Chapter 1, Book 1, After A War

A girl with brown bushy hair, deep brown eyes and fair skin looked up at the ceiling of the room she was staying in. This girl was Hermione Jean Granger, and this room was the leaky cauldron's rented room. Now, Assuming you know the whole story of Harry Potter and his friends, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, this should make total sense, a war just happened, this should be the perfect way to start.

Right?

Wrong.

No, this shouldn't be the way this starts off, in a gloomy and dusty old room where the only noise was the chattering people outside the building. It should start with Hermione working in the ministry with Harry and Ron as Aurors, just like they had planned. Right? That's how it should start.

But the ministry was corrupted, full of spies and thieves, undercover death eaters and many more things that Hermione wouldn't dare list off. Why would she work there?

There was an eerie silence after the war for the Golden Trio. While the world continued on as though nothing had ever happened saying that they couldn't just drop everything. The trio landed in a stand-still.

Hermione had no clue what to do with her life now, her parents didn't know who she was, Ron was mourning over the loss of his brother, and Harry was alone, spending hours on end thinking about the people who were lost in the war, and about the fact that he had killed in that war, he had become a murderer that day. All of them had.

The three usually saw each other once a week, no matter how upset they were or how alone they wanted to be, they met up once a week and had lunch, or dinner, just anything to make sure they didn't fall away from each other.

So Hermione laid in the bed, her wand by her side and long sleeves covering her battle scars. There was a silence in the room that she savored. Yet it haunted her at the same time.

The girl sat bolt upright when there was a knock at the door. She took her wand in her hand and walked over to the door, hesitantly opening it to reveal Harry, Ron and. . . Malfoy?

She immediately hugged Harry and Ron and greeted Malfoy politely, even though she didn't understand why he wasn't imprisoned. She invited the three boys in and shut the door with a soft click behind them.

"How have you been? I haven't seen you guys in weeks." She stepped over to the bed and had a seat, Ron sat next to her while Harry sat in the armchair. Malfoy leaned against the wall, the blond didn't seem like he wanted to be there.

Ron slipped his hand into hers gently. "We're fine 'Mione, we've been keeping ourselves busy, what about you? You've been in this old room for weeks, I told you that you could come to stay at the Burrow," Ron told her. Hermione shook her head and gave him a reassuring smile.

"I'm fine here, your family is going through enough without having to take care of me too. What about you Harry?" She quickly changed the subject off of her with ease. Ron was right though, all she had done was sit in this room for weeks, barely speaking to anyone.

Harry shrugged. "As Ron said, we've been keeping ourselves busy. There's been plenty to do. We helped Malfoy out at his trial." Harry nodded his head towards where Malfoy was standing.

The silver-eyed boy huffed a small bit. "I didn't need your help, Potter." He crossed his arms and snarled.

Harry brushed the rude comment off and looked at Hermione again. "He would have gone to Azkaban if I hadn't of told them that he actually had saved me back in the manor," He concluded that subject. "We spoke to McGonagall 'Mione." He looked to Ron to explain further.

"You know how our last year at Hogwarts was cut short? Well, McGonagall has invited us back to finish it. They've worked their bloody butts off rebuilding that place and it's paying off. We wanted to go back, just to get our last year finished," Ron explained, with his free hand he dug around in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled up piece of paper. "We all got letters explaining things to us. Harry's got yours, we wanted to wait and read them together," Ron stated, he seemed nervous.

Harry nodded and opened a small bag he had, sort of like a satchel but it was oddly shaped. When he stuck his entire arm in it she realized it was a bag like hers. Harry's hand emerged from the bag with three non-crumpled letters in it.

For a moment Hermione was confused on why he had three but then she realized one of them was for Malfoy, he seemed just as surprised about it as she did. The boy who helped destroy the school was being invited back for his final year.

Harry handed a letter to her and then one to Malfoy, the trio looked at each other and ripped theirs open at the same time, Malfoy seemed more hesitant but once he noticed the trio looking at him he scoffed and opened the letter.

Hermione took a deep breath and read it over.

Dear Hermione,

Headmistress Minerva McGonagall would like to formally invite you back to Hogwarts; School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to complete your seventh and final year at the school.

You are not required to attend if you do not wish to, but all who would like to complete their education may attend.

Though, all students will have to be resorted into their Hogwarts house, as many people have changed after recent events, under special request one may remain in their Hogwarts house they were previously in.

With hope to see you soon,

Headmistress Minerva McGonagall

Hermione read the letter over twice more before she looked at the three boys, who seemed to be reading theirs a fourth time over. "Did yours all say the same thing?" She questioned when they looked up from their letters finally.

Malfoy was the first to shake his head, he shoved his letter into his pocket and frowned. He didn't say what was different about his letter though, but he clearly knew that it was different from hers so it must have been something specifically targeted at him.

Harry then nodded as well as he neatly folded his letter and put it away. "Mine said something different. Unless she wanted to tell you two that you should prepare yourselves for the fact that you might end up in Slytherin." He said, he sounded disappointed. Of course, Hermione would sound disappointed too if McGonagall herself had told her that she was most likely going to end up in Slytherin. Ron showed his to Hermione, it was the same as hers.

Malfoy looked at them for a long moment, a disgusted look fell across his face. "So you're telling me that Potter could end up in Slytherin, Weasel could end up in Hufflepuff, Granger could end up in Ravenclaw and I could end up in Gryffindor?" He questioned. Ron scoffed when Malfoy called him a Weasel and Hermione gave Malfoy a pointed glare that made him hold up his hands in his own defense.

She wanted to brighten up the mood. "Why don't we test it? See how much we've changed?" She offered as she looked at Harry and Ron, nearly forgetting that Malfoy was even there.

"How do we do that?" Ron questioned as he looked at her, taking her hand again.

Hermione thought for a moment. "Well," She began. "We could either do something small, like just taking a simple quiz, we could do something a little bigger like just talking about old memories we have of each other and see what's different about us now, or we could go out, just have a normal day and see if we do things differently then how we did them before the war," She suggested. Harry nodded for a moment and then smiled encouragingly.

"Let's try it," He said. And with that, they were off.