Chapter 1
And So it Came to Pass Hermione Granger sat on the edge of her bed, her face knitted in thought as the shadows cast across her bedroom slowly lightened. Outside her window was a world that had never known magic, true magic, and never would. She sat now in a room in a house whose occupants had, until seven years ago, also never dreamed there was another world out there, one where the impossible was ordinary. But then there had been a letter and a woman with kind eyes and a peculiar sense of style and everything had changed. A few soft, well-practiced words and her life had suddenly become different—as if she had suddenly realized that everything in her world was simply a veneer, beneath which a brilliant new planet lived. Hermione Granger reflected on that life-changing instant, that one moment where the universe had shifted and everything in it had tipped slightly off balance. And she wondered if she, bookish Hermione, had the power to do the same—the power to nudge the Earth so that it kept spinning, but the rotation was just a little different.

In her hands she held a small glass object that appeared to be a simple hourglass, though admittedly an ornate one with a long, fine chain attached to it. It was a Time-Turner, that little magical object with the power to send it’s wearer through time itself. It was also, as far as Hermione knew, the last one still in existence. The rest had been smashed and though they had seemed to repair themselves, they had only broken again. On the bed beside her lay an old book, a fragment of one, really. It was tattered beyond repair, with the cover and most of the pages missing. She had not meant to find the book, but when she had summoned all of the books concerning Horcruxes from Dumbledore’s study, this tiny scrap had been stuffed inside one of those vile, Dark tomes. All that remained of the book was a few brittle pages bound together with dark string. But on those pages were words, words that had made Hermione dig through her most treasured possessions to find the Time-Turner she had received just before the start of her third year at Hogwarts. The pages mostly detailed how Time-Turners were made, complex magic that Hermione had marveled at, but had nearly cast aside before her eye had fallen on the last few lines, which read:

The Time-Glass is a most powerful invention indeed, a truly marvelous achievement. The Glass can be used to transport the wearer through time itself, both backwards and forwards. A simple counter-clockwise turn will send the wearer back an hour and a clockwise turn shall send them forward an hour. However, this is not the limit to the power of the Time-Glass. If one should risk flipping the Glass instead of simply turning it, they can move through years, or even decades. Be forewarned, traveling that far through time is less predictable than traveling backwards or forwards in hours, as the wearer may find themselves off by a few years one way or another. It should also be noted—

The page had stopped there, but it was more than enough. A Time-Turner, which was surely the same as a Time-Glass, was not limited to transporting one through mere hours, but was enormously more powerful! What she had read had put a fire in her veins. Hermione had always thought that a Time-Turner could only allow one to travel a few hours at the most, but this... this said that travel through years was possible—even through decades! What if... what if she went back many years? Fifty-plus years? If this book was right, and it seemed authentic enough, from what little was left, then she could do it. She could go back to the time when Lord Voldemort had not been Lord Voldemort, the most powerful Dark wizard alive, but had instead been simply a student at the very school Hermione herself had attended for the last six years. If the book was right, then she could end the threat of Voldemort before it truly began!

Her heart pumped quickly as the heady idea sizzled through her, as Hermione imagined what a world without the Dark Lord might be like. All the innocents who would never die, all the lives that would never be rent to pieces for no reason... it was almost too huge for her to comprehend. The little scrap of book was the key. Hermione felt sure that the fragment must have been lost for a very long time—why else would no one have tried it already? She felt a sudden chill, however, as the enormity of what she was contemplating fell heavily onto her shoulders and seemed to crush deeply upon her like lead weights. Could she really kill—murder—a man, no matter who he might become? Hermione Granger was not a killer and she knew it, she knew that her heart shied away from such horrific thoughts. Why, she could not even bear the thought of house-elves being enslaved! Could she actually take a life in cold blood? For a moment, her throat constricted as she thought it, as she wondered what it would feel like to know that she had cast the curse that had ended a life. Then calm fell over her, and her brown eyes reflected a steely determination that washed away the uncertainty. All she had to do was think of her friend, Harry Potter, who had lost his parents to the Dark wizard, who might have to die to save the rest of them. And of Neville Longbottom, a classmate of hers whose parents had suffered a fate worse than death because of Voldemort’s followers. She knew so many, friends, acquaintances, classmates who had lost someone to the wizard or one of his Death Eaters. So yes, she could take a life to save a life—to save many lives. If she had the power, she would kill Voldemort, and she would not let it haunt her. How could it? Hermione slid off the bed, staring around at her room and wondering what to pack and what to leave. When she had used the Time-Turner before, she had stayed in the same place physically as she’d moved through time. It seemed most logical, then, to pack her trunk with anything she might need, Apparate as close to Hogwarts as she could, and then use the Time-Turner to go back. She could pass as a new student, perhaps a transfer from... She frowned. The United States, perhaps? That could work. It would certainly explain why no one would know her, and they spoke English—a form of it, in any case. Furthermore, an American accent would be easier for her to mimic than, say, a German one.

Methodically, she began to pack. It was almost surreal, as if she were simply going back to school at the end of any other summer break. She almost tossed in her copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six, when she paused, realizing that while the book had been originally been written decades ago, it had been revised and reprinted recently, only a handful of years ago. How would she explain turning up for the first day of lessons with a book printed fifty years in the future? Hermione sat back down on the bed with the book in hand, momentarily flummoxed by the problem. When the answer came to her, it was so simple she half expected it to not work. She tapped her wand on the title page and the numbers squiggled briefly, subtracting fifty years from the reprint date. Pleased, she stacked the book into her cauldron and repeated the process on the rest. When she was finished, she stood and gazed at her tidily packed trunk for a moment, trying to think of anything else she might need. On a sudden inspiration, she pulled a blank sheaf of parchment towards her and tapped it smartly with her wand. At once, words began to scroll across the page; the papers now giving her the identity of one Leto Alfero, (a name she borrowed from one of her Muggle neighbors) a transfer from the Midwestern School of Magic in Indiana, USA.

Hermione, now packed and furnished with a fake identity, paused again, this time wondering what to do about her parents. She had a plan for them, but if this worked she wouldn’t need it... She would wait, Hermione decided, for if this, by some miracle, actually worked, then her plan wouldn’t need to be put into effect. And if it didn’t... well, she wouldn’t really be gone for them, would she?

Closing her eyes, she concentrated—deliberation, determination, and destination —and then was flung forward into crushing blackness, conscious only of the handle of her trunk as she clenched it in her hand. Almost instantly, she opened her eyes to the dark shape of familiar Hogwarts in the distance, though it did look a little different without the bustle of activity present during the school year. Then, before she had a chance to talk herself out of it, she gripped the Time-Turner hanging around her neck and flipped it, once, twice, three, four, five times, each time harder than the last. Darkness fell over her—there was a great whirl of sound—she was hanging onto the trunk for dear life—her body felt as if it were being simultaneously stretched and compressed—and then it was over and she stood in the very place she had been, just outside the front gate of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

“Oi! Where’d you come from?�