Jill stared limply at the wilted lilies in her hand as she laid them softly on her sister's grave, the first time she had ever visited. Her mind was kilometers away from the cemetery—the spotlessly blue sky was entirely too bright for the way she felt.

Jill could remember when Kirsten first received her Hogwarts letter. She was so excited that she reread the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy that week. Of course, she was later to learn that fantasy books had little to do with the real world, wizarding or otherwise. The Weasleys, distant cousins of hers, came out of the woodwork and offered to show her around the fabulous world that was now her own.

. Kirsten came home holidays with her pockets bulging with Wet Start No Heat Fireworks—just because she couldn't do magic over the holidays didn't mean she couldn't enjoy magic as long as she kept it away from the muggles. Jill had stared in awe at the magical glow for hours, amazed that the dull universe she had grown up in could turn so exciting with one wave of a wand.

Five years later, her own letter had come, and she was thrown into the heart of the world she had only heard about through her childhood. It was like she had been changed from a frog to a princess. The sheer number of spells designed to help and delight her never failed to astound Jill, right up until her sixth year, and the friends she made at Hogwarts were an enchantment better than any she learned in class. She had believed life could not get any better.

And she was right—in fact, it got a whole lot worse.

First year aurors always had the most casualties. There was a saying at the ministry—you get cursed enough and you learn when to duck. Kirsten had not been cursed enough when the Avada Kedavra came.

Jill took the news hard, to say the least. The woman who had first shown her the wizarding world was now gone from it. No matter how cool magic looked or felt, the fact remained that it was dangerous to her. She felt she would have given back all of her powers just to have her sister with her again.

What could she do but turn back into a frog? With no secondary education, Jill began waiting tables at a hamburger restaurant in her hometown of Silver Oak. She certainly felt froggy. Though it lacked the flash and dazzle of the wizarding world, her life was now safe.

Jill looked up, jarred back to the present, as the full impact of this statement hit her. Safe. Her friends were now garishly predictable, her boyfriend had told her in advance in what year he was planning to propose to her, and her parents would be the same old parents until the day they died. But at least everyone in Silver Oak would die old.

She watched a robin twitter inanely at its mate as she reflected. About the only risky thing she had done since she had dropped out was joining the Wizard Muggle Alliance. She smiled a sad, bitter smile. And Amanda thought her schism over the chess game was stupid. Jill had left everything she loved out of senseless fear. She had never even considered becoming an auror.

Would Kirsten have wanted this? Finding the answer somewhere in the ancient limbs of the elm in the center of the cemetery, Jill suddenly cast the dismal lilies onto a neighboring tomb and instead selected a nearby cluster of wild heather for her sister's grave.