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It was all a practical joke. A huge, extensive, extravagant, cruel prank set specifically against her. It had to be. It seemed that everyone from Hogwarts and most of their families and friends had been trapped into this strange world specifically so Hermione could finally find love, only to have him brutally murdered!

Flashback

Something was wrong… different…

Hermione woke with an awful pain in her neck, and one look at her surrounding told her why. Instead of waking up in her four poster bed, she gazed up at a wooden ceiling that seemed like something from a cleaned-up Shrieking Shack. Oddly enough, she knew exactly where she was...

This was her room. She was in her serf house of her farmer father.

Wait a minute... her parents were dentists!

Hermione got up to rush down the stairs from the bedroom that she felt like she had grown up in. In her rush to find her parents she was moving too fast to stop in time as she collided into them turning a corner. They too were seeking her out.

“Hermione!” Mrs. Granger exclaimed, helping her daughter back up and then giving her a strong hug as if she hadn’t seen her in months, which she hadn’t. But she had also seen her yesterday.

“Hermione,” her father said, baffled, “do you have any idea what is going on here?”

“We were home last night,” her mother commented, “our England home, we’re sure of it!”

“But how come we have memories of a second life here in… where in the world is this country anyway? Central Europe?”

“You too?” Hermione asked, “We all have memories of two lives?”

“We were hoping that you would have an idea what’s going on,” her mother offered. “We’ve been up for a couple of hours, but in the end, we figured you would be more familiar with, well, odd happenings like this.”

Hermione shook her head, “I have never experienced nor heard of anything like this ever happening. Ever! This can’t be happening! At all!” Hermione started to panic, “there’s no logical way this could be happening! And you guys have no idea?”

Her parents shook their heads.

“I’ve gotta go into town and figure this out!” Hermione stated and started heading towards the door.

“Don’t forget to take the milk pails to town with you,” her father automatically called after her.

The Grangers all exchanged confused glances at his comment, but being farmers was so oddly familiar to them and instinctive.

Milk in hand, Hermione headed into town to try and find some answers.

She didn't have much luck, however. After delivering her milk, she managed to run into some more familiar faces. One was a Ravenclaw third-year she had tutored a couple of times. Another was a Hufflepuff boy who she had yelled at for disorderly conduct. There were also others such as Marietta Edgecomb, Terry Boot, Michael Corner, Marcus Flint, Romilda Vane, Luna Lovegood, Penelope Clearwater, and Tonks.

"Tonks!" Hermione called to her older friend. "Tonks, is that you?"

"Hermione? Hi!" The girls hugged.

"I could hardly recognize you with normal colored hair!" Hermione teased.

"Actually, this is my natural hair color," Tonks explained, "In fact, I can't use my powers...they seem to be gone, leaving me, sadly, with my natural nose..." Hermione looked at her quizzically as Tonks crossed her eyes to look at her nose, which Hermione couldn’t tell was any different.

Hermione never thought about her magic since she didn't have her wand with her. She guessed it would be more readily apparent to someone with more natural powers like Tonks. "Can you do any magic? Can you apparate?" Tonks simply shook her head in the negative.

Wherever they were, everyone seemed to be none-magical. They were all muggles.

Hermione delivered this news to her parents, but still with nothing apparently left to go on, and a strong instinct to play out their new lives, they agreed that maybe they should just play along for now. They each had a pretty good feeling that their other lives will pick back up to where they left them off.

In late afternoon, Hermione was trying to find something to occupy herself as she contemplated their situation, and without a library, she had to explore new options. She tried heading outside towards the stables, hoping a horse ride might help clear her thinking.

When she got there, she took one irritated overall glance and turned straight around and stormed down the hill to a separate little house where their hired hand lived.

"Farm boy!" she banged on the door, "don't tell me you haven't cleaned out the stables in weeks because that's what it certainly looks like!" She banged on the door again for emphasis before heading back to the stable. Once there, she saddled up one of the horses and went galloping. Hermione had gone horseback riding before; normally she would have felt just as awkward with a horse as she did on a broom. Thankfully the horse stayed on the ground.

The ride helped her relax from all of her confusion and anger, although the anger was ready to switch on if that Farm Boy did even touch the horse stalls. She didn't really feel disappointed when she rode up to a much cleaner stable. As she got off the horse, the farm boy came in with a fresh bundle of hay.

At the sight of some familiarly fiery-red hair, she promptly lost balance, slipped, fumbled, and fell to the ground with one foot caught in the saddle.

"Hermione!" He dropped his bundle and hurried to her side. "Are you alright!"

"Ron!" Her shock quickly turned to annoyance as she worked herself to her feet. "Get off! I'm alright, thanks for caring!" Her words turned bitter and she furiously brushed off the dirt and hey on her.

"Sorry," he replied, he tone quickly turning sarcastic, memories of the row they had last night in the common room came flooding in, "I'll try not to do it again."

"What are you doing here?"

"Cleaning the stables like you told me to!"

"I know that! I mean why, of all people are you our hired hand? Where's Harry? Ginny? And all the others?" Hermione threw her hands up in exasperation.

"I don't know! Why are any of us here, genius?" Ron's eyes narrowed "I’m the stupid prat, remember? Useless? Incapable? What was it exactly that you called me last night? Oh yeah, all of them and many more! So why would you think that I, of all people, would be able to figure anything out or do anything right?"

"Oh ho ho!" the bushy-haired maiden mocked, "don't turn this on me! I sure didn't bring us here! And getting into more arguments isn't going to help anything!"

"You started it!” Ron maturely retorted. He resettled himself and mocked with a bow, “So what would you like me to do, ma'am?"

"Just get back to work," she snarled and turned away from him and headed back up to her house.

So this new life continued and the months passed. Hermione continued to pester Ron. Neither of them were willing to forgive or forget that painful argument they had back in Hogwarts. The power she got with Ron in his lower status felt refreshing. He really wasn't in a place to doing anything about it. And no back-talking! She got as bossy as she hadn’t been since their first year at Hogwarts. Ron wouldn’t take it well, but arguing with her about it only earned him threats of having her father sack him, which would make him homeless and unemployed.

Ron, however, started to become the passive one. It had started out sarcastic, but he got to the point where all he ever usually said to her was something like "As you wish, ma’am."

“Hermione,” Mr. Granger started softly at the dinner table one day, “I’ve been noticing how you’ve been treating Mr. Weasley…” Hermione, feeling slightly guilty, raised her eyes to listen to her father. “I don’t know what he did, but that boy has gotten you extremely worked up. Yet at the same time, he’s been working really hard to respect you, especially since I know the boy has a fiery spirit. It must be hard for him.”

“I know you two are busy, but maybe you should talk sometime,” Mrs. Granger added.

The next morning Hermione approached Ron carefully in an attempt to make amends, “Ron?”

“Hermione,” he said by way of greeting. He was currently milking one of the cows, having glanced over his shoulder when she came in. “I’ll be done here in a minute.”

“Alright,” Hermione found she was rather nervous; she had put this off too long. “I just thought you’d like some company into town this morning.”

“I’d like that,” Ron smiled as he got up from his stool and started to clean up.

“Ron?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we be friends again?” she finally got out softly.

Ron halted in mid-process of wiping his hands off on his work clothes. It took him a second or two to process this request. A friendly smile grew on his lips that reassured Hermione. That grin then turned into a teasing smirk, “As you wish, M’lady.”

Hermione chuckled softly and helped him gather the milk pails.

As many more months progressed, Hermione had never realized how much she depended on magic. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to manual labor; being an only child, she was used to doing her share of chores when she was at home. But then again, they didn’t even have the luxury of modern technology, like plumbing. Hermione got to the point in her work were she even began to neglect her hygiene. When she started getting a cold shoulder by the other girls whenever she was in town, she had assumed that hygiene was the reason.

She was shocked to learn the real reason for her being snubbed when she ran into Luna one day. “Good morning, Hermione,” Luna dreamily greeted, “you’re looking especially lovely this morning.”

Luna seemed sincere. Hermione often couldn’t tell if Luna was capable of sarcasm at times.

Hermione remarked, “I guess I ought to try and do something with my hair more often, it’s almost a literal nest now.”

“I guess you could,” Luna replied, “but even still, you are remarkably stunning how you are.”

Hermione blinked. “Are you serious? You seriously think I’m pretty? Even like this?”

“Oh, you hadn’t noticed?” Luna tipped her head and studied Hermione. “I was sure you would have. I’m almost convinced that you had become part veela.”

“Part veela?” the milkmaid numbly repeated.

Luna nodded, “it’s happened before. Daddy had interviewed a girl from Scotland who had. Apparently the local pumpkin juice had been contaminated by local magical wildlife. If you did not see it yourself, surely you’ve noticed how all the boys our age seemed to have fallen in love with you.”

"What!" Hermione choked.

“I wonder if that may have been why you are a bitter topic in conversation with the other girls in town.”

"So, wait, wait, wait," Hermione tried to confirm "the other girls...are jealous...of me!"

“I guess so,” Luna shrugged, “I don’t really see what they are all upset about. The boys our age in town aren’t worth getting so worked up about.” Hermione busily tried to wrap her mind around the idea of been the envy of the town as Luna continued, “except, of course, for Ronald.”

“Ron?” blurted Hermione as she snapped out of the previous train of thought, “Ron Weasley?”

“Yes, your Ron,” Luna responded, “I’ve seen him when he comes in to town lately, he’s becoming quite fit and attractive actually. We stop and talk. I enjoy talking with him.”

“My Ron?” Hermione was having trouble keeping up with the information Luna was pouring out. She was starting to get a serious headache. Luna continued to ramble on for a while how much she enjoyed Ronald’s company, irritating Hermione for some reason.

Back home, Hermione studied herself in a mirror and realized, as she was now becoming a young adult, she really was quite pretty. It was too weird. So Hermione slacked her hygiene even more, much to her parents’ annoyance...but they made sure she kept brushing her teeth, which eased them off her case slightly. Unfortunately, that didn't stop people from staring at her like idiots.

Therefore, Hermione tried to avoid going into town for that very reason. However, duty calls and that duty was to take the milk pails in and out of town. One particular time that she was dreading the trip, she asked that Ron join her since he was available for once. In the back of her mind, the part where random thoughts are largely ignored, Hermione wondered if she had an alternate agenda for asking him to join her. They didn’t get the chance for quality one-on-one time very often and she found his company rather... well, it’s nothing really...

On there way out of town, after their previous conversation had dwindled and died, Hermione spoke up. “So… you and Luna.”

Ron knitted his eyebrows in confusion at the statement as he kept his eyes on the road, “Me and Luna?”

“Yes,” Hermione replied bluntly.

Ron was completely confused, “Hermione, that’s not a question or a statement, or even a sentence.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Um, no, actually, I don’t.”

“Don’t play dumb with me Ronald!”

“I’m not playing, Hermione, I am dumb.”

“Oh don’t start that again.”

“Start what again? I really have no idea what you’re getting at!”

“You and Luna; do you… like her?”

Ron halted in his steps and faced her, “as in like-like her?”

“Yes, you sloppy git!” Hermione seethed, her temper flaring.

“No.”

“Huh?” Hermione wasn’t sure why this came as such a surprise, and a relief.

“I like chatting with her from time to time, but I really am not interested in her like that,” Ron stated as if baffled that Hermione did not realize this.

“Oh,” Hermione replied humbly and turned again to head down the road.

It took Ron a couple of seconds for his brain to catch up until he jobs the few strides to catch up with his friend again.

“Look, Mione, I know we often don’t see eye-to-eye, but I fail to see why you were so bothered by the thought of Luna and I being a couple.” Ron queried, “Any particular reason why you are so interested in my personal life?”

“Why should I care about your personal life?”

“Well you seem to.”

“Do you want me to?”

“I—what?” Ron faltered in his steps and stopped walking. Hermione was a few steps ahead before she stopped and turned.

Hermione bit her lip regretting to question that got released.

“Well, I…” Ron attempted to reply but he ended up opening and closing his mouth like a suffocating fish trying to finish that thought.

“Do you want me to care that all of the town girls are attracted to you?”

“They what?”

“Oh, come now, you haven’t noticed?” Hermione spat, “I thought you loved it when people throw attention at you! You always seem to forget your friends and get all selfish!”

“Oh, wonderful remark coming from you!”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

“You never talk to me when you’re upset, Mione,” Ron replied, “instead whenever you’re upset, you take it out on me! And even when you…” Ron’s composure softened as he bit back what he was going to say.

His change in stature did not go be unnoticed by Hermione. “When I what, Ron?” She prodded, but the redhead just sealed his lips together . “Talk to me Ron!” Hermione demanded “I can’t read your mind!”

Ron gave in abruptly, dropped his empty milk pails and grabbed the sides of her face as he closed the distance between them and firmly planted his lips on hers.

When he pulled back, Hermione suddenly found herself completely incapable of speech as her brain slowly managed to get in gear and translate what he just told her. Finally Hermione made an attempt to verbally communicate again since she had seemed to think it was very important a minute or two ago.

Swallowing a lump in her throat she gave her voice a try, “I—didn’t know you could speak your mind so…eloquently.”

The corner of Ron’s lips curved upward slightly in a hopeful expression. “Well, you did tell me to speak my mind.”

“Yes,” Hermione replied, “…we should talk more often.”

They met halfway in for another kiss.

After the greatest snog ever, Ron and Hermione completed their trip home, holding hands, and awkwardly holding their empty milk pails in their other hands.

They had managed to open up and admit that they had liked each other for a very long time now. But near the end of the walk, Ron had become more pensive. When their approached his little field home, Hermione waited, hoping he would open up about what was on his mind.

After setting down their milk pails, Ron tenderly faced Hermione, taking hold of both hands and leaned his forehead down against hers and closed his eyes. “I love you, Hermione.” Ron said softly.

“I love you too.” Hermione replied.

“Hermione…I don’t have much money.”

“So what? What makes you think that ever mattered to me?”

“But,” Ron sighed, “I’d like to settle down…I mean, we’re nineteen years old now. I’d like to build us a home…I don’t think I can afford a big wedding…”

Long term plans hadn’t really gone through Hermione’s thoughts that night yet, but she could only blush and smile. She wasn’t going to say how much thought she had put into the idea before tonight, back when the thought of marrying Ron was still a fantasy.

Ron pulled back from her with his typical, worrier Ronald Weasley paranoia, asked her, “Would you marry me?” in a ‘you would, wouldn’t you?’ tone.

“There’s no one I’d want to marry more!” she reassured, moving her left hand up to his cheek.

“Not even Krum?” same good old Ron.

She smacked him on the back of his head. He deserved it. “Since he had a girl-friend last time I talked to him, whom I was very happy for him to get together with, I wouldn’t even be surprised if he had kids by now in this reality.”

Ron smiled and then sighed with a concerned expression. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, Hermione.” Ron held her at arms length so he could discuss this seriously. “I’ve been wanting to go to America.” Hermione took in a painful breath to which Ron responded with an explanation, “there are a lot of growing opportunities out there…and there’s a boat leaving soon…I might even be able to still catch it…”

Tears were springing from Hermione’s eyes. The word “when?” finally broke from her throat.

“Aw, don’t cry, love, please,” Ron said sweetly, wiping away her tears and pulling her in and held her close. She couldn’t help but smile at his calling her ‘love.’ “If I leave tonight, I may reach London in time.”

“Tonight!”

“The opportunities are going fast!” snuggling in closer, “and another chance may not come in months!”

After a pause, Hermione continued, “You will write, wont you?”

“Of course!” He hugged her again and then stood back and placed a hand on her cheek, the both of them taking in the reality of the situation. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

Hermione held her breath for a moment longer, dread and fear growing in the pit of her stomach. “I fear I will never seen you again…” the tears began again.

“I’ll be back,” Ron promised, gathering Hermione in his arms and holding her close. “I’ll always be there for you!” They held each other close for a long time. "Well, if I’m going to go, I need to leave as soon as I can."

"Promise me that I'll see you again." Hermione looked up at him, eyes shimmering from the tears.

"As you wish, Love, I promise." Ron pushed a strand of bushy brown hair lovingly behind her ear, "as you wish."

Hermione helped him get ready to leave and saw him off again with another long kiss filled with promises. As she watched him walk off into the sunset, she had no idea how real those fears in her stomach would become; nor how soon they would catch up with her.

It was less than a week later when the messenger showed up, regretfully informing them that one Ronald Weasley had been killed when their ship was attacked by pirates. They brought back his belongings to her family since the Grangers were the closest thing he had to a family. Hermione couldn’t believe the messenger and had demanded the poor bloke to take her to see the body, despite his urges that she probably didn’t want to see it. The technology of the time made transporting the bodies back to their homes impractical. The messenger took Hermione to Ron’s gave.

From there, she went straight home and locked herself in her room. She clung to the torn, blood-stained clothes that were all that remained of the man she loved and sobbed.

That was when her heart started to produce the theories that this was all a prank against her. Most of the logic still clinging to Hermione’s brain knew that this prank theory was impractical. So many individuals were trapped in this magic-free alternate life for it to be solely about her, but that logic didn’t ease the pain.

One shred of proof that this was all a joke was simply the name that Ron’s murderer had gone by: The Dread Pirate Roberts.