Prologue
July 2019
When I was sixteen, I did something no daughter should ever have to do. It is something I still carry with me every day.
It was evening, and I was sitting alone on the garden swing, watching the sky darken above the lawn. A faint breeze stirred the freesias beside me; Mum had planted them years ago, and they always returned, no matter the season. Inside the house, my parents were going about their usual routines, completely unaware of what I had already done. Or what it had cost me.
At the time, I told myself I was being brave. There wasn’t another choice, not really. But as the last of the sunlight faded and shadows crept across the grass, that certainty began to crumble. Was I right? Was there another way I had not seen, or had not wanted to see? I wanted to feel proud, to tell myself I had done the right thing. Well done, Hermione, I tried to say. But the words no longer sounded true, not even in my own head.
There was no neat explanation. Nothing tidy or simple. Only a rush of tangled thoughts that would not quiet, circling again and again as night settled over everything.
It happened during one of the hardest times of my life. The war had already begun, though most people beyond our world did not yet realise it. The lines between right and wrong were no longer as clear as they had once been. I made a decision Harry and Ron would not have understood at the time. They would have been shocked, perhaps even furious. Yet I believed it was the only way, even though it broke my heart and meant tearing myself away from the people who loved me most.
I still believe it was necessary, even now. The pain was real, but it was worth it. I had to protect them.
Looking back, I know I paid a price. It felt as though I had torn something vital out of myself, something I might never regain. I do not dwell on it every day now, but when I do, the ache remains, quiet and heavy.
I am forty now, the same age my parents were that summer, and yet the memory has not dulled. Not really. I remember every detail: the sound of the wind, the clink of cutlery through the kitchen window, the look on my mother’s face the last time she saw me and did not know who I was. It is all still there. And so are the feelings, sadness, yes, guilt, but also something warmer, a kind of pride. For a long time I wished I could separate the sorrow from the strength.
But I have learnt that if you pull at one thread, you risk unravelling everything.
So I keep them together, the joy and the grief. They belong to each other. That year shaped me. It changed everything.
Sometimes, when the world is quiet and the sun begins to slip behind the trees, I let myself return to that night. I think of my parents, of how much I love them, and of how everything changed with a single choice.
In those moments, it feels as if I am seventeen again, my hair wild and unmanageable, my hands trembling just slightly, my heart thudding with something between fear and determination. I become that girl again, clever, stubborn, and terrified.
That is when it all comes rushing back.
What I did.
And what happened next.
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