Hermione Granger sat by the first-year fire (everyone had started to call the painting that at some point), worrying at her lower lip and letting the conversation of her fellow first-years wash over her.

Prof. McGonagall had taken Harry to meet the Headmaster about fifteen minutes ago, and while she knew that that probably wasn’t even enough time to get to his office, wherever it was (Hogwarts, A History hadn’t said), she was already beginning to feel like it had been too much time already.

A small part of Hermione’s mind realised how... odd it was that she was worrying for Harry, after all, Prof. Snape had virtually assaulted them, by all rights they should be the ones making complaints. Not the other way around.

On the other hand, Prof. Snape was a Death Eater. And Dumbledore knew this, as did McGonagall.

And yet they let him teach Harry!

That was like a ‘former’ Nazi teaching a Jewish pupil, for God’s sake! Worse even, with all of the history between the two of them.

What? Was the Headmaster just hoping Harry wouldn’t know? That it wouldn’t matter to him? The man who caused his parents’ deaths standing in front of him, unapologetic, and Harry was supposed to simply pretend like nothing was wrong?

What were they thinking!?

“Whoa, calm down there, Hermione,” Seamus said, and Hermione realised that everyone was now staring at her warily. And also that she was glaring.

“Sorry,” she said, massaging the expression from her brow, and taking the opportunity to stretch her fingers after releasing them from the achingly-tight fists they’d been curled in.

A somewhat awkward silence settled for a few moments, before Dean brought up his favourite topic of football again and almost everyone groaned.

Ron (who, thank heavens, had left his “rat” in its cage upstairs) quickly tried to counter by bringing up his favourite topic, quidditch, and Faye backed him up, while Helen, the only other muggleborn there, who also liked football thanks to her Dad, supported Dean, and things quickly devolved into a debate about which sport was better.

Hermione stayed out of the argument. She didn’t really care about which sport was better, nor did she think the people arguing even knew, considering Dean and Helen had never even heard of quidditch before Hogwarts, and Ron and Faye seemed to think football was a sport played with foot-shaped balls.

Honestly Hermione was just glad that they were no longer asking her questions she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, answer. Such as why Snape and Harry had locked horns like—according to Ron—two garden gnomes fighting over a piece of his mom’s apple pie.

Harry came in some time later, Hedwig still on his shoulder like when he left. He looked exhausted.

Hermione had gotten to him before The Fat Lady had even swung closed behind him.

“What happened?” She asked. “Did you get detention? What did Dumbledore say?”

Harry blinked, somewhat overwhelmed by her rapid fire questions. “No,” he said finally, “I didn’t get detention. And Dumbledore said pretty much what I expected him to.”

That didn’t tell her much, and Hermione still had a list a thousand questions long, but she could see how tired Harry was, so she held back.

“You look exhausted, Harry,” she said. “You should go to bed.”

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair, then nodded.

Hermione followed him up, luckily no one approached Harry for questions or anything, their time in The Great Hall had given them the opportunity to sate most people’s curiosity.

Distractedly, she noticed that the boys’ dorm was much cleaner than she’d expected it to be, and that made her remember that none of them in her own dorm ever did any cleaning, yet the room never dirtied.

They didn’t even do their own laundry, just left their dirty clothes in the hamper and woke up to find it freshly laundered.

The boys dorm must run on the same magic, she decided.

She left Harry with a final hug and a “goodnight” as he began to prepare for bed, then she returned downstairs where she informed the group that, no, Harry did not get detention, as well as tell Harry’s dormmates not to bother him since he was tired.

Hermione went to bed not long after, but sleep didn’t come for a good long while. And when it did, she dreamed.

*****

Saturday, Sept. 7

Harry looked bright-eyed and well-rested the next morning, in complete contrast to Hermione, who had been plagued by a dream where Ron’s rat had morphed into a nightmarish amalgamation of man and rodent and stolen Harry from his bed. Pettigrew had then proceeded to deliver Harry, bound and gagged, to Prof. Quirrel, who then pressed his wand against Harry’s scar and said with a flash of poisonous green light, “Avada Kedavra.” And Harry had slumped, dead, while Snape watched from the background with a sneer.

Hermione still didn’t know how come she hadn’t woken up her dormmates with her scream.

She’d almost run up to Harry’s dorm to make sure the boy was still safe in his bed, but she’d managed to stop herself. That would be rather difficult to explain if someone were to see her.

So the girl had satisfied herself with keeping watch in the common room instead, hoping that if anyone were to come for Harry, she would know and stop them.

And it was on the sofa that she’d chosen as her lookout that Harry came to wake her at 5:30 the following morning.

Hermione jumped awake, her mind painting dark scenarios of a legion of Death Eaters marching in like Storm Troopers to take Harry.

She reached for her wand, but she couldn’t find it in the tangle of blankets wrapped around her.

Where was it? Harry needed her. She—

“Hermione!”

She blinked. “Harry?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he managed to get out, right before Hermione squeezed him into a hug.

“It’s fine,” she muttered repeatedly to herself. “You’re fine.”

It took Hermione several minutes to calm down, and when she finally pulled back, Harry said, “you had nightmares.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Hermione nodded anyway, and Harry’s eyes dimmed in sadness.

“That’s where I sleep,” he said after a time, pointing at the darkest corner of the common room. “This is actually the first time I’ve woken up in my bed since I came here.”

Hermione’s gut wrenched. How had she not noticed any of this? She practically screamed at herself. It had been obvious!

The way he was always awake, waiting here for her every morning, the way he was so jumpy, pulling out his wand whenever something sudden happened. He’d even told her, straight to her face, that he’d considered not coming to Hogwarts, and she’d just pushed it out of her mind.

...

Wait. What about his relatives? One of the first things Harry had ever told her was that they didn’t want him around.

He hadn’t been joking when he said that.

Harry’s sigh pulled Hermione from her spiraling thoughts. “Go get dressed,” he said. “I promised you the truth; I’m going to tell you everything.”

Hermione got dressed in record time, and when she came back down, Harry was waiting patiently on the sofa she’d left him on.

Hedwig had joined him at some point.

Harry rose as she approached. “Come on then,” he said, heading for the exit.

As the portrait swung closed behind them, Hermione and Harry exchanged pleasantries with The Fat Lady as they often did.

It had taken quite a bit of research with the little material available, a lot of convincing from Harry, and some long conversations with some of the more talkative paintings in the school, but Hermione had finally, grudgingly admitted, that the people in the paintings of Hogwarts were neither brainwashed, nor trapped.

Turns out that while paintings were real people, in that they were capable of thought and feelings, they still differed largely from humans. Like when Hermione had realised that boredom was a foreign concept to them.

Which she had to admit made sense, because some of the paintings in Hogwarts were older than the castle itself, and had spent much of that time in dusty, barely-used hallways.

“Say, Jolene,” Harry said, “do you know where the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy is?”

The woman frowned and asked, “the odd one who tried to teach trolls the ballet?” Harry nodded. “Up on the seventh floor, Harry. What do you need it for?”

“Oh, nothing, just wanted to show Hermione something. Thanks by the way,” Harry said as he went, and Hermione followed.

Up on the seventh floor, it didn’t take them long to locate the tapestry, a still one, surprisingly, that depicted a bearded wizard and three trolls, all of whom were wearing tutus.

The wizard himself, was in the middle of a pirouette, while two of the trolls just looked confused as to what was going on. Meanwhile, the final troll had a giant club poised to smack the dancing wizard on the head.

Hermione understood now why the man was called the Barmy.

Harry walked to the blank wall opposite the tapestry muttering to himself, and Hermione followed.

“How many times was I supposed to walk across again?” Harry mused. “Three? Seven? I remember it was a prime number, so nine maybe?”

“Nine isn’t a prime number, Harry.”

“It’s not? Huh. Maybe seven then.” Harry then began to walk to and fro in front of the wall, still muttering to himself all the while. “I need the Room of Forgotten Things... or was it the Room of Abandoned Things? Whatever. You know the room I’m talking about; I need the room people hide stuff in.”

Harry continued to walk to and fro, and right before Hermione gave up and asked what he was doing, a door appeared on the wall.

“Finally,” Harry said.

It was a perfectly ordinary door, so much so, in fact, that if Hermione had not just seen it form out of thin air, she would have walked past it without another glance.

Harry set a hand on the doorknob, then took a deep breath. “Well, this is it, I guess,” he said before opening the door, and Hermione’s breath caught as the saw the interior.

The room was huge, with a ceiling higher than the library’s. It smelled musty and old and infrequently used, and the lighting came from dozens of magical lamps like the ones used everywhere in Hogwarts.

Despite the size however, the room was hardly impressive, what was astounding was the contents of the room.

Everything, from books, to cupboards, to cauldrons, to flasks full of unidentifiable but obviously magical fluids, even robes; the room had it all.

Broken desks, rusted armours, cracked statues, it seemed like the room had at least one of anything that could potentially be found within the walls of Hogwarts. And even many things that are unlikely to be.

Hold on, Harry had called this The Room of Forgotten Things, right? Or was it the Room of Abandoned Things?

“So, this is where things lost in Hogwarts end up?” Hermione asked.

“Yeah, something like that,” Harry said distractedly, before sighing again.

He’d done that a lot today.

“Why are we here, Harry? What do you want to show me?”

Harry sighed again. “It’s a diadem,” he said. “And if things work out the way I’m hoping they will... well, you’ll see.”

Hermione nodded. “Okay. Where is it?”

“I have no idea,” Harry said. “We’ll have to look. You go that way, I’ll go this one. And if you find it, Hermione, do not touch it. Hedwig, go with her, please.”

Hedwig flew off Harry’s shoulder, but instead of moving to Hermione’s like they’d both expected, she flew off into the room.

“Okay?” Harry said, just as perplexed as Hermione. Before he could say anything else however, they heard Hedwig’s call from up ahead, and Harry frowned. “Come on,” he said.

Finding Hedwig didn’t take long; she was perched on a large cupboard with a surface that seemed blistered by acid, and as the children walked up to her, she pointed a taloned foot at something; a tarnished diadem sitting on a badly burned desk.

“Is that it?” Hermione asked.

“I think so,” Harry said. “Thanks, Hedwig.”

Then Harry pulled out his wand from within his left sleeve (Hermione had no idea how he got it to stick up there), pointed it at the diadem and said, “I sure hope this works.”

And before she could ask what, Harry’s face twisted into a rictus of hate, and he growled words she never imagined he would say, “Avada Kedavra!”

The flash of green light came out, just like in her dream, but unlike in her dream it was an ironically beautiful shade of green, almost exactly like Harry’s eyes. It struck the diadem, and a bloodcurdling wail erupted from the object as something dark and foul burst out from it.

It hovered, the thing, for some seconds, its hate palpable, then it dispersed, turning into black wisps of smoke that rapidly vanished.

Hermione stumbled backwards, her heart pounding in her chest. “What was that?” She squeaked.

“That was a horcrux,” Harry said. He was breathing heavily too, but he looked in better control of himself than Hermione did. “A piece of Voldemort’s soul. They’re the reason he’s still alive.” Then he muttered, “God, I can’t believe that actually worked.”

Hermione was at a loss for words for several seconds. “And this has just been sitting here!?” She asked, when she could finally push the words out.

Harry looked at her. “Welcome to Hogwarts,” he said, but the attempt at humour fell flat. Mostly because the boy didn’t seem to be in a joking mood himself.

Hermione swallowed. “How—how do you know all these things, Harry?” She just couldn’t hold back that question anymore. “How can you know all these things?”

Harry reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to her.

It was a lovely envelope. Rich, thick, designed paper, with perfume she could smell without trying.

It had been opened already, so she raised the flap and pulled out a letter.

It read:

Dear NO. 997,345

You know me as ROB, so that’s what I’ll call myself (although, I assure you that far from being omnipotent, I am actually small potatoes on the cosmic stage).

Anyway, my friends and I are holding game night, and since we’ve run out of games to play, we’ve decided to try out this rather odd idea that has become prevalent all over your internet, because, apparently your kind seems to think we have nothing better to do than to go isekaing people.

To that end, we’ve purchased one million human souls, and are sending you all to different “fictional” universes, and you drew the “HARRY POTTER” straw.

Congratulations.

Anyway, consequently, all of your personal memories have now (more or less) been stripped, and replaced with HARRY POTTER’S.

Hope you’re entertaining at least.

signed—ROB

PS: since the Harry Potter world is so lacking in common sense and competency, we’ve decided to make things more exciting.

First, no horcrux or “mother’s love” Deus ex machina for you.

Second, we like Hedwig, so she gets something special.

Third, let’s face it, Voldy’s a joke. Therefore, to make things challenging for you, we will isekai the soul of... well, let’s just say this young man is who Tom Riddle wishes he could be, into Voldypants on the summer of your fourth year.

Let the games begin!

Hermione looked up from the letter, her mind trying to comprehend it.

Then Harry said, “the letter came with this,” and took of his robes to reveal that he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt underneath.

The T-shirt had words written on it. They said:

I got isekai’d and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Tee-hee.

Hermione blinked. “Harry, I—I don’t understand.”

Then Harry Potter, her best friend, looked her in the eyes and said, “I was fifteen when I died of a “sudden” heart attack. When I woke up, I was in a cupboard, in this body, wearing this T-shirt, and holding that letter.

“That’s my truth, Hermione.”