VIDA VENTURA was never one to forget. Ever. She remembered everything from vacations to petty bets to what color someone's shirt was. It came in handy, her memory, especially when it came to those milestones in life. Her first day of magical school, her graduation, her wedding.

More than anything, she remembered that October night of 1981—the night she met her daughter. No, not biologically—she had discovered her infertility many years prior. She met her daughter on the street.

Vida had turned that night over in her head so many times, she was surprised she hadn't lost it. Something about it was off, and no amount of scrutiny could pick that something out. Even fourteen years afterwards it puzzled her to no end.

Using their vacation days, she and her husband Preston had travelled across the Atlantic Ocean from Brazil to Great Britain. Her sister-in-law, she remembered, had invited them over, offering to let them stay with her in her Bristol home.

"Mummy!" Siobhan, Vida's five-year-old niece, had exclaimed after about a week in the kitchen. "Mummy, it's Halloween! Can I go trick or treating, Mummy? Mummy, please?" She was tugging at her mother's pants, wide brown eyes pleading.

Vida recalled Gisella Monroe's regretful sigh, her hand sweeping over little Siobhan's hair. "You know I can't take you this year, hon. I have to get back to work soon, and so does Daddy."

Oh, how that girl cried! Strangers knew that her favorite holiday was Halloween before they knew her name. Tears poured from her eyes, and her face had turned red. It was the most unusual sight, really—she usually was a passive person who rarely begged for anything.

Eventually, Vida had caved in. "I can take her," she offered from her seat in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen.

Gisella looked up as her daughter squealed. She pursed her lips in thought, her thumb running circles in Siobhan's hair. "I couldn't possibly bother you."

Siobhan wailed.

"It wouldn't be a bother at all," Vida said quickly. "It's the least I can do for you, what with letting me stay with you and all."

"Really?"

"Really."

And with that, her hand was soon gripping Preston's as they shadowed their niece. A small smile played on her lips as she watched her skip down the pathways to the houses, the owners doting on her little fairy costume before dropping chocolates into her pink bucket.

Despite that night's nippy weather, Vida had felt a warm knot in her stomach. Her smile had broadened each time Siobhan had returned with one of her own. Never in her twenty-nine years had she experienced such a sensation. As she grabbed the girl's hand and Preston the other, her tiny feet lifting from the pavement with a shriek of joy, Vida Ventura had never been so pleased.

As the trio walked back to the homely cottage, a gutwrenching screech had cut through the late October night.

"Wait here," Vida commanded her companions, promptly setting off down the sidewalk.

Turning a corner around a thicket, she skidded to a stop. Lengths before her was a small, quaking figure in the middle of the walkway. It was a child, she deciphered in the dark, his or her's knees to chest and whimpering.

"Are you all right?" Vida called out.

Immediately, the child's head snapped up and silenced. She still couldn't make out the details, but big doe eyes—red from crying— shone.

She reached the kid with a few long strides. Stooping down, her fingers had brushed a shoulder before the child skittered away.

Now in the way of a nearby streetlamp, Vida could see a halo of deep red hair circumscribing a freckled baby face. The girl, she realized, could not have been much younger than Siobhan.

Her heart raced at the sight of her rumpled nightdress and scratched limbs. Blood trickled from a scrap on her kneecap, which, judging by the thin streak of red on the pavement, had been the reason for her initial position.

The girl shifted her body away from her, and light casted on a stretch of crimson soaked fabric across the shoulder she had touched. Squeamish, her stomach had turned.

"Honey, are you hurt?" Tentatively, she shuffled forward. "What happened?"

She watched her for several long moments. Her heavy breaths filled the air prior to her saying, "I'm lost."

Vida took a couple more cautious steps. When the girl didn't protest, she closed the gap. "Do you know where you live?"

She lifted a finger towards the woods behind them.

Vida frowned. She was no expert, but she knew that there wasn't another town in that direction for miles.

"Are you sure?"

Her hand falling limp at her side, she shrugged.

"Where's Mummy and Daddy, honey?"

"Home." Her voice sounded like it was once soft and light as a feather. It certainly wasn't then.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Running," she replied quietly, "like Daddy sayed."

Those four words had made Vida's heart stop. Running? From what? What could be so terrible that a less than five-year-old girl had to run from home on her own?

"Honey," she said, her voice cracking, "what was Daddy doing?"

"He was on the floor."

"And Mummy?"

"On the floor too. Ha'y was crying."

Suddenly, the world began to spin, and Vida had to press her fingers to the sidewalk to balance her swaying body. The only thing she could think of was murder. Parents on the floor, daughter told to flee mere moments prior? It was the most reasonable theory.

As she focused once again, she found herself looking at the girl's shoulder. "What happened here?" she asked, bracing herself for the answer.

"I was hit."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

Vida buried her hand in her coat pocket, procuring her beloved redwood wand. To her surprise, the girl didn't seem shocked in the least. She only followed it with her eyes as the tip rested at her wound.

"Episkey." The girl hissed, and a twin pair of tears snaked down her round, red cheeks. Vida aimed at her knee. "Episkey."

Several more tears broke free, and after sheathing her wand, Vida wrapped her arms around her heartbreakingly tiny, cold frame. She made no move to free herself, only melting into the embrace with a few choked sobs.

"Shh," Vida whispered, running her fingers through the auburn locks. "Shh, don't cry. Shh..."

But the girl continued. She cried so much, Vida wondered how such a young, small girl could hold that much sadness. It made tears of her own rise into her eyes, and she clutched that girl even tighter, wishing she could absorb some of that pain.

As the sniffled quieted, Vida said, "What's your name, honey?"

"W-willa."

"Willa," she repeated, trying the name out on her tongue. "Willa, I am going to take you to the police, okay?"

And just like that, her sobs returned to their old intensity. "No!" she wailed. "No! You can't take me! Daddy's coming for me, he won't find me if I leave!"

"Yes, he will," Vida reassured. She pulled her chin from her freshly healed shoulder and looked into her hazel eyes. "The police will help you, Willa. They'll help you find Mummy and Daddy and the rest of your family."

Willa fell silent, her eyes searching hers.

All the while, Vida studied her face. What was her story? She really had no answers other than some one-liners and her own inferences.

Wordlessly, Willa pushed herself to her feet and toddled behind Vida's back, and she encircled her neck with her arms. Understanding the tacit request, Vida pulled her knees to her side and stood. Red hair fell over her shoulder as Willa rested her forehead there.

She carried her around the corner and down the street to where her husband and niece waited. At the sound of her footsteps, they turned to face her, their cheeks and noses pink with cold.

"Who's that?" Siobhan asked.

Vida waited for Willa to say something, but when she felt her even breaths against her back, she realized that the girl had fallen asleep.

"Her name is Willa," Vida replied. "Uncle Preston and I are going to help her after we bring you home, Bahnny." Her eyes skimmed the man's expression, narrowing to signal finality.

The following events still baffled Vida, even after fourteen years. When taken to the Muggle authorities, she was nowhere. She was in no system, and when asked, nobody claimed to have ever seen her. No one stepped forward when her picture was plastered in Bristol and the neighboring villages, even after two weeks. There wasn't even a report of a pair of attacked parents and a missing child.

"Where's Mummy and Daddy?" Willa inquired one day. "You sayed they would find me."

Vida remembered the heartbreak she felt and couldn't even begin to fathom what Willa was going through. She didn't even realize the full extent to which the situtation stretched.

"I don't know, honey," Vida whispered, voice faltering at the sight of brimming tears. "I don't know."

In the mere fourteen days she knew Willa, she had seen her cry eight times—too many tears, too little time. She had grown accustomed to her quaking body pressed into hers. Things were looking grim, a terrible understatement.

As Willa drowned in her sorrows, a sparkles in Vida's peripheral vision caught her attention. It was a thin gold chain that ran along the child's collarbone and into her blouse. Vida hooked her pinky around it and pulled it free, the pendant resting on Willa's chest, who looked down before lovingly dragging a fingerpad down the gold.

"It's pretty," Vida commented, and pretty it was. It wasn't exactly ornate, but the way the simple swirls danced along the oval's perimeter was a beauty in itself. "Where'd you get it?"

"Mummy," she responded. "When she was sleeping on the floor, I taked it. She'll be mad, but I like it."

The pleased smile Vida bore faded a smidge as she envisioned Willa unclasping a necklace off of a dead lady's neck. A chill shook her bones.

Willa's tiny fingers suddenly snapped the pendant in half, revealing that it was a locket. The photograph that it framed depicted a family of four: a mother, a father, a young girl, and a baby boy. It moved, the members smiling and laughing with a happiness that could be felt.

That was when Vida knew why Willa was unfazed by her wand: her family was magic folk. And Vida also knew why it seemed like Willa never existed until then: they were using the Muggle systems.

She rushed the girl to the British Ministry of Magic, giddy with the prospect of Willa being back where she belonged.

"Home," Willa had cheered. "I'm going home!"

Wrong.

She wasn't there either. No birth record, no recognition, nothing. Vida had hoped—even now—that the only reason why Willa wasn't found was because of the end of the gruelling Wizarding War. But deep in the back of her mind, she knew that wasn't true. Even after another two weeks, there was no new information. Vida had began to cry nightly, whether she could help it or not, because of Willa's plight. Every flame of hope for that poor little girl was stamped out at that point, and with her case ice cold, she had no options left.

The time had come—all too soon, in Vida's opinion—to return to Brazil and the Wizarding War refugee camp she and her husband hosted. Willa was in emotional shambles, and when Vida informed her of her impending departure, the heartbreak and devestation on her face shattered her.

"You're leaving me too?"

Those four words forever branded themselves in Vida's mind. She'd never forget them, especially them. At that moment, it had dawned on her that she was that lonely girl's rock, the only one who believed her story and never doubted it. Leaving her behind would have been like her parents all over again, gone in a finger's snap after eveything that happened.

Vida felt a hand on her shoulder, and she whirled around to see Preston.

"Preston," she croaked, "Do we have to go?"

She had never felt so childish in her thirty years of life, but at the time, she couldn't bring herself to care.

"Yes."

Sorrow choked her, and her knees went weak as Willa clutched at them, begging her not to leave her—not then, not ever.

She dropped to her knees and hugged Willa with all her might, whispering consoling words to her. She had been mentally counting to sixty. At sixty, she was to let Willa go and leave. Any later, she may never do just that.

"That's enough!" Preston barked.

Vida jumped at the shout, and she looked at him from over her shoulder. That's enough? she repeated in her head. That's enough?! I find this girl bleeding, crying, and lost in a strange town, and after four weeks of lost hope and suffering, I have to leave her here alone. YOU'RE SAYING THAT THIS IS ENOUGH?!

Preston approached Willa, bringing a hand through her hair. "We have to take you with us."

Three days and four Portkeys later, Vida and Preston were walking alongside the road leading to the refugee camp, each holding one hand of their adoptive daughter and swinging her between them. Vida watched as her locket flew into the air with a bout of giggles, and she recalled the picture of the ecstatic family inside.

Vida Ventura remembered everything, but some things more than others. Perhaps the thing that she would never forget—not even the most minor aspect—was a vow she had scribbled on a scrap of parchment and tucked behind the locket's photo: You were happy like this once. You will be happy like this again.