Hourglass (rewritten as of 16/05/2018)

Chapter One:

CHAPTER ONE:

Being pushed through her mother's birth canal out into the world was extremely disconcerting. It took Hermione several panicked moments to get her bearings, and then she really wished she hadn't.

At least the hourglass had worked, she comforted herself as she scrunched her eyes closed and tried not to think about what was happening. Feeling cold air on her slimy, wrinkled, overheated skin, she opened her eyes again as her infant body was handed to a nurse so she could be cleaned then swaddled.

Her parents cradling her in their arms and looking down at her with adoring eyes made her feel a pang of guilt, for Helen and Richard Granger thought they had just created an innocent, perfect little baby girl and instead their daughter was a thirty-two year old woman trapped in the body of an infant. Hermione comforted herself with the thought that she could charm their minds so they'd decide to have another baby so they could have the child they wanted and deserved.

After all, Helen and Richard hadn't been awful parents. A touch on the absentee side, yes, but not awful and they deserved the child they'd longed for.

~

Being an infant was very trying of Hermione's patience. It meant she couldn't talk, couldn't consume anything other then her mother's breast milk for months (the less said about that the better) and couldn't control any of her fine motor skills. Practicing wandless magic was her only salvation as while her body had been reduced to something pathetic and reliant on the mercy of those around her, her magic levels were just as strong as they had always been. Training herself to use wandless, wordless magic became a way to pass the hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks (and months and months) of inhabiting the useless body. Well, that and sleeping.

By the time she was two months old, she'd managed to confund both her parents into thinking they wanted another child, and Cordelia Joy Granger was born a mere eleven months after her own birth. Her parents now busy caring for the newborn gave Hermione the privacy she needed to practice writing until she was able to create a fairly eligible script.

By the time she was two, Helen and Richard had grown aware of their eldest daughter's much higher then average intelligence and they started hiring private tutors for her, having decided that she was too young for school but not wanting to let her talent go to waste. Hermione really wished they hadn't as it didn't make the time passing more bearable, not when she was being taught a lower primary school level curriculum.

As her third birthday drew nearer, Hermione became aware of the fact that Halloween was approaching- no, not just any Halloween, the Halloween.

Now able to write a perfectly eligible letter, Hermione wrote an Owl Order form and (thanking Hecate, Circe and Morgana that a two, almost three-year-old owl was bigger then a two, almost three-year-old child) shifted into her owl animagus form to fly to Diagon Alley, hitching a ride atop a bus for a majority of the way as her weak muscles simply weren't used to the exercise.

The return flight was just as hard and she near about fell into a coma she slept so deeply all day the following day, but her efforts had paid off and an owl arrived outside her window the next evening, delivering her Ageing Potion.

Having the body of a witch in her twenties was incredibly refreshing, and Hermione easily navigated her way to the Leaky Cauldron. The atmosphere in Diagon Alley was tense, and Hermione worked quickly, using money she had gradually been stealing from Helen and Richard's purse and wallet to buy an illegal wand from Knockturn Alley and all the Ageing Potion she could afford (it was much more time efficient buying it pre-prepared, then to make it on her own).

She was slightly perturbed to run into a much younger Severus Snape in the Apothecary, and tried not to think about the last time she saw him, bleeding to death from Nagini's fangs, with the memories spelling Harry's death.