's also how you counter jinxes and curses, Ron." She said, but she knew the battle was already lost. Snape, trying to save Harry? Preposterous! He hated Harry's guts. And the rest of him too. He'd made that quite clear, less than ten minutes after he started giving them lessons.

Hermione bit her lip. She actually kind of liked Professor Snape. Aside from his achievements as a potioneer, he made it very clear how much he hated incompetent buffoons, Gryffindors, Harry Potter, know-it-alls, the Weasly Twins, Harry Potter and pretty much everybody that wasn't a Slytherin. He was straightforward, so she never had to wonder about him. Professor Quirrell, on the other hand, was looking more and more suspicious the more she thought about it. He was too twitchy. But she couldn't admit to having seen Quirrell muttering through her scope without having to admit she had been the one to put half their professors in the Hospital Wing.

It wasn't her fault! Nothing in all the books Hermione had read had even vaguely mentioned anything about flashbangs being potentially dangerous at close range!

You forget that dog, an' you forget what it's guardin', that's between Professor Dumbledore an' Nicolas Flamel-"

"Aha!" pounced Harry, "so there's someone called Nicolas Flamel involved, is there?"

Hagrid paled, then he turned his back to them and crossed his arms. "I'm not sayin' anythin' else."

The boys were grilling him futilely when Hermione grabbed them both by their arms and dragged them away. Over their protests, she quoted, "Nicolas Flammel is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone. He's also mentioned a handful of times on books about potions and transfiguration, and always as a reference to what can be achieved when speaking about alchemy. I've seen his name somewhere else too…" Hermione searched her memory further, lapsing into silence for another couple of seconds, "Oh yes, he's mentioned in Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card. Dumbledore is known for his work in alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel."

The boys stared dumbstruck at her.

"Hermione, you're brilliant."

Faced with a steadily growing Norbert, Hermione became increasingly aware that while she had many things to start a fire with, she had none to stop a fire with.

The Forbidden Forest loomed over them. There were only trees around them and cool mist that lightly covered the ground. It was too quiet. Even the natural sounds seemed muffled by its canopy. They were being watched. In her head, Hermione could feel his eyes, hear the rustling of clothes. At any moment, she felt, he could jump out and grab them, dragging them away to who knew where to do who knew what.

Hagrid's crossbow felt too little a deterrent, too weak a weapon. Maybe she should-

There was a scream… red sparks!

Hagrid went running towards them, barreling through the undergrowth, but all she could think was as she clinged to Harry was...

Hermione had trusted him.

And then there were great vast beings breaking through the firmament, falling, falling, falling towards her.

And it was right. It was okay. He had been a bad person. A bad man, an evil man. Hermione had done nothing wrong. She wasn't sure if it had been right, but it hadn't been wrong.

Even if right then, all she had felt was hate.

She wasn't going to shoot Malfoy. She wasn't going to shoot Malfoy. She also wasn't going to scare him with a near miss, or threaten him with a knife, or even punch him.

But the prat sure was making it harder for her.

"Light a fire!" Harry cried.

Hermione hesitated, frozen in indecision. "Ah- How!?" Maybe this was it, maybe this was when she was supposed to reveal her power.

Ron exploded. "Oh, by Merlin's- ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT!"

Oh right. She could use her wand. No need to break out the incendiaries.

Hermione grabbed Harry's hand before he could swallow the potion. "Look, Harry… I don't think it's Snape."

"Hermione…" Harry tried to get his arm out of the taller girl's grip.

The girl shook her frizzy mane, grabbing his robes tightly. "No, look, it's like a mystery novel: Snape's too obvious. He hates you and everybody knows that. It's too easy! It's never the first suspect, but always the one nobody suspects!"

I was just like Hermione to use books as examples, Harry thought. And it made a sort of twisted sense, but he knew it had to be Snape. "Alright, then who do you think it is?"

"Quirrell." Harry blinked, unable to wrap his head around Professor Quirrell being in league with Voldemort. The turbant-wearing professor was too afraid of his own shadow to conspire with Dark Lords. He'd faint at the name Voldemort! Hermione scowled at the disbelief on his face and elaborated. "Nobody suspects him, but he's weird. And you saw him and Snape fighting and… and he was staring at your broom during the Quidditch match too, just like Snape."

Quirrell had? "Wait." How did Hermione know that? Unless… "Were you- No. Look, it doesn't matter who it is. I'm ready for them. I've done this once before."

No, no he wasn't. Hermione knew. Nobody was ready for the gun -wand- pointed at their faces for the first time, and realizing they could die… She let go of Harry and took a deep breath. Then she called on her power. The knife at her back blurred into a kaleidoscope, reforming at her hand in a gun. The first gun Hermione had ever used.

She flipped it, gripping it by the barrel and presented it to Harry. "Take it. I'm not quite sure how far it can get away from me, but don't let go, or it will disappear. It's loaded, the safety is off, so it's just pulling the trigger." The words rushed out, fast and scared.

Harry's jaw had gone slack, his eyes alternating between the gun being pushed into his hands and the girl that had produced it from nowhere. "What? Hermione how?"

Hermione avoided his gaze. "I've… I've never told anybody about this Harry. It's a long story, so I'll tell it to you later."

She steeled her nerves and looked up.

The policemen would take her away for a little while. But she hadn't done anything wrong, so she'd come back. And when she came back... Everybody would know she was a murderer. She would be alone. Her parents would look at her… different.

They wouldn't love her anymore.

She left the room without telling the truth.

"Promise?"

"Promise."