A bead of water left over from the late afternoon showers dripped from one of the drooping leaves of the tree above and landed on the tip of Hermione Granger's freckled nose. She pulled her coat tighter against her shoulders, the cool, wet air sending a chill down her spine.
Ever since leaving Hogwarts to return to her parent's house a week prior, Hermione had been trying to make sense of what the conclusion of the Tri-Wizard Tournament meant for her and everyone she knew. Fudge might not want to believe it, and as badly as she wished it was all a terrible dream, she knew Harry would never lie about something so terror-inducing.
Which meant that she had no choice but to believe that Lord Voldemort had returned.
Ever since Harry had thwarted Lord Voldemort successfully capturing the Philosopher's Stone in their first year, much of Hermione's time had been devoted to imagining what would happen once the evil wizard inevitably returned. In her dreams, fire rained down from the sky, and silver-masked Death Eaters patrolled the street, tearing Muggles and Muggle-borns from their beds in the middle of the night to execute them. Everyone would feel the palpable darkness hanging in the air, and mass hysteria would reign, beating out all else.
But none of that was happening. At least not as far as Hermione could tell from the garden of her parent's townhome on the east side of London. People were going about their business. Walking dogs. Delivering papers. Going to work. Did they not know that everything was different? That there was danger now lurking around every corner?
Even Viktor didn't seem to think there was anything to worry about. Their short conversation right before she had boarded the Hogwarts Express for the return trip to Kings Cross proved that he didn't believe Harry's story, or, as a pure-blood, he didn't share the same concerns as she about a murderous blood supremacist regaining power. The thought made it hard for Hermione to return his letters. How could she talk about the weather or ask him about his Quidditch matches when he didn't seem to care that she was in mortal peril?
A cool breeze tickled through the loose hairs at the base of her neck. In the distance, a dog barked. A neighbor dragged out their bins. A gate closed with a resounding crack. Those hairs at the base of her neck stood on end. That last sound…no, it had certainlynotbeen a gate.
Her hands began to shake and Hermione awkwardly jumped up out of the chair she had been lounging in. A frantic search for her wand came up empty and she remembered that she had left it sitting on her bedside table. It might as well have been back at Hogwarts for all the good it would do her from her bedroom. Shame dropped like a rock into the pit of her stomach. The immense fear she was living under was having detrimental effects on her mind, causing her to make foolish mistakes, perhaps even deadly ones.
There was a rustling in her mother's hedge of flowers. Hermione let out a squeak of surprise as a young man with dark brown hair sticking up every which way stumbled out of the hedge, his white long-sleeved shirt and drawstring pants tattered, threadbare, and nearly drowning him.
"Where am I?" The boy asked. He spun around, his eyes wide and glowing a curious green in the luminescence of the full moon. In the blue-hued light, Hermione could see that the side of his face and neck were covered in blood.
"You're bleeding!" Hermione exclaimed, pointing at his right ear which looked significantly smaller than his left. "Who are you? Where did you come from?" She fired in rapid succession, attempting to shield her discontent within a plethora of questions.
The boy cupped a hand over his ear and then lowered it to examine the crimson liquid covering his palm.
"I must have splinched myself when I escaped," he said plainly, seeming unbothered by the revelation that he'd lost a piece of his body to Apparition.
"Escaped? Escaped from…" Hermione suddenly froze, the rest of her question lodging in her throat. "You said splinched. How did you know I'm a witch?"
The boy turned, looking into the hedge, then out into the street, and up into the tree before repeating the motions. "I can sense your magic. You're powerful for someone so…short," he finished, looking her up and down.
Hermione placed her hands on her hips. "You troll!" She gasped haughtily. Demands that the boy tell her who he was teetered on the tip of her tongue, then backslid into her throat when his eyes flickered a glowing green and the blood coating the side of his face disappeared. He reached up and rubbed his ear, which was no longer bleeding yet still missing half.
"Blyat. That fucking potion…" He muttered angrily.
"How did you do that? And what's with your eyes? They glowed just now." Hermione forgot all about being offended as her intense curiosity took over.
"They tend to do that…ever since themudaksbranded me with this." He shoved the dirty sleeve of his sweater up to his elbow and brandished his forearm.
"You're one of them!" Hermione jumped backward as if the snake and skull tattoo might jump off the boy's skin and infect her. Not looking where she was fleeing, she tripped over the chair she had been lounging in moments prior. Time seemed to slow down as she careened towards the mud, but the impact never came. She felt her body levitated up and set gently back onto her feet.
"I'm not going to hurt you." The boy took a step closer to her, his hands raised in supplication. "Whatever you think you know about this brand, I can assure you, you're wrong."
Hermione stared at his exposed forearm, at the Dark Mark, the symbol she had spent all year dreaming about.
"I know that mark! You're a Death Eater!" Hermione hissed.
"There's no such thing as Death Eaters!" The boy hissed back, clawing the air in front of him.
"Lies! You're a follower of Lord Voldemort!"
Everything Hermione feared was coming true. The mortal peril had arrived, though, she had expected someone much older to be the one sent to kill her. She felt a blip of empathy for the boy. He looked young, too young to have been able to choose such a dark, deranged path as the one he'd been set upon.
"I'm not going to hurt you!" The boy insisted, chasing her up against her mother's gardening shed.
Hermione could feel the peeling paint and cracking wood underneath her fingertips as she pressed back against it in an attempt to put as much distance between her and her attacker as possible. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to summon a blip of wandless magic, something, anything in which to spare her life.
Moments passed. Nothing happened.
Hermione peeked through one open eye and saw the boy standing right in front of her, his blue eyes hard as they searched her face.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he repeated. "I'm not a Death Eater."
"Then why do you have that brand?" Hermione jabbed a stiff finger at his forearm.
"As I said, this is not the brand of a Death Eater. There is no such thing as Death Eaters."
"Stop lying to…"
"I'm not lying to you! Listen to me, little witch!" The boy gripped her by the shoulders and shook her. "There is no such thing as Death Eaters! You've been lied to!"
"Bollocks! I know they exist! My best friend Harry was just attacked by a group of them along with their master! My other best friend, his mum's brothers were killed by a Death Eater!"
The boy ticked his head to the side, dragging his tongue slowly over his teeth.
"This friend, the mother, and her brothers. What are their names?"
"Molly Weasley! Her brothers Gideon and Fabian were killed by a Death Eater! So you see, you're mistaken! You're the one who's lying to me!"
The boy released her shoulders and took a step back, his chest rising and falling as he rubbed the back of his neck.
"What if I told you that my name is Antonin Dolohov? I'm the one supposedly responsible for killing those men"
All the blood drained from Hermione's face.
"You can't be. You don't look any older than…"
"Seventeen," Dolohov offered.
"But…then…that means…"
"I was seven when they were murdered. Don't tell me you're naive enough to believe a seven-year-old took down two seasoned Aurors."
Hermione had to admit that she'd never read deeper into what had happened to Molly Weasley's brothers. Ron had quickly glanced over the subject one night while Hermione had been at the Burrow with him and Harry during the holidays. His uncles were killed by Antonin Dolohov. That's all he'd said on the matter. This meant that it was either the boy or Ron who was lying and Hermione had known Ron for years. He had no reason to lie to her.
"You're lying," Hermione accused. "Either about your name or your age. Antonin Dolohov killed my friend's uncle's and he's rotting in Azkaban as we speak. You can't be him!"
Antonin grabbed her by the shoulders again.
"I am Antonin Dolohov, I did not kill your friend's uncles, and there is no such thing as Azkaban!"
"You're barking mad!" Hermione flailed her arms. "Let go of me!"
The boy, Antonin, whoever he was, glowered at her before releasing her and stepping back.
"I'm not crazy," he growled, narrowing his eyes at her. "I'm not the one believing in fucking conspiracies like Death Eaters, Azkaban, and Lord Voldemort."
"Everyone knows they're real!" Hermione shouted passionately.
"Everyone is foolish," Antonin snarled. "They believe everything they are told without any evidence!"
"I'm going to my room to retrieve my wand and then I'm calling the Aurors!"
Even with her threat, at that point empty or viable, she wasn't sure, Antonin let her go. Hermione ran into her house, slammed the backdoor, and bolted up the stairs. Grabbing her wand from the nightstand, she darted over to the window that looked down over the garden.
When she saw a group of men surrounding Antonin with their wands raised, she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming.
She wasn't sure what startled her most.
The fact that Lucius Malfoy, known Death Eater, was in her garden? Or that Sirius Black stood directly next to him, both of their wands trained on the boy claiming himself to be Antonin Dolohov.
Hermione ducked and pressed hard against the drywall just underneath her window, right next to the poster of The Weird Sisters. Were her eyes playing tricks on her or had she seriously just seen Lucius Malfoy and Sirius, the man she'd helped Harry save from the Dementor's kiss just a year before, working together?
She could barely hear murmured voices from down below. Slowly, Hermione raised up and pressed her ear to the single pane glass, careful not to move too fast thus she drew attention up to the second-story window.
"Relax, Antonin. Don't get carried away. People get hurt when you get carried away."
Hermione could make out that the gravelly baritone belonged to Sirius. Putting the confusion of his presence on the back burner, another equally upsetting realization came to her.
Sirius had called the boy Antonin. She knew Sirius, at least, she thought she did. Which meant…Antonin had been telling the truth about who he was.
"I don't hurt people!" Antonin said sharply. "That's your job, Snuffles."
"Honestly Sirius, if you can't control him…" The pretentious drawl of Lucius poured out.
"I can, Luc. Just let me…"
"If you could he wouldn't be out of his bloody cage!"
"I told you to stop sending that woman…"
"Both of you shut it!" Came a third, booming voice. Hermione tried to angle her head to see who it was, but they were concealed within a hooded robe. The cloaked figure raised their wand, and Antonin cried out in pain. Hermione barely saw the figure thrust a needle into the boy's neck. He whirled, striking out at his attacker, but then swayed dangerously before crumpling to his knees.
"Get him in restraints and let's get out of here," the mystery figure said.
Lucius and Sirius did as they were instructed, affixing glowing cuffs to Antonin's wrists and heaving him up under his arms.
In a blink, they were all gone.