Disclaimer: As of right now, I have included little of the traditional elements of Harry Potter. Nonetheless, I do not own Hermione, Remus, or anything else you might recognize...I don't even own this computer...sad really.

A/N: I don't know what people think of stories where Hermione's parents aren't sunny, but this just poured out. I have about 50 more pages of this written. I'll post it soon.

Prologue: The Girl at the Playground

The little girl—she didn't look a day older than eight—sat on top of the rusting playground equipment. This piece of equipment was one of those dome-shaped arrangements of short metal bars. The bars were arranged, as was traditional, in triangles—intended to make the climbing more difficult for those children unafraid of heights. But she never noticed. After all, she climbed to the top and sat there every day.

No one ever cared that she was there. Because no one ever knew she was there. Her parents hated her—or at least they didn't like her. And she had no friends. She knew she was considered abnormal. And she thought she knew the cause. It was because of that strange flying thing she'd done that one time in the town preschool, wasn't it?

She was wrong. You see, young Hermione Rose Granger knew less than she thought she did—at least on that particular subject. Also known as her parents. Drs. Stephen and Serena Granger, dentists, knew some of the things their brown-haired baby girl had been able to do were unnatural. Hermione didn't. They knew that she wasn't what you'd call a normal child—Hermione knew that. So, they tried to make her be normal. Not by kindness. No. It wasn't cookies and cake. It wasn't approving smiles and warm hugs. They—he especially—tried to beat it out of her. It was no less than abuse.

But, for some reason, Hermione, as precocious as she was, had never actually gone so far as to figure that fact out. She submitted easily to the sharp words and sharper blows of her tyrannical parent, thinking it was for her own good. After all, she was not like other children. Her parents weren't like other parents. They didn't believe she could do no wrong. In fact, the way Stephen and Serena saw it, their daughter could do nothing right. It was not a caring environment. It was not pleasant. It was definitely not lenient. Anything and everything she did was rule breaking.

The eight-year-old girl looked stoically down at the other children and the adults at the tiny, residential-area playground from her high vantage-point. She cast a longing look at the blonde girl who shrieked and giggled as her father chased her through the bottom of the dome, her refuge from home. She sighed heavily and let a tiny tear—just one—fall from her half-closed eyes and run down her cheek. Her father wasn't here. Her father didn't even care if she was here. Her father didn't know she was here.

Her sharp, green-hazel eyes, hidden by her curly brown bangs and the tears she wouldn't let fall, failed to notice the man with identical green-hazel eyes, who was scrutinizing her very closely as she sat on top of the dome.

Remus John Lupin hadn't gone to a playground since his childhood, especially a Muggle one. But ever since he'd lost his Ministry of Magic Department of Mysteries job as and Unspeakable—it came to about two weeks ago—he'd been sitting here on the cold metal park bench and watching the rusting, rather pathetic playground. He tried to take in everything, not even sure why he was there. And, of course, being there, he'd noticed the petite, curly-haired brunette who came to the tiny park every single day at exactly three-thirty in the afternoon, set down her backpack—she looked about eight—and climbed to the top of the dome of bars. She would simply sit there, doing absolutely nothing, for an entire hour. He would have thought any child would have been ready to jump around after a day in a desk at a school. But not this girl. Her green-hazel eyes, so like his own, would become unfocused and glaze over, and you could tell the young girl was further and further away from the world of form.

She was never happy, this little girl. She was calm-faced, but it wasn't pleasant calm as would be expected of a child, strangely enough. It was a chilling sort of stoicism, especially from an eight-year-old—or however old she was. He knew there were strange children in the world, but those such as this? He'd never seen anything of the sort. She would only display emotion when she saw other families come to the park and play with their children either underneath her or right in front of her.

The unemployed, philosophical werewolf stared at the little girl as she carefully wiped her pale, wearied face on her long sleeve in the late October chill. His heart went out to the crying child, for reasons he couldn't explain and had no control over. If she hadn't been a complete stranger—and someone else's child—he would have tried anything that would console the girl—he didn't even have a reason to be so protective. The gentle werewolf couldn't think of what to do. But as he debated a course of action in his head, she straightened and dropped from the dome with practiced ease. He didn't see her leave.

Remus stood up, finally making up his mind. He was determined to talk to the enigmatic child, even if he knew nothing of her. But when he looked for the girl, he found that she had disappeared, wraith-like, into the residential, small-town neighborhood.

A/N: It's awfully depressing, but here it is.

Luv, LysPotter