A/N: All right, so I'm back with a new story. I'm somewhat curious myself at how my first attempt at not writing crack will turn out. As such, any kind of feedback is very much appreciated.

Hermione will be the main POV character of the story, and she and Harry will run away from Hogwarts soon into the story.

I will be doing some world-building, but I'll try to stay canon-compliant overall. While I try to avoid character bashing, I won't ignore all the stuff that happens in the books either (which is too bad for pretty much ALL adult characters). Still, I won't make anyone artificially worse than how they are shown in canon. So, there will be no Evil or over-the-top Manipulative!Dumbledore. But, well, you know what they say about good intentions...

Hermione and Harry will receive very little help overall. There will be no billion-Galleon-inheritance, no rich godfather to take the kids in on an unplottable private island, no Dobby-ex-machina, not even super understanding and helpful Granger parents. There'll only be two teens, alone against the world, armed with nothing but their magic and their ingenuity. How will they fare? Over the next 180k words or so, we may find out.

The story starts during Chapter Eighteen of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

- CHAPTER ONE -

The Stone to Start the Avalanche

Hermione's steps echoed loudly in the empty hallways of Hogwarts as she ran towards the Hospital Wing. The only other sounds to be heard were her sobs, which she had been unable to suppress ever since she had taken flight from the Potions corridor.

Even though there were no other people around, she tried to shield her mouth and chin with her hands, causing her to run rather awkwardly. Her two front teeth that had been hexed by Malfoy were grotesquely protruding from her mouth, reaching almost below her chin. To add injury to insult, the enlarged teeth also caused excruciating pain in her upper jaw.

It wasn't the pain that had her in tears, though. At least, not for the most part. No, the reason for her tears was Professor Snape's reaction to her predicament.

I see no difference.

That was what the man had said when he had looked at her, when she had been in pain and obvious need of medical assistance.

She had been hit with the Densaugeo Hex by Malfoy when the Slytherin and Harry had exchanged spells in the dungeons in front of the Potions classroom.

Malfoy had done his best to needle a reaction out of Harry, with his taunts and his stupid badges insulting Harry, and he had succeeded. With all the pressure of being an involuntary participant in the Triwizard Tournament, Hermione supposed it wasn't very surprising that Harry had finally snapped. She had been caught in the crossfire when the boys' spells had collided, deflecting Malfoy's Teeth Enlargement Hex towards her.

With some bad luck, the spell had hit her right in her face, and her front teeth had started to grow rapidly.

It had hurt badly, and she had been utterly humiliated by her disfigurement, and this would have been bad enough.

But then, Professor Snape had arrived on the scene. Accusations had been exchanged. And the Professor had looked at her with his usual sneer.

I see no difference.

That had been when she had no longer been able to hold back her tears and had started to run.

The laughter of the Slytherins as her teeth had grown to grotesque proportions was still ringing in her ears. So were the raised voices of Harry and Ron as they had shouted at Snape. She hoped the boys hadn't done anything stupid on her behalf and wouldn't get into too much trouble for whatever they had said.

Soon, Hermione was out of breath and had to slow down slightly. By now, she was on the first floor but still had to make it to the other side of the castle to get to the Hospital Wing.

While she ran along, she berated herself for tearing up like a little girl because someone had said a mean thing to her.

I see no difference.

No, that wasn't fair to herself, either.

Some of her tears were definitely due to the pain in her jaw. And in either case, the reason for her distress was not the words, but who had said them.

Sure, the words had been hurtful, especially as they very much resembled the taunts of her bullies back in primary school.

But if Malfoy or some other Slytherin had insulted her, she would have easily kept her calm. It hadn't been Malfoy or another Slytherin, though. It hadn't been a student. But a professor! A professor, a figure of authority, had joined in with the bullies.

Of course, she had always known that Snape was anything but a good teacher. He had always been an unpleasant person. His awarding of points to Slytherin and his points deductions from the other Houses had always been biased.

But bias towards their own House was something the other Heads of House were also guilty of. They weren't as blatant and obvious as Snape, but at least that had mostly been a mere difference in degree.

Whenever Professor Snape berated Harry, Ron, or Neville during class, it was usually because they had made a mistake or had been inattentive. Even when the Professor had asked Harry all those difficult questions in their very first Potions lesson three years ago, he had only done his job. Kind of. Teachers were supposed to ask questions, weren't they? That's what she had told herself, at least.

Snape being unfair and spiteful certainly wasn't newsworthy.

But this was different.

I see no difference.

She had only been an innocent bystander, had been hurt, had been visibly in pain, and the teacher's response had been to mock her appearances!

For a professor to be a bully was simply inexcusable.

All her life, it had been the adults that had protected her against the cruelty of her peers. When her classmates in primary school had made fun of her for her enthusiasm for reading and learning, or when they had lashed out against her for showing them up in class, it had always been her teachers that had stepped in and had stopped the bullying. At least for a while.

The teachers were the ones to protect her. The rules and the teachers. The rules and the teachers were the only ones to never betray her, as all of her peers invariably and inevitably would.

As a result, she had developed an unwavering, steadfast trust in people in authority. After all, if you couldn't trust the people in charge, how could you trust anyone? And you needed to trust someone, right?

She had been so stupid!

To her, this trust now much more resembled an irrational and misplaced blind faith. No, not all the teachers at Hogwarts were deserving of the kind of deference she had been showing them. Respect had to be earned, and a bully like Snape didn't deserve any. That much was clear to her now, but it should have been clear to her a long time ago.

She was angry with herself. Why was it just now, when the abuse was directed at her, that she saw things for how they really were?

Why hadn't she seen it before?

Why had she always seen the isolated incidents, but never the pattern behind them? Why had she never realised what an utterly vile person Snape really was, that he really shouldn't be allowed to be anywhere close to children, never mind being a teacher for a core subject in Magical Britain's only school?

Whenever Snape spoke ill of Harry during class or deducted points for petty reasons, she had always told herself that the Professor might be unfair but that he was still acting within his rights as a teacher, and so his behaviour couldn't really be considered all that bad.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

What had she been thinking? Insisting that Harry called this vile man by his title, a title he was totally undeserving of! Snape's treatment of Harry had always been unprofessional, bordering on abusive.

And she had refused to see it. She should have helped Harry to fight Snape's abuse starting with their very first Potions lesson, but she had failed her best friend. The first thing she would do when she saw him would be to apologise to Harry for not supporting him against Snape. She only hoped Harry would accept her apology.

Hermione slowed down her pace further when she finally reached the corridor leading to the infirmary. By now, she was panting heavily and felt a stitch in her sides. But at least she hadn't encountered any students along the way. No one else had seen her disfigurement.

She was no longer sobbing or crying, but some tears were still trailing down her cheeks. Though by now, that was mostly because of the pain. Her jaw was really killing her.

She approached the doors to the Hospital Wing and opened them, stepping inside the infirmary.

As she entered, Madam Pomfrey peeked out of her office on the other side of the room. The school nurse only had to take one look at Hermione before her wand appeared in her hand and she came rushing forward.

"Oh, dear, let me take a look at this," the woman said and waved her wand before Hermione's face.

"Hgn thehh-" Hermione began, trying to explain what had happened, but she realised that with her teeth protruding from her mouth, she was completely unintelligible.

"Now, never worry about that, Miss Granger," Madam Pomfrey said. "No need to explain anything..."

The nurse waved her wand again and huffed.

"Densaugeo Hex?" she asked.

Hermione only nodded in response.

"All right, we'll have this fixed in a jiffy," the school nurse said reassuringly and aimed her wand at Hermione's face.

Hermione looked with both hope and apprehension at the glowing tip of the witch's wand that hovered mere inches in front of her nose before Madam Pomfrey cast her spell.

"Reducio Dentientes!"

Hermione immediately felt how the pressure in her jaw subsided, and soon her pain was gone and she was able to breathe more freely. When Madam Pomfrey lowered her wand, Hermione moved her tongue over her teeth and could feel that her two front teeth were still twice as long as before. She was about to ask why the nurse hadn't shrunken her teeth back to their original size when Madam Pomfrey began to speak again.

"Now that we've fixed the worst of it, I'll need your help with the details. Unfortunately, I can't just revert your teeth to how they were before. Unlike living tissue, teeth can easily be altered magically in a lasting fashion. So, I need you to tell me when your teeth look the way they did before, while I apply the Shrinking Charm again. Can you do that?"

"Yesh, Madam Pomshreh," Hermione answered, still unable to speak clearly, and the school nurse conjured a small hand mirror, handing it to her patient.

Hermione winced as she looked at her reflection, which showed her still abnormally large front teeth. She really looked like a caricature of herself.

But only a moment later, the nurse spoke her incantation, and Hermione's teeth began to slowly decrease in length.

As she observed the changes, Hermione realised that this might be an opportunity to have Madam Pomfrey change her teeth not only back to their previous form but to finally get her teeth more evenly shaped.

Her slightly larger front teeth had always been an issue for her self-image, mainly because they had been a common point of ridicule for her bullies in primary school, and occasionally at Hogwarts, too. Innumerable times, she had been called 'buck-tooth', 'beaver-face', or one of countless other unflattering names. As a result, she had always felt extremely self-conscious about her front teeth, even when the unevenness of her teeth became less pronounced as she grew older.

She had of course known for a long time that her teeth could easily be fixed with magic. But when she had told this to her parents after her first year at Hogwarts, they had been much less enthusiastic about the prospect than her. Quite to the contrary, actually. Sternly, they had told her that as a daughter of two dentists, she would have her teeth fixed with real and honest dentistry and orthodontic work, not with some unnatural magic tricks. Just this summer, her parents had told her that they might look into getting her braces the next year.

Hermione felt a surge of anger at the memory of her parents' close-mindedness and decided that she really couldn't care less about their instructions. She would allow Madam Pomfrey to do what she should have asked of her a long time ago.

She watched on as her teeth shrank and kept silent even when they reached their previous size. Only when her upper teeth were perfectly even, she nodded, and Madam Pomfrey ended her spell.

"Thank you, Madam Pomfrey," Hermione said earnestly. She smiled into the mirror once more, and as she observed her reflection, her smile widened even further. When she laid the mirror aside, Hermione thought that the school nurse had done a truly great job.

Her parents wouldn't be happy with her, but Hermione found that she couldn't bring herself to care overly much about their likely reaction. They had been in the wrong with their outright refusal of any and all magical treatments, so she wouldn't feel guilty for what she had done.

There was nothing wrong with having to wear braces, of course. If one actually required them, that was. But for her parents to forbid her a safe, quick, and easy magical solution and force her to instead undergo a lengthy and rather uncomfortable mundane treatment just so that their pride as dentists wouldn't be hurt, had been rather petty. Almost cruel, if she was honest about it.

Hermione sighed, a sad look forming on her face. That unreasonable demand of her parents had been a mere symptom of how strained her relationship with them had become ever since she had started at Hogwarts.

Her parents really didn't like that their only daughter was a witch. Such a thing threatened to bring their orderly little world completely out of balance. Hence, they much preferred to pretend that their daughter didn't go to a magic school, that she wasn't a witch, and that magic didn't exist, despite having been shown the evidence to the contrary.

It wasn't that her parents mistreated her or anything. But they were always distant, aloof, and treated her with a strange politeness usually reserved for distant acquaintances. Still, they provided for her, they supported her financially, they took her on vacations. They probably even loved her. At least, they loved their daughter Hermione, child prodigy and top student. They certainly didn't love Hermione, the witch, who they pretended didn't exist.

After that fateful visit of Professor McGonagall over four years ago, when she and her parents had been told about the wizarding world, Hermione had started to feel like a stranger in her own home, and every summer, that feeling had only got more pronounced.

While she primarily blamed this on the narrow-mindedness of her parents, Hermione also knew that Hogwarts and the magical world hadn't exactly helped. Her parents weren't informed about the happenings at school. They couldn't visit the castle. She couldn't practice magic at home to show them what she was learning. Maybe-

"Are you all right, Miss Granger?" Madam Pomfrey asked with concern, startling Hermione out of her musings. "Aren't the teeth to your liking? Or are you otherwise hurt?"

"No, no," Hermione replied quickly, annoyed with herself for letting her mind wander. "I'm sorry, I just got a bit distracted. You have done a wonderful job. Thank you very much, Madam Pomfrey."

"You're welcome, dear," the school nurse answered kindly. "Now off you go, before you miss too much of your class."

Hermione slightly grimaced at that, but she only gave a polite nod in response.

"Yes, thank you again, Madam," she said and turned towards the exit of the infirmary.

As she stepped outside and closed the doors behind her, Hermione thought that she really didn't feel like re-joining the Potions class. She didn't feel like joining Snape's class ever again, if she was honest about it.

No, the Potions classroom was the last place she wanted to be right now. So, instead of going to the dungeons, she just started to aimlessly walk away from the Hospital Wing. While she didn't have a destination in mind, her steps soon were automatically leading her towards the library, her usual place to go when she had things to mull over.

With the pain in her jaw gone, she was now able to think more clearly. In her mind, she replayed what had happened in the Potions corridor several times over, and her initial feelings of hurt, shock, and betrayal at Snape's behaviour slowly subsided, giving way to deep, passionate anger.

I see no difference.

How a vile bully like Snape could ever be allowed to teach children, she didn't know. But she knew that she wouldn't stand for it!

But what to do about it? Was there anything that could be done?

Usually, her first instinct would have been to lodge a formal complaint against Snape. Either with Professor McGonagall, as the Deputy Headmistress, or with Headmaster Dumbledore directly.

But now, she felt much less confident about such a course of action. Would that really be effective? Would Professor McGonagall do anything? She certainly had to be aware of Snape's general bias and unpleasantness, and she had never intervened. And the same was true for Professor Dumbledore.

For years, both the Headmaster and the Deputy Headmistress had allowed Snape's unprofessional conduct, his bullying of students, to continue unchallenged.

Weren't they aware of what was going on? This had been an issue for many years, most likely for over a decade, so they certainly had to know! They knew, and they weren't doing anything!

Hermione halted.

Suddenly, she knew with absolute certainty that the Professors and the Headmaster would never do anything to protect the students from Snape's abuse, just like they hadn't done anything to protect the school from basilisks, trolls, or dementors. Just like they had left it up to three first-years to prevent the Philosopher's Stone from getting stolen by Voldemort. Just like they had left it up to a second-year to kill a basilisk. Just like they had left it up to two third-years to save Sirius from getting his soul sucked out by a dementor.

The level of negligence displayed by the staff of the school was staggering.

And it was the same this year. The teachers weren't doing anything to help Harry. They knew that Harry had been wrongfully entered into the Triwizard Tournament, likely in some kind of assassination attempt, but could any of the teachers be bothered to do anything about it? No! No one was investigating what had happened or who was responsible. No one was conducting interviews or questioning people with a possible motive under Veritaserum. No one was looking for ways for Harry to get out of the tournament.

They were all content to let Harry risk his life once again. They couldn't even be bothered to offer him any help for the tasks.

Looking at all of this at once, it was shocking.

One Defence Professor possessed by Voldemort, the next one a fraud who tried to kill Harry and Ron for a good story, the one after that a fool who forgot that he was a werewolf during the full moon, and now a paranoid maniac who in the real world would be deemed just as unsuited to teach children as Snape, Binns, or Trelawney. Or Hagrid, if she was honest.

Detentions in the Forbidden Forest at night, an unchecked colony of Acromantula close to the school, a basilisk roaming the halls unchallenged, a dark artefact possessing a student unnoticed, a school governor getting away with attempted murder, dementors attacking students, people sneaking into the castle undetected, and now a stupid tournament where school children would risk their lives for a handful of Galleons to the amusement of the populace...

She had always known about the incidents, about the isolated events. But now she saw the pattern.

Hogwarts wasn't safe. The faculty was negligent at best and malicious at worst. And what was true for Hogwarts, was also true for the Ministry and Magical Britain at large. There was no sense of responsibility, no accountability, no rule of law. Not if it wasn't convenient for those in charge.

What did this mean?

With her long overdue epiphany on the true nature of Hogwarts and the wizarding world, what action should she take? Right now, what did this revelation mean for her and Harry?

First of all, she certainly had to rethink her priorities.

Getting back at Snape or any such nonsense wasn't really important right now. Nor were many of the things she had always cared about most. Her school work and her grades didn't matter in the face of Magical Britain's bigotry and the continuous threats to her and Harry's health and very lives. And as much as it pained her, even her crusade for the rights of the house-elves would have to be put on hold for now.

Above all, she had to ensure the safety of Harry and herself. The major issue in that regard was of course the Triwizard Tournament and Harry's forced participation in it.

So, that was what she had to do now. She had to help her Harry even more ferociously than before. She had to keep her Harry safe.

Her Harry.

For this was her most closely guarded secret: That Hermione Jane Granger was completely and utterly in love with Harry James Potter.

How could she not have fallen in love with him? He had jumped on the back of a troll for her in their first year, only to then quickly become her first real friend, and then, as the relationship with her parents deteriorated, the most important person in her life.

What she felt for him might have started out as a silly school girl crush, with her doodling hearts with the inter-winded letters H.J.P. and H.J.G. – or occasionally H.J.P. and H.J.P. – on the sides of her notes from History of Magic. But her love for him had only grown ever since. Not because of his heroism or because of his silly moniker, but because despite all the difficulties in his life, he remained such a caring, gentle, and humble person.

He wasn't perfect. Harry didn't stand up to Ron when he made nasty comments about her. Nor did he stand up for himself when he was treated unfairly by students or professors, as it happened so often. He could be stubborn and often leaped into danger without thinking. He also didn't really apply himself in his studies, which saddened her. Though she blamed that mostly on Ron's influence. She knew Harry could be brilliant when he put in the effort.

But everyone was allowed to have faults, and his could easily be excused. Considering all the hardships that life had heaped upon him in his young years, it was astonishing enough how he could still be growing into such a fine, compassionate, amazing young man.

She saw the vulnerable boy under the larger-than-life image of the Boy-Who-Lived, and her heart ached for him as he was thrown into one traumatic experience after another over their years at Hogwarts. And even though Harry never talked about his home life, she also knew he hadn't been shown much affection from his relatives, and often she just wanted to hold him and tell him that there were people who cared about him and who loved him, and that everything would be all right.

But she couldn't tell him how she felt. Not until he showed her any indication that he might feel the same way about her. Their friendship was just too important to her.

It hurt that he had never shown this kind of interest towards her. She consoled herself with the fact that boys just developed slower than girls, and Harry was almost a year younger than her, so there was still time.

Hermione shook her head, annoyed at where her thoughts had led her. There was a time and a place for pointless daydreaming, and it wasn't now.

Harry didn't need another fan-girl fawning over him right now, he needed someone to help him with the thrice-damned tournament. And it was up to her to help him, as evidently, no one else could be bothered to do so.

With her mind set upon her new goal, Hermione paced up her walk towards the library. She needed to find a way for Harry to stay safe during the tasks, or preferably a way to get him out of the stupid competition altogether.

Was there a way out for him? After the Ministry officials and the Headmaster had all declared that there was nothing to be done, she had assumed that it wouldn't do any good for her to waste time researching the topic. But now she thought that she really should have done so.

The Ministry couldn't be trusted.

The teachers couldn't be trusted.

The adults couldn't be trusted.

It was up to her. And she would find a way to keep her Harry safe. He had saved her life several times already. Now that he needed her, it was time for her to save him.

A/N: Thank you to Proton6 and Pontus for proofreading this chapter, and thank you to the folks from the Harmony Discord group for their feedback and encouragement.