A/N: This is a sequel to my story, Second Chances. This sequel is by special request of Say Happy, and therefore is dedicated to Say Happy. It is born entirely out of Say Happy's suggestion and request, and therefore if you enjoy it I ask that you thank Say Happy. :D And I certainly hope you enjoy it.

-J

She was breathing heavily, desperately running away. They weren't going to catch her this time. They weren't. It wasn't going to happen again.

"Michelle!" called his voice, that disgusting voice of Everitt Holland. His cronies were jeering and she ducked behind a building, finding an alleyway. It was a dead end, she realized, panicked.

"Come out and play, Simpson! We ain't gonna hurt you!"

If she hadn't been so terrified that they'd find her, Michelle would have snorted at that. Of course they were going to hurt her. It was all they ever wanted to do, hurt her.

Sometimes it felt good for a bit, but the pain was always more than the pleasure. And they got more pleasure out of it than she ever would anyway, Michelle thought bitterly. They shouldn't feel good for hurting her. Life shouldn't work that way.

But life had never been in Michelle Simpson's favor. She'd been orphaned young, tossed from foster home to foster home, and then an orphanage, but it was closed down, so she was back in foster care once more. Her foster parents, though, they didn't really care about her at all. If they had cared, they would have been concerned with the interest their twenty-year-old neighbor's son took in the fifteen-year-old girl they'd taken in. They might have noticed the way he leered at her when she took out the trash. They might have bothered not to pretend not to hear her screams the first time he raped her, before his friends got involved.

Michelle huddled on the ground at the end of the alley, hugging her knees to her chest and praying that they wouldn't find her. That was all she had left. Her blonde hair fell in a curtain around her as she shook with fear.

Of course, the wishing never helped, and one of the bigger boys found her, calling to the others, and she just let the teardrops fall to her knees as the half a dozen or so boys surrounded her, jeering and kicking her as Everitt pulled her to her feet by her upper arms.

"Thought you could hide from me you stupid slut?" he hissed in her face, spitting on her with contempt. "You belong to me. I own you, you whore."

He probably thought he did. He probably thought he was her pimp. For all she knew, his friends were paying him for a chance to rape her. And her foster parents didn't care, they didn't care at all. No one cared. They were too busy drinking the checks that were supposed to feed her to notice what was happening. And the tears ran down Michelle's face.

"You don't own me," she hissed.

"What did you just say to me, slut?" he growled.

"You don't own me," she said again, a bit stronger as she lifted her tear-filled eyes to face his own rage-filled eyes. "I don't belong to anyone, least of all you, coward."

Perhaps she should have bit her tongue and born the pain for what seemed like the hundredth time, but Michelle was tired of being beaten and used. If they were going to kill her for her insolence, at least she would die and it would be over.

First, Everitt hit her across the face, hard. Then, he shoved her against the hard brick wall of the building behind her, ripping her shirt wide open with one hand and squeezing at her neck with the other as he began roughly groping her breasts. Michelle struggled, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of doing as she was told anymore. He did not own her. Nobody owned her.

As she was starting to struggle away from the wall, however, he slammed her hard back against it, causing her head to crack sharply against the brick and his hand's grip on her neck loosened with surprise as she saw the world fade to black.

/-/

When her eyes opened, Michelle found herself somewhere she certainly didn't recognize. Perhaps it was a hospital, she thought dumbly. After all, she was in a sterile white sort of cot, although the walls were made of stone, and she felt colder than she ought. Her head ached fiercely and her breasts were sore from the handling Everitt had given her.

"Minerva, she's waking."

Who was Minerva? Was she a nurse? Michelle groaned lightly as she tried to sit up, and she saw two women heading toward her in strange clothes, one looking severe with a tight bun, squared glasses, and a firm, worried line that was where a mouth ought to be. The other was kindly, concerned.

They must be nurses, Michelle decided, although strange nurses they seemed to be.

"Miss Simpson, how do you feel?" the stern one asked, who must have been Minvera.

"My head hurts," Michelle said honestly.

They knew her name, which meant someone had taken her to the hospital, someone who knew her. Everitt hadn't just left her to die in the alley. But had he taken her, or had her foster parents been alerted to where she was?

"You fell down the stairs, Miss Simpson," the other woman said kindly. "You hit your head rather hard."

Michelle frowned.

Fell down the stairs? Was that the rubbish those sorry excuses for foster parents had fed the hospital when they brought her in?

"Do you remember what happened?" Minerva said in a way that seemed very nearly gentle.

Oh, Michelle certainly remembered what happened, but as she really didn't want to be shuffled around again, she decided it was better to say no, so she shook her head.

The women exchanged nervous glances.

"Miss Simpson, what is your name?" the nameless nurse asked.

"Michelle Mallory Simpson," Michelle said, guessing that they were testing her for amnesia, which was silly, because she remembered everything.

"What is your date of birth?"

"May 2nd, 1978," Michelle said impatiently.

"And who are your parents?"

Are? Didn't they mean 'were'? Her parents had been dead for ages, Michelle wasn't even sure that it was on her medical charts. Had it not been her foster parents that brought her in? Perhaps Everitt's parents did.

"They were George and Cynthia Simpson," Michelle said slowly. "But they're dead."

The women looked surprised and exchanged a look.

"Miss Simpson," Minerva said, unsure of what was happening, obviously, "your parents are Mark and Mallory Simpson, and as far as I know they're very much alive."

Michelle blinked.

Her parents weren't alive. Something was wrong. Something was going completely wrong. She couldn't have woken up yet, that was the thing. She must just be having some sort of dream, she told herself.

"What year are you?" the unnamed woman pressed.

"In school?" Michelle asked. "I dropped out, last spring. I... I don't go."

"Poppy, it's like Samantha Collins all over again," Minerva whispered.

Who was Samantha Collins? What was going on? Was it a dream? What was everyone talking about?

"I'm afraid you're right," Poppy said nervously. "We shall have to alert her parents, explain to her friends, and I suppose we ought to have the headmaster talk with her."

Headmaster? Wasn't she at a hospital? They hadn't been stupid enough to bring her to a school, surely.

There was only one thing for it, Michelle decided firmly. She was still asleep, dreaming. Her body was probably lying in a hospital somewhere, or in the alleyway, and her mind had dreamed this place up, whatever it was.

She didn't ask what was going on, and the women seemed relieved as they went about telling her they were going to tell her friends about her accident and that the headmaster should be with her shortly. Michelle wasn't sure who Angelina and Alicia were, but apparently they were her friends, so she just nodded until she could no longer take the pain that the movement caused her head.

Then Michelle waited, trying to decide what to do. Should she give in to the dream, or would that make it harder to wake? Did she even want to wake?

A very old man entered the room (ward?), a solemn expression on his face as he sat beside her bed.

"Do you remember who I am, Miss Simpson?" he asked in a faint but firm voice.

"No," she said honestly, fully aware that she'd never seen the man before in her life.

"My name is Professor Albus Dumbledore," he said gently, "and I am headmaster here at Hogwarts."

"And what's Hogwarts?" Michelle asked nervously.

"It is a school, Michelle," he said gently. "A school for witches and wizards."

She blinked. He wasn't serious, was he?

Before she could ask after his sanity, he stood and paced at the foot of her bed.

"Some twenty years ago," he said finally, "a young girl by the name of Samantha Collins was a student here. She was a pretty girl, willful, manipulative many would have said, and the sole heir to an old, rich family. Because of a prank her best friend was pulling on a boy, she was severely injured, knocked unconscious for a moment, and she had forgotten everything, all of her friends, everything about herself and the life she had known, the person she had been.

"Her friends helped her, and she grew into a completely different person, with more compassion and honesty and conviction. She left the influence of her parents, who were jailed for attempting to drug her into a marriage she was opposed to. She lived with a man she loved for several years during the war, but he was taken to jail and she went mad, killing herself, drowning herself in the river.

"There was something about the change in her," Dumbledore said thoughtfully, "that always bothered me. And last year, I found this clipping in a London paper and saved it."

Michelle took the newspaper clipping from his hands and skimmed it. It was a birth announcement of a Samantha Collins, the second child to a perfectly normal family on the West End.

"I suspect," he said softly, "that if I wait fifteen years there will be some terrible accident that will befall her, possibly put her into, oh, what's the word, coma? Yes, and then several years later she will die inexplicably, drowned with no obvious cause of drowning. Do you see?"

Michelle did see, he thought that somehow this was the same Samantha Collins who had suffered the same 'amnesia' she had, and that would explain her not knowing where she was or what was going on, but she didn't understand how it had happened.

"What happened, Miss Simpson?" he asked gently. "What really happened before you woke up here?"

"I... I was being chased," she said softly. "I was being chased through the streets and they caught me and he... he was going to rape me again, sir. I didn't want him to, I wanted him to leave me alone and I was stupid and I spoke against him and he... he hit me back against the wall, I think. I don't know. I don't remember anything after that."

He nodded sadly and said, "You were unhappy with your life, things were wrong, and then you experience a physical trauma in both worlds. Your consciousness was transferred here where you can start over, in a sense. There was no hope for a fresh start in your other life, was there?"

Realizing that he was right, she shook her head.

"I'm not sure I understand exactly how it works," he admitted, "but at least we know the why. That's a start. I can trust you, Miss Simpson, not to tell anyone of this?"

"Of course, sir," she said nervously. "I don't even know who I would tell."

"We'll have to get you to blend in for now," he said with a sigh. "Amnesia will suffice as it did before. I hope that you will apply yourself to learn quickly, and not to get too caught up in what's going on around you. It may take some time before we can figure out how to set things right, but you need to remember that this is not where you belong. All right?"

"Yes, sir," she whispered.

That should be easy enough to remember. She already felt like a stranger, and didn't expect that the feeling would subside as she went about trying to figure out who her other self was in the universe she'd landed herself in.

The only problem was, she would have to go home. Where she was had to be better than where she'd come from. It had to. Nothing was as bad as what she'd come from.

Michelle sat up a little straighter, watching the man leave the room, wondering what the rest of the place looked like outside of the room she was being kept in, the infirmary.

"Michelle?"

There was a voice, a quiet, questioning voice.

She looked over at the voice, only to find a stalky, strong-looking red-haired boy about her age looking down at her, terror in his eyes.

"Yes," she answered, realizing that she was looking at one of the most attractive people she'd ever seen, although not in a conventional way. There was a tenderness in his brown eyes that she'd never seen before in the eyes of another human being that didn't work at some hospital.

"They said you wouldn't remember me," he said softly, sitting down by her bed. "I... I'm sorry. The explosion, well, I guess it was mostly Fred's fault but I still feel responsible."

"I... I'm sorry," Michelle said, feeling genuinely upset that she didn't know who this was or why he looked so terribly sad, but she knew she didn't want him to be sad. "I... What happened? I don't..."

"You don't remember, yeah," he said awkwardly. Then he cleared his throat. "Well, I'm George. Um, we've been friends since second year, so for a few years now, anyway. You didn't like me much first year because Fred and I used to tease you and Angelina a lot and... Well, anyway, Fred's my twin."

"Right," Michelle said, nodding to indicate that she understood. "And Angelina's my friend?"

"Yeah," George said with a sad sort of smile. "You and Angelina and Alicia are really close. Anyway... Fred and I, we were testing a firework and we didn't know you were coming up the stairway and the explosion knocked you down the stairs and... and... I'm so sorry, Michelle. I never meant... I mean, I never wanted... I'm so sorry."

She thought he might be about to cry, but she was still trying to sort out the story in his mind.

"Right," she sighed. "I'm sorry, this is just a lot to get used to in a short period of time and I... It's overwhelming. I mean, I don't remember anything."

"Right," George sighed sadly. "How's your head?"

"Better," she admitted.

"Scoot over then, munchkin," he teased, and she wasn't sure why, but her lips upturned into a smile as if it were the most natural thing to do in response to being addressed that way, and she scooted over in the bed and he crawled under the covers beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders comfortingly. "I'll tell you everything I know," he sighed. "I know it's not enough, but I'll do my best. So, you know when you were born and stuff?"

"I remember what my birthday is," she said nervously. "But... I don't remember my parents at all."

"Wow, that's really depressing," he muttered, more to himself than anything. "Well, your mother makes really delicious molasses biscuits, and I don't even like molasses, so that's a good thing. She's... well, I'm not really sure where you get your good looks from, because neither of your parents is particularly attractive, but they're the friendliest souls in the whole of Sussex."

Michelle nodded, but she was finding it hard to listen to everything he said. She would pick on little tidbits, like how he said that she had good looks.

She'd never thought of herself as anything particularly special to look at. But it made her feel a bit tingly where his hand brushed her arm and his arm touched the back of her neck when she thought he thought of her as good looking. She wondered what that meant.

"So," he said. "Let me think... You like spending days outside when it's warm enough and dry enough..."

"Where are we?" she asked curiously.

George blinked.

"Um, Hogwarts," he said quickly. "Um..."

"No, I meant where in the country," she said, cutting him off, and the relief filled his eyes instantly. "I already know we're in the infirmary at Hogwarts. Although, that's about all I know."

"We're in Scotland," he said with a small, sheepish smile. "By Hogsmeade."

"What's Hogsmeade?" she asked curiously.

"Um... It's... Wow, it's the largest wizarding community in Britain. It might actually be the only all-wizarding community. I don't remember. You'd have to ask Granger to be sure."

"Granger?" she asked. "Who's Granger?"

"Ah, Ron's friend," he said. Then he frowned. "Oh, Ron's my little brother. Merlin, this is hard."

It was all she could do not to giggle at his use of the word 'Merlin', but she thought that might not go over too well. So she held it in and just smiled at him instead.

"I'm sorry I don't remember," she said, "but thank you for helping me."

"Yeah," he said. "It's the least I can do."

Then, to her surprise, he kissed her forehead and said, "I've got to go, but I'll be back for you tomorrow, okay?"

And before she had time to process what he'd done and said, he was gone and she was left staring after him in the hospital wing in an unfamiliar world.