Author's Note: So, here we go. The sequel to my first multichaptered fic is up! I would like to say thank you to all of the reviewers of Hero Complex and everyone who has added that story/me to their favorite story/story alert/author alert/ favorite author. It's a really wonderful feeling, to see that someone likes your stuff. Also, thanks to my wonderful new beta, MidsummerNightGirl, for catching all of the things that I would never see.

Just a note, for new readers: this is the sequel to my other fic, Hero Complex, which is about a muggle girl living in Little Whinging who somehow meddles her way into Harry Potter's life. I would recommend reading that story first, since there might be allusions made to it that aren't all that clearly.

I should also mention that this story will not be entirely epilogue compliant.

Here we go with chapter one.

"Please enjoy your lunch, sir," I said, smiling as I placed a plate of salad in front of a customer. He was a stocky middle-aged man in a business suit, with hair that looked like it might have once been brown and a pair of bifocal glasses. Despite the fact that his food looked absolutely delicious, he wrinkled his nose at it. I got the distinct impression that he hadn't ordered it because he wanted it; he looked like the sort who probably had to watch his cholesterol or blood pressure or something. I saw him give an envious look towards the customer at the next table, who was biting into a cheeseburger like it would be his last meal.

"Thanks," he said as he picked up his fork and began to pick at a piece of lettuce. His salad looked good, and looking at it directly made my stomach rumble a little. If I had had the time, I would have loved to stop and get something to eat for lunch. Unfortunately, I was also sure that if I stopped and ate, I would miss my train. That would be completely unacceptable.

"And would you like a refill on your drink?" I asked, trying not to sound horribly rushed and to stop my foot from its constant tapping. Maybe I was too impatient to be a waitress, but this man as the last patient of the day for me and I was ready to leave.

"No thank you, I'm fine for now."

"I'm about to leave, but my relief is right over there," I told him, pointing across the restaurant to a young, round-faced blonde tying the strings of her apron. Out of all of my coworkers, she was my favorite, the only one who didn't seem to begrudge the fact that the restaurant owner would let me leave early, or that she would hold my job for me over the summer. "Her name is Gwen and she'll be over in just a minute to see if you need anything, okay?"

"Alright, thank you."

I smiled at him again and made my way over to the kitchen door. "Mrs. Carter? I'm going now." I began to untie my apron and hang it on the hook beside the door.

"Alright, Katie," said the restaurant's owner, sticking her head out of the kitchen window. She was a woman with short, curly gray hair and friendly blue eyes. She gave me a warm smile. "Have a good summer. We'll miss you, dear. Be sure to come visit if you come to London, alright?"

I had a bit of a teacher's pet relationship with my boss, but there were good reasons for that. Mrs. Carter was my Grandma Foster's best friend and was like an aunt to my father. She was adept at running a restaurant and was a genius in the kitchen. She had also owned the restaurant back when my mother was in school, and happened to introduce my mother, who had been working there as a waitress, and my father, who had dropped by the restaurant one day to drop off something for Gran. As such, I owed my very existence to Mrs. Carter and she looked on my siblings and I as the grandchildren her daughter never gave her.

I laughed a little. "Yes ma'am." I grabbed my handbag from a shelf of employee belongings under the window and slung it over my shoulder. "See you in August."

I left the restaurant after that, stepping out onto the London streets.

It seemed to me that my life was nearly everything that I could ask for. I went to school at King's College, like I had always fantasized about. I lived in London, which had always ranked highly on my list of favorite places in the world. My job was lovely and I made enough to be able to pay my part of the rent to the flat I shared with two of my closest friends. My roommates were Lizzie, my best friend from age eight, and Anne, a rather shy but sweet girl who had been Lizzie's roommate when she lived in student housing. And, whenever I got tired of staying in the city, I could go home to my parents' house in Little Whinging.

The building where I lived finally came into view, an old-fashioned structure made of red brick. I actually quite liked living there. Since it was a small complex (with four floors and sixteen flats), I had had the opportunity to meet all of my neighbors. They were all polite and none were really noisy. Our flat was located on the top floor and had a nice view of a nearby park. The hallways were always perfectly clean, the seventy-something-year-old lifts functioned very well, and any repairs needed were always quick. The building supervisor was sort of a pain, but it was worth it.

Looking at it, I felt the familiar emotions of being both sad to leave it and excited to be home.

I began to rummage through my handbag for my keys. With a shock, I realized that I couldn't find them. I started to search in each individual pocket of my bag, and then in the pocket of my jeans. No, they weren't there. Had I even grabbed them that morning before I left for work? I thought back and realized that the last time I had seen them had been at breakfast, when they had been idly tossed onto the small kitchen table. I couldn't remember picking them up.

This was definitely not a good thing, especially because no one would be home to let me in. Lizzie had a date with Noah, her boyfriend of four and a half years (also known as my ex); I recalled that they planned to go visit some museum or something like that and wouldn't be in all day. Anne wouldn't be there, either, because of her summer internship at an office. I wouldn't be able to get to my bags until someone got home to let me in.

I could miss my train, I thought suddenly. God, Pen is going to be so pissed off at me. She'll think she cancelled her date with Eric or Kevin or whatever his name is for nothing… Maybe I should call the landlord.

But I could hear the voice of the super in my head already. "Do you know what we want in this building, Miss Foster? Reliable tenants. I'm sure your flat mates would be able to replace you, if you don't clean up your act…"

I didn't want to listen to that. But, at the same time, I didn't want to call Lizzie on her date or Anne at work. I knew that they wouldn't have minded, but I hated to get in the way of Lizzie's romantic interactions or Anne's future job success.

"Perhaps I left them at the restaurant…" I muttered hopefully. It couldn't hurt to check, could it?

I turned on my heels, about to head back the way that I had come, but then I remembered the shortcut that began at a nearby alley and continued on a narrow street, which then connected to the alley beside the restaurant. It was so much shorter than going on the proper streets that I suddenly couldn't remember why I didn't use it all of the time.

It didn't take long for me to remember, though. As I came into view of the alley, two or three buildings away from the flat, I realized that the reason was that it was sort of shady. The two buildings it was wedged between were tall enough that a good bit of the alley was covered in shadows. The dumpster leaning against one side was brimming over with rubbish, which spilled out onto the ground, and there were puddles of some rather suspicious-looking liquid every few yards.

The proper word to describe that alley was "sinister."

I shook my head. I really didn't have enough time to be afraid of an alley, and besides, the neighborhood was perfectly safe. There were alleys like this in the safest neighborhoods in any city. And, in broad daylight, there wasn't much of a chance that I would get mugged.

With those facts providing a perfectly sound reasoning, I took my first steps into the restaurant. In all actuality, it wasn't really that bad. The puddles and the garbage were easily avoided, and I stayed as much in the sun as I possibly could. Look, you were worried for nothing, I reassured myself. It's just a backstreet. There's no reason for you to be scared, Kate. I felt sort of brave.

Or at least I did until I started to hear voices.

At first, they were faint and muffled; I thought that I must be imagining them. A few seconds later, however, I learned that that wasn't the case. The closer I came to the narrow street that lead to the alley beside the restaurant, the louder they became. I couldn't really tell what it was that they were saying from a distance, but I could tell by their tones that there was definitely something wrong. My breath caught in my chest.

Finally, I came to a bend in the road and the voices became intelligible. For whatever reason - a sixth sense about something, maybe - I didn't take the step around the corner. Instead, I plastered my body to a wall and tried to keep myself as still as possible.

All girls from Little Whinging knew how to eavesdrop. It was practically ingrained into our personalities.

"Please," a man's voice said; his voice told me that he was probably middle-aged, about as old as my dad. His pitch told me that he was terrified. "P-please don't k-kill me. I-I d-don't even k-know what I-I did w-wrong!"

I froze. They were going to kill him? Oh my God, what do I do? I wondered in a panic. They're going to kill him! What do I do what do I do what do I do…

Did I try to step in and help the man? No, that seemed ridiculous; I couldn't do a thing against a murderer, especially since he or she was probably armed. Running for help probably wouldn't be any help at all, because I had never been a very fast runner and it would take about three minutes to get back the way I had come. The man could be dead by then.

You have a phone; a voice in my head reminded me. Call the police!

Of course; I had my mobile phone in my handbag. As quietly as possible, I unzipped my bag and began to search for my mobile. On some days, it was easy to find and seemed almost magnetically drawn to my fingertips. This was not one of those days, and every little sound that came as I rummaged through my handbag made me cringe. I finally pulled it out of my bag; it was a newer model phone, a sleek silver flip phone that I had had for all of three days.

Another voice was talking at the same time, this one female. "Oh, really?" she asked. Her voice was calm and airy to the point of frigidness. It made me instinctively want to shiver. "Are you certain that you don't know?"

I threw the phone's lid up and punched in the numbers "9-9-9." For a few horrible moments, it rang.

"I h-have four k-kids and a w-wife," the man implored. "Please d-don't kill m-me, they n-need m-me…"

"Why would they ever need scum like you?" the cold-voiced woman asked. "I can't imagine that you've ever done them much good. Not compared to all of the bad things that you've done."

Someone pick up soon, I begged silently.

The phone popped slightly as a woman's voice came out of the phone. "You have dialed 999 for emergency services. What is your emergency?"

She sounded sort of like my grandma.

"Um, hey," I whispered, probably sounding for all of (I think it'd read more smoothly if you deleted the 'of' and just left "all the world") the world like a child pulling a prank. "My name's Kate Foster and I think I'm about to witness a murder."

"Young lady," the emergency dispatcher said sternly. "This line is for real emergencies only."

"This is a real emergency!" I hissed fiercely into the mouth of my mobile. My voice quivered. "I was taking a shortcut through a backstreet and I heard voices and this man keeps saying 'Please don't kill me!' and it sounds like he's crying and there's a woman who keeps calling him worthless scum and she says that he's done something bad and there might be some more people but I'm too scared to look around the corner and check!"

The next time she spoke, the dispatcher sounded more businesslike. "What's your location?"

"I don't know the name of the street, but it's off of an alley off of Rainey Avenue and it's dark and spooky back here. I knew that I shouldn't have come this way but I just needed to go get my keys or I'm going to miss my train and then my sister will be pissed off at me and-" I was babbling hysterically; I had to stop and gulp for breath before I continued. "I'm really scared and I don't know what to do and I need help."

"Calm down, dear," the woman said. "I'm going to send the police your way, alright? I want you to stay on the phone with me. You've done the right thing. Please stay calm and still."

"Okay," I whispered into the phone. I felt tears begin to trickle down my cheeks, but as scared as I was, I really did believe that things were about to get better.

Or at least I did until I felt someone grab me roughly by the arm. I screamed aloud as the man jerked me towards him. My phone fell in the mud, the dispatcher woman's voice screeching over our connection.

I looked up at my assailant's face in absolute terror. He was unusually tall, probably in his mid-thirties, with large, muscular arms that told me he must spend a good bit of time in a gym somewhere. His shaggy hair, which was a muddy shade of brown, was beginning to get gray around the temples, and he had scraggly-looking beard. His clothes were strange; he was wearing a bright red cape with a hood, as if he was an unpleasant grown man version of Little Red Riding Hood. His dark eyes probed into mine.

He smiled a rather nasty smile as he dragged me around the corner. "Look what we have here," he said. His voice sounded like a villain on a Disney film. "A pretty little interloper," I shuddered and strained as I tried to pull away my arm, but I couldn't find the words to tell him to let me go.

"A muggle, from the looks of it," stated a figure from the far side of the street. It was a man, much shorter and leaner than the one who held onto me. He was also much younger. He looked like he could've been my age.

He was also beautiful, in the way that men aren't really supposed to be. If it weren't for his voice, I probably wouldn't have known that he was a man at all. His hair was worn in a shiny black ponytail that was at least shoulder length; I couldn't really tell, because he was also wearing a red hooded cape. His skin was very light, and his eyes were an amazing shade of cool blue that looked like water. His facial features were thin and fine-boned and were neither feminine nor masculine in the slightest.

From years of watching Disney films and reading fantasy novels, I could guess that he was probably the more evil one. However, I was focused, not on his apparent evil or his apparent androgyny, but to his use of one little word.

Muggle. I knew what that word meant. It meant, to witches and wizards, a person who was not a witch or wizard.

It had been a long time since I had heard anyone who used that word; I hadn't heard it since the day that Harry Potter (the boy who lived on Privet Drive, the one who had the amazing green eyes and the glasses and the unusual scar on his forehead) had told me about a secret magical world, hidden below the surface of what I - or any other muggle - could see. Harry had believed in magic; he had thought that he was a wizard, and that it was up to him to save the world from a mass-murdering lunatic. Back then, I had sort of believed it too, but it had been years since I had even heard from Harry. My belief in magic had been buried under much more practical and mundane thoughts in my head a long time ago.

It had been almost five years since I'd first had that epiphany, but it came back to me at the moment just as shocking: magic was real.

Not only that, but I was going to be killed by magical criminals.

"Isn't that nice?" continued the girly-man, kicking his leg out at the huddled form of a person on the ground. It made a groaning sound on impact. "We know how much this one likes muggles."

The figure on the ground, which I assumed was the person who had been begging not to be killed, started to weep. He was laying on his stomach on the ground, so that I couldn't see his face, but I thought that his hair might be blonde under the matted blood in it. It looked as if something had shredded through his shirt, too; the rips on his back looked as if someone had tried to carve him with a knife. My stomach lurched at the sight of it. I wondered if I would end up like him.

The thought made me sob.

Standing above him was the woman I had heard talking a few moments ago, or at least I thought it was since there was no one else there. Like the men, her outfit consisted of a long, hooded robe. The color was what my fine arts teacher would describe as carmine, as opposed to the men's robes, which were definitely more of a scarlet or crimson. There was gold embroidery around the edges of the hood, which was pulled over her head and blocked her face from view. The bottom of a plait stuck out of the hood, but I couldn't see her face - though I knew I should have been able to. When I looked there, though, I just couldn't see anything.

But that couldn't be right, because everyone had a face. I blinked and looked again.

She still didn't have a face.

"Really, Ian," the woman's cold voice said. "You're so crass. You mustn't tease the poor things. Look at the state of them."

"Are you going to kill me?" I managed to gasp out. The woman-voice chuckled.

"It can speak," she said. I thought that she might be smiling, though I couldn't see it. "It must be one of the more intelligent of its kind."

Perhaps I was just a stupid muggle, but I thought that that failed to answer my question. Of course, being the same stupid Kate that I had always been, I opened my mouth again. "That's not what I asked," I said in a small but nearly steady voice. It almost made me proud of myself. "I asked if you are planning on-"

The woman extended her arm, complete with a villain-ish pair of white gloves, towards me. To my surprise, she appeared to be holding a stick. It was an impressive stick, sort of long and thick and sort of gnarled, but I was perfectly certain that it was only a stick. It didn't seem like much of a weapon. It wasn't really sharp enough to be used to cut or stab me, and I didn't think that it was large enough to make a proper club. I blinked, expecting the woman to step towards me and attack me with it. Instead, she held her ground.

"Crucio," she said calmly.

My legs gave out as I began to scream.

I had never felt anything like that pain before; it was so complete, like there was nothing else besides what I was feeling at that moment. Like there never had been. It was like my skin was melting off, or like every square inch of my body was being impaled.

When it was over, I was left on the ground, whimpering and twitching. I was unable to control my body for a few long moments, unable to make myself stop the horrid sounds that were escaping my mouth. The quaking finally stopped after a few seconds, and I managed to roll over onto my side. I stopped making the sounds I had hated so much - now the only sound I was making was the sound of my heaving breath.

"Insolent girl," the woman said, as I tried (and failed) to pull myself into a more dignified position. "Did you really think that you could get away with a comment like that? Of course not, because your kind simply does not think." She shook her head disapprovingly. "I'll deal with you later. First, I'll need to see to Mr. Cooper…"

She took a few steps, so that her shoes were only centimeters away from the crying man's face. "Do you have anything else to say, Mr. Cooper?"

When he didn't immediately respond, she nudged him with her foot, and when he didn't immediately respond to that, she kicked his shoulder. He couldn't seem to form any words - he only whimpered, making kicked-dog sounds. I felt sick to my stomach, longing to tell her to stop - or, really, to be able to make her stop. I wished that I was able in some way to stop this from happening, but I wasn't.

"Fine. Be that way," she said, sounding the slightest bit peeved. I tried to pull myself together again, this time with a hint of success. I heaved into a sitting position, leaning back on my hands so that my fingernails dug into earth. She pointed her wand at the man, and I watched her every movement like I was in a cinema watching a horror movie.

"Avada kedavra," she said; her tone was so normal and easy that she might have been a customer ordering a sandwich at the restaurant.

A green light emerged from the end of her wand; any other time, I might have thought that it was a bit pretty. As it was, however, the light streaked towards Cooper with perfect accuracy - and the minute that it touched him, he became absolutely still. His body instantly stopped trembling, and the horrid noises he was making abruptly stopped. I knew, in my very core, that he was dead.

I made a noise half between a scream and a gasp, my eyes suddenly darting around the alley as I looked for something, anything that I could use to fight back. My breathing grew frantic, my breaths catching over and over as my hands searched for something laying around that could be useful. There had to be something that I could use. There had to be something that I could deflect that light with.

There was a glass bottle close to me; I scrambled towards it, fear giving me movement. I picked it up jolted to my feet, scrambling to push myself against the wall as I clutched at that piece of rubbish like it would somehow save me.

The woman only laughed at me, like someone laughing at a child's antics. "Silly girl. What do you think that you can to do me?" She chuckled as I opened my mouth, thinking of a response. "No, don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question. This one, however, isn't: what's your name?"

"Kate Foster," I whispered automatically.

"Kate Foster," she repeated, as if she was getting used to the sound. Her voice had a smiling tone to it, and she raised her arm again. "I hope that you have no unfinished business, Kate Foster."

The green light, I thought wildly. She's going to use it on me now, just like she did to Cooper. There was something horrible about the thought that, with nothing more than a jet of light, I would be dead and there was nothing that I or anyone else could do to stop it. And there was so much unfinished business and so many regrets that ran through my mind.

I would never finish university or become a psychologist. I hadn't told Dad and Maria that I loved them enough. I wasn't going to meet Alec's new girlfriend or be around when Pen became a famous lawyer. I hadn't gotten to help Noah pick out an engagement ring for Lizzie, like I'd promised I would. I hadn't seen my friend Nina in two years, when she eloped and moved to Spain permanently and I hadn't ever met her husband or baby son. Hell, I would never get married nor have kids. It was all because of that magic stuff that Harry Potter had mentioned so long ago.

It made me so angry. Maybe that was why some deep part of my subconscious decided to through the bottle at the woman's head.

Apparently, she hadn't expected it, because it hit her squarely on the forehead. The woman cried out. She fell onto her butt in surprise, and an angry red mark showed on her forehead where her hood had fallen away. I could finally see her face, and it surprised me.

I had expected either some sort of beast or some sort of angelic beauty to be hiding under the cloak, but in front of me I only saw a normal woman. Her hair was a shade darker than mine, with a slight red tint in the narrow beam of light that fell over her. Her facial features were perfectly average, a rounded face with a narrow nose and too-full lips. There was a tiny, easily-missed scar on her chin, a thin, curved line probably a centimeter long. She was the nondescript woman that you could walk by every day on the street - until you looked at her pale green eyes. They gave me chills.

As if she was only just realizing I could see her face, the woman abruptly stopped rubbing the mark on her forehead and pulled up the hood. Instantly, her face vanished from sight again. "You'll pay for that," she whispered in a deadly voice, taking another step closer to me.

My last stand had failed, and now she was only angrier. I closed my eyes, deciding that at least I had tried. And then something exploded.

My eyelids flew open; tiny bits of metal, glass, and paper were flying in the air, narrowly avoiding hitting my face. The remains of a rubbish bin that had been sitting beside Ian were smoking, and it was a long moment before anyone spoke again. Then, abruptly, the woman cursed out loud and whirled around so that she was no longer facing me.

"What the hell?" she demanded; looking around in what I thought was an anxious way. Suddenly, her form went stiff. She looked to her left and mumbled something sharply. To me, it sounded like, "Now, of all times?"

Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, a new voice began to speak from the entrance of the alley. "Ian Carrow, Quentin Wilkes, and Morgana Vulpine, don't make another move. On behalf of the Ministry of Magic, I'm placing you under arrest."

Someone had come to save me. I breathed in sharply; the air that rushed in felt like the manifestation of hope in my lungs.

The saviors stepped up, perfectly calm - as if they dealt with this sort of thing every day. The group was larger than I would have thought, consisting of three men and two women (Good, I found myself thinking, that means they've got superior numbers), all of whom were wearing navy blue robes. They put up a sort of unified front as they stood, arm in arm, walking forward with quick but steady steps. It was almost like I could feel them coming, deep inside - every step that they took made me tremble.

They all looked confident. The two women were as different as they could be; one was a tall, curvy black woman with short hair, while the other was an almost child-sized blonde. Despite this, though, the two of them moved in sync even more so than the others; it was like they moved together. The tallest of the three men was a gangly ginger man, and even from a distance I could see that his face was covered in freckles and that his nose was just the tiniest bit too big. The other two were about the same height, a few good inches shorter than the ginger, one with black hair that stuck up in the back and one with hair in a shade of dark gold that I couldn't really call blonde or brown. The black-haired man wore glasses and seemed very collected, while the man with brownish hair had a round, boyish face that contrasted with his determined expression.

The bespectacled man's eyes fell on me for a long moment, and I thought that I saw his calm expression waver into a bit of panic. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of something familiar in his eyes, something that made my mouth go dry. However, an instant later, that little bit of vulnerability was gone - replaced with a new, fiercer expression.

"Neville, protect the muggle. Get as close to her as you can, and don't let her get away from you," he ordered, and the man with the round face nodded. "Everyone else, you're with me. We can't let them escape this time. We might not get this chance again."

The woman - the man had called her Morgana - jumped away from me as the man that had been called Neville held out his wand and muttered an incantation, shooting a beam of blue light towards her. He appeared close to me the instant later, as if he had popped out of thin air with a crack. It made me jump; the sound was like a gun shot. The woman, meanwhile, shrieked in anger and shouted out an unintelligible word in Latin that sent a rocket of green light (the same kind that had killed Cooper) towards us. My first instinct was to push myself as far against the wall as possible. Neville, meanwhile, flicked his wand almost lazily, and transparent wall materialized to protect us from the blast.

He was looking me over keenly, examining me like I was a particularly interesting animal at the zoo. "Are you alright, Miss?" he asked, in a friendly but controlled voice. He sounded like a police man. I guessed that, in some ways, that's what the people in blue robes must have been.

"I'm fine, now," I mumbled, straightening myself up - though I didn't stray from the wall. I had a sudden flash back to myself when I was a kid and my brother and sister coaxed me into riding a roller coaster with them. The final loop of the ride had felt exactly like this. "It's almost over, and I'm not even dead."

"No, you're certainly not dead," Neville said offhandedly, turning his head back towards the tussle with dark eyes. His eyes followed every move that they were making, until the moment he looked back at me. "Right. Well, I think that the boss might prefer it if I evacuated you, so-"

"You can't do that!" I said loudly, surprising myself. Three minutes ago, I would have done anything to get out of this alley. Now I couldn't imagine leaving. "We can't go now! Not while they're still fighting! What if something goes wrong and they need your help?"

Not our help, because God only knew what kind of problems would happen if I had to help. His help, because I had no idea what was happening.

"We're trained professionals, you know," he informed me with a little half-smile. "Those four over there are some of the best we have in the department. You shouldn't sell them short."

But he wasn't hauling me out by my ear, either, which I took as a sign that he agreed with me.

I opened my mouth to reply, but my (sure to be embarrassing at a later time) reply was cut off with a shout. A beam of bloody red had just bounced off of the wall a few inches from my ear, and I immediately dropped to the ground. Neville had shot up another wall in between me and it, but it still seemed too close.

I turned my attention back to the fight. It seemed like, as of yet, no one had been hit with anything; however, there was a lot of noise, a lot of lights in every hue of the rainbow and lots of jumping around from the combatants. My attention zoned in on the black woman, who practically flipped to avoid being hit by blue streak from the man who had grabbed me; however, as I watched, she lost her balance and flailed in the air for a moment. Ian, the girly man, took the opportunity, and there was a bright, colorless flash. The woman screamed out in pain and seemed to crumple in on herself as blood began to soak through the front of her clothing. It looked like she'd been slashed with a knife down her chest.

"Oh my god!" I shouted, casting a look at Neville with wide-eyes. "What just happened to her?"

"Looks like sectumsempra," Neville replied, eyebrows furrowed in concern for his ally. "Ouch. Poor Lucinda."

I blinked in disbelief. "'Ouch? Poor Lucinda?'" I repeated. "That's all you've got to say? 'Ouch?' She's going to bleed to death, we've got to go over there and help her."

Oh, God, her blood was beginning to pool around her. It made my stomach lurched; my dislike of blood hadn't changed a bit since I was fourteen years old, despite all of the biology and anatomy classes I had taken since I had started university. However, those classes had taught me enough that I realized that the result would be horrible if we just allowed her to bleed out like that until the fight was over.

"Don't you know any spells that could…seal it up?" I pleaded with Neville, who was frowning at the woman. He was probably seeing what I was: her moans of pains were coming more frequently, because she wasn't able to hold them in anymore as she lost consciousness, and her face was becoming paler.

"No, not me," he said quickly, looking almost frightened at that thought. "Healing's something that I never had much of a knack for. She's going to have to go to St. Mungo's, the sooner the better."

"Oh, for the love of God, Neville!" I exclaimed, suddenly feeling extremely agitated. He seemed surprised to hear me say his name, but he said nothing. "Come with me!" We're going to go help!"

"Look, I know that you want to help her, but I'm telling you, it'll be better if I don't try to use a healing charm. If I mess it up, which I probably will, it's just going to be more work for the healers. Sit back down, before you get hit by something," he said, pulling me back as a spell flew towards us.

"I don't want you to use a spell, I just want us to be covered when I try to staunch the bleeding! Look, you can ask Harry Potter, if you know him; going along with what I want makes me quite a bit less annoying!" I insisted, jerking my hand away from his arm and looking both ways before I bolted towards Lucinda. Neville, realizing that he had no choice, hurried after me.

"Wizards," I mumbled under my breath as I knelt by Lucinda's side. She was definitely unconscious now, I decided; her eyes were closed, and she didn't respond as I touched her gently on the wrist. "You lot make things so much more complicated than they have to be, you know. If you can't use the right spells, it's always an option to just use first aid. Don't you ever have first-aid seminars at Hogwarts?"

Neville knelt beside us, and I turned my head towards him as a thought hit me like a ton of cement. I didn't have anything to staunch the blood with; I wasn't wearing a jacket or anything under my shirt, and my handbag was too far out of reach and across what looked like a war zone.

"So, um, let me ask you a question, Neville. Are you, uh, wearing anything under those robes?" I inquired. My face grew hot, realizing the way that might have come across. "N-Not like pants or anything, which I'm sure you are wearing, but like a t-shirt or something that you can take off and give to me. I just realized that I have nothing to use, and…"

Neville's expression was priceless as he waved him wand, producing a fluffy white towel out of thin air. I blushed and muttered a rapid thank you as I pressed it against the injured woman. She groaned at the pressure, and I squeezed her hand in an attempt to comfort her.

I felt, in a strange way, guilty; maybe it wasn't my fault that Cooper was dead, but if this woman died, it would feel like she died for me. Maybe she had kids at home who were worried because Mummy had a dangerous job, or a boyfriend who would be expecting her home at by dark. What if she never made it back to them, like Cooper would never make it back to his wife and four kids?

"You know a lot about magic, for a muggle," Neville mused, his dark eyes locked back on the fight. The people weren't looking so good now; Ian had an eye swollen shut, his partner was bleeding on his arm, and everyone was bleeding and covered in little nicks all over. But no one was out of the fight, other than Lucinda.

"I used to know a wizard," I said, my voice growing soft, just like it always did whenever I talked about Harry. "But not anymore." Harry Potter had been long gone for years, a world away.

In the center of the alley, the man with glasses had finally gotten a clear shot at the woman, and I could almost see him thinking. "Stupefy," he said. The moment that she saw that red light coming, though, she popped out of existence - like she had so many times during the fight, going from one place to another so often that it had, at times, sounded like a machine gun was in the alley with us. The difference was that this time, she didn't come back, and this time, the large man followed suit.

However, one of them wasn't fast enough; the light that had been aimed for the woman hit the Ian squarely in the chest, and he fell.

"We've got one!" the ginger yelled, sounding exhausted but happy. "Finally, we've caught one of them! We've never done that before!"

"But two of them got away," the blonde reminded him tiredly. "And Lucinda's been hurt." She came to where Neville and I were and peered down at her partner with emotionless eyes. I scooted away as the blonde summoned a floating stretcher from thin air, just like Neville had created the towel, and levitated Lucinda onto it. "I'm taking her to St. Mungo's. I'll report in later," she said shortly to the man with the glasses. She was very obviously telling him what she was going to do, not asking.

She gripped the stretcher with one hand and, with another popping noise, they were gone.

The redhead shrugged. "One victory at a time," he said nonchalantly.

"Is she going to be okay? Lucinda?" I asked, realizing that I was now the only person sitting down since Neville had stood up. I scrambled to my feet and walked with him to where the other two were standing over Ian's unconscious form. However, a wave of wooziness hit me just as I reached them, and I lurched forward. Neville and the man with glasses both reached out to one of my arms, as if to steady me, and I mumbled a quick thank you.

I didn't feel well. Maybe I needed to go to the hospital, too.

"She'll be fine," Neville assured me with a smile as he let go of my arm. "I mean, know that she's going to get to the hospital. Besides, Melanie will be with her. She's so protective of Lu that you'd think she was a guard dog."

"Oh. That's nice," I murmured faintly. "Very nice."

"Kate. Are you alright?" the black-haired main asked in a serious voice. I realized, slowly, that he still hadn't let go of my arm. And that it had sounded like he'd called me by name.

"What did you just call me?" I asked, staring into the green eyes. No. There was no way that this was happening. When he didn't answer me, instead focusing on my face concernedly, I asked again. "What did you just call me?"

Before today, I had only known one wizard. And there was no way that these people could've heard me tell Morgana my name, the way that I'd whispered it.

"Kate. That's your name. Kate Foster," the guy said, looking at me strangely. He looked almost angry, and he pulled me a bit closer to him. "Did they do something to you? Make you forget who you are?"

"No, of course not," I said softly, my hand reaching up past his glasses and towards the fringe of hair on his forehead. Gently, as if I was lifting a page in an antique book, I brushed the black hair away so that I could see the skin underneath. There it was - the lightning bolt scar that had defined him since he was a baby. I dropped my hand from his face, my cheeks growing hot as I peered into his eyes. There they were those lovely green eyes I'd adored so much. No one else could have that scar, and no one else could have those eyes, not to mention that ridiculous hair and that pair of rickety glasses.

How could I have missed the resemblance? It all came back to me now, the short summers that I had spent loitering in Little Whinging in the company of this boy and the long school terms waiting for letters.

"Harry Potter." It came out sounding like a dazed prayer.

"Yeah, Kate. It's me." Harry smiled at me, a genuine, warm smile, the kind that used to make my insides flutter and my head feel light. I smiled as I remembered all of the wonderful things about him, the way that he made me feel and the way that he looked at me and the way that he said my name. And then I remembered all of the bad, the worry, the anxiety, the years of waiting.

I slapped him across the face as hard as I could.