Disclaimer: I own none of this – just the idea

I was seven when I was bitten. It was my fault. I shouldn't have been there. Bad things happen when you go messing in places you had no right being. I didn't believe it then. I don't think I do now. Not really. Not since school and pranks and hidden tunnels and sneaking around and animagi. I should have listened to my mother. I'm cursed with this for the rest of my life because I didn't listen. I ruined her life as well.

I was eleven when I met him. I was shy and nervous and there he was in the carriage just staring out the window. He looked as lost and as afraid as I did so I took the seat across from him. I recognised his name from somewhere but I couldn't place it. Besides, he seemed nice enough. Smelt a bit like blackberry bubblegum. Another boy entered the carriage not long after. James Potter. I thought he was rude at first because he wouldn't shake his hand. But he didn't seem to mind. Just said Potter owed him a knut. James bought him blackberry bubblegum. I've never been able to eat it since without thinking of them.

I was fifteen when they cracked it. The hidden code to transforming. The final solution to the great puzzle of animagi transformations. It changed my life. It made me and broke me. It gave me a pack and took it away. I don't dwell. Not really. Who knew what the price for just been together would be? Who knew that us; the four greatest friends in history would slowly destroy each other – simply because we were there.

I was fifteen when he did it. When he betrayed me for the first and last time. He killed me. From the inside out. But I forgave him. I told him it didn't matter. But it did. It always did. It was the beginning of a downward spiral that would leave him broken and lost. That would leave James dead. Peter a death eater and me? It would leave me just… being.

I was twenty-five when I thought he'd done it again. James gone. Lily gone. Peter gone. Harry gone. And him. The once lively, bubbly and energetic him. Gone. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. All gone. And me? Still here, still living, just watching the seconds tick by. Waiting for a peace of mind that will never come. A relief that will always be just out of reach.

I was just eleven when I met him. If only. If only we could all have stayed… just eleven. Happy, young, carefree, innocent. Alive.