Her name was Dorcas Lydia Meadowes. She was the granddaughter of Dorcas Mary Meadowes and the Dorcas Anne Meadowes. The Meadowes were a famously matriarchal family, and when she was born on a sticky July day in 1973, her mother had not hesitated in bestowing upon her the family name before running off to join the Order of the Phoenix.

Dorcas Lydia rarely saw much of her mother for the eight years that she was present in her life. Dorcas Anne was a fantastically gifted witch and staunch supporter of Dumbledore, loyal to her very core, but maternal she was not. An opinion of herself motherhood had only seemed to reinforce. Dorcas Lydia could count on one hand the number of times her mother showed her any affection. She couldn't recall a time where she told her she loved her.

Therefore Dorcas Lydia was raised by her grandmother, an old-fashioned yet kindly witch who was devoted to her daughter, granddaughter and family name. She wondered if her grandmother disapproved of her daughter's lifestyle, but Dorcas Mary Meadowes had never said anything, and her granddaughter too afraid to ask.

Her mother died when she was eight years old. Dorcas Lydia and her grandmother has been eating breakfast at the kitchen table when her silvery doe materialised and informed them of the news. Dorcas Lydia remembered very little of what actually happened besides the anguished crying of her grandmother, and the doe itself. She had wondered how to make an animal look like that and whether her grandmother knew.

At her mother's funeral she overheard a grizzly man telling a handsome dark haired man how her mother had been killed by You-Know-Who personally. She remembered the near reverence in both men's voices as they discussed it, as she stood wondering what was so great about that, being eight and rather ignorant of the terror spreading around the wizarding world. They had then been silenced by the dark-haired man's companion, a tired looking mousy haired man, who gave her a square of chocolate.

Years later she learned that her mother had died in the living room of the cottage she was hiding in, clad only in her nightgown. She could picture the scene too easily, her mother sprawled out and empty eyed, wearing the blue, flannel nightgown her mother had bought her for Christmas. Dorcas Lydia thought that if that was a death others were awed by, she hoped to die in her bed where no-one would see.

For the remainder of her childhood, Dorcas Lydia was raised by her grandmother. The identity of her father was unknown though her grandmother was certain that he had been killed by Death Eaters. Dorcas Lydia was of the opinion that he had learned of her existence in her mother's womb and hightailed it out of there.

Like every other magical child in Great Britain, she went to Hogwarts when she was eleven. The sorting hat placed her in Ravenclaw almost immediately (every Meadowes had been a Ravenclaw, except her Gryffindor mother), and had immediately felt the weight of expectation heaped upon her.

"That's Dorcas Meadowes' daughter, You-Know-Who killed her personally you know. Extraordinary witch, I wonder if the daughter is anything like her."

After overhearing a teacher say that, Dorcas Lydia strove to be as normal as possible. She made friends, went on trips to Hogsmeade, did well on her OWLS and NEWTS and never made any effort to distinguish herself from the crowd.

Several days before she graduated from Hogwarts her grandmother died, leading her to spend her first days of adulthood planning a funeral.

After it ended she stood in front of her mother's grave and studied the dates on it intently. Dorcas Anne Meadowes had only been twenty-seven when she died. She had seemed much older when Dorcas Lydia was eight.

She wished she could have asked her mother did she think it was worth it, defending a society that was deeply afraid of anything and everything that was different. A society where many of its inhabitants had welcomed the ideas of Voldemort (she is not afraid to say his name. Why should she be afraid of the made-up name of a ludicrously self-important bully?) Dorcas Lydia doesn't understand why people would want to slaughter the majority of the population in England. Muggles were much cleverer than any wizarding folk. Whenever they faced prejudice in America or South Africa, they fought and overcame it as best they could. Wizards and witches seemed content to brush away werewolves; vampires etc. and then somehow been surprised when they sided with a man who promised them freedom.

Dorcas Lydia supposed that this made her good, if morality could be defined in such black and white terms. (She wonders what her mother thought.)

So she ran. Ran and joined the Muggle world, the people she had watched through the window of her grandmother's cottage when she was young. She had taken Muggle Studies for an OWL and NEWT, and knew which society she wanted to belong to. While Professor Binns had droned on about Goblin Rebellions, Dorcas Lydia had read books about Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, JFK and numerous other icons under her desk. How amazing people like them could be deserving of death because they couldn't use a wand was beyond her. The fact that they did what they did with no magic whatsoever only increased her admiration of them.

She forged documents for herself, including GCSE and A level results as well as a birth certificate. She then, reminded of the countless hours she had spent reading Sherlock Holmes stories under her covers at night, enlisted in a police training program and began to climb up the career ladder at Scotland Yard.

On her documents she called herself Lydia Mary Meadowes. She didn't want the reminder of her mother anymore; she wanted to be free of the weight of expectation that had been hanging over her like a dark shadow all her life. Dorcas Lydia Meadowes had not been free, but Lydia Mary Meadowes was.

Until it all ended in 1995, when she received a call summoning her to a crime scene. Recently promoted to sergeant, she stared at the body of the man on the living room floor of his suburban house, the rest of his family strewn around. Gazing at his lifeless eyes and horrified expression, reminiscent of how she pictured her mother's corpse when she was found, Lydia knew that the war that had supposedly ended when Voldemort tried to murder an infant Harry Potter had not really ended, it was only the wizarding world's First War. A Second War, such as it had in the muggle world, was starting.