Hermione knocked once on the door to her father's home office, and after a short delay, she heard him call out for her to enter. She opened the door to reveal the dark paneled wood interior. The office was completely at odds with the rest of the house, in the Granger's bright, modern suburban home, the office felt dark even on the brightest of days, a feeling only exasperated by the minimal light coming from the small overhead lights and the small green-shaded lamp on the desk. The gloomy room was commanded by the massive desk. Hermione knew that both the desk and the large bookcase behind it had been purchased at an estate sale for an old manor down in Devonshire and it was easy for her to imagine a lord sitting behind it in the fifteenth century planning a war on its polished walnut expanse.

Now there were only her parents behind it, her father looking imposing in the high-backed chair and her mother standing next to him, both being cast partially in shadow by the minimal light. There was no other chair in the room, so Hermione was forced to stand in front of the desk. Her father pulled out an envelope "I have here your report for year two" Hermione stood up a little straighter, trying to hide her eagerness, there was nothing she loved more than a report.

For a while she stood there in silence looking on, second-guessing every facial expression her parents made. Eventually, her father looked up from the letter, folded it, and placed it back into the envelope. "Well done," he said handing her the letter and giving her a small smile, Hermione felt elation rush through her, a warmth spreading out to every part of her body, a warmth that was immediately crushed as her father leaned forward into the light.

"Now onto more important matters." He declared. "Your mother and I had an appointment at the hospital yesterday." The light now fully illuminated his face, bringing into sharp focus his beaming smile, "We will be having another child." Hermione's heart sunk as she struggled to keep herself composed, feeling as if the world was spinning around her. "Of course, it is too early to determine the sex" he continued, suddenly sounding far away.

Her eyes shifted off him as he continued about something or other as a whirlwind of thoughts swirled through her head, only to be brought back with a sudden call of "Hermione? Are you listening?" She looked back up and met her father's gaze. "I thought you would be happy to finally have a sibling," he said looking down at her. Hermione pushed down the lump in her throat and responded in the evenest voice she could muster, "I'm thrilled, it is just a lot to take in, do you mind if I excuse myself." She received a small nod and walked out of the room as fast as possible without running.

Through pure force of will, she kept herself in check until she reached her bedroom. Only once her door was securely shut did she allow her emotions out in a great fit of body-racking sobs. It was so unfair. It was not her fault she was born a girl, but she was reminded of her failure every time her parents commented on how "their son wouldn't be so irrationally emotional" or how he "wouldn't be so unathletic." She worked so hard at what she was good at, school, to get them to even acknowledge her, and yet she only received a small smile and two words when her teachers described her as "brighter than all of my year threes." And now this unborn sibling of her, given her luck it would be a boy, was coming along to take what little of her parent's attention she had managed to carve out for herself.

The only upside to that summer was that Hermione became an impeccable actor. It seemed like every day there was another nosy neighbor or family member who was coming over for tea and to gush about her mother's pregnancy. Hermione did not see the appeal; her mother was rather short and stout and in her second trimester her bump was barely noticeable. But even so, every time someone came over Hermione was torn away from her books to play the role of dutiful daughter and excited soon-to-be sister.

At the end of July, the Grangers received their confirmation, that the coming baby was going to be a boy. The following week was the best week of Hermione's life despite the constant talk about the baby. Her parents, especially her father, were so happy they forgot their dislike of their daughter. They took Hermione out to get ice cream once and they even went to the neighborhood pool on an especially hot day. But all good things must end and soon it was back to minimal effort and marginal neglect.

Oliver Walter Granger was born on January 7, 1988, a healthy 6 pounds, 12 ounces. He was brought home the following day. For Hermione, his arrival was significant, not because she cared about him but because it marked her descent further into her studies. With that imp on the ground floor constantly crying, her books were her escape.

Hermione's life followed the same schedule every day, she would wake up and fix herself a bowl of cereal or if she was lucky her mother would have made some extra eggs, she would go to school, come home, go to her room and read or work until dinner where she would sit silently or engage in polite conversation with her parents, go back to reading, go to sleep, repeat.
She stopped caring about making friends or socializing, all she needed to do was make it through the next few years until she would be old enough to convince her parents to send her to a boarding school.

The worst had happened, Oliver had learned how to walk up the stairs, but now nowhere was safe from him, especially with her mother following him around and opening any door he decided he wanted to go through. The first time he came waddling into Hermione's room she was reading Les Mis, in the original French of course, and she glanced up, an unconscious smile crossing her lips as she watched him totter and fall over.

That slip of face became one of Hermione's greatest regrets as her room soon became Oliver's favorite place to intrude. Sometimes he would just walk around staring curiously at the full wall bookshelf or the prizes that she had framed and hung around her room and sometimes he would take it upon himself to annoy her out of her mind, hitting her leg like he expected her to read to him or reaching for one of the dioramas she had on a shelf as if it was a toy.

He always chose the worst moments to intrude. Hermione had her notes spread out across the floor as she worked on her final paper for history. As always, they were organized first by topic than by year, arrayed out perfectly across her light grey carpet. So engrossed in her paper, Hermione did not hear him enter through the open door, a new requirement from her mother now that she was tired of opening doors for Oliver. She never noticed him until she heard the first crinkle of paper as he stepped on top of the first stack of painstakingly gathered notes.
She shot up from the ground as Oliver continued to trample over her work like the miniature vessel of destruction he was. Hermione felt her emotions building up inside of her, begging to be released, all of the anger at her parents for their treatment of her and her hate for their inability to see her as anything other than a disappointment because of her gender, her jealousy of her brother for the love that he was showered with, and the stress from all of her constant work and her attempts to play the perfect daughter to bring herself any semblance of approval.
It all boiled up inside of her and exploded as she tried to push him off her work. But instead of Oliver falling backward a raging pillar of flame exploded out of her hands blasting him back through the doorway. He hit the wall limply as the wall caught fire and began to smoke, setting off the fire alarm. Hermione silently shook as she stood in place, surrounded by the gathering smoke amid the wailing of the alarm.

Oliver died six hours after he arrived at the hospital, succumbing to third degree burns on almost the entirety of his body as well as multiple broken vertebrae. As doctors tried to save his life, the Granger family house burned to the ground in what was later ruled as a radiator explosion.

Hermione's parents knew that was not true. They had gone to get their son and saw him crumpled against the wall with the radiator very much still intact. They had also seen the cone of scorch marks fanned out across the carpet originating at their daughter.

Now Hermione lay curled up in a chair in a hotel lobby. She felt drained and raw, like she had been a supercharged battery that had completely purged itself of power. Her eyes were closed but she was very much awake as she tried to catch snippets of her parents hushed conversation halfway across the lobby.

Even though she was out of earshot of most of the words, Hermione could tell from their tone alone how they felt "She did this somehow" was the message of their conversation and Hermione knew she had. She felt so conflicted, immensely guilty for killing Oliver, he may have been a little brat, but he did not deserve to die, angry at herself for allowing herself to lose control over something so trivial, but mostly scared, what had she had done?

Hermione's clock struck midnight and she got up from her bed and began to creep upstairs. It had been a month since the fire and Hermione's parents had not spoken a word to her in that time, only a little gesture to tell her where her new room was in their new much smaller house was, the room as far away as possible from theirs: the basement.

Hermione did not mind her new room, it was dark, the only light coming through a little window above the ground and a couple of bulbs in the ceiling, and the lack of real natural light made the passing of time hard to measure, but it was private, and her parents never went down there, something she was eternally grateful for. Before it happened, they used to look at her like she was just some boring little girl, not worthy of much of their attention, but now, during the day they completely ignored their presence, but at least that was not that different to when they had just chosen to not acknowledge her most of the time, and it was infinitely preferable to what happened later. It seemed that now Hermione's father was drinking every night and if she ever had the misfortune to meet him in that state, he would focus his glare on her his eyes containing nothing but intense burning hatred and Hermione would scurry away as fast as possible to avoid him.

That's why Hermione was now silently moving up the stairs, she wanted dinner and by this point there would hopefully be some leftovers in the fridge and her father would have either gone to bed or drunk himself to sleep at the kitchen counter. The later was true tonight as he was slumped over the counter, his hair looking disheveled, an empty knocked over glass in one hand and a bottle of whiskey one third full in front of him.

She opened the refrigerator as quietly as possible, nothing for her to eat, she would just have to settle for an apple tonight, she started to close the door slowly but let it fall shut as she heard a chair scraping back behind her. Her father looked at her with bloodshot eyes a little bleary. "It's been a month" he spat out, "a month since you killed my son."

Hermione considered denying it or trying to explain that it had been a mistake, but one look at him told her that no matter what she said, nothing was going to change what was coming. She suddenly ducked to the left trying to make it around him, maybe if she could make it to her room, he would not follow her. He might have been drunk, but he was not that drunk, her father grabbed her shoulder as she tried to run past and pushed her into the granite countertop of the island in the middle of the kitchen, the edge smashing into her rib cage. Hermione felt fear and panic building up inside of her as it had with Oliver, she fought to control it and push it down, she might fear and occasionally despise her parents, but she did not want to kill them, and there was also a small part of Hermione, deep down, that still held out hope that if she just rode this out, eventually her parents would forgive her and maybe they could go back to the way things were before.

Hermione's mouth was forced open as her father pushed a balled-up hand towel between her jaws. Hermione screamed into it as she felt his belt buckle collide with her back through her thin pajama shirt. Eight more times she felt it smack into her, expelling her breath from her lungs, until her father removed the hand holding her down and allowed her to sprint out of the kitchen back to her basement refuge.

Hermione pulled the chocolate bar out from underneath her mattress, she had managed to steal it from the cupboard in the kitchen a couple of days ago and had been saving it for this day. The 19th of September 1990, she was now 11 years old and had made it through one year two months and 17 days in this hell of an existence. At this point she had become an expert in sneaking around, meaning the only times she had to suffer at the hands of her father were days that he planned to hurt her: holidays, Oliver's birthday, the second of every month, and some Sundays. She had considered running away or reporting the abuse to her teachers many times before but always came to the same conclusion, it did not make sense. If she ran away, she had no future, no ability to finish school and as terrible as living here was, at least there was relief in the future. And if she reported this, she would be sent into child services, how long until they found out she was freak too, and at that point, better the devil she knew than the one she didn't.

Her musings were interrupted by a tapping on the window to her room. Standing on top of a chair to peer out her window she saw the lower half of a large bird, clutching a letter that when she opened the window was presented to her. "Thanks" she commented, feeling very foolish talking to an owl. She looked at the letter, the envelope was thicker than any she had ever held before and sealed with an actual wax seal, imprinted with a crest.

Ripping open the letter, she pulled out three sheets of parchment.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, first class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Ms. Granger,

We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment able to be purchased at Diagon Alley found through the Leaky Cauldron at Charing Cross Road, London.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl no later than 31 July.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

Flipping to the second sheet Hermione saw it was the materials list. Her heart sunk as she looked at the third sheet which appeared to be a tuition notice, 15,000 Galleons. She had no idea what a Galleon was, let alone pay that amount, but she calmed down when she saw at the bottom of the sheet that she was one of four students in her year whose tuition was covered by something called the Lily Potter Memorial Fund. She quickly ran to her desk and wrote a letter accepting her position.

Hermione felt split, she was simultaneously elated, but also extremely angry. She was clearly a witch which was not hard for her to believe, but why had she not been told sooner. She had been living with people who thought she was a freak for over a year with no notice from any wizards. She thought that maybe she should be grateful for that though, it would not do to have everyone know she was a murderer.

No matter how she felt about the slow notice, she had a year before Hogwarts started, but there was no way she would be waiting to get away until then. Elated to be leaving, she got her backpack from school and started packing it with all the clothes she would need. She walked up the stairs not caring anymore if she was quiet, found her mother's wallet in the front hallway and liberating 300 pounds, she nearly skipped out the door, hearing a shout from upstairs as she let the door slam behind her.