Promise You Won\'t Forget Me

~Prologue: A Hogwarts Professor~

Hermione Granger was a bossy, bushy-haired, know-it-all kind of woman. But she was also bloody brilliant. As a witch, she was far ahead of the game. Upon her graduation from Hogwarts, she went to a Muggle university and got her degree. However, the Muggle world didn't hold much for Hermione so she returned to Hogwarts and became the Muggle Studies Professor.

Hermione enjoyed her job and was greatly admired as a teacher. The other professors, all older than she, saw her as an equal and treated her with respect. The students knew her to be difficult but fair. Quiet and studious. The only anomaly in her demeanor was her tendency to be melancholy. No one could figure out why the intelligent, attractive, young professor didn't seem to have much of a personal life. There were rumors around school that it had something to do with the Great Harry Potter.

Some said that Harry Potter had broken her heart by refusing to acknowledge her affection. Others claimed it was exactly the other way around, that the strict Professor had refused Harry Potter and he had gone to China to forget her. Still others yet (with wilder imaginations) said that there was a curse placed upon them by You-Know-Who and that if they looked at one another, they would turn into squirrels.

Hermione continued on oblivious to the ridiculous rumors. She and Harry continued to be the great friends they were back in Hogwarts and were in constant communication. The Boy Who Lived was somewhere in Africa making arrangements for treaties on behalf of the Ministry. He wrote Hermione at every opportunity and she happily wrote back. That was their friendship. She hadn't actually seen him in three years.

Other rumors, these mostly circulated by the staff, were that Hermione was lonely because she had no people her own age around. Hermione caught one or two of these and dismissed them as groundless. She often spoke with and visited her old friend Ginny Weasley. Hermione herself wouldn't say she was lonely or unhappy. She considered herself quite content. She went out on dates and was currently seeing a man who had the potential to be a boyfriend. However, if someone asked her to look deep down inside for the root of the problem, she could find it in a heartbeat.

His name was Ron Weasley. He, too, had been her best friend at Hogwarts and they had separated at graduation. Ron had disappeared mysteriously two days after the ceremony--without a word to anyone. Hermione had been hurt and angry that he hadn't said anything to her about his decision to leave. But when no message reached her or his family after months of worry, the general consensus was that he was gone. Gone, as in never to come back. It had taken a long time, but eventually his family, Harry, and Hermione moved on. They never forgot him, but they moved on.

In their letters, Harry and Hermione avoided Ron's name like the plague. It was taboo between them. In fact, no one had said the name Ron Weasley in over four years.

Hermione missed him often. She kept those feelings buried deep down, but they were there. Her feelings toward him had been confused in the months before he vanished. She had been beginning to see him as more than a friend and was on the verge of telling him how she felt. She was almost sure that he felt the same way. Then he disappeared without a trace and Hermione forced those uncertain feelings down as far as they would go.

It was because of all those confusing feelings that Hermione decided she needed a vacation. A real one. She had quite a lot of money saved up, so when the summer holidays came around, she did something she would never have done before. She signed up to take a Caribbean cruise. An all-magic Caribbean cruise.

It had been Professor Vector, the Arithmancy Professor, who told her about it. She even went so far as to hint that it would be a good place for Hermione to mingle with witches and wizards her own age. So Hermione signed up. The cruise would last for two weeks and would end right about the time that school started again. That meant she had the first half of summer to go shopping.

Little did she know that a simple summer holiday vacation would turn out to be not only fun, but also dangerous.