Omerta

Prologue

The sun was beginning to set behind the trees in the park, and she knew that she was running out of time in the day. Hermione let a soft sigh pass through her lips. The air around her was getting cooler, a gentle breeze pushing the swings to move on their own. It was almost eerie how quiet the area surrounding her was as if the park were a black hole, devoid of anything aside from the soft rustling of the pages on her book. The children who had played there all day had vacated at least an hour prior, their parents surely warning them against being out past sundown. In the back of her head, Hermione could hear her own parents warning her against being out in the streets of London once the sun had set, making her smile at the bittersweet memory.

"The streets of London are most dangerous once the sun sets, Hermione. You mustn't find yourself out alone after dark." Her mother would sigh, wagging a finger in her direction. If she were being honest, Hermione hadn't always taken her mother's warnings very seriously while she was alive, but after the accident, she always made sure that she was indoors with the door locked with time to spare before the sun disappeared.

Hermione had always had a difficult time making friends while growing up. When she was very young, of course, it hurt her feelings that no one wanted to hang out with the buck-tooth, frizzy-haired, swotty girl that she was, but eventually, she'd learned to be independent. Once she was comfortable in her own skin, she found that she had made friends easier than she ever had before. Harry and Ginny, especially.

It had been three and a half years, but nothing could change how much the death of her parents had hurt her. People constantly tried to say that she needed to 'just get over it' but Hermione figured that was just because they could never understand. Harry did, to some degree, having lost both of his parents at barely a year old, and she was grateful to him for doing everything he could to be there for her, but he couldn't possibly fill the void that her parents had left behind. They had been her entire world as she grew up and losing them both on the same night during some freak accident that the police were only able to give her more questions than answers about had been traumatic, to say the least. And even though she was an adult now, and had even been an adult when she had lost them, there wasn't a day that went by where she didn't miss them both terribly.

Since she still lived at home with her parents while finishing up her final year of university, the accident left her in quite a difficult financial state. She was left alone to pay the bills and when they started to overwhelm her despite the three jobs she tried to balance immediately after being orphaned and still maintaining her status as top of her class and attempting to graduate early, nevermind maintaining a social life with the two friends she had, she decided it was time to sell the home she grew up in and downsize to a flat she could actually afford on her own. It wasn't an easy decision, in fact, she spent more time than she'd care to admit crying over it, but it was a choice that she needed to make to alleviate at least some of her stress. She handled the waves of loneliness in strides as they came.
Much sooner than she was ready to, she had to grow up, and start to make those life-changing, important decisions for herself in an effort to better her life. She'd come to find with time that she would constantly question if she had made the right choices. Without her parents to guide her, though, those questions would all too often go without being answered. By 25, she had obtained an anxiety disorder, constantly second-guessing everything she had ever done and stressing over things she couldn't possibly control.

With another sigh, she closed her book, standing from the bench she'd been stationed at for at least half the day. She couldn't say that she was surprised. It wasn't exactly uncommon for the time to slip right by her while she was caught up in a book. With a stretch, she eyed the horizon warily, trying not to get too paranoid as the sun sank quickly behind it, dusk creeping in on her sooner than she had been prepared for, and she was no longer sure that she would be able to make it back to her flat in time. She pushed the urge to shudder aside and ignored the pit in her stomach. But, she also knew that people don't say 'trust your gut' for no reason. Nevertheless, she knew that if she didn't start moving right that second, she would definitely not find herself safely in her home in time.
She set a brisk pace in the direction of her flat, holding her book close to her chest and trying to ignore the way her heart was pounding heavily inside it. The park wasn't too far from her flat, a few blocks at the most. She'd be lying if she told anyone that she wasn't nervous, but with only a block and a half left to safety, she decided to continue to ignore the nagging voice inside her head that insisted she was in danger. That was the first mistake of many she seemed to make that evening.