Author's Note: I own nothing. Jo owns it all, and I'm envious every time I think about it, haha. Also, this story contains spoilers from the first six books, although it may contain spoilers from book seven in some chapters. If that happens, I'll put it in the Author's Note for that individual chapter, but consider yourself warned!
November 1996
Hermione Granger was in the school library, putting away her research books before curfew—she had fifteen good minutes to spare before she had to be safe within the confines of the Gryffindor common room. It was not uncommon to find her in the library alone, studying until the final moments before curfew. As the best student in her year, she rarely afforded the opportunity to slack off on her studies, even if her two best friends, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, seemed quite skilled at skipping intellectual pursuits for a bit of fun more often than they probably should.
Other than her extraordinary aptitude, Hermione considered herself to be a rather ordinary girl. She was very thin and until her fourth year had a rather boyish body—it was only then that she finally began to fill out a bit. But she did not get the womanly figure that her friends seemed to gain in abundance—thin but not too skinny, she was pear-shaped and cursed with her mother's small chest. Her brown hair was frizzy and untamable, taking hours of work and hair product to smooth, so it was rarely worth the effort. Her teeth were still rather large, although beautifully straight and white, thanks in part to her dentist parents. Her brown eyes reflected upon her face the kind and caring demeanor she possessed under the surface, willing to fight like a tigress to protect those she loved.
Hogwarts boys seemed to find her invisible and while it bothered her at first that her pretty classmates got asked on Hogsmeade dates and made out with boy after boy in darkened corridors and she remained alone, she later conceded to herself that with NEWTs only a year and a half away, she rarely had enough spare time apart from studying and prefect duty for herself, let alone a boy. No, there was plenty of time for a boy filled life after Hogwarts.
"Maybe I'm just really good at giving off that 'ice queen' vibe," Hermione mumbled to herself as she put The Effects of Mood-Altering Potions back on the shelf. She began scanning the stacks to see if other students were there, to urge them to finish up before curfew, but found herself utterly alone with Madam Pince, the librarian. She was just getting ready to turn out the door for Gryffindor tower when she spied a book left out on a table in the rear of the library, and doubled back to collect it for Madam Pince, laughing at her inability to tear herself away from her favorite place in the castle. When she reached the table, she eyed a time turner sitting on it, next to a copy of Helpful Hints for Time Travel.
"Who left this here?" Hermione asked herself, "Time turners are illegal right now." She thought back to the events of last June, when she and her friends in the DA fought Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic and all of the Ministry time turners were smashed. Apparently, when this large—and only, as far as Hermione was aware—collection of time turners were smashed simultaneously, it severely damaged the delicate threads necessary for time travel, making it highly dangerous.
While the Ministry was sorting out the problem, they forbade anyone to travel through time. Whoever was the owner of this time turner was obviously preparing to leave for the past in complete disregard of the rules. Hermione wondered who would be so desperate to go back in time that they'd risk Azkaban to do it. Resolutely deciding to turn the contraband time turner over to Dumbledore immediately, Hermione snatched it and the book up and headed for the door. She handed the book to Madam Pince and turned to walk out of the library for Dumbledore's study.
Terrified of what would happen if anything happened to the time turner, she placed the necklace around her neck. Immediately, the tiny hourglass began to spin. At first Hermione was taken so aback that she didn't know what to do. She began to shout spells to make the turning stop, but nothing seemed to work. She couldn't take it off with it spinning as it was and was terrified of what would happen. When she had used a time turner in her third year, she used precise, careful turns of the hourglass to take her back mere hours in time. This hourglass was bewitched and spinning out of control, and nothing she could think of would make it stop. Frightened, Hermione began to scream. As the piercing sound rang out through the library and the empty corridor as she stood petrified in the space between the two, the turning stopped. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief that perhaps it was just a clever joke and reached to take it off her neck when her whole world went black.