These Strange Familiar Things

Chapter 2 - Disarranged and Broken

Hermione Granger stepped off the bright red Hogwarts Express onto sunny Platform 9 ¾ with a smile on her face and a light, excited step. She was home! Her last summer before Commencement. By this time next year she would be leaving Hogwarts behind forever and embarking on real life with its myriad possibilities.

She frowned. There was still the minor issue of Voldemort, of course. Things had been escalating recently though, and it seemed that the final battle must come soon. Shaking her hair back in a carefree gesture, she pushed these unpleasant thoughts away. Today such dark things seemed unreal, beyond the realm of possibility.

Impatiently, Hermione made her slow progress toward the luggage compartment through the jostling, chattering crowd. She grinned and waved at Harry and Ron as they left with the Weasleys. They had said their proper goodbyes on the train, and would undoubtedly be seeing each other soon at the Burrow.

Hermione hoisted her trunk, hefted it onto a trolley and pushed through the barrier into King's Cross station, searching for her parents among the rushing Muggles that the thronged the platform. She oofed as a couple of scruffy teenagers slammed past her and disappeared into the pushing mass of humanity. She muttered an impolite word after them with a scowl, then turned her attention back to the crowd. Odd, she thought. I don't see them. They're usually early.

She waited for about half an hour, tapping her foot in increasing irritation, and then decided to take a taxi home. Perhaps they had taken ill. At any rate, they knew Hermione was a smart, resourceful girl with a sensible head on her shoulders (she smiled guiltily at the thought of their reaction if they ever found out what she had gotten up to at Hogwarts). They were probably expecting her at home.

The taxi soon pulled up in front of the Granger residence and the driver got out to help Hermione with her luggage. She looked towards the home she had been away from for ten months, squinting in the sun, a warm feeling welling up in her. Dragging her trunk along behind her on the footpath, she walked toward the house with her head slightly bowed. The afternoon sun was beating directly into her eyes, the bright glare behind the house transforming it into a dark silhouette.

Hermione left her trunk on the veranda and rang the doorbell. She waited, bouncing from foot to foot, but there was no answer. Strange, she thought again. Maybe they got the dates mixed up for my arrival. She tried the door, and was surprised to find it unlocked. They must have left it open for her.

She entered the house and walked up the shadowy hall, calling her parents. It was oddly dark despite the harsh afternoon sunlight. Hermione saw as she passed the drawing room that all the blinds were drawn, the room cloaked in shadow. There was no light except for a thin white line around the edge of each window. "Mum? Dad? Anyone home?"

She reached the bottom of the stairs and tripped over a dark shape, stumbling in the dim hall. She blinked, peering down at it, then with dawning horror recognized her father's blue and red argyle socks...his weekend trousers, clothing bony legs that were stuck at unnatural angles...his bent back, slumped toward the ground, shoulders hunched and face in the carpeted step.

Alarm short-circuited Hermione's brain as she gasped and dropped to her knees, heart pounding as she searched for a pulse on his twisted neck.

Nothing.

A choking, gurgling noise came up from within her suddenly collapsing lungs, jarring in the stifling silence. She staggered back, shock freezing her mind. She stared at her father, always the epitome of the dignified English gentleman, sprawled half on the rough carpet of the stairs and half on the bare wooden floor, humiliated.

Dead.

A sudden new fear checked the rising bile in her throat.

She jumped up so fast her head spun, running down the hall to the kitchen, the dining room, the family room. All the curtains were drawn, all the rooms deserted and dark. "Mum?" she called shrilly. "Mum!" Her voice caught in her throat and she struggled to breathe. She tried to push the horrid clamping feeling away, to banish from her mind the certainty that her mother was...no.

She panted at the bottom of the staircase, eyes averted, closing her eyes tightly at the thought of stepping over her fallen Dad. She took a noisy breath, looked down, and accomplished it in one lurching leap, racing up with muffled thuds, and then she was on the landing, looking around her at the empty hall. All of the bedroom doors yawned open, and Hermione could see that here, too, some malevolent hand had systematically blocked out the sunlight. The windows were all covered, like blindfolded eyes.

Sweating, her legs shaking, she reached the first bedroom door. Her parents' room. The door stood ajar, and she could just see the lumpy mass of the rug that normally lay beside the bed, crumpled up in a heap in the doorway. What had happened here? Forgetting to breathe, Hermione put her damp hand on the wood and pushed inward slowly. The large creak startled her and she jumped spasmodically. Unable to take the horrible pressure anymore, she gave the door a push and followed through with her body as it swung in. She glanced around fearfully.

The room was empty. Various items were strewn around the room, lying disarranged and broken, not in their places. Light-headed, her hands shaking, Hermione fell against the wall and slumped down to the floor, breathing heavily. She didn't think she could handle another ordeal like that.

She closed her eyes momentarily to steady herself. Rising from the floor, she walked out to the hall and peeked into the guest room quickly, not giving herself a chance to chicken out. It was undisturbed, pristine from the last frantic cleaning Agatha Granger had given it. She did everything that way; with an almost hyperactive enthusiasm and energy that infected those around her. Of course it also translated into high stress levels; Hermione had always had the irrational impression that her mother was waiting for something, something dreaded and inevitable, and she wanted to cram as much as she could into the time she had left.

Hermione swallowed as she recalled this childish fancy she had always amused herself with. Perhaps she had been too hasty to dismiss the signs as products of an overactive imagination. She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes and bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to distract herself. Just one room left, now. Hers.

As she opened the door her heart stopped. Her mother lay sprawled on the carpet, face up, glazed eyes staring sightlessly in an expression of frozen horror. Her beautiful features were contorted in such terror that Hermione reeled at what she must have seen and felt in her last moments. For she was definitely gone from this world. No one could still be living who lay in such a grotesque, unnatural position--Hermione felt her nausea returning with a vengeance and had to look away, her hand over her mouth. She could not look at the twisted corpse of the woman who had borne and nurtured her for another moment. Her body shuddered violently, a loud sob erupting from inside her, yet doing nothing to loosen the hard knot in the middle of her chest. Her vision started to flash black, dizziness overtaking her senses.

She stumbled out to the hallway and into her washroom, collapsing to her knees over the toilet and retching. She threw up until her stomach muscles were cramping and she had completely emptied herself of the food she had enjoyed with such excited anticipation on the train.

Lying shivering on the freezing tile floor, eyes wide and glassy, she felt some semblance of coherent thought returning as she allowed herself for the first time to think about who had done this. There was only one rational (Rational--ha! thought Hermione hysterically) explanation, only one possibility that made any sense.

But even in a severe state of shock, Hermione Granger's mind pointed out something that just didn't fit. She wished for a moment that her mind would just leave off, just for now, just for a little while. She shut her eyes and tried to do the same to her brain, but she soon decided that she had best focus on this minor conundrum, because otherwise the terrifying images would start flashing mercilessly across her eyelids.

Hermione moaned and dragged her suddenly rock-heavy body to a standing position. The walk to the front door was a blurred refusal to look at her surroundings, especially when she reached the bottom of the stairs. She walked into the bright sunlight, squinting at the sudden contrast from the dark tomb she had just exited. The sun was a little lower in the sky now, the shadows a little longer, and once her sight had adjusted, she saw that the sun, while still behind the house, was softer.

She raised her gaze to the sky, looking for a specific image--the image she had missed on her way in, head ducked and attention focused on lugging her trunk. Shading her eyes, she saw it, grotesque and green, floating above the house and a little to the right.

The Dark Mark.