This is a short simple story I came up with. It was inspired by Silence of the Lambs in a way. The story isn't an exact match for it though. There are a lot of similarities, and some of them are purely coincidental. But I may turn this into a cross between Silence and Harry Potter. Not so sure yet. It would make for an interesting read, however.

Enjoy, and if you find a moment, critique please.

The Lambs:

When Hermione was a little girl, she remembered her parents sending her to live on a farm in the States. Not for the rest of her life mind you, but because they were simply too busy during the summers to care for her. The rest of the time, she had been in school.

Now the farm was your typical, run of the mill (pardon the pun), barn house and ranch, not counting the many pastures, fields, enclosures, and of course the cozy home in the center of it all. The sun was out around five o' clock, and set early enough to be able to witness the fantastic sunset against the surrounding hills. Hermione remembered when she was young; she would sit under a tree in one of the lamb's enclosures, and some of them would come to rest beside her as she watched the oranges and reds of the setting sun blend with the green and brown hues of the hillside.

It was a lovely place to raise a child, and that was exactly why dear old mum and dad had decided to let their precious little angel live there for a few months a year. They did have other things to attend to, like dentistry conventions and the like. Mr. and Mrs. Granger could not be bothered with trivial moments like taking care of a girl.

That did not matter to Hermione. She was content just staying on that farm all day long; the chores were of no bother to her. If she finished early enough, Cousin George and his wife Rachel would let her play with some of the baby animals, especially her lambs. So fond was she of the lambs, that practically every single day she would be seen playing with some in the pastures. Her cousins would teasingly call her Sheppie on such occasions. To Hermione the lambs were like her children. Instead of having a Raggedy Ann doll as many of the children in neighboring farms did, she had her little lambs to feed, care for, and love.

One lamb in particular Hermione spent a lot of time with, Annie. Her Auntie Rachel called the sheep a bottle lamb, which she explained was an orphaned sheep raised on a bottle. A wolf pack had stolen into one of the enclosures shortly after it had been born, killing its mother and some other helpless animals that had been nearby. It was weaker than the rest of the flock, due to a bad limp in one of its hind legs. Part of this reason was why Hermione was attracted to the lamb. It was like her in a way, alienated from everyone and left alone in the world. Her parents left her just like the lamb was left by his parents.

So she and little Annie the Lambie, as Hermione would sometimes call her, became close. Even during her morning farm chores the lamb would be spotted by Hermione's side, one of her hands on Annie's head, the other carrying a bucket or some other farm tool.

Year after year went by, Hermione getting better grades in school during the school year, and during the summer getting more and more attached to Annie. Both grew older, and Hermione grew more and more content about her parent's almost literal abandonment of her.

Until one spring morning, when Hermione had come to visit the farm during a break in spring, then everything changed. It was late at night when she heard it; there was a screaming noise from outside her window. From her childhood bed she rose and moved to it to take a closer look. One of the lights in the side farmhouse was on! And the screaming she was hearing… there was someone in there!

So she quickly threw on some jeans and a white shirt, slipping some sandals meant for the house on her feet. Racing down the stairway and out the door, she took no notice of the fact that her Cousin Rachel and Cousin George were missing. Her footsteps made a crunching noise against the bare dirt and stray hay that had fallen off some of the bales. Hermione paid little heed to that fact as the screams got louder and she got closer to the open barn door.

Out of breath, she stopped in front of the door to catch her breath, trying to prepare herself to confront whatever was inside. But no amount of preparation could have helped her. Creeping inside, she made her way quietly to the lit area, and screamed as something red hit her once pristine white shirt. It was blood.

Focusing her eyes in the light, she noticed her Cousin George standing, his cleaver raised high in the air, and his wife by the far end of the wall- her eyes wide and her hand over her open mouth. The screaming was coming from near them, and as her eyes adjusted more she noticed the screams weren't that at all, but the bleating of thirty or so lambs. Her own family was killing the sheep for meat! And the lambs were just standing there, a terrified look in their coal black eyes. They were free, no cage around them, but too terrified to move an inch.

On the table though, was the sight that would haunt Hermione for the rest of her life, there on the table, was Annie. And she wasn't breathing anymore.

So Hermione screamed and ran, farther and farther away. Eventually Rachel and George found her, hiding up in the tallest branches of the trees, just rocking slowly back and forth. Her hands were covering her little nine year old ears, and she was muttering, "Stop screaming. Please be quiet Annie. Stop screaming Annie," over and over like a broken record.

Her parents arrived within three days to pick up their traumatized daughter, and she was forbidden to ever return to that farm in the United States. It would be another year and a half when she got her acceptance letter into Hogwarts that she would ever speak again. But even if her parents hadn't forbid her, she still would not have gone back. Because sometimes, something would set off her memory, and she could hear the deafening screams of the lambs, begging her to set them free.