I Will Live (a thousand million lives)
prologue
Claudia Rizzo considered herself a good woman. She was in her late thirties and worked in the public library, a minimum wage job that however was enough to get her by in the little town that was Little Whinging. She personally knew everyone who came into the library, occasionally exchanging niceties and opinions on some of their reads. She could often be found helping some of the younger visitors, engaging them with sweet smiles whenever they were too shy to ask a question but not too prideful to come up to her desk.
A little girl, her personal favourite, often disappeared behind the many shelves of the library and sometimes she could find her on one of the old, rocking chairs near the big window — the one where you could see the playground on Magnolia Road, where many kids littered about. Her name was Heather Potter and Claudia was absolutely smitten.
She was a quiet but opinionated child, determined and with a certain fire burning in her emerald green eyes. At times, when the library was too still and Claudia bored, the two would sit together and discuss the many topics the child would read about. Heather devoured the books. The first time Claudia saw her dragging around a big tome, the child was six; she had approached, curious and meaning to convince her to read something easier — after all, at six children aren't the best readers around! She was soon reprimanded by the child, something she still finds funny to this day, and told very clearly that if Heather Potter wanted to read about a girl falling in love with a vampire in a fictional town with a ridiculous name, then she could.
Claudia's eyes had narrowed that day, annoyed at the child's lack of manners, but she decided to leave the little girl be and proceeded back to her desk. Weeks passed and turned into months and after fantasy novels, the girl delved into history books, biology tomes and sometimes the occasional comic book. Heather never approached her again until one day, when she was nine, she rushed to the desk with a book that had just come in.
The adventures of Harry Potter: the genesis of a Hero was a new book for pre-teens and up published by an unknown author. No one knew who the real ideator was, but soon after its release it was sold out in every single book shop in Britain, possibly even overseas. Both children and adults loved the story of little Harry Potter, a magical child who had unknowingly saved magical society with the power of a mother's love. It was a nice story, one that most likely would be continued for many years to come — and that was why Claudia herself was ecstatic when various copies of the book were delivered to the library she cared so much for, available to the people she had come to love.
Heather Potter, for the first time in three years, had bounded to her desk with a childlike gleam in her green eyes, brown wavy hair flying behind her as she ran. The smile on her face was huge and a soft blush coloured her tan cheeks. "Harry is just like me!" she had said to Claudia, who looked amused. "I can do strange things too and my parents and his parents have the same names! Mine died in a car accident, though…" she trailed off, looking disappointed.
Claudia couldn't really fault a child for that. Seeing yourself into a character you admired was great and something that happened often — and when that connection between person and character formed, it was only normal, especially for children, to wish their lives were more similar. For all Heather Potter seemed like a mature, closed off child she was still just that, a child.
Claudia listened as the girl babbled on and on about the book and the amazing adventure Harry Potter had, a small smile forming on her face. Heather Potter, differently from her first opinion, was a good child. She didn't have much contact with other children, which led her to isolate herself and never learn how to relate to them, but she had enough contact with adults to maintain a conversation going without running around in circles.
When Heather rushed through the doors of the library one morning in June, just before her eleventh birthday, with a burning red scar on her forehead and a panicked look in her eyes Claudia almost had a stroke. Did someone attack her? Were her guardians abusing her? Maybe it was the round, little boy she sometimes saw her with, the one with blond hair and blue eyes. He was enough of a bully, Claudia thought, considering the amount of children that ran inside the library to escape his clutches and find refuge in books.
"What happened?" she fretted, long fingers moving some stray hair away from the little girl's forehead. The child sniffled, obviously trying not to cry, and hugged her instead of explaining. "You're a really good person, I think you should be a mom," she had said.
Heather closed her eyes, the precious emeralds hidden from sight, and a stray tear escaped her.
Claudia Rizzo considered herself a good woman. She was in her early forties and worked at the public library; she was good with both adults and children and always knew what kind of book would speak to their soul. Claudia Rizzo had no recollection about an Heather Potter and considering she remembered every single child who entered the doors of her beloved workplace very well, she knew she had never met a girl by that name.
But at night flashes of sweet smiles and emerald eyes would plague her dreams and in the day she would live with a devastating sense of loss, never knowing what it really was.
When a month later a big half-giant would arrive at 4, Privet Drive looking for the Girl-Who-Lived, he would only find a family of three who had no idea who he was talking about. When Albus Dumbledore, leader of the Light, would ask Mrs. Figg for information, the squib would look at him confused and wonder who he was. When the Ministry of Magic would investigate, they would discover that no one in Little Whinging, Surrey knew who Heather Potter was and that she simply disappeared off of the face of Earth.
They say that we can't change history, but can instead learn from it — one thing was certain, Heather Potter would learn from his story.
