Disclaimer: I own as many rights to the Artemis Fowl series as I do working moral compasses.

I honestly don't know what I'm doing here. Really. My profile looked empty and I wanted to see if I could write an original character without making it a blatant Mary-Sue. That's all. The plotline is horribly cliche, I know.

I might continue it.

The first thing she saw when she turned into the driveway was the house. Or rather, what was left of it.

At first she felt nothing. She just stood there, staring at what was, to her, simply a large, smoking pile of ash and brick and charred, soggy timber. Stared at what was most definitely not her house.

And those people, the ones draped in clean white sheets, the ones being hoisted on stretchers into the backs of ambulances?

They were not her family.

The firefighters and police officers seemed to notice her after some time, and one or two came up to her and knelt in front of her and told her that it was okay, it was going to be okay, it was going to be okay and they would take her away from here soon and find a home for her, because really, what else could you tell an ten-year-old kid who's lost everything that was ever important to her in a couple of hours, right? Well, that was all well and good, the aforementioned ten-year-old thought, her eyes never leaving the ruined house. She needed a new home.

But what about this one?

And all of a sudden everything became just too much, far, far too much for such a small young girl on such a big, dark night, and as choking sobs wracked her body she felt something warm being wrapped around her and was vaguely aware of her feet leaving the ground, of a pair of strong ams carrying her somewhere, anywhere.

Anywhere but here.

--

She cried all the way to the station, in the back seat of a police car that smelled like leather and reminded her of her father's boot polish. The two officers in the front cast the occasional sympathetic glance toward the blanketed figure behind them, none of which she saw. They said nothing to her.

She had stopped crying in time for an officer at the police station to interview her, though. It had been at least an hour before he asked her if she had any other relatives.

"No," she said, between hiccups. Her voice was quiet and croaky.

"Anyone at all? Not even a friend of the family I can call?"

She was tired now, tired and emotionally drained. She didn't want to answer questions and she didn't want to have to deal with this right now. She just wanted to sleep.

But the officer repeated his question, and so she answered him, her hiccups gone and her voice quieter and croakier than ever.

"Angeline," she said. "Angeline Fowl."

She slumped back in her chair and slept.