Never Finished Fic: AU Hermione

[rsadelle]

Between movie 5 and book 7 seems like a good time to burn off some never finished HP fic.

The woman stepped out of the wall behind the staff table. Now it was Hogwarts; they were used to odd goings on. But no one had ever stepped out of the wall into the Great Hall during lunch before. At least, not as far as any of the students had known.

The woman was barely in the room before Dumbledore and Snape, and McGonagall a beat behind them, had their wands out and pointed at her. When she'd fully emerged from the wall, the professors, and then the students, noticed that she wasn't alone.

One arm was supporting a dark-haired girl, no more than four years old, who was clinging to her neck. She had a second dark-haired girl, older, but not yet Hogwarts age, somewhere between six and nine the students would guess, by the hand. Holding the girl's other hand was a third girl. This one had hair as red as any Weasley's and seemed to be about thirteen.

It was the middle girl who spoke first. "Daddy?" she asked and took a step forward.

The oldest girl yanked her back. "No! Papa's dead." She looked uncertainly at the professors and then back up at the woman who'd come through the wall first. "Isn't he?"

"Oh, my darlings, we have come far," the woman said. "Yes, Mary, he's dead." She turned to Dumbledore. "You'll be wanting an explanation," she said briskly. She glanced around and included all of the staff in her statement. "We won't all fit in your office. It'll have to be the staff room. Do have some tea sent up there, and you'd best invite Hermione, Ron, and Harry along as well. I don't want to have to tell it twice." She hitched the youngest girl a little higher and unerringly led the way to the staff room.

Tea had been set up on a small table against the wall. The woman poured for the three girls and settled them at a small table in a corner before returning to pour her own cup. She glanced around to be sure everyone was there.

"I'll need a wall," she said, and no one knew quite who she was talking to or what she was talking about. "Standard silencing wall, transparent, but a bit of a shimmer, I think. Keyed to the children in an emergency and otherwise only to me." When she'd finished making the odd request, there was, indeed, a bit of a shimmer marking a line around the three girls and their corner of the room.

"How did you do that?" Flitwick asked. It wasn't the sort of charm he knew.

"I didn't," she said. "Not really. Hogwarts did it. I just asked for it. I could've done it silently," she said, "but I needed you to know I could do it." She gestured toward the large table in the center of the room, the one they used for staff meetings. "Please, sit." She put her teacup down at the head of the table but stayed standing.

"I believe," Dumbledore said with just a bit of an edge to his usual genial manner, "that we would like very much to know who you are and where you've come from."

She smiled at them. "Of course. I'm Hermione Granger."

It caused a stir, as she'd known it would. She waited patiently and sipped her tea until the commotion died down.

"I'm not, of course, your Hermione Granger." She nodded to the girl. "I'm quite a bit older, for instance." She took a sip of her tea to let them digest that.

"And the children?" McGonagall asked with a nod at the children in question.

"My daughters. Mary Weasley and Elizabeth and Victoria Snape." Another sip of tea while they stared at her in disbelief.

"My world," she said just at the moment when someone would have broken the silence, "is different from yours." She looked around the table. "We lived in fear, Muggles and Wizards, since before I was born. Harry Potter," a nod of acknowledgment, "survived, but so did Voldemort, and everyone knew it." She was pleased to see that no one flinched at the name.

"I married Ron." She smiled briefly at this world's startled version. "My Ron. He was killed when Mary was four months old. I married Severus three years later, and we had Elizabeth and Victoria." The less said in this large a group the better, she thought. That could be worked out later.

"Severus refused the Dark Mark." There was a collective drawing in of breath. She stopped and looked hard at this version of Snape. "I'm Muggle-born, my eldest daughter is a Weasley, and the other two girls are Snapes. It made us targets."

She had to stop and drink her tea before she could continue. "He was safe at home, or at the school, but he couldn't be there all the time. They killed him six months ago. Albus has been dead three months, Harry two." She had to force herself to finish. "Hogwarts is staffed by Death Eaters now, but they haven't figured out all of the school's secrets. They were coming after us. We had another week, if that." She gripped her teacup so tightly her knuckles went white. "I was not going to let my children grow up in a world ruled by Voldemort," she said fiercely as if daring someone to contradict her. No one did.

"We took one of the tunnels they hadn't found yet. We just had to be on school grounds." She swallowed back the remembered panic. "I asked Hogwarts to take us someplace safe. And then we were here." She drank down the last of her tea and waited for their questions.

It was Ron who managed to find his voice first. "You were married to *Snape*?"

"Yes, I was," Hermione said smartly. "And I'll thank you not to talk about him that way."

"Shouldn't you have stayed?" Harry asked. "Maybe you could have done something."

"My loyalty is to my children. I won't have them growing up in a world ruled by Voldemort." Her gaze didn't waver. "If he wins here, I'll do it again."

Harry, she could tell, wasn't sure what to make of that. Snape was inscrutable. McGonagall looked faintly horrified.

"And what do you plan to do in the meantime?" Dumbledore asked her.

"Work to ensure he doesn't rule this world," she said grimly. "I'll be staying here. You don't have a full-time Dark Arts teacher. I'll do that. Victoria and Elizabeth will have lessons with me in my office. Mary will attend classes. I'll need you to provide me with a summary of your curriculum to determine what level she's at."

Her plan was met with a clamor of objections.

McGonagall was outraged by her plans for Mary. "She hasn't been sorted! And she'll have to have classes with the children her age."

"I'm not sure we have suitable quarters available," Dumbledore put in.

Snape directed his comments to the headmaster. "You're not going to trust her to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. You don't even know her!"

"Ah, but I do trust her," Dumbledore answered Snape.

"I've already asked Hogwarts to provide me with suitable quarters," Hermione answered Dumbledore. "As for Mary," she glanced over to where her daughters were sitting close together, "I won't have her sorted. It's that kind of nonsense that causes problems like this war." She held up a hand to forestall McGonagall's next objection. "She'll live with me. She won't be comfortable in a dormitory even if I were willing to have her sorted. She'll attend classes with all four houses. I'll go over a schedule with you to be sure it works out evenly."

Her tone changed when she spoke to Snape. "I'm not a security threat, Severus. Having lived through Voldemort's reign once, I believe I'm quite capable of imparting the basics of defense to the students."

Dumbledore stood and held out his hand to her. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Professor Granger."

She smiled and shook his hand. "Thank you, Headmaster." She looked around the table. "Any more questions?" She waited a moment. "Good." She glanced across the room. "The wall can come down." The shimmer separating her daughters from the rest of the room disappeared. "Come along, girls. We're staying."

"Where are you staying?" McGonagall asked. "We'll need to be able to find you."

Hermione went to a window. "Good." She pointed. "There."

The staff gathered around the window. It was like Hagrid's hut in that it was a stand-alone structure. It was unlike Hagrid's hut in that it was quite a bit larger and there was a wall around what appeared to be a garden.

"We'll need a few days to settle in. Send me an outline of the curriculum, and as much detail as you can about previous Dark Arts curricula. I'll figure out where we should place Mary and develop an initial lesson plan." She picked up Victoria and took Elizabeth's hand. "We'll be down in the house." And with no more fuss than that, she took her children out of the castle and to the house Hogwarts had provided for them.

***

"Come in, dear." Hermione opened the door before the girl on her front step could even knock.

The girl looked started.

"I'm not a seer," Hermione assured her. "I have wards up around the house."

The younger Hermione made a small noise of disgust.

"Don't discount seers," Hermione said sharply. "Sibyl Trelawny is generally a fool, but divination is not all foolish nonsense and predictions of death." She waved the girl into a chair. "Cream and sugar, right?"

"Yes, please."

Hermione mixed two identical cups of tea and put them on the table with a plate of biscuits. She sipped her tea and watched the girl nibble at a biscuit and watch her.

"Did you really love him? Professor Snape, I mean."

Hermione carefully set her cup in its saucer. "Yes, I really loved him."

"But he's Professor Snape!"

Hermione smiled faintly. "Yes, dear." She wrapped her hands around her tea cup. "You have to understand my life. Ron and I got married right out of Hogwarts. I loved him. Absolutely and completely." She smiled at the girl's spark of interest. "Yes, me too. I was devastated when he was killed." She turned her tea cup thoughtfully.

"Severus saved my life. He reminded me that I was alive and that I had a child to take care of. He made me get out of bed one morning, and then the next and the next and the next, until I could do it on my own. I went back to school." She looked down at the girl. "I quit when I married Ron. That was probably a mistake. Don't you make the same one."

The girl's jaw jutted out. "I won't."

"No," Hermione said thoughtfully, "you probably won't.

"Mine was a different world."