I am not JK Rowling, I hold no legal rights to anything other than a couple copies of some books…
Rated T for teen
A tiny alteration of the beginning of book 6.
……………………
Voldemort's return and the resurgence of Death Eater attacks was awful. Fear, death, destruction, ruined lives… These were the reasons why they had to be stopped. Why Harry's quest to find the horcruxes and destroy them had to succeed.
It made no sense to Hermione why Harry hadn't been trained more, given more information and spells to prepare him for this task. Why Dumbledore had just sat back and offered lemon drops and smiled instead of telling them what they'd need to know. Instead of helping the common people prepare themselves.
She'd decided that it would be too dangerous for her parents. They were muggles, how would they fight Death Eaters? How could they fight cowards who'd attack in overwhelming numbers under cover of darkness, cowards who wouldn't give them a chance? She'd spent the last week preparing her arguments, ready to persuade them to hide when they returned from their Dental Convention at Hastings.
The train that they'd been traveling on had been attacked. Just as it had been crossing a river, Death Eaters had attacked, casting killing curses at the driver, exploding the railing and the support to send the passenger cars crashing into the river. Anybody who'd managed to swim up in the first minute had been hit with awful curses that left them either detonated or slowly bleeding out in the current. There had been a very few survivors.
Those survivors hadn't included her parents.
She'd stood alone at the small funeral the Thursday before she'd gone to the Burrow. The dull grey tombstone with her parents reduced to a pair of names and two sets of dates lurked behind her eyelids. Robin and Juliet Granger. There had been so many things that she'd wanted to talk to them about. So many plans – they'd been making arrangements to visit her dad's former partner at the dental practice this summer. Wendell and his wife Monica had moved to Australia, and they'd been asking for the Grangers to visit for ages…
Few people had noticed how quiet she was when she met the Weasleys. Ginny had thought she was mooning over Ron – as if! One twin had asked if she was that worried about the upcoming school year. The other had tried to offer her some sort of little pastry with purple filling. Harry hadn't asked anything, only watched her with haunted eyes.
It almost didn't surprise her when Bill's wedding was attacked.
She insisted that she would go with Harry to search for the Horcruxes.
Ron was the one who asked, "But Hermione… What about your parents?"
She looked at them, Ron with his earnest clueless concern and Harry with his somber eyes. Tears threatened as she remembered the funeral, sorting the paperwork. Crying herself to sleep. For a moment, she closed her eyes, fighting another round of tears.
Opening her eyes again, she gave a trembling smile and lied to her best friends.
"I've memory charmed them and sent them to Australia. They think their names are Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and… and they don't have a daughter…"
End The Truth About the Grangers.