It's a sunny Tuesday morning in England, a rare occurrence indeed, when Hermione Granger is called downstairs by her mother for breakfast. The seventeen year old yawns, and joins her parents downstairs in the dining room and sits down in her usual seat at the table.
"Good morning." She says as cheerful as possible, even though cheerfulness sis not reflect her mood one bit.
"Good morning, sweetheart." Her Mother says to her as she passes her a bowl of organic and sugar free oatmeal.
Her parents are Dentists and all her life, Hermione has grown up on organic foods with no sugar and today would be no different. She accepts the food with a sigh and begins to eat it.
"What's wrong?" her father asks, lowering his newspaper.
"Nothing." She replies quickly. "I was just thinking of how much I have left to pack."
"I can help if you want me to." Her mother answers.
"No, I'll be fine by myself." she answers, turning back to her oatmeal.
Packing wasn't really what was bugging her. Of course she was stressed because she was a perfectionist and didn't want to forget anything, but there was something else she had to do today and she really didn't want to.
After eating breakfast, she walks back upstairs to her room and begins to gather her clothing and school supplies in piles on her bed to later be put into her brown leather trunk.
Once she put all her things in perfect piles, she decides she would take a shower; she does her best thinking there.
She begins the think immediately when she steps into the warm water about what lies in store for her this year. All she knows is that she would not be returning to Hogwarts for her seventh and final year because she would be on the run with her two best friends Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
On the run. It sounds so criminal. They wouldn't technically be on the run from the law yet, but who knows what might change within a month's time. They would actually be searching for Horcruxes; bits and pieces of Voldemort's soul imprisoned in objects, rendering hi immortal.
They knew only a few things about Voldemort's Horcruxes. Dumbledore thought there might be seven of them. Two were already destroyed; a ring from his ancestors and his old diary. Last year, Harry had gone with the old Headmaster and found what they thought to be the third Horcrux but it turned out to be a fake. Now they were no closer to killing him than they were when they started.
She knew because she would be absent from school, and it had become mandatory this year to attend classes at Hogwarts, and she was a Muggle-born that would not show up for questioning, her family would not be safe. Death Eaters could torture her parents with the flick or their wand for information about her whereabouts.
Hermione knew what she had to do. She finished her shower and packed the remainder of her trunk, checking to make sure she packed everything multiple times.
When her trunk was packed, she removed her wand from her middle dresser drawer that remained locked at all times and took her favourite beaded bag and casted a complex undetectable extension charm that she researched on almost all summer, before shrinking her trunk and placing it in the bag that acted like a bottomless pit.
"this is it." she says with a sigh, turning in a circle, looking at her small room with purple walls for the last time before going back to the sitting room where her parents were reading together.
Careful not to make a sound, Hermione raises her wand to the backs of her parents heads, concentration hard on the story she had thought up.
"Obliviate." She whispers. Their new identities would be Wendell and Monica Wilkins, whose lifelong dream was to live in and explore Australia, which they would be doing this year and they never had a daughter. They would never remember her unless she removed the spell. They would be safe and happy now.
Tears were now streaming down her face. "I love you, though you don't know it now." She whispers, and with that, she leaves home, perhaps for forever, locking the door behind her.