Hunted

Chapter 1

Hermione's POV

The school bell rang for the last time in 2056, and I followed the cheering crowd of middle schoolers as we all hurried to our lockers, anxious to get out of the building and have a taste of freedom directly after Christmas break had hardly even started.

"Hey--Hermione!"

I had just slammed my locker shut and heaved my backpack over my shoulder when I heard the call. I turned to face two of my cousins and closest friends, Adeline and Avery, grinning broadly at me. I joined them as we headed outside, pulling our jackets closer to our bodies as we did. Although we didn't always get snow here in Virginia, it was still freezing. I fumbled with my hat and yanked it over my ears to give them protection from the biting wind and then stuffed my hands into my coat pockets.

"We're leaving with you, right?" said Adeline, her voice muffled under the thick scarf peeking out from under her chin. Avery nodded, and we walked to carpool. Either my older sister or Avery's older brother, who were both already graduated from college, drove us to the office every day after school; our entire family was extremely close to the president of the United States, and they all worked at the White House. Adeline, Avery, and I were always dropped off at my sister's office building, as she too was starting work, although she wasn't yet part of President Matthew's inner circle, so to speak, like our parents were. Avery's brother, Luke, was training at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, but had arrived here last week to stay for the holidays.

Luckily, we didn't have to wait outside in the cold for too long. Luke drove up in his used pickup truck presently, and the three of us clambered inside, eager to get into the pre-heated car.

"So...how was school?" Luke asked us once we'd driven past the gate. Adeline, Avery, and I went to a private Christian school, and although all schools in America had recently developed extra safety measures due to new laws, the security guards were much friendlier here than in public schools. We turned forward after waving to them, and I answered Luke's question for the three of us.

"It was pretty good. We mostly played games and watched videos, though." The other two nodded in agreement, and smiled. I grinned as well when I remembered the Christmas fail videos we'd seen.

In less than half an hour we arrived at office building that my sister, Luna, worked at, which was actually part of the White House. It was very new and had just opened a couple years back, and Luna had immediately seized the opportunity.

My cousins and I practically ran inside after Luke parked, wanting to stay out of the freezing weather as much as possible. When we burst inside, a few of the older and fussier workers glared at us, looking scandalized, but the woman at the desk, Amanda, smiled and waved us over. Once Luke ensured that we would be taken care of--something we insisted that he didn't need to do--he left to go back to his and Avery's house.

Adeline, Avery, and I went through security, chatting with the guards the entire time, as we knew them so well. They guffawed at a funny story that Avery told them, moving her hands animatedly as she spoke while they rifled through our purses and backpacks.

"You're cleared," they said, still chortling, as we walked through a metal detector, the kind found in airports. We grabbed our things from the conveyor belt that went through the liquid, weapon, and drug sensor thing. Of course, the water from our water bottles had to be dumped out--no matter how many times we came through here, the security guards still had to take strict safety measures. We then scanned our special name tags that we had to keep safe in case they were stolen, which had our security info. Finally we had our faces and irises checked and scanned before we were really cleared. They didn't let just anyone in. Under normal circumstances, kids wouldn't have been allowed at all, but as our parents were close colleagues with the President, and we had no record of trouble making or anything, we had special junior badges.

Amanda motioned for the three of us to carry on as usual as we approached the front desk, and we went up the elevator to the fourth floor. Once there we walked down the hallway, turned left, and found the second door to the left--passing at least ten or fifteen offices as we did so. I knocked and let myself in, holding the door open for Adeline and Avery.

Luna looked up at us as we walked inside, brushing her blonde hair out of her face. Yes, our parents were pretty big Harry Potter fans, thus the names.

"Oh good, you're here," she said, standing up. "I have a few minutes before my meeting today with some of the other staff, so you can just head into your room for now. I should be done here for the day in an hour and a half at the most."

"Okay," I responded before following her down another hallway, my cousins trailing behind. We always met in her office before she would rush off to finish her--whatever she did here. The meeting room where she spent late afternoons once each week was in pretty much the same room as the room that Adeline, Avery, and I waited in everyday after school. They were separated by a moving wall of sorts, but we could still hear what was being said in the meetings if we strained our ears enough. Of course, they never really talked about anything important or interesting or anything, with kids running around and all, but we were still held bound to vow not to repeat anything that went on in there. We even had to sign a contract, but I didn't think that we would've repeated anything anyway. I barely understood a word of what they said.

"Try not to be so loud, alright?" And with that, Luna had disappeared into the room. I led the way into the same room, only through a different door. There were three desks, each complete with a large tablet screen, stacks of all sorts of pencils, markers, and pens, and paper--construction, notebook, or just regular sheet paper. A separate table held a stapler, a hole puncher, a pencil sharpener, and a printer. There was even a TV set up on top of a short shelf full of movies and CDs, and a refrigerator full of all sorts of fruit, snacks, drinks, and ice cream that we'd snuck in with the help of the security guards sat next to it. To top it all off, there were three swivel chairs in front of each desk. I could remember in sixth grade when Adeline, Avery, and I would race each other with them, or spin each other super fast. Now, of course, as eighth graders, we were much more mature, but that didn't stop us from having the occasional spin.

"So...what do you guys want to do?" Adeline asked Avery and me. We usually did homework while we waited here for either Luna to finish up or Luke to come and pick us up. But as today was the last day of school before Christmas break, we had nothing to work on. I pulled out my iPhone 49 and shrugged. Extremely thin but impossible to break, the 49 remained one of the best and newest models so far.

"Wanna start a new story?" Avery suggested. The three of us had a sort of "writer squad," since we all loved reading and writing.

"Sure," I replied. I took a small tablet screen--which is basically a thin sheet of glass with a protective metal covering. I logged in and opened up Voltpad, a new and improved version of the original Wattpad that had lasted some thirty years or so. My parents had told us about Wattpad, and when I had looked it up and found Voltpad, I'd known that I'd have to show Adeline and Avery. Ever since then we'd been junior writers.

We crowed around my tablet screen and thought up ideas.

"What if...the three of us were the main characters in the story and there's this alternate world that we go to?" Adeline suggested.

"Yes!" Avery agreed. "And lets have something about babies." Avery loved little kids, especially babies.

"Sure," I answered, typing on my digital Virtual keyboard furiously. Virtual was one of the most renowned computer and technology companies in the world, and though its products were extremely expensive, our entire family bought them for nearly everything.

"Let's see...what if we added clowns in it?" I joked, thinking about the clowns on the news lately. I didn't understand why clowns seemed to come up for a couple years, disappear, and then come back up for a while. We'd just been learning about the war on terrorism that had happened starting in the early 2000's, and how clowns had played a minor part in it at one point. I personally thought that the clowns right now were just a hoax, although everyone was panicking at the very mention of them.

My cousins laughed at my idea. At that moment the door opened, and Luna poked her head in.

"Hey, my meeting's done early," she told us. "There wasn't much to talk about...anyway, let's get going and grab some dinner."