Prologue
James POV
"Lily!" he whined, hoping to get some sympathy from his wife of almost eight years. "Why are we in muggle London, again?"
"I already told you" she replied, taking hold of their son, Harry. "I want Harry to be exposed to the muggle world as well as the magical one. In no circumstances will my child be uncomfortable in either world!" Ahhh, Harry James Potter, his son and the other half of his world. He's turning eight soon and he's already a carbon copy of his me. His birthday pranks now could rival some of ours, when my friends and I were still at Hogwarts. "Fine, but can we go quick, it's getting dark and I want to get home." Lily just rolled her eyes and continued walking as she answered: "We're leaving now, I just need to find a side street we can apparate from."
They walked into an alleyway behind a dingy pub and he was about to apparate when he heard Lily scream beside him. He whipped around, only to discover that they were cornered by some teenage muggle kids, who had what looked like knives in their hands. He gulped but stepped in front of his wife and son. "Well, well, well, look what we have here, a couple of house pets, from the richer part of town no doubt." The leader, he presumed, said. "It's not every day we get fresh meat 'round here, is it boys" he continued walking towards them as he spoke. Just as he was about to reach them, a girl, no more than eight or nine years old jumped down in front of them. The change in the boys was as clear as the change from a matchstick to a needle.
The boys straightened and the leader, who was an arm's length away from the girl, quickly backed up. He was confused, why were these men, roughly fifteen or sixteen, running scared from this barely nine-year-old girl. Sure, she had a knife, but they did as well.
The girls' posture was relaxed, as she stood in front of them, knife twirling lazily in her right hand, as opposed to the boys, who were tense and held their knives with an iron-like grip. "Get. Lost." those two words were all it took for the boys to leave, almost running down the street to avoid a confrontation with the girl, but now I could hear why. When she spoke, her voice was cold as ice, void of any detectable emotion. It also came out as barely a whisper, but it was enough to convey her promise of pain if they didn't do as told.
Slowly she turned to face us. All three of us gasped as we caught sight of her scarred face, but what really got me, was the lack of emotions in her violet eyes. They looked empty, devoid of any and all emotion. "Hello" she smiled at us, but I noticed she didn't put her knife away, still twirling it lazily in her hand. "Hi" Harry responded before Lily or I could stop him, giving her his hand to shake "I'm Harry". She laughed and took his hand. "Hi Harry, I'm Alexina, but you can call me Alex". Her laugh, unlike her appearance, was carefree and sweet sounding, like a nine-year-olds should be. Before Harry could reveal everything about us, Lily spoke: "Hi Alex, I just wanted to thank you for saving us, we don't know what we would have done without you."
"It's no problem, I could tell you don't live around here." seeing our confused faces, she elaborated "Everyone around here knows not to use this alleyway unless you have a death wish. It's getting dark, let me walk you to the main street, these ones all have gang members and we don't need another innocent casualty"
"Innocent casualty?" I wondered, out loud. "Yeah, there's been a turf war going on for a while between the blades and the gunners. Neither wants to give up this land because it has one of the best hideouts. Well, bye now" she said as we reached the main road "don't go through any other alleyways 'round here!" she turned to walk away but Harry grabbed her arm "Why are you leaving? Can't you come home and play with me for a while? Please mom, dad!" she laughed and said "As much as I would love to, Harry, your mom, and dad probably want to get home and rest. Maybe some other day yeah?" despite being the same age or maybe a year older than Harry, she already showed the maturity levels of someone who's been through a lot. I don't know why but I felt overcome with the need to protect her.
Her own parents clearly weren't doing such a great job of it. Looking at Lily, I could tell she had the same train of thought. "Actually," Lily started "We wouldn't really mind, and besides, you saved our lives, it's the least we could do!" Suddenly we heard a noise behind us, Alexina reacted the quickest, jumping in between us and the noise. "You need to get out of here, now." her tone showed us that she wasn't going to take no for an answer. Despite not wanting to leave Alexina, we ran down the main street until we found a place we could apparate from, going directly to our house. We hated leaving a young girl to fight our battles, but our family came first, we just hoped that she would be alright and that we would meet her again someday.
