Authors Note.

This is a very different kind of story than those that I normally write, so with that in mind, I will warn of the following now. This story will be explicit, contain violence, foul language, and sex. There will be deaths because all things must end. It is set AU and during the marauder era.

"Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence causes silence
Who are we mistaken?
But you see, it's not me
It's not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting.."

The Cranberries - Zombie.

"Dear Diary, I guess you could say it all started with a bang. One second I had been ducking curses, the next I had fallen onto the dining room table disturbing what I think had been a lovely meal. But considering the mess I made it was hard to tell. Lucius Malfoy had either cursed or saved me and even weeks later I cannot decide which is true. We never escaped Malfoy Manor, we never managed to free ourselves from the death-eaters clutches. Harry and Ron had died in Malfoy Manor, Peter Pettigrew had disobeyed Bellatrix and summoned the dark lord who had been furious that she had wasted time on torturing me. Voldemort had said that I was a no one, a child with no name and no real power but they had two heirs to noble houses that had not joined the dark lord's cause. And so I had been thrown into the dungeons as Voldemort killed Ron and Harry after what must have been hours of torture.

The wizarding world had crumbled under Voldemort's rule after that, with no chosen one to save them all, and those brave enough to fight killed off Voldemort was free to rule. All muggleborns were rounded up and put to work as little better than house-elves and I had been left to rot in that dungeon alone after those deemed magical enough were either killed or swore their undying loyalty. I don't know how long I was left down there, but only Lucius stopped by to force feed me after I tried to starve myself to death. Death had seemed better than being trapped in that room, listening to Voldemort kill those he deemed unworthy with Bellatrix's cackle ringing in my ears. Through Lucius' visits, I learned that Voldemort had killed Draco as punishment for Lucius' hesitation to contact the dark lord when Harry had been delivered to them. As Lucius had mourned his son the dark lord took great delight in telling him that the boy was probably his, as Narcissa had been warming his bed for decades. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the man, it was clear he never suspected Narcissa's betrayal.

So Lucius in his grief had started to plot on how to take the dark lord down, how he could destroy him without ever being suspected. It was this plan that had me landing in the middle of that dinner. He had used ancient magic and blood adopted me as his daughter in spite of my protests." Hermione paused with the quill coming to rest against her lips, looking over the words that she had written. They didn't seem to encapsulate the horror of that ritual, of how terrified she had been in that dungeon, dreading the day that Greyback or Bellatrix would come down those stairs looking for a new plaything.

She had been asleep when the gate guarding her prison had clanged open, and Lucius had walked in accompanied by Voldemort. She had immediately shifted so that her back was against the wall, and she had cringed as his snake slithered into the dungeon behind them. "Lucius all this time you spend feeding her and she is a bag of bones. She will make a poor meal for Nagini." His red eyes had fixed on her as he spoke, his hand stroking the snake's head as she had wrapped herself around his leg.

"My lord, she was already half starved when she arrived, and I believe she has been purging the meals that I force feed her." Lucius had looked at her with almost dead eyes, his demeanor so aloof she wondered if he was even still sane anymore.

"Well that will not do, we cannot have this mudblood disobeying my orders. You will teach her what it means to obey Lucius, I want to hear her screams echoing down the halls, a warning to all the others who think to cheat their fate. After all, how can I publically have her executed if she looks half dead already." Voldemort's icy fingers had lifted her chin to look at her face then, turning it left and right before backhanding her. He had whispered something to Nagini, a strange hissing she knew had to be parseltongue. He had left, his robes billowing out behind him and Lucius had summoned ropes that pulled her into the middle of the room and held her in place.

"You don't have to do this" she had barely managed to croak out, her voice straining from lack of use.

"Yes, Miss Granger, I really do. This is necessary and you heard the dark lord, he wants to hear you scream." Lucius had then summoned a terrified-looking house elf and had implements and a cauldron brought to the dungeon. He had ignored every question she had asked, instead he moving around the dungeon and drawing runes, murmuring under his breath so that she could not hear him. And then he had started to trigger old wards in the manor, ancient magic that she could see dancing on the walls dropping blood from his cut palm on the runes he had , Hermione knew that ancient houses all had different ways of protecting its lords and she wondered what exactly he was planning to do to her.

He stopped at the cauldron once the dungeon was humming with magic and began to mix something in there that smelled vile. Hermione wanted to be strong, to give him nothing from what he was about to do, but the power she could feel coming from him and those wards had her terrified. When he came over to her, he didn't make eye contact, he simply cut her top so that her stomach was bared to him and used his dagger to make an incision just inside her belly button. She swore at him, called him every name she could think of and the only reaction she got was a twist of his lips and a tut. The smile that graced his face when that potion came to a boil sent a chill down her spine.

"Don't do this, I'll eat, just do not do this." She still didn't know what he was going to do, but she watched in terror as he filled a bottle from the cauldron and brought it over to her. She struggled against the ropes as he poured the potion over her stomach where he had cut her. It was warm against her skin and she strained to see what it was doing. She heard him hiss and looked up to see that he had reopened the wound on his hand and was now pouring his own blood onto the potion that was seeping into her skin.

At first, nothing happened, it felt warm and she was disgusted that he was bleeding on her but nothing happened. But then he had drawn a rune on her skin and she watched the potion seem to grow sentient and dive straight into her open wound. She screamed as what she was sure was molten lava burned through her veins. She pulled on the restraints trying to escape, the pain of being filled by that potion felt like it had set every cell she had on fire. She could feel something happening to her, changing her even as she could feel it burning her from the inside out until all she could do was writhe and scream. Her body went into spasm from the pain and she was sure she felt her arm pop out of joint. She screamed until she could not scream anymore and passed out from the pain.

It felt like hours had passed when she awoke still tied up in the middle of the dungeon. Her whole body ached and she could feel the lingering heat inside her. Lucius was standing next to her, his hand on her cheek and looking at her like a cat would a mouse. He must have healed her arm because although it ached she no longer felt like it had been ripped from its socket, but as she was tied up she couldn't test that theory. He pressed a glass of water to her lips and she drank it feeling a reprieve from the burning that had coursed through her. He spoke to her then, but his eyes continued to move around her face making her feel extremely self-conscious.

"Miss Granger, there are things I must tell you, and we have little time to get through them, so I will require you to keep your questions at bay. I will answer them after I have finished speaking." His voice was graveled, no longer the silky purr she had remembered it being, but she simply nodded when he had waited for her response. "The spell I have performed has altered your essence, you are no longer your parent's child, you are mine. In moments this spell will be completed and you will no longer be here and I will perish with the spell, but first, there are things you must know.

"I have used an old family spell, an insurance should the last of the male line be killed. You will be sent back in time to prevent me from making the mistakes that led us to here. I will give you memories to give to my younger self and to my father so that they know what you tell them is true. In all honesty, this spell should have been done with Draco. But Bellatrix was always present to prevent me doing anything to keep my son alive. The hateful bitch never got over not having a child of her own so taking mine from this world was something that gave her great joy, even if she didn't get to do it herself.

"The world as you know it will no longer exist, every decision you make, everyone you speak to will change the path that leads to this moment, Hermione. You must destroy it, do everything you can to make sure that the Dark Lord does not win so that my son is not killed for my mistakes." His eyes dropped from hers then, and he took a deep shuddering breath.

"Narcissa and I lost several children before we were able to have Draco, but none but he was strong enough to survive. He was everything a parent could ask for, and we overindulged him. We did not prepare him for the world that we helped to create and in doing so, I failed him. Losing Narcissa broke my heart, but losing my only child…" his voice broke as he spoke, and that hollow look returned to his eyes briefly. "Losing my child destroyed what was left of my tattered soul, and so here I am, a broken desperate man, willing to do anything to prevent this from happening again. You are my only hope, I cannot return, nor do I want to keep living with this emptiness inside me.

"My father will never know the truth of your birth, he will sense my blood in you, and that will be enough for him. My blood my essence has replaced that of your father's so you are my child in every way that matters, but I would avoid mention of anything to do with muggles if you do not wish to send him into a rage. From what I remember those can be quite spectacular." A ghost of a smile lingered on his features for a moment, but it faded as quickly as it had appeared. He lifted a curl from her shoulder and Hermione was shocked by the silvery colour. He pushed it behind her ear and seemed to be looking her over as though he had never really seen her before.

"Change me back, I don't want any part of what you are doing. I am not some pawn for you to maneuver on a chessboard. There's no guarantee that sending me back will change the future for the better, or that anyone would listen to me. I'm muggleborn, I'm a girl and pureblood society is so up its own arse that I could play a reel of everything Voldemort does and you'd all still chose to follow him because he promises you more power." Hermione pulled herself to her feet and tried to leave the runic circle and found that she was trapped. "Let me out of here."

"I will believe you because you will show me these memories, of everything he cost me. You are mine, my child now and my younger self will protect you. And it's too late, Hermione, as I am already dying." He lifted his arm then, showing that he had cut through his dark mark and some kind of black liquid was running down his arm. "I have betrayed him, and he will come for me, and I cannot allow my house to end with me." He grimaced then, swaying as he spoke as the blood loss was clearly taking its toll.

"The ritual is done and will complete itself with my death which will be very soon, I would apologize, but I would not mean a word of it. You are my revenge, Miss Granger and I take great pleasure in knowing you will be the downfall he never sees coming. I have made so many mistakes that led me here, so many of the families you scorn trusted a man who destroyed everything we knew and loved to create his new world order. And he did it all so demurely that we thought it was our idea. The Blacks disowned their heir and neglected the youngest, the Prewetts threw their sons away, letting them both become aurors. Those of the light and the dark, it didn't matter he found a way to destroy us all.

"Instead of preserving our houses he destroyed them, and we let him. I wouldn't stop this ritual and let you go even if I could. You need to go back, my younger self might resist listening to you, but my father will not. Preservation of this family is all he ever cared about. And thanks to this ritual you are the first girl of Malfoy blood in nearly four hundred years. My father was a hard man but he always wanted a daughter, having you arrive, a girl who is effectively his grandchild because of this spell, he will do anything to keep you safe. That is the only thing I can promise you, Hermione, that you will be safe there. I cannot keep you safe here, the dark lord has plans for you, plans far worse than what he has allowed Bellatrix to do to you."

"What could be worse than Bellatrix?" She asked, not quite believing that such a thing even existed.

With a grimace, he answered. "Greyback has been demanding a mate to bear his pups. You being a muggleborn in his new world order, would be seen to elevating her status from filth to beasts broodmare."

"I thought he wanted to publically execute me?" she asked, confused, even as she winced at the idea of being Greybacks mistress.

"He does, but he is more than willing to let those he favours play with you first, my torturing of you was meant to be my reward for taking my punishment so well." he gave a grimace, his whole face practically bleeding with unspoken pain.

Hermione had been looking at Lucius in horror as she realized the enormity of what he had planned when she heard Bellatrix's cackle coming from the stairwell. She was being sent back to a time she did not know, to people she didn't know or trust and she knew no matter what happened, life as she knew it was over. She had no idea why Bellatrix had come back to the manor, but she had taken one look at the runes and paled. In the momentary distraction, Lucius had pressed a glass vial into Hermione's hands and told her not to fail.

"Traitor!" Bellatrix had screamed and Lucius had simply stood, unarmed and waiting to die as she cursed him. He never raised his wand to protect himself, and what stuck in Hermione's mind was the resigned look on his face as the killing curse had taken him. Even weeks later as she tried to make sense of that day in her diary she could not get it out of her mind, he had seemed so hopeless at that moment.

Bellatrix had turned her wand in Hermione's direction then but before she could fire off a curse the runes around Hermione had lit up like a beacon as the room around them began to crumble. Her bonds had dropped her and she had fallen, landing awkwardly and she dodged a curse that was flung her way. She had no wand and tried to dive behind her bed, but she instead fell through the floor. She fell so fast that all she could was a blur of flashing light and darkness. She fell on her side, sending a glass of wine shattering to the floor and a tray of cut meats into the air. "Fuck" was all she said before wands were drawn in her face.