"Yay! The fall term starts tomorrow and I can't wait to go back to Hogwarts. It'll be so much fun to be able to do magic again after a summer long hiatus. I don't get how Muggles can live without magic; if you break something, you can't just do Reparo, you have to throw it away," said a girl with shiny blonde hair and bright blue eyes excitedly.

"Rebecca, only you would be excited about the impending detentions and hard work before our O.W.L year. I want to do magic too, but I so don't want to deal with Snape. Seriously, he's like ninety. Surely he wants to retire soon; he'd certainly do us all a favor," replied a short, ginger haired girl.

"Lily, if you would actually behave, you wouldn't hold the detention record. What even was the point of putting nifflers in his office? All it did was get you and Jason in trouble." The girl dubbed Rebecca said, pointing at Lily and a boy sitting next to her.

"Hey!" Jason interjected, leaning forward onto the round wooden table in the backyard of a large house in Godric's Hollow. "That was good, clean fun. Plus, he deserved it. He gave us detentions for putting some of Geegie's Shrinking Solution in his morning Pumpkin Juice. He wasn't able to teach all day. It was bloody brilliant!"

"So that's what happened to some of my solution. It looked like some was missing when I went to fill up a flask for it to be graded. Still, it could have been dangerous. What if I had accidentally messed mine up? You could have poisoned Snape, and then you would have felt guilty about it, and you would have gotten in trouble for it. It really wasn't a very smart idea." Geegie said, as she was always the good girl of the group. She got the perfect grades and all of the teachers loved her, plus she knew when a prank was going too far. Lily and Jason were never gifted with that knowledge, which is why they were constantly in detention. Rebecca was in between Lily/Jason and Geegie on the scale of troublemaking. She liked to have fun, but wasn't a total teacher's pet. Rebecca and Jason were also the only ones that weren't part of the family. Since Harry married Ginny, Ron's sister, and Ron married Hermione, Lily and Geegie were cousins.

Since it was starting to get dark out, Harry and Ron walked out of the sliding glass door and on to the patio.

"Geegie, it's time to go home now. You have to leave for school tomorrow and your mum will absolutely murder me if you don't go to bed at a normal hour." Ron said, making sure she knew it was Hermione that was making her leave early, not him.

Geegie got up reluctantly and said her goodbyes to her friends and family, and then she and Ron walked across the street to their residence. Once they left the backyard, Lily said, "Hey dad, what's up?"

Harry replied, "It's time for you guys to come in too. We have to get up early tomorrow and you need to be well rested for Hogwarts. So in you go. Jason, you're staying in the room on the left, and the girls are down in Lily's room. No sneaking over to each other's rooms. I agree with Hermione on that front, you do need to get some rest before tomorrow."

"Fine, Dad. But it's not like you've ever stayed up late on a school night," replied Lily.

"So? I'm the parent, so you can head right up to bed," said Harry, but Lily just shook his comment off with a laugh. He was never that great at being a stern parent. The entourage headed inside and up the stairs, laughing, and he added, "Rebecca, come here for a moment."

"Sure," Rebecca said, hoping her friends weren't curious about Harry asking to see her in private, which they weren't. They were too busy laughing over a joke Lily had told about a vampire, a raspberry trufflenucker pie, and Rosmerta from the Leaky Cauldron.

Harry led her off into an unused guest bedroom, sat her down on the purple comforter clad bed, and plopped down next to her. "Rebecca, is there anything you need to talk about? I know this has got to be incredibly hard on you, and I'm always here to talk." He said in an understanding tone.

"I'm fine" she lied, coldly, "I shouldn't have said all that stuff to you this summer. Just forget about it."

She started to leave, but Harry grabbed her arm, and held her back, "Rebecca, it's natural to be scared, and I don't think any less of you. I went through the same thing. In fact, I talked to Professor McGonagall about this, and you're welcome to use her fire any time you want, or you can go up there to talk to her about all this. Heck, you could even talk to Dumbledore's portrait. I just want you to know that what you're feeling is normal."

"Yeah, fine, okay. Can I go now? Lily and Jason might notice when I'm gone for a while." Rebecca really didn't know why she was treating Harry like this, as he was only trying to help. But she just couldn't talk about what happened this summer. It was just too much.

"You really should tell friends about what happened. They deserve to know. And you shouldn't bottle up your feelings like this, because you'll only end up blowing up, which isn't healthy. Oh, and by the way, you can go now."

"You don't want me to bottle up my feelings? Okay, fine, Mr. Boy-Who-Lived. I'm bloody terrified right now and I feel helpless. I have no idea if I'll get murdered while I sleep and if I'm endangering the people around me," Rebecca was yelling at this point, "and you expect me to just be able to talk about it like it's so easy. Well I have news for you. It's not. And also, you don't understand what it's really like. Your parents were all ready out of the way."

And she stormed from the room, leaving a flabbergasted Harry in her wake.

Rebecca stopped for a moment when she was halfway up the stairs, calming herself down before she entered Lily's room. Did I really just do that? Rebecca asked herself. It wasn't like her to start yelling at somebody, even if she had a reason. Once she was sufficiently calmed down, she walked the rest of the way up the stairs and turned and headed into her best friend's room. When she opened the large oak door, she was met by Lily and Jason, which wasn't a surprise since she knew Jason would sneak in.

"Hey, what did my dad want with you?" Lily asked curiously.

"Oh, nothing," Rebecca replied, and she was thankful that Lily really believed this answer.

After all, she didn't want to explain to her that this would never really be nothing. She didn't want to explain why her life was ruined. She didn't want to explain what happened in the Department of Mysteries on that awful day.