I feel a tendril of sweat creeping down my neck as the sun beats mercilessly down on my unprotected form. I am standing resignedly in line at Flourish and Blotts, waiting for the bookstore to open so that I can get a book signed for Hepzibah by her favorite author, Lucy Lovelace, a romance writer who recently published, "The Wanton Werewolf and the Proud Pureblood." I had briefly skimmed through the book when Hepzibah handed it to me this morning and I wasn't impressed by the sickeningly saccharine language and the clichéd plot. Professing your undying love for a werewolf during a full moon does not, in fact, "cure" him of his disease.

Yet, here I was, waiting in line for a hasty scrawl in a record-breaking heat wave. I already missed Jamie and I had only been gone for half an hour. I had left him sleeping with the window open for a chance breeze. Hokey had told me that she would keep an eye on him, but I felt uneasy being away from him for too long.

I stumble as the person behind me gives me a hard shift between my shoulder blades. I turn around agitatedly to give her a piece of my mind, only to be met with an eyeful of bright orange robes. I follow the robes up to the neck of the owner and keep going up, to be met with the face of a woman with a black eye and, what looks to be a recently broken nose, framed by wild brown curls.

"What are you looking at?" She grumbles to me, her mouth set in a grim line that stretches the length of her round face.

I quickly turn around without answering, I don't need to get into a fight with a woman who looks like she breaks bones for a living. I finger my wand in my sleeve to reassure myself nevertheless. I sigh and then crane my neck forward to see if the store has opened yet. I am greeted with the sight of an endless line ahead of me and no sign of it moving forward anytime soon.

Maybe after I finish up here, I'll grab an ice-cream cone for me and Jamie from an Ice Cream Parlor nearby, I listlessly muse.

CRACK! CRACK! The sound of several people apparating comes from ahead and to the left of me. That's unusual, I thought that Diagon Alley had a ward set up to prevent apparition into the Alley at a time of war. I still remembered the bomb that had surpassed the wards and landed nearby just weeks ago, when we had just come here.

I put my hand on my wand and leave it there, on alert and my ears straining for any unusual sound. I am met with the quiet murmur of people around me as they all wait impatiently in line. I wait a moment more, feeling unsettled for some reason, the hair on the back of my neck raising in response.

Suddenly a flash of green and an older woman waiting a few paces ahead of me drops to the ground. My heart stops.

I take a shallow breath as the chaos around me starts. The woman behind me shoves me again, this time hard enough for me to fall in slow-motion to the ground. The ground rushes up to meet me as my throat constricts in the unmistakable sign of an oncoming panic attack. I land on the side of my face, my left cheek hitting the ground hard enough to bruise. The space where I was a millisecond before has an imprint of a flash of bright green light that hits the heavyset woman behind me. She topples to the ground on top of my legs.

The force of her hitting my legs awakens buried survival instincts that halt the panic attack. I immediately start taking deeper breaths and check my sleeve to make sure my wand is there. I ruthlessly kick the dead women off my feet, breaking her nose in the process, ignoring the crunch and filing the remorse for later. I get to my feet, my wand in my hand and my eyes and ears straining for a glimpse or whisper of the unknown assailants. I fumble for the hood of my tattered green robe and pull it over my bloody and sweat-stained face. Surrounding me is mayhem as people rush to get away from the attackers. The world becomes mute around me and seems to be going at half the speed. The problem is I can't see the source of the onslaught. Just flashes of green light all around me and people falling like leaves.

I center myself and slowly scan the area around me, trying to locate the sources of the attack. My eyes catch onto a flash of red, swaying left and right methodically in the madness. It's man with a coppery colored beard that dominates his face, enhancing his magnetic green eyes. He's wearing bright red robes and smiling serenely as he moves his wand in a complicated pattern , while shouting Avada Kedavra intermittently.

I lift my wand and move closer to him, trying not to get trampled in the process. He hasn't noticed me yet; he's turned slightly away from me as I approach him from his left. As soon as I can get a clear shot, I calmly murmur the first curse that comes to mind. I watch detachedly as the hand holding his wand breaks at the wrist, the bone peeking out from the mess of flesh. He drops his wand in a mixture of surprise and agony.

I move even closer until I'm standing right in front of him. He bends to the ground, fumbling for his wand as I stand over him. I dispassionately point my wand at him and make a sharp gesture to the wall behind him. He hits the wall hard enough to break his neck and drops to the ground. Immediately, there's a cry of outrage behind me.

I briskly turn around and steadily back up to the wall, while putting up a defense shield. Another man emerges from the chaos, a hulking giant with onyx eyes set in a bronzed face. He viciously points his wand at me and starts raining down curses, all the while yelling something apoplectically at me. I can't hear him because I've retreated so far into my survival shell that all I can do is mechanically put up shields to counter him, while waiting for an opening.

The man is an excellent fighter, much better than the average dueler. But what he makes up in skill, he lacks in speed. He stands firmly rooted to the ground, while my feet do a complicated dance to dodge the attacks I can't defend. I finally find my opening: he pauses as he eyes something to the right of me and I pounce, going on the offensive, while simultaneously moving forward. His hand slips once, but he manages to catch himself in time, though he seems unprepared for my sudden ferociousness.

One swift kick to his shin and he stumbles backward, his movements becoming more frantic. I finish him off with an Expelliarmus, and he stumbles again, falling in front of me. He looks up as I point my wand at him and reflexively closes his eyes. I stall, wanting him to open his eyes. A flash of green light to my right distracts me and I realize that reinforcements must be coming, that's what caught the man's attention before. A swarm of identical red robed individuals are about to swarm me.

I grit my teeth at the interruption, knowing that I will not be able to fight them off too. I stick the man's wand in my robes and spin to apparate away, leaving the bedlam behind.

I apparate in front of Hepzibah's house and gag into her flower bed, the acidic taste of bile filling up my mouth and clashing horribly with the cloying smell of roses nearby. With a quick twist of my wand I fill my hands with water and haltingly rinse my mouth. I fill my hands with water and scrub my grimy face, running my hands through my tangled hair. After I look somewhat presentable, I take a deep calming breath and make my trek to the house.

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