Diana

Disclaimer: All recognizable people, places, and things belong to J.K. Rowling, not me. Diana, Daniel, Rob, Alex, and everyone else are my creations, so please do not use them without my permission.

Author's Note: This fic represents years of work and imagination, trying to plan out the perfect fic and the whole story behind it. I could never have done it without my best friend and beta reader, Sarahjane. This is slightly related to my other stories, but not really. The ideas in them have been tweaked slightly to better fit this story. As of now, the title is still up in the air, so any suggestions would be much loved.

Prologue

We moved around a lot. From the time I was born to when I reached sixteen, I had lived in over half a dozen places: New York City, Des Moines, Austin, San Francisco, Boston, Minneapolis, and Chicago. Mom and Dad were always searching for something always just out of reach – safety, I think.

The hopping from place to place was tough on us kids. Daniel took it the easiest. Every place we moved, within days, Daniel would have gathered a group of friends and followers as loyal as soldiers. It didn't matter when we arrived at the new school either; he was just as good at socializing on the first day of school as halfway through the year. It was genuine devote he got too. Sometimes I think that those kids would have died for my twin, if he had asked them too. I remember clearly the time in Austin, when Daniel was accused of cheating on a math test. Even though he was guilty, the whole school stood behind him. They carved messages into walls and desks, and every student refused to do any work until Daniel's name was cleared. Eventually the teacher gave in; she had to. I heard that she wound up quitting teaching at public school and moved to a tiny Catholic school. To this day, in every room in Bluebonnet Elementary at least once, there are scrawled messages like "Free Daniel!" and "Mrs. Walters is a mean witch!" When the event occurred, Daniel and I had been in third grade for four days.

Like Daniel, I too managed to find friends fairly quickly. I would push my way into the inner circles, or form my own, until I reached the coveted position of leader or second in the clique. Despite all this obvious popularity, however, I still feel quite alone and isolated. My family is the most important thing to me. Without them, I don't know how I would survive. Maybe people trust me, but it takes a long time for me to get to trust anyone – time I do not have with all the moving around. My last true best friend, besides Daniel who I count as my best friend now and forever, was Rowan Cooper in San Francisco. She had problems, I had problems, and we shared them quite nicely. I relied on her quite heavily for a sympathetic ear and for guidance and comfort. San Francisco was our home for three years, and in that time, I developed the erroneous belief that this would be our home forever. When we finally left at the end of sixth grade, I was devastated. I sobbed for hours over the loss of my best friend. Since then, I haven't let myself get hurt like that. If you never make a best friend outside of your family, you never have to leave one.

Out of us kids, it was Rob who suffered the most through the constant moving. He's always been a shy, quiet kid who had trouble making friends. As we moved, he began to get quieter and quieter. We didn't realize it at first, though. At home he always pretended to have lots of friends, and it wasn't until we were in Boston, and Mom and Dad got called into the Principal's office, that we learned the truth. Rob got beaten up daily at that horrible school. He withdrew all of his creativity and happiness into his room, where he would sit for hours in front of the computer or video game. He would scream and cry and throw fits if Mom and Dad tried to make him come out of his shell. As far as he was concerned, life was fine that way – maybe not great, but acceptable.

And so we moved: New York to Des Moines, Des Moines to Austin, Austin to San Francisco, San Francisco to Boston, Boston to Minneapolis, and Minneapolis to Chicago. That was the last move we would make as a family, although we didn't know it at the time.

-- From the diary of Diana A. Smith