Shifted

The Changing

Hermione spent the next few days trying to pinpoint the exact, pivotal moment her viewpoint had altered.

For a moment, she believed it was in the Department of Mysteries, when a deadly curse was thrown at her and she survived based on a technicality. But still, she knew it had happened before then.

It could have been in fourth year, when Harry came back with Cedric Diggory's lifeless body. But she watched the light sink out of Harry's eyes day by day afterwards, and when she watched her very first dead body fall in the heat of battle, it felt nothing like what he'd described.

If she was honest— painfully, gruesomely willing to tell the truth to herself— she could pin it back to third year. When slapping Malfoy in the face was a more religious experience than any Sunday Bible study had ever given her.

It was her first real experience in violence, her first taste on what inflicting physical pain on another was like.

Her adrenaline had been pumping afterwards, blood singing through her veins as she listened to the pained, pathetic whimpers of Malfoy as he ran away, frightened.

Scared. Of her.

Things changed for Hermione after that. She was a know it all, yes. She was annoying and nagging and everything else everyone called her that made her feel less important than Harry or Ron.

But she was powerful, too.

She didn't pull it out all the time. She let it free once or twice during the DA meetings to prove Ron wrong, or to impress the other girls that had never warmed up to her like she'd wished.

Mostly, just knowing it was there, lying beneath her skin and preparing for when she'd need it most was enough to soothe her.

Long after the Battle of Hogwarts, when they were passing around scorecards of every remaining Death Eater and assigning teenagers to kill grown witches and wizards like it was commonplace— when morale was at its lowest and they weren't given the time to properly mourn their dead comrades— Hermione let the power roam free.

She killed three times as many Death Eaters within the first year the Order returned than even the most experienced Aurors.

Kingsley clapped her on the back. Harry stood by her, unsure but knowing what needed to be done to end the war.

Ron watched on as if he didn't recognize her.

No one had expected it. Not Hermione Granger, the Quidditch hater and bookworm. There was no way she was such a talented dueler, so skilled with knives and swords. She had no physical prowess. Her time was best spent behind a cauldron, pulling random facts from the dozens of books she read and saving the day, but never really getting the credit.

Hermione Granger had no depth.

She knew it was what people had thought about her. Had known since she'd learned to read facial expressions and body language. She saw it in their clenched jaws and eyerolls during Order meetings. Barring Harry and sometimes Ron, no one thought she had earned the right to be an Order warrior.

But she had felt the power, way back when before puberty had even struck.

She trained in the middle of the night while everyone else was sleeping. The Order had spent eight months underground, plotting and organizing, planning to come out stronger than before despite their weak numbers.

Hermione was no exception.

It started with a set of raised eyebrows from an instructor when she was the first to perfect a newly created drowning spell. Then it was a pat on the back when she'd pinned Ginny during hand to hand.