Chapter one: "Welcome Home Sweet Angel"

Summery: The agonizing train ride home and everything that follows.

All through the train you could hear the joyful laughter of children happy and ready for their summer vacation. For most the loss of the headmaster was simply nothing to be too worried about. Although you could find many of them whispering, wondering what had happened to what many described as the greatest wizard the ever lived. Someone would simply come in and replace the old man, that was just the way things worked. It was the way things had always been.

At the end of the train in the last compartment sat a group of six. But unlike the peers they were not laughing and talking about what they would be doing over the summer. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Ronald and Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, and Luna Lovegood sat in an uncomfortable silence. Hermione looked out the window trying her hardest not to notice the piercing green eyes across from her. Harry Potter had spent all of his life losing the ones that he loved and now he had lost the one person who had given him a second chance at life. It may not have been all that the old man had planned but it was a chance that had almost, if not for his mother's sacrifice, been stolen from him any three months after his birth. When she did chance a glance his way you could see the burning rage in his eyes. Voldemort had spent his lifetime taking things away from him, and he was ready to fight back. He may not have gotten everything in perfect order yet but he was ready to finish it when the time came, he had all the rage it took to make even a good god fearing man a murderer.

What she saw in his eyes made her want to cry out. To hold him close and protect him form the rest of this cruel world. But Harry was there only chance at peace and she knew that no matter what she did she could not stop him from what was his destiny, no matter how much she wanted to. So the silence that had fallen around them continued without interruption. All of them feeling the full force of the tremendous loss the wizarding world had suffered just days before. They would all spend the rest of their lives, how ever long that might be, remembering how they felt at this moment.

When the lunch trolley came by hey paid little attention to the nice old women. So she simply just pasted them by muttering to herself. As evening came and they got closer to London they all became extremely jumpy and on edge. They all wanted to go home. Hermione at least would be able to escape a little bit of her pain. She had a good and supportive home to return to, Harry did not.

Only when the train began to slow did any of them realize how long it had been. As the watched the train pull in to platform 9 ¾ with little to no interest. They hauled their trunks down from the racks and found the nearest trolley. As had become usual not a single one of them said a word. As the reached their families all that was exchanged between the friend's were a few waves and halfhearted smile.

Harry watched as Hermione walked away, not knowing that it would be the last time he saw even that magnificent halfhearted smile again.

Hermione noticed that her parents were being unusually quiet. She had no desire to disrupt something she had become too accustomed to. The first hour and a half of the two-hour ride home remained uninterrupted. Her mother was the first of them to speak.

" Hermione darling, we have something's we need to tell you, to explain to you." Abigail Granger said from the front seat. Abby flipped the front visor down and opened the mirror so that she could see when she had her daughter's full-undivided attention. It took five minutes for Hermione to turn her gaze to her mother, only then did Abby speak again. " Your father and I have spent the last few months. We have decided that… it might be… better… if we… if we separated for a while."

Abby looked back at her daughter, not knowing how to judge by the look on her face. So she turned her gaze away.

Hermione simply looked at her mother in the mirror. She could see that the woman was waiting for a response, but what the hell was she supposed to say! All she could even think was that her life had officially fallen apart. Everything around her seemed to be getting smaller. Everything was suddenly caving in. all of the emotion she had worked so hard to detain went through her like a flash flood.

" What?" she whispered, Abby was amazed she had even been able to hear Hermione's short response.

" We are going to take a sort of break." Abby answered trying to stay calm. When her estranged husband snorted at her answer all Abby could do was hang her head and sigh.

" Why the hell try to sugar coat it Abby? She's fifteen fucking years only. I think she, of all people, would know what the word divorce means. Why pussy foot about it Abigail. You'll just be wasting you damn time." Alexander Granger all but yelled from the driver's seat.

Abby just slumped she shoulders on the verge of tears. " Well then are you going to tell her why? Are you going to fess up to what you did? Go on tell her Alex! Tell her why this is happening!" Abby paused and watched the man sitting next to her. She knew he would say nothing and she was not about to tell her daughter what her father had been up to while she had been at school. " I didn't think so. So long as you are not going to tell her what you've been up to I'll sugar coat anything I damn well please, and you are going to stay the fuck out of it!" She was so tired of her husband. She knew she shouldn't have said anything like that in front of Hermione but she couldn't stop herself.

" What are you talking about mom?" cam a panicked voice in the back seat, " Dad what I she talking about?" She looked frantically between her parents. Thinking of the fact that they were hiding something from her brought tears to her eyes. " Someone tell me what the HELL is going on!" Hermione all but screamed. She was tired of everything and everyone, and by goddamn it someone was going to be straight with her and give her the answer's she deserved. She continued to look between her parent's. The confused and frantic look in her eyes had changed to a burning cold rage that could have matched Harry's.

When the car pulled into the drive her father quickly got out of the car and headed into the house. She and her mother were still sitting in the car in complete silence.

" Just tell me something, please?" Hermione pleaded with her mother, " Anything?"

" We… it's just… its just that…" Abby looked in the mirror again. She had no idea what she was suppose to say, " WE don't love eachother anymore Hermione." 'There' Abby thought, ' I said my part.'

Abby looked at Hermione in the back seat before going inside the house.

Hermione sat in the back seat of the car for a while. Only when her mother came out two hours latter to help her get her things and to tell that dinner was ready did Hermione even try to move. She never thought, that of all her friends, she would be the first one to be mentally and emotional drained. She was afraid that she would never feel again.

Lying in her bed that night she heard her parents fighting. She could hear her mothers screams mixed in with breaking glass. In that moment she realized that she had never heard her parents fight before. Suddenly she heard her mother's screams cut off as something, most likely Abby, was slammed into a wall. She could hear her father muffled voice, and then her mother crying while her father made his way upstairs. Hermione rolled over to face the window just as her bedroom door was open. She had no doubt that it was her father at the door, she could still hear her mother's cries downstairs. She heard her father let out a relieved sigh when he thought she was asleep. When the door to her room closed she let out the breath that she had been holding. It took Hermione three hours to cry herself to sleep.