Hermione followed the professor into the restricted section, but then seemed to walk through a hidden wall, she followed and once she had passed through the portal she was hit with a strong sense of mencholy. She couldn't expin why, but as she gazed at this older section of the library, it reminded her of the games and how she and Sebastian has hidden from the prefects, the thrill of nearly getting caught, the look of glee on his face when they were successful. She stilled, those were strong feelings for a video game, she shook herself and followed her feet, already leading her to the archway she needed to pass with Revelio.

  The connection to Sebastian is subtle but effective, especially paired with that mencholy tone. Here's a suggested continuation that builds on your current paragraph, introducing the idea of residual echoes from the NPCs of her past life—without making anything overt or breaking the subtlety of her disorientation:

  They reached the outer corridor of the Restricted Section somewhat lost in her memories.

  She stepped through the archway, casting Revelio almost absently, as though her magic had moved ahead of her thought. The stone shimmered and parted, revealing the darkened passage beyond. Cold air poured out like a breath held too long.

  She paused.

  The scent in the corridor struck her—dust and something floral. Not roses. Not vender. Something older. Her chest tightened.

  A flicker of sound. A low chuckle that echoed off stone, vanishing too quickly to grasp. She turned, but there was no one there.

  No, she told herself. It’s just memory. The game. And yet, the name cwed its way forward.

  "Ominis" she whispered. She continued as Dumbledore joined her through the revealed passage.

  The path ahead twisted. The architecture was wrong—too deep, too old. Her mind kept trying to rationalise it with blueprints she'd studied, but none matched. These corridors belonged to another age.

  She reached out, trailing her fingers along the cool stone. Her magic prickled where it met the surface. The runes etched into the walls weren’t Latin or Anglo-Saxon. She knew that. She’d researched it once, hadn’t she?

  The torches lit one by one as she passed, fred to life without so much as a spell.

  Hermione gnced back. Dumbledore followed, silent and unreadable. His gaze was fixed not on the path but on her.

  She looked away.

  A new memory, or perhaps a dream, came unbidden: running down these halls with someone beside her, ughing breathlessly. A boy with fury in his blood and kindness in his hands. A boy she had loved, or nearly had, in another world.

  Sebastian, she thought again, and the ache returned, sharp and senseless.

  She didn’t understand why it hurt.

  Eventually, the staircase ended. The corridor widened into a cavernous space, and before her stood a set of ancient doors—tall, dark, and pulsing faintly with a magical seal she didn’t recognise. Her breath caught. Her pulse surged. The ache in her chest sharpened.

  She stepped forward, expecting resistance, but the seal parted as if it knew her. The doors opened without protest, and the Map Chamber revealed itself—circur, vast, and glowing with quiet magic. The statues watched her.

  Hermione stopped at the centre, unsure if she was meant to speak. Her eyes traced the golden lines of leyline convergence in the floor. They pulsed slowly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

  She felt Dumbledore’s gaze settle on her back.

  "Are you the same Hermione Granger who ended the Goblin Rebellion of 1890 and saved this school?" he asked.

  Hermione turned toward him, confusion blooming in her chest. "No, I—"

  The lie caught.

  She tried again, felt her throat constrict. Her mouth formed the denial, but her magic resisted it, catching on the word like it had weight.

  She blinked. "Why... why can’t I say it?"

  He didn’t answer immediately, only watched her with that same searching calm. She hated how calm he was.

  Something about this pce felt like memory. The chamber felt familiar in her bones, but wrong in detail—like a dream half-remembered through someone else’s eyes.

  She opened her mouth to try again, slower this time, gentler, as if coaxing truth from a stubborn child.

  “I wasn’t…” she began.

  But the words dissolved. Her lips moved, her voice formed shape—and still, nothing came. Not even a whisper.

  She could feel it now. The tension not in her throat, but deeper. In her magic. In her self. The lie wasn’t being silenced. It was being rejected.

  Her breath hitched, and suddenly the chamber felt colder.

  I don’t remember it. I only remember the game.

  Even thinking it now felt wrong. Disjointed.

  Pain nced through her head, she felt the blood trickle down her nose, then she felt hands grab her as she started to fall. The memories of her life as a physicist came back to her, but they were changed.

  She recalled her memories from her past life, she could remember her schooling, she knew she had a family but had given those memories up, so she knew those had existed as the sacrifice was accepted, but how did she remember this? She recalled pying the games, but something wasn't right.

  She saw herself pying, but the screen was always turned away. Her hands moved on a controller that never quite resolved. She remembered quests, choices, endings… but not the clicks of a mouse. Not the glow of a monitor. Not the system menus.

  Because she’d never owned a console.

  She’d never built a gaming PC.

  One can not be true if the other is false.

  Her breath came in shallow pulls.

  If she had never owned a console, if she had never built a machine capable of rendering those worlds, then how had she pyed them?

  She hadn’t.

  The answer came with no fanfare—no dramatic fre of magic or voice from beyond. Just the quiet, sickening click of something falling into pce.

  She hadn’t pyed the game.

  She had lived it.

  The dungeons, the wandwork, the pain—none of it was imagined. Her soul had held the truth, fractured and bleeding, and her mind had wrapped it in the only shape it could understand. A game. A story. Something safe. Something that could be closed and forgotten.

  But it hadn’t been forgotten. Not by her. Not by the magic that now coursed angrily beneath her skin.

  Her memories were a fabrication? What else was a falsehood, she pushed harder into her memories, using the full strength of occlumency and the fury of her magic she had been lied to, by either herself or some outside force. All the while convulsing on the floor unaware of the panic being caused to the Headmaster.

  She remembered her parents. Not as strangers wearing the faces of comfort, but as her parents. Entirely, unquestionably. She remembered the smell of toast on Sunday mornings, her father’s terrible jokes, the books her mother gave her when she didn’t know how to expin what growing up felt like.

  She had lived that life.

  Every scrape, every triumph, every disappointment. Her anger. Her wonder. Her letter to Hogwarts.

  She had not stepped into Hermione Granger’s life.

  She was Hermione Granger.

  She became dimly aware of the cold beneath her cheek.

  Her thoughts still spiralled—scenes fshing like shattered gss in a storm—but something anchored her. A hand, firm but gentle, pressed against the side of her head. Another hovered at her chest, channeling something soothing, grounding. Magic.

  She gasped, breath returning like a tide.

  Dumbledore's face hovered above hers, pale and drawn, eyes sharp with focused control. His expression betrayed little, but the tightness in his jaw, the slight tremble in his wand-hand, spoke volumes.

  “Stay still,” he said softly, though there was no mistaking the urgency in his tone. “You hit your head when you fell. You've been convulsing.”

  She tried to speak. Her throat burned. Her magic crackled along her skin like heat lightning.

  “I’m—” she rasped, but the words faltered, not from magic this time, but exhaustion. Too many truths all at once.

  “Don’t,” he murmured. “Just breathe.”

  She shook her head, pushing his hands away. The memories could wait—she knew now why the gaps existed, and she hated what that meant. Logically, she knew it was a form of repressed memories, probably due to the traumatic deaths she had experienced. Deaths, Plural. She pushed his hands away and stood "We do not have time, I need to finish this to save Angitia".

  Dumbledore’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t move to stop her.

  “You are in no state—” he began.

  “I was in no state the moment you invited me along,” she cut in, voice hoarse but certain. “I will not lose anyone ever again.”

  She turned before he could argue further, following the leyline markings on the floor. They pulsed brighter beneath her feet, guiding her to a section of wall that looked solid, but thrummed with hidden intent. Without hesitation, she raised her wand.

  “Revelio.”

  The stone shimmered and parted, revealing a narrow passage spiralling downward into the bedrock of the castle. The magic here was old, unfiltered, and it bit at her skin as she descended, Dumbledore following in tense silence.

  The path grew colder the deeper they went. Air thinned. The walls narrowed. This was older than even the Map Chamber—this was the source. The Root.

  She knew it the moment she stepped into the hollow chamber. Magic rushed to greet her, not violently, but expectantly. At the centre was a raised ptform of raw stone, glowing faintly with leyline convergence.

  Hermione stepped forward and id Angitia gently in the centre of the ptform. Her familiar whimpered once but did not wake.

  She reached for the bracer—McGonagall’s Magnum Opus—and secured it around her own forearm, adjusting the settings with precision. Her wand hand steadied.

  “No runes are needed for this, no blood or magical regeants. It needs intent to guide it."

  She steadied herself and began her spell, her lips moved but no words could be heard, but the magic thrummed in response, silver wisps grew around her, her hair turned silver and her eyes once again, ephemeral and cold. No longer was she at war with herself, gone was the witch searching for answers, asking why she was here. She was Fae. She had returned.

  Saltzil