Somewhere, deep in the heart of London, crowds of strangers are passing by a bench on which a girl with unruly brunette hair is weeping. Her heart has been broken, smashed to the ground and spit upon, by the powers that be. The powers that stole her life. The powers that are destroying her.
She can't help but think that it is, in a sense, the fault of a boy with a shock of black hair and bright green eyes. If he and his best mate had never saved her in their first year, they would never have been friends, and she wouldn't be in the absolute agony she is in now. Alternatively, if he had just died when he was a baby, she wouldn't- no, that was absurd. It would be worse if he had died.
Some selfish part of her, however, still wishes he had. For their sake.
Over the years, she had been tortured, ridiculed, and nearly killed more times than she could ever possibly count, however nothing compared to the hell of erasing herself from her parents' memories.
She erased herself first from her bedroom, removing all traces that a teenaged girl had ever lived there, leaving a basic guest room in her wake. She then erased herself from all the pictures. Then from the home videos. Then from the memory of every non-magical being she had ever met, apart from her parents. Then, she erased herself from their memories, along with every bit of love they'd ever felt for her, all the pride they'd had in her accomplishments, all the pancake breakfasts which were customary every Sunday morning. Then she sent her parents away to Australia, and she left to fight on the front lines of a war which didn't have to be hers, save for the fact that she had befriended the boy around whom it revolved.
She could not help but lay some of the blame on him and his red-headed friend. They should never have saved her; all they had done was prolonged the inevitable. Either she died, eleven years of age, at the hands of a troll, or she died of heartbreak now. The former would have been less painful. They should have let her die.
The final battle had been the most painful day of her life until that point. So many were wounded, so many lost- including, happily, the psychopathic cult leader who had started it all. She had hoped life would get better, what with him gone, the one who people still feared to speak the name of.
Fate doesn't work like that, however; at least it doesn't for her. Instead of being free, she had one more trial to battle through. While her friends reunited with family and friends, while they began rebuilding their world and themselves, her world had to be completely destroyed. There was one more wall to rip down, one more shred of happiness to obliterate.
Imagine her surprise when, upon her arrival at their house in Australia, she hears that the new tenants never had shown up. Imagine her surprise when she finds the house to be completely uninhabited. Imagine her surprise when she realizes that, despite her best efforts, they were killed.
Somewhere, deep in the heart of London, crowds of strangers are passing by a bench on which a girl with unruly brunette hair is weeping. Her heart has been broken, smashed to the ground and spit upon, by the powers that be. The powers that stole her life. The powers that are destroying her.
Somewhere, deep in the heart of London, a red-headed boy has just found our tragic heroine after weeks of searching, and has wrapped his coat and his arms around her. He is there to save her, and though it will take months of hard work on his part, he will succeed. He will fix her. He will make her smile again.
He will be the home that she lost when he first saved her from a troll in the girls' bathroom when she was eleven years old.