I finished writing the whole thing. Sixteen chapters in total. I'm happy with the ending, less abrupt than my others. I'm not quite sure why I'm putting all this. Just read.

A pink sore thumb on an already nasty hand was the perfect way to describe the foster house. It didn't take Alicia much wandering after apparating over to her old building.

The neighborhood wasn't much to brag about, with peeling paint and messy yards, but it was the pink house that put them all to shame. The shutters were falling off, the shingles sliding off the roof. The siding that made the house so pink was broken in some places, and falling off in others.

The yard was nothing but dead grass and broken toys. Along with children playing on the dead grass with broken toys.

"What?" one of the kids hollered at her, a little boy with his overalls hook broken.

"I..." Alicia suddenly realized she didn't know the name of the foster mother she was looking for. "I need to talk to the lady of the house."

"We don't want to buy it!" the same little boy hollered, and his companions, about four other children, all laughed at this.

"Who said I'm selling?" Alicia questioned, putting a hand on her hip. She realized that attitude was key here, just like it had been when she lived a few streets over. "Tell the lady of the house I'm here." she finally ordered.

The mouthy little boy went into the house, grumbling and shuffling his feet as he walked. The other children just watched, curiosity taking over.

After just a few moments, a very large woman made her way out the door, followed by the mouthy boy. She was wearing a pink house dress, it almost matched the house, with black polka dots. She had a scarf in in her brown curly hair that went with it. She had no shoes, and was stirring a large bowl that looked to have pancake mix in it, despite the fact that lunch was coming, not breakfast.

"Can I help yeh?" she asked, squinting in her eyes in the sunlight.

"I'm looking for someone who used to live with you. Katie, or Katerina. She was adopted by the Bells." Alicia started, figuring that her lack of politeness was going to unnoticed.

"I remember her. Don't remember many of 'em, but I remember her. C'min." the large woman instructed, still stirring as she spoke.

Alicia followed her through the front door, and not surprisingly, the inside of the house didn't seem much better than the outside. Pictures on the walls that remained still, pictures of countless children with countless stories. The furniture was worn and dinged up, and the toys that filled the room looked older than Alicia.

"That girl is hard to ferget, came here, all those nasty curses. Most of the kids I take in, muggleborns who's parents freak out, then they're given to me, but not her." the woman went on, still cooking away.

"Why?" Alicia questoined, even though she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"Well, there was the whole not sayin' nothing but curses stint. But that's not the most memorable part." and then she stopped talking. The woman just stopped talking.

"What is?" Alicia was practically begging for an explanation.

"She came back. When she was about nine. That's not normal. When a girl ge's adopted, we expect 'er to stay with the family, but not her. She would come for visits." the large pink lady was barely audible over the pots and pans she was banging, but Alicia made the words out.

"Why'd she come back?" it really didn't matter if Alicia sounded offensive or not.

"Tha's an easy question. Jordan. She came back for Jordan."

"Who was Jordan?"
"Her best friend. A couple years older, but Jordan watched out for the girl."

"Do you happen to know where I can find this Jordan?"

Without as much as a word about it, the woman sprawled an address on an old receipt. One of the many that littered the kitchen, actually.

With a few words of thanks, Alicia was out the door, just in time to see a pack of hungry looking children migrate from the living room to the kitchen.

Alicia escaped from the collapsing pink house, reading the address over and over again. It couldn't be right, yet at the same time, there was no way it was wrong. That large woman in pink was probably the closest thing Jordan ever had to a mother, so she'd know the correct address.

She wondered because she knew exactly what the address was. When she had lived in the nasty flats, she would walk an insane amount, as in about eighteen blocks, to cruddy little bar that sold Fire Whiskey cheap. Being young and fresh out of Hogwarts and working odd jobs that could drive anyone to the bottle, Alicia knew the bar well.

But she hadn't been there for about two years, and it wasn't likely that the bartender would know her name still. Not to say that she was an alcoholic, but the bar was a hot hang out spot.

It was worth a shot, and it wasn't like she couldn't use the excercise. So Alicia let her curiosity give in, for the umpteenth time since she decided to find her friend, and started walking towards the old bar.

The Whispy Willow is not the name of what one would call a 'tough' bar, but that's what it had become. Alicia stood outside of her old haunt, smiling a bit to herself as she remembered every little crack in the windows she helped to make. The biggest crack, which like all the others was easy to fix, but the bartender/owner just didn't care, was made the last time Alicia had been there. An ex boyfriend showed up, and George, being drunker than he ever had been in school, had slipped him some new experiment and blown the guy across the room. Ah, the memories.

The old door still squeaked as Alicia pushed through it, and much to her surprise, faced a full house.

"Remember me?" Alicia asked the bartender. A large man with no hair, and several tattoos. His name? Billy.

"Yeh, want a Fire Whiskey?" he gruffly asked.

"It's barely one o'clock!" Alicia snorted, laughing a bit the idea.

"Well, yuh want lunch?"

"You serve lunch now?"

"You've been gone awhile."

"Have you started cleaning this place, too?" Alicia's eyes were big, full of laughter.

"Things haven't changed that much." Billy remained gruff, not really catching onto the laughter.

"Oh, I love this place." Alicia sighed, leaning against the bar, scanning the now restaurant. It had become a hot spot for starving students in the area, a few preppy intellectuals having heated discussions at tables, and a few punks chilling in a boothe. Next to Alicia, two girls with shirts way too low who seemed to be either drunk already, or still drunk from the previoust night.

Knowing better than to ask Billy anymore questions, Alicia turned to the drunk girls to inquire about the mysterious Jordan.

"Would either of you happen to know Jordan?" she asked, leaning forward a bit, making her able to smell the alcohol on the girls breath.

"Jordan's a demon in the sack." one of the girls laughed.

"And out of it!" the other girl finished, making both of them laugh harder.

"That's great." Alicia said, patronizing a bit, "And where is this demon?"

Both girls pointed to a stair case at the back of the place, which evidently led up to a flat.

And Alicia walked up the stairs, ready to face the first best friend of someone she thought was a best friend.