She sits in the waiting room, her deep red hair covering her face so that no one can see the mascara running and the tears seeping out. She sobs quietly, thinking about what she had just heard in the doctor's office.

He had come in, clipboard in hand and frown upon his face. "It seems that you are just not compatible with the type of surgery that we conduct here, Miss," he had said.

"What?" she had spouted, leaning forward in her seat.

"We ran all the tests we could, but your blood is just too dirty for the transfusion," he said, looking down at his chart instead of at her face.

She had looked at him, straight in the eye, but he avoided her gaze again. "If you had only had a little magical blood in there, but no, you're all Muggle inside. The surgery just isn't possible if you're all Muggle-born," he said, as if it was her fault that her father wasn't a wizard or her mother wasn't a witch.

With one hand, he opened the door and with the other he motioned her towards it. "Your reversal procedure is scheduled for 9am tomorrow. Please report promptly or we will search your house without warrant and bring you here by force," he had said this all nonchalantly, as if it was every day that he told someone that he was going to strip them of all their magical powers, reducing them to merely a Squib.

Maybe he did, she thinks to herself, relegated to sitting outside the office. She is unable bring herself to leave the clinic and face the fact that she will lose all of her magic in less than twenty-four hours. So she continues sitting in the waiting room, weeping, until she hears voices in the corner of the room.

She looks up to see a discussion between her so-called physician and a messy-haired boy in scrubs. The physician is talking to the boy, pointing in her direction and then scooting his finger over to the doorway. He jabs his finger at the boy until the boy nods reluctantly and begins to walk over to her. Seeing him do so, she sweeps a finger under both eyes and wills herself to stop the tears from falling. She might be losing her wand, her magic, basically her entire livelihood, but she refuses to have someone think her weak so she looks straight at him, daring him to tell her to move.

But when he looks at her, she sees the tired bags under his eyes and the wrinkles in his scrubs. She takes in the scruff of his beard and the crookedness of his glasses. She looks at his eyes and sees a softness that she didn't see in the doctor's face. When he reaches out a hand to grab hers, she takes it, allowing him to lead her outside and sit her down on a stoop near the back of the building.

He sits there while she rants and raves, telling him the faults in their system. How they're never going to eliminate the Mudbloods. How they're all idiots, huge bigoted Pureblood idiots who think they're better than everyone else, more magical somehow, just because they've got some extra sparks in their blood. She tells him the blood transfusions are stupid, that she hears they hurt like hell, that she wouldn't even want one if they told her she could get one. She tells him that she doesn't care what he thinks or if he thinks she's wrong because she knows in her heart that she's right and nothing that he says is going to change that.

He smiles, one of those big heartbreaker ones that the guys at school used to throw her sometimes, back when the blood didn't matter, back when she was popular and smart and pretty, and not some girl who was going to get chucked out in the garbage any day now. "Now what makes you think that I don't want that too?"

She frowns, peering into his soft hazel eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You're right, you know. It doesn't have to be about blood." He runs a hand through his hair, fluffing it up, then patting it down. It seems to be a nervous habit. He takes a quick cursory glance around the area and then looks back down at her. "This isn't the end. Or, it doesn't have to be." He corrects himself. He takes a deep breath before saying the next part. "There's a safe house, a few miles from here. A friend of mine runs it, he takes in people like you all the time. I could take you there."

"People like me?" she questions.

"People that couldn't get the blood transfusions, people who chose not to get them, you know the drill. But also, people who are fighting for the other side, people who need a place to stay hidden for a bit. Those kind of people."

"You mean there's others like me? There's people who still have their magic that didn't get the transfusions?" Sure, she'd heard the rumors, but she didn't know they were true. "And what's the other side? Who would want to fight for people like me?"

"I-I can't answer those questions right now, not right here," he says, taking another glance at the building behind them. "But I can take you to the house and explain everything there, I promise."

"I-"

"I know it's sounds crazy, but trust me, okay, I promise I can help you."

"Well," she says, thinking quickly. "I guess I've got nothing to lose." She picks herself up off the stoop.

"That's the spirit," the boy says, reaching for her hand again. "And by the way, I'm James."

"Lily," she says in response.

"Well nice to meet you, Lily. I promise I'll answer all your questions back at the house, or as many as I can, but I just want you to know now that there are people fighting for you. I know, because I'm one of them." He smiles again, that great big heartbreaker smile, and leads her away from the building and into safety.