Chapter One

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Author's Note: I couldn't stand it anymore and have officially begun to rewrite the chapters. The changes are small but fit better with the big picture that becomes clearer later in the story.

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In the blackest cranny of a cell, water leaked through the bricks in a steady rhythm and left its inhabitant resting poorly on their bedroll. A pile of books was scattered around her, loose papers covering nearly every inch of the floor, and the wall did not escape the disorder.

A loud bang against the arched door woke the young woman from her slumber, and she sat up while rubbing the residue of sleep from her eyes. She yawned, combing a hair through her thick hair that all but defined the word chaos before clambering to her feet. Her trousers were skin-tight and unwrinkled, but her shirt did not fair as well. A hand moved down her shirt, and slowly, the creases disappeared and appeared to be freshly ironed.

Her hair was pulled up and above her collar, providing her with a proper militaristic appearance, and the woman grabbed a well-worn but sturdy cloak from a hanger. She pulled it on quickly and buttoned each shiny gold piece with great care. On the upper arm of her sleeves, three gold stripes stood out, and over the broad of her shoulders, two gold stars proudly revealed her rank.

Lastly, she rolled up her sleeves to strap two wand holsters around her wrists before hiding them under her uniform. Without further ado, she left her cell to be greeted by a young man nervously shifting against a wall. "Lieutenant, General Longbottom has requested your presence in the main hall."

"Very well," the woman said softly, her eyes unyielding as she considered the route to her destination. "Dismissed." The man scurried off, clearly afraid to stay in her presence longer than strictly necessary. She didn't blame him. Her reputation had gotten out-of-hand the longer she was absent from the Sanctuary.

As she made her way down the hallway, she nodded to each soldier that saluted to her and studied their expressions to try and gather hints on the general moral today. There weren't as many trainees or soldiers in the hallways as usual, and as she passed by the various rooms, she was surprised to see them empty. Where was everyone?

When she reached the Main Hall, she found where everyone had gone for nearly the entire room was crowded by her comrades. Men and women, soldiers and civilians, magical and non-magical, all stood together armed and facing Neville's direction. Her lips quirked at the sight because she knew what he would say in private. "I'm never going to get used to this."

A hole was made when the crowd took notice of her, and she strode with purpose to the center podium to where her long-time friends, General Neville Longbottom and Colonel Luna Lovegood, stood. Among the two of them, Hermione Granger was the last survivor of the Hogwarts Massacre since the war began, and no one forgot that. Without a word, she filled the space made behind them and looked at the crowd sternly, receiving their silence almost instantly.

Then, she waited for the infamous speech their trusted leader was known for.

Neville cleared his throat, nervous despite having made these speeches for several years now, and begun. "We have been fighting for a long time. We have lost so very much; so many loved ones. But the war in the UK is on the brink. We have found a solution, one that can end this in a single battle."

"The Dark League is planning something big, but the Resistance is planning something bigger. If we take out the Death Eaters in the UK, we cripple the League and hinder their plans that leave them vulnerable for the Sanctuary to take advantage of. Most of all, we take back what is rightfully ours. Hogwarts, our homes, our towns, and our land! Tomorrow, I lead whoever is willing to finish the battle of Hogwarts and end the influence of the Dark League in our kingdom with the Lord's death. No one is truly immortal, and I promise you that when we take that man down, he will never return to our green earth!"

"Stand with me when tomorrow comes. When the sun rises in the clear morning sky as we march to confront the Immortal Legion, I will stand before you with an unwavering hand that will strike my enemies down before me. I will serve as a shield to your sword, I will stand beside you upon the ending of the world, and I will hold you in my arms should death claim you before me. I promise you; I will not let your life live without purpose. Tomorrow, I know not the hour of my death, but if I shall meet my fate, so too will the Dark Lord!"

The crowd uproared with excitement and flattering applause following his words, and she grinned proudly for the noble man. She could see how his words had inspired their people. The morale was high, and they were ready for the battle that always demanded so much from them.

After a minute, Luna stepped forward to stand beside Neville to speak to the crowd. Hermione admired the woman she once looked down on. Just a few years and so much had changed between them. She had witnessed to a young girl grow into a courageous woman and befriend her along the way. No one considered the girl unwise when they followed her strategies in battle. No one questioned her judgment.

Especially not today.

"The goal here is simple. The execution, however..." Hermione listened to her superior officer lay out the basics to their army with split attention, knowing that she and the other squad leaders would receive better and more in-depth information away from the public. For now, she let her mind race as she considered the strategy.

And for once, she let the fear in her heart turn to hope.

War was easy to summarize behind the scenes into fine-print textbooks passed through the generations of children. Participating in the battles was another thing entirely, and the sensation of fighting and fleeing from her enemies could not be aptly described with mere words.

The masked people in black fancy robes practically glided through her ranks, and she sprinted through the crowd every time one of them seemed to overwhelm her comrades. "Reducto!" She shouted, stilling her wand as she waited for a half-second to see how her opponent would defend themselves.

Predictably, they dodged out of the way only to collapse when she fired a stunner wordlessly at their position. She finished them off with a quick slash to the throat before moving on in a similar manner, pretending to cast a spell audibly only to wait to see their reaction and throw a better spell wordlessly accounting for their defense.

As she cut through the ranks of the Death Eaters, her allies surrounded her, and she thanked Thomas Hanes for created the Moonshine potion for the werewolves. It was a potion that was inspired by the Wolfsbane potion that would allow werewolves to retain their minds, but instead of isolating their transformations, it allowed the drinker to transform at will for the next seventy-two hours.

Hermione imagined the sensation was something they never grew tired of. She knew because she could do it too. In the blink of an eye, she altered her body into that of her spirit animal and suddenly pounced on her next opponent with her claws in his chest and her teeth tearing through his throat. Blood sprayed into her furred face and stood in stark contrast to the beautiful black tear lines that ran down from her eyes.

As fast as a swooping eagle, she turned her tail and sprinted halfway across the battlefield when the familiar visage of the Dark Lord finally arrived to aid his fallen men. Neville was after him immediately, a magical sword cutting down his elite bodyguards in a single motion while his magical signature sky-rocketed to counter the Lord's. Warmth shot through her as though she had sat near a fireplace after a long journey through the winter, and she could've laughed in joy when she understood what Neville now meant in his speech how he would stand by them in battle.

Empowered by the feeling of companionship, she gained her second wind to claw and rip through a battalion of the immortal league of Death Eaters. Transfigured mythical creatures rose from the Earth around her and surrounding the Resistance from the Sanctuary in a fearless aura that belonged to Luna, and in minutes, her comrades had cut down more Death Eaters than they had at the start of the hour.

A green skull with a snake coming out of its mouth suddenly lit up the sky, and the Immortal Army fell back beside their Lord. To prevent being overwhelmed, Neville fell back with his comrades while shouting, "reform the line! Reform the line!"

Quickly, they fell into formation as soon as they could. "Raise your arms!" Neville commanded, and in a single motion, they had raised their wands, their shields, their swords, and any weapons they had. "Lend me your strength!" Neville said before suddenly stabbed his sword into the ground. Following his command, a great amount of magic swept through the ranks to Neville before a towering silver shield surrounded them on all corners.

Just in time, too, because their enemies were not idle in their time. The Dark Lord rose into the air as dark energy surrounded him, like shadows themselves had taken form to wrap around him. A giant weapon made of his aura took shape in his hands while his army chanted, their magic fueling whatever spell their Lord was using against them. The amount of magic between the two armies was powerful enough to compare to the destruction an atomic bomb was capable of.

Hermione looked among her comrades, many injured and shivering from exhaustion despite the adrenaline rushes the aura of powerful wizards provided them. She could tell by their expressions that their morale was sinking and against magic so dark it drained the positivity from you, not unlike a dementor, a solution came to her. Unnecessarily using the incantation, her patronus leaped from her wand in a silvery blue mist before prancing around them in a loving aura that only the happiest of memories could provide. People began to understand her reasoning behind using the spell, and soon several more wands raised to add their patronus to their army. the shield surrounding them began to glow in the strength of their power. Emotion, after all, was the fuel for most spells.

When the Dark Lord seemed to finish preparing his attack, the black lance of dark energy seemed to drawback in the sky above them to be thrown down at them, much like Zeus would strike his enemies down with his lightning. A moment passed, and the lance hadn't budged. The Dark Lord was too far away to read his expression, but no one could miss the sudden wavering of the dark weapon in the sky.

Hermione returned to her body to see better and watched with widened eyes as blood suddenly splattered into the sky and stained the earth in a flood of bodies. More than a quarter of the Dark Lord's army dropped dead to a sudden attack, and Hermione's only conclusion was that someone must've struck from the inside of his ranks. A familiar head of silver-blonde hair stood out from among the Death Eaters as Draco Malfoy unmasked himself.

She held her breath at the sight of the blood magic surrounding the young man revealing that he was the traitor. She then turned back to the mass of dark energy fueling the weapon now shaking unstable. She remembered then, suddenly, that when Dark Spells couldn't be sustained with enough magic power that there were disastrous consequences. Even someone as powerful as the Dark Lord couldn't maintain a spell that had used 250 full-grown and trained wizards and witches.

The consequences would be fatal.

But Draco wasn't finished yet. "Blood of my family, taken from thy maker, I avenge your souls. Flesh of my friends, stolen from thee, I return your souls. Soul of my enemy promised to thee, I fulfill my oath." Avada Kedavra green soaked into her childhood bully's aura in frightening clarity as his intentions became known. By the livid red seeping from the Lord, she could only watch as the Blood Ritual restored the Dark Lord's mortality.

A monstrous body return to a human form, pale, weak, and vulnerable looking. Before he could so much as a flash the killing curse at Draco, the green aura exploded, and like a chain reaction, the dark weapon self-destructed, and the entire clearing was consumed by dark shadows.

Darkness surrounded them as the sky was painted red. Their only protection was the shield cast by Neville and the glowing animal constructs of their patronus. The shield shimmered slightly as the strain on their magic was tested, and Hermione could only hope they could outlast the attack.

Then, the shadows dispersed, and the world was returned to them in the form of an empty battlefield. Where the Dark Lord's army once stood, a scorch mark remained, but anyone could feel the dark magic that saturated the area. "Who would've thought... Malfoy, of all people," she heard Neville mutter as the shield collapsed into silver wisps. Hermione made her way toward him and found him staring expressionlessly at the lion-carved hilt of the sword of Gryffindor.

"His mother was killed recently," Hermione said unthinkingly. Neville turned his head to look at her questioningly. "Lestrange told me she misstepped. I think... the Lord killed her... despite his vow as a Lord." Neville knew what happened to Oath-breakers.

"I guess everyone is capable of change when they lose someone," he said quietly.

Hermione didn't say anything else. Instead, she moved toward the scorch mark to pay her respects to Draco's sacrifice. An ear-deafening explosion suddenly shook the ground under her feet, and her head swiveled east to see a battalion of Death Eaters swarming behind them.

"A countermeasure!" Someone shouted in a panic. Hermione looked back at Neville to see him giving Luna her orders. Their army split in half as one group headed straight toward the battalion. "Lieutenant, take these men and head around them!" Hermione nodded at the order and saluted with a snappy, "sir!"

"Men, come with me!" She commanded, jogging ahead of them as she split away from Neville. Without hesitation, they followed her in rank and file formation. Unfortunately, their group was maybe halfway out of the area when the cracks of apparition surrounded them, and they were suddenly under fire, debris sent toward them alongside various lights of spells.

"Cover!" She shouted, leading a small squad behind a wall of the castle. Destroyed and abandoned Hogwarts maybe, but still a magical castle it was, and therefore was the perfect cover for them.

"The Dark Mark is gone!" She heard one of the masked women shout. An explosion kicked dirt up onto them, and Hermione ducked lower even as she stretched her neck out to listen to the conversation more clearly.

"Bloody hell!" Hermione assumed they saw the scorched clearing.

"Then, follow your orders!" A decorated mask snapped, defining himself as an Elite. Hermione risked herself to peer up to the woman speaking, and her eyes widened when she caught her pulling a golden chain from her black robes. Her heart stuttered when a familiar trinket was attached to the end.

A time-turner!

"Cover me!" She ordered, before sliding over their cover without looking back, wand out. "Look out!" A Death Eater roared, but Hermione's focus was single-minded, and she tackled the woman entirely, ignoring the wand digging into her torso as she reached for the chain.

"Get off!" The woman shouted, a spell pushing out her wand and blowing a hole straight through her side. Hermione screamed in anguish but managed to wrap her fingers around the chain. When the woman kicked her away with her feet, the chain snapped, and the time-turner was in her grasp.

The woman's complexion went ashen when she realized her error. Hermione stumbled back, her vision tunneling as black spots went through her vision as a reaction to her injury and the unimaginable pain. Where was her cover?

"No, don't!" The woman shrieked, but her warning came too late as the Elite had already acted intending to get her out of the picture.

A force of pure energy knocked into her like a wall, and she was thrown back several feet. When she hit the ground, it was hard and uncomfortable. She panted at the explosion of pain in her side and shifted as she opened her eyes only to stare in paralyzing fear when she realized what happened.

She was inside the clearing of dark energy, right in the center of the scorch mark, and the scent of death in the air... worse, the shattered remains of the time-turner were soaked in her blood in the center of a ritualistic burial ground.

Whether it was due to the pain, the blood loss, the magical exhaustion, or the sands of time, Hermione was hit with a dizzy spell and collapsed against her will at the site. The last thing she saw was the battleground of Hogwarts before her world turned black.