Rediscovering Reality

Family?

Hermione's POV

I woke up on the couch, face feeling tight. Heart heaving with a dull ache. 

For half a moment I forget what i had learned. What had happened. 

But it all came rushing back in a painful flash of memories and guilt.

With a quick glance toward the kitchen i realized the quiet of the house means that no one else was awake. 

Panic settled into the pit of my stomach. I don't know where I am going to go but I couldn't stay here.

I wrote a quick note to my hosts. Already filling with guilt over the fact that I was abandoning these friends, who had been kind enough to open their home to me.

H.G.~
Thanks for everything.
But, I have to go.

I grabbed my bags and left the house, feeling rushed and also sluggish. Was i moving fast enough? Was i moving too slow?

Great Job Granger.

Where are you gonna go now.

A voice chimed in my head.

First things first.

First things- god what is first. 

My parents house... maybe.... maybe they left... something... anything... anything of themselves behind.

I recalled the way to the house.

The grass rushed by at a sickening pace as i sprinted through the streets. Walking once again up to the door I had ran away from yesterday.

I pulled the key out of my pocket and fingered it nervously.

Moving slowly i placed it into the lock and paused a moment before turning. There was no sense in running away from this. It was their things. And I'm sure that if for some reason i were to leave the house un touched the authorities would have an estate sell. Getting rid of any of  the information i would have had about them, any memories i had left. 

The key turned.

The lock clicked.

The door swung open.

The stale scent of dust and lavender hit my nose in a gust of winf. Dust particles danced in the sunlight that snuck in through the tightly closed drapes.

The halls were covered in pictures, some old and some new. Those old pictures... they used to have me in them. But now looking back at their smiling faces, it was as if i had never existed at all. That is how they died. Not knowing i existed at all.

I walked past the kitchen, past bookshelves with a thin layer of dust on them I was reminded that they had been alive not that long ago. The ache in my chest recalling that i had just missed them.

Down the hall, in their old bedroom, the faint smell of my mothers perfume mixed with my father's aftershave. Distant but- even now the scent reminds me of them.

There was the dull ache again.

Sitting on the edge of their bed i reveled in the silence that surrounded me, engulfing the whole house.

It was as if no one in the world dared to breath. The room was so still.

As if at any moment they could back through the door from a vacation.

A door in the corner of their room caught my eye, a closet perhaps.

My mother's dresses hung in a row. My fathers shirts, and slack too.