Hi there! My name is Morgan and this is the first fic I've posted on here. Reviews and constructive feedback are welcome, but hate is not.

I have a sweet spot for time travel fics (which is what this story is). It will feature eventual HG/SB pairing but there will certainly be a little bit of a slow-burn element and that doesn't mean they won't date other people along the way! I've already written about 10k words worth of story, but this will probably be full novel length by the end (so 75k+). So buckle up and I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of Harry Potter or it's characters, they all belong to JK Rowling. I'm just playing in her world.

Chapter 1:

Saul Croaker had the unmistakable feeling that something was about to go wrong. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened so far that morning. Nevertheless, he had a strange tingling in the back of his neck that made the tiny white hairs all over his body stand on end.

When he stepped out of the Floo gate into the ministry, unlike most days when he was apt to flip through his copy of the Daily Prophet, he kept the morning paper rolled into his fist as if he could swat away bad juju at a moment's notice. A few fellow ministry colleagues tipped their hat at him in greeting, which was more people than usual. Working as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries made many folks unnecessarily wary of him. He couldn't fathom why, seeing as there was nothing much different about him other than his tendency to be intrigued by life's biggest questions and his better-than-most ability to keep a secret.

Nothing continued to strike him as particularly odd as he stepped off the lift and hung his summer coat on the rack in the corner of his office. Although already mid-June, a few bites of winter still clung to the air and it was chillier than it should have been. Perhaps that had been the cause of Saul's apprehension, and he was just being silly.

That hope was quickly dashed upon his entrance to the Time Room to check up on his latest experiment. There, face down upon the floor, was a girl who looked to be no older than 10. She was surrounded by the broken shards of some sort of glass jar, as well as an overturned bookshelf.

It was not unusual for unusual things to happen in a place like the Department of Mysteries. After all, one need only look at the name to understand that it was a very different department than the rest of those at the Ministry. Typically, there was a process to reporting incidents of this nature, including but not limited to alerting his superiors and writing up a report. However, something about this scene niggled at his memory, and he decided to pause and check on the girl before making any hasty decisions about how to handle the situation.

Saul leaned down to check the small girl's pulse. Faint, but there. He then grasped her firmly by the shoulder and pulled so that he could turn her over onto her back and check for injuries. There, slashed across her chest, was a wound half the size of her that he could swear was glowing purple. It was then that he came to realize what it was about the scene that made it a little bit more unusual.

Years ago, when Saul was straight out of Hogwarts and new to the Department of Mysteries, he had been given the opportunity to do a one year rotation of the different sub-practices. It was during his Hall of Prophecies rotation that he had had the extraordinarily lucky chance to record a prophecy himself. Such occurrences were quite rare. And for this reason, he had memorized the complete and exact wording of that prophecy.

It seemed as though a twist of fate had realized the same prophecy right in front of his very eyes.

In a bamboozling whirl of excitement and dread, Saul swished his wand and called out, "Expecto Patronum." A giant silvery boar materialized in front of him awaiting instructions.

"A message for Albus Dumbledore."

/

Hermione Granger's eyes rocketed open.

A harsh medicinal atmosphere assaulted her senses. Bright flat light and a smell vaguely reminiscent of ammonia swirled around her in a jarring tidal wave. Five years of being Harry Potter's best friend had made her familiar with the basic attributes of hospital wings, and this rude awakening met the criteria.

Only, there was no Madam Pomphrey bustling around her bedside and wagging her tongue about Gryffindor recklessness. In fact, there didn't seem to be anyone else in the room at all. A room which was most certainly not the Hogwarts hospital wing, she noticed. It looked like a guest bedroom, with a neutral shade of robin egg blue painted across the walls and cream colored drapes. A simple 6-drawer dresser that matched the bedside tables sat directly across from the bed with a vase of flowers and lineup of medicine on top. It was decorated unlike any room she could remember being in before, leading her to the conclusion that she was somewhere foreign to her. While the calming atmosphere led her to believe that it was a place belonging to a friend, one could not be too careful in recent times. Grimmauld Place, dank and dangerous as it could be, was the home of a friend. If such a place could be friendly, then surely a light and serene place like this could be the work of enemies.

A light breeze from outside the open window ruffled the cream curtains and brought to the surface memories of a veil that swayed in the same manner. A mesmerizing stone arch, a round crystal ball, and the sound of glass shattering…

The door swung open.

"Oh dear, you're awake."

A woman with sleek black hair and large grey eyes glided into the room in a silk dressing gown. She carried a steaming mug in one hand and flourished a wand in the other, with which she used to open the flapping curtains. Early morning sunlight flooded the room, brightening the space even further and causing Hermione to squint her eyes and place her palm above her face. It was then that she noticed how tiny her hand looked.

"I had hoped you would sleep another day or so, but you must be somewhat resistant to the dreamless sleep I administered. Too much use, perhaps? And lucky that I ran an allergy diagnostic, almost gave you some potions that would have given you the most horrendous of reactions…"

The woman continued to flutter about the room, adjusting linens and pouring out rations of potions. Her mannerisms seemed oddly familiar, and yet Hermione was nearly positive she had never seen the woman in her life.

"...and when Dumbledore brought you to my doorstep with such a story, I knew we couldn't say no." Hermione's eyes snapped to the woman at the mention of her Headmaster.

"Albus Dumbledore brought me here?" Hermione asked, ignoring that her voice sounded much higher than normal. Maybe it's a side-effect of one of the potions.

The woman paused in her pouring with her back towards Hermione, whipped around with a bright smile Hermione could tell was forced, and nodded once before resuming her ministrations.

"I'd like to speak with him, please," Hermione asserted in a tone that contrasted with the politeness of her words. The woman seemed to take a moment to consider her words.

She walked over to the door and called out, "Albus," before returning again to the table.

A jolly headmaster decked in a sunshine yellow set of robes stepped into the room and asked Hermione's permission before seating himself upon the edge of the bed. With no wand in sight to hold up, Hermione simply turned her attention to him and asked demandingly, "What creature got Hagrid expelled from Hogwarts?"

The previous summer Hermione had been schooled by Remus Lupin, in a rare display of transparency from an Order member, about how to ask a good security question. The memories from the Department of Mysteries were slowly descending on her consciousness, but she couldn't remember what had happened to her. The last thing she could recall was the death eater being sent backward into the odd bell jar and head shrinking to that of a baby's. It was entirely possible she had been abducted by death eaters and she had no idea. While Hermione knew very little about Dumbledore on a personal level, this was a question Hermione was relatively certain very few people in the world knew the answer to. The real Albus Dumbledore was one of them.

What Hermione didn't expect was Dumbledore's reaction.

"I beg your pardon?" He asked, his demeanor turning sharply to stone. Hermione had never noticed how unusual his wand was until it was directed squarely at the space between her eyes.

"A security question, sir," she pointed out, suddenly unsure of herself. "I have to make sure it's you."

Dumbledore's eyebrows shot nearly up to his hairline. The black haired woman had stopped what she was doing and was looking sharply at Hermione through the side of her eyes. The two adults shared a look before Dumbledore snapped the door shut with a hasty jerk of his wand.

Before Hermione had the chance to get nervous over the sudden change in tone, Dumbledore looked her dead in the eye and said, "An acromantula. It seems we have much to discuss."

/

Hermione stared at herself in the full-body mirror hanging in her new en suite bathroom with befuddled fascination. Her eyes made their way up from skinny legs, across her recently scarred torso, over a newly flattened chest, past a bushier mane than usual and settled on her buck teeth.

"Crap," she muttered.

It wasn't as if Hermione had become a beauty queen by the age of sixteen, but she had certainly matured far beyond how she had looked as a ten year old. Maybe she could at least get her teeth fixed again before Hogwarts.

She sighed and walked over to the tub, letting her mind wander back to that morning's conversation as she flicked on the tap. Hermione's memories had started to slowly come back to her once Dumbledore sat her down for what Hermione could only describe as an interrogation.

The DA had been fighting Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. She remembered being hit by Dolohov's silent purple spell, and then a brief time of unconsciousness before waking up on a cold floor to chaos surrounding her. Pain bloomed in her chest, and her vision of most of the room was obscured by a dazed looking Ginny attempting to get something-were those brains?-off of Ron's arms. An unconscious Luna lay slumped against her shoulder. A shout from outside the room echoed through the door she was slumped next to.

"Harry?" she croaked, her voice hoarse from the night's spellcasting.

Trying to push down the excruciating pain, Hermione had slipped Luna's wand out of the girl's limp hand and pushed herself through the doorway to where she heard the shout coming from. She looked back at Ron, but figured Ginny would deal with him. She had to find Harry. More sounds of shouting took her back out into the black hallway they had first come through where the spinning doors almost set her on her ass. She gritted her teeth firmly and steadied herself on a knee while waiting for the doors to stop.

"Harry?" she tried again. No response except for a grunt beyond one of the doors.

She hesitantly cracked open the door, not knowing what was lying behind it but sincerely hoping it was an uninjured Harry. Instead, she was faced once more with the Time Room and a screaming baby-headed Death Eater. The man was grotesque looking, but seemed otherwise uninjured. Dolohov was nowhere to be seen.

"Not Harry," she murmured to herself. She stepped further into the empty room and chanted a light sleeping spell she had seen once in a wizarding parenting book during a dreary day at the Burrow. The unfortunate-looking man made an odd cooing noise before drifting to sleep where he sat on the floor. She didn't want his noises to give away her position while she continued her attempt to locate Harry.

Hermione turned back around to retreat to the spinning room and attempt a new door when her luck ran out and the Time Room door was slammed open by an irate looking Dolohov-

Hermione hissed as she sunk a foot into the too-hot bathtub. Gritting her teeth, she lifted her other foot and gripped the sides of the tub to lower the rest of her tiny body below the bubbles coating the surface of the bath. Her muscles screamed in protest, but years of experience chasing after Harry and Ron had taught her the value of a hot bath on sore muscles. Tears sprang to her eyes as the water lapped over a variety of cuts on her back. It kept bringing to mind the image of Dolohov's creepy smile and the feeling of him tossing her backward into the Time Room's strange glass experiments. Hermione could only consider herself lucky she wasn't conscious during the removal of the glass shards from all over her back.

Hermione shuddered as her full body hit the water. Or perhaps it was the chilling memories that continued to assault her, not made any easier by difficult realizations of the day.

Stuck in an 11 year-old body, and stuck in 1971.

Her accident in the Time Room had not only cut her skin with glass, but permanently rocked her world by. Neither Dumbledore nor the dark-haired woman had heard of anything similar to her situation ever happening in history.

Hermione did always have to be special, didn't she.

"A most peculiar circumstance," Dumbledore had called it, in that nonchalant way of his, once she had finished her tale. It had barely taken any probing from Dumbledore for the story to fall out of her mouth like vomit. It was not the smartest move to be so open and trusting as she had, but like her breasts had disappeared, so too had her impulse control. She couldn't help it when her inquisitive mind began to spin out theories-did her hormones revert back to those of her 11-year old self as well? It would certainly explain how out of control her emotions felt.

She could also see wheels spinning behind Dumbledore's eyes, ocean-like and brimming with questions. Why was she in the Department of Mysteries in the first place? Why was a 16 year old being pursued by dark wizards? Who was this Harry she was so concerned with? But before he could open his mouth to ask him, she interrupted his train of thought.

"And, well, I suppose that's it," she had said, stumbling awkwardly over the final words of her story. "I don't-I'm not sure-What do I do now?"

Neither Dumbledore nor the striking dark haired woman had an immediate answer.

"I will make Saul aware of your circumstances, and he will do some research into your situation-discreetly, of course. Sometimes it helps to have friends in mysterious places. In the meantime though, there have been some rumblings of a faction of dark wizards who I fear may want to take advantage of your knowledge of the future," Dumbledore explained, stroking his beard in thought.

One of the first things Hermione had independently researched at Hogwarts was the First Wizarding War. It seemed only natural after that night on Halloween that she should better understand the war that had orphaned one of her new best friends. She knew the dark wizards Dumbledore spoke of had to be Voldemort and his Death Eaters. 25 years in the past and somehow she was still being hunted by the same people, even if they didn't know they were looking for her yet.

"Perhaps we hide you in plain sight, where any other 11-year-old English girl would find herself…"

"We'll take her," asserted the dark-haired woman. "We have a son about your age, dearie, and while I love him with all my heart I've also always wanted a daughter." She smiled at Hermione sweetly, and it made her feel a bit more at ease.

"Won't people question where I came from?" Hermione asked.

"We had our son very late in life," the woman explained. "We had practically retired by the time I realized I was pregnant. We had made all of these travel plans-years worth. And it's not like having a baby didn't mean we weren't still getting on in age, so we just brought him along! We've only just returned to England since he's about to start Hogwarts. I'm sure with a few safeguards-a magical adoptions, perhaps-we could fool the majority of the world, and certainly all of Great Britain."

The woman's logical straight-talk made sense to Hermione. She was a bit doubtful that it would be that simple to fool people, but Dumbledore seemed to agree and trust the woman. Over the years Harry and Ron had doubted his judgment with people like Snape, but at the end of the day, regardless of how rude the man was, Snape had always protected the three of them. She had no choice but to trust Dumbledore once more. Plus, that niggling in the back of her mind that made the woman seem familiar continued to creep up on her again and again and she wanted to know why.

"Excellent! Oh my, I realize I haven't even completely introduced myself and we're getting so far ahead of things. I'm Euphemia Potter, although I suppose you can just call me mum."

Oh, crap.