Note:

Thanks to EMyra for following the story, and to une-papillon-de-nuit, once more, for your uplifting review!

We are still stuck on Privet Drive for this chapter, but now the plot will start to crank into motion... Beginning with the clandestine meeting of Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Hagrid, who has, in tow, The Boy Who Lived...

On a side note, it's kind of weird, but though James and Lily Potter are killed on the 31st of October, Harry is delivered to Privet Drive on the night of November 1st... I've decided to stick to that date, even though continuity is a little shaky. Hope you don't mind!

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling the Utmost Venerable.

Chapter Three Totally Optional Cast (in order of appearance)

Mackenzie Foy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Young Alice
Kathryn Hunter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arabella Figg
Richard Harris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Albus Dumbledore
Maggie Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minerva McGonagall
Robby Coltrane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rubeus Hagrid
Asa Butterfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Young Harry Potter
Daniel Radcliffe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harry Potter
Harry Melling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dudley Dursley

III | Lemon Drop

1 November 1981 – August 1992
Privet Drive

It is on one such street-spying night when she is ten years old, that Alice witnesses something quite unexpected, indeed.

From the early morning of that day, the world outside her window seems changed—as though some great event has happened, which she cannot place or guess at. Upon waking up and looking out through the narrow slit between the blinds, she spots the now-familiar cat with strange markings about the eyes, sitting on a gate across the street, reading a newspaper. The cat is reading, she's sure, for it stares down at the paper for minutes before the Dursley man comes out of his house around eight o'clock-at which point the paper promptly disappears into thin air.

All day long, there are odd people about, wearing cloaks and robes of all different colors, a few of them walking quietly down the street in pairs at noon, and more coming through towards three in the afternoon. Not to mention the multitudes of owls swooping through the air in broad daylight, crowding the roofs and seeming to converse momentarily before taking off again into the blue sky. On the television, there are reports of shooting stars in Kent.

In the early evening, a disturbance arrives in the form of a letter. It comes tumbling down the chimney and into the ashes of the fireplace, stopping their already distracted game of scrabble in its tracks.

Ms. Figg stands up slowly from the table and leans over, plucking the envelope out of the fireplace and brushing off the layer of ash before unfolding the parchment and reading it. Alice watches her from across the room, her mind no longer focused on figuring out what word she might form from her nonsensical jumble of letters. Arabella reads the brief note, and then reads it again, and again.

He is gone. It's over. We've lost Lily and James Potter. Their son was the one. More to come from Dumbledore.
- Alastor

She has to read it upwards of five times before her mind allows her to understand and believe the message. A wave of exhaustion comes over her with crushing force, like when one begins to come down with a cold suddenly, the body giving itself an excuse to become sick at the first sign of rest after a long and arduous period of stress. The first thing she does is fold the letter and place it in her pocket, to ensure that it will stay out of reach of the girl. The second thing she does is to remind herself to inhale, and do so. The third is to turn from the room and climb the stairs to her bedroom. Once inside, she shuts the door and locks it quietly, collapsing into her bed and falling asleep in an instant, before the tears of shock and loss have a chance to come.

Alice, left downstairs, looks up after the woman for a time before venturing to follow her. But once on the second floor, realizing that something must have happened, something connected to the strange happenings around the country, she decides against disturbing the woman, and instead goes quietly into her own room, shutting the door.

And so she ends up staying in her own room all day long, too deep in thought, and too interested in the happenings outside the window to grow hungry or bored. Through all of it, the cat remains, sitting like a statue on the fence, looking intently toward the far corner of the road, expectant.

It's midnight, and Alice's eyes are straining from tiredness, when a white bearded, burgundy-red robed, half-moon spectacled man arrives out of nowhere on the street corner. By now, the girl has lifted the blinds away from her window, given the cover of night, so she has no difficulty seeing him in her peripheral vision, and squinting as he takes a few more steps down the street, before coming to a stop again.

She watches, enthralled, as he removes something that looks like one of Ms. Figg's lighters from the pocket of his robes, and holds it up into the air. Alice gasps quietly as, one by one, all the light posts up and down Privet Drive go out-their light traveling in contained balls across the night to the upheld object, into which they disappear. In just seconds, the street is nearly pitch black, but for the light from the moon, and she has to squint even harder to watch the mysterious man pocket the object and proceed down the street, closer and closer.

Suddenly, Alice's interest is piqued even further than before. All day she has been trying to piece together the strange events, and this is the largest of all her clues—this man is someone who is like her; someone who can do magic. Something suddenly stirs in her heart, and her head fills with a single hopeful thought: perhaps she has been found, perhaps this man is here to rescue her, to take her to her rightful world...

But her thoughts are soon interrupted, and she becomes quickly pulled back into reality. The cat who has been sitting on the fence all day has been replaced by a woman, wearing dark emerald robes, a pointed hat, and square-shaped spectacles.

It promptly becomes clear that the two are more than acquainted with each other as they fall into step side by side, proceeding slowly down the street, closer and closer to Ms. Figg's house. The man with the exceptionally long beard takes a yellow lemon drop candy from his robes pocket and offers it to the woman, who declines, before putting it in his mouth.

Eventually their slow walk comes to a stop and they stand still in front of the house across the street, the house of the Dursleys, continuing to converse. The woman seems to ask question after question, and the man nods his head up and down gravely. Alice's eyes strain through the darkness as she tries to discern what they might be saying, but she cannot hear, and it is too dim to possibly try to read their lips.

But just moments later, a rumbling sound arrives to her ears from somewhere behind the house, somewhere in the sky, and she runs to the window at the other end of her room, looking up to see what looks like one large headlight parting the drifts of blue clouds above. The rumbling grows louder and louder, and soon enough, she is running back to the other window and looking down into the street, where the flying motorcycle lands, its engine going quiet as its giant rider dismounts.

Alice's heart pounds in her chest loudly as she watches him approach the two normal-sized people. It's not until she's looked closely for another minute, that she realizes the giant, leather-coated, frizzy-haired man has been holding a small blanketed bundle—a baby.

The white-bearded man, at length, takes the bundled child from the giant man's arms, and the latter seems to diminish in the darkness, a deep and mournful wail suddenly breaking from his throat. But the sound is just as quickly silenced by the woman in the pointed hat.

The three of them talk for a minute before moving in a slow procession up the walkway leading to number Four's front door. The man who had put out the lights sets the boy down on the doorstep in his blanket, and pulls a letter out of his robes, setting it on top of the sleeping child's chest. They all look down at him for the next minute, and then finally the man with the long white beard leads his two companions back towards the street.

The giant man with wild black hair is the first to depart: getting back on his motorcycle and flying away into the sky, the sound of the engine ebbing gradually into silence.

The woman in green robes is replaced suddenly by the cat with spectacle-shaped lines around its eyes, and slinks away and around the corner at the end of the street.

The only one left, the man in maroon robes looks up and down the street for a few measured seconds before, suddenly, his chin tilts up, and he looks directly at Alice through the glass of her window. At the realization that she, the spy, has been discovered, the girl becomes frightened, her heart jumping into her chest for a moment. She slowly starts to step back from the window, nervous to be looked at, sure she's just broken some rule, or seen something that was anything but intended for her eyes.

But the odd man stops her from hiding away by putting a hand up into the air, signaling safety. She steps back to the window, peering out curiously. He tilts his chin down, and reaches into his pocket, drawing out another one of his lemon drop candies. With his other hand he reaches into a secret place and produces a slender wooden wand.

Alice feels her jaw slacken, the entirety of her body trembling with excitement and a kind of relief as the candy is made to hover in midair, controlled by the man's wand, which makes delicate flitting motions. Slowly the candy floats up through the air until it is just outside her window. She can only stare at it in awe, looking down at the man. He flicks his wand gently, making the candy tap once, twice against the windowpane, prompting her to open her window and take it.

Carefully, she does so, a small night breeze, damp and cool, blowing back her hair, stirring up the still air of her bedroom, of her life. She reaches out one hand, and the man standing on the street lets the candy drop into her open palm, smiling as he watches her place it in her mouth.

Alice lifts up a tentative hand and waves at him.

Albus Dumbledore waves back.

Then he goes back down the street towards the spot where he'd appeared earlier. He turns around, and returns the lights to the lamp posts, a slight glint of light glittering on his spectacles before he waves at her again, the hem of his robes swaying in the breeze. And, a split second later, he is gone.

Once she's registered the finality of his disappearance, Alice turns from her window to find every single object in her room—aside from the bed—floating in midair. She takes a moment to dilute her extreme excitement and happiness, and soon the objects settle back into their original positions without a sound. But inside of her she still kindles a flame of wonder, only growing, expanding so fully that she thinks her chest might soon be too small to hold it. She lays down on her bed, and sucks on the candy until it's completely gone, staring at the ceiling and replaying the memory of the wizard with his delicately flicking wand—the first time she'd ever seen magic performed the proper way.

But after a minute of rubbing her tongue thoughtfully against the roof of her mouth, its bumpiness perpetuated by the lingering taste of the lemon, she suddenly remembers another key player in the event just passed: the bundled infant. Still laying on the doorstep, across the street.

Alice returns to the still-open window, and looks down towards the abandoned child, out in the cold night. He doesn't cry at all, is totally silent, on the contrary, in a deep sleep. But she still cannot help her worry. Something in her tells her to help him, in any way she can—some part of her which remembers what it feels like to be a swaddled baby, left out in the cold.

Before long her concern for him wins out, and she leaves her bedroom, going across the hall and tapping on Ms. Figg's door after finding it locked.

"Ms. Figg," she whispers loudly.

"Alice?" Arabella moans softly from the other side of the door.

"Ms. Figg, there's a baby on the doorstep across the street. A group of magic people came and left him there."

The woman gathers herself up from her bed and goes into the girl's room across the corridor, looking out the window at the boy—who, she knows, could only be Harry Potter—on the doorstep of Number Four, Privet Drive.

"It's cold outside. Will he freeze?" Alice worries aloud.

Arabella Figg shakes her head no. "He will be perfectly safe... Who did you say put him there?" But before Alice can answer, she suddenly realizes that the girl's window has been left open. "Why is the window open?" she asks.

Alice shrugs her shoulders. "The man gave me a lemon drop."

After a moment of thought, Ms. Figg smiles to herself, and says, "Albus," under her breath.

"Who?" says the girl, curiosity reaching another peak. "Is that the man's name? The man with the long white beard and half-moon eyeglasses?"

Arabella half-opens her mouth, almost answering, before she remembers herself, and gives the girl the look she gives her whenever she starts asking questions she knows she shouldn't answer. "Go to sleep, Alice, dear," she says quietly, bending down to kiss the girl on the top of her head. "And remember to close the window."

Alice nods her head in the affirmative, and lets her guardian leave the room, closing the door around behind her.

But Alice ends up staying up all through the night, keeping her eyes peeled open, watching the quiet bundled form of the boy on the Dursleys' doorstep as though he will perish if she looks away.

The night is long, however, and she almost starts to doze off by the time dawn pinkens the sky. She would certainly fall asleep where she stands, but instead she is jolted into further wakefulness, as Petunia Dursley opens her front door, preparing to set out the empty milk glasses, and screams out loud at the sight of her nephew on her doorstep.

Over the next eleven years, Harry Potter comes to be a frequent guest—or, should we say, refugee—in Ms. Figg's house. He comes to stay an hour or two, or longer, when the Dursleys haave to go somewhere to humor their son Dudley, and don't trust Harry to stay in the house alone.

Petunia sends him across the street on those days with a measure of relief, happy to have that constant reminder of her freak sister out of her immediate surroundings, but also with some excitement: perhaps Harry could be like a spy, infiltrating that curious Figg woman's house, and will tell her about what happens inside. But there's always something that stops her from trying to draw out information from him.

Harry and Alice quickly become good companions, despite the disparity caused by the two-year age difference between them, and Alice's intellectual maturity. She soon weaves herself into his childhood as a vital thread, though she doesn't do so intentionally. The hours or days when he comes over to the house are like paradise to the girl, who has been starved for companionship all her life, and is more than happy to mentor, make innocent mischief, and play games with the young boy.

The one burden upon her shoulders is the absolute necessity of keeping her powers under lock and key while he is in the house. Once, she comes close to slipping up, when the two of them have been overtaken by a long bout of joyful laughter and her lamp starts to lift off of the bedside table. But she quickly manages it and young Harry doesn't notice a thing.

Ms. Figg has told her only that Harry, too, is of the magic folk, but that he doesn't know it, yet, and cannot be told. Alice is confused by this to say the least—Harry doesn't make anything fly on accident when he is happy, and when he is sad or quit, no lights flicker out in the house, the way they do for her. But there is something odd and exceptional about Harry that she cannot deny; something manifested in that lightning-bolt scar in the center of his forehead. She asks her ever-growing list of questions over breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and before bedtime, but Ms. Figg keeps her insufferable silence. And though she longs to show Harry her magic, to have a partner in arms, she keeps from doing so.

A scar had formed from the deep scratch Mr. Paws gave her on that day when her magic had lashed out in response to her pain and anger. On days when she longs to show Harry her powers, she will find herself staring down at that thin white line on her forearm, reminding her how dangerous and frightening it had been to lose control, to cause another creature pain with her magic, even by accident. So, she comes to the decision not to tell Harry about herself, or about himself. She knows doing this makes her a hypocrite, for that's just what Ms. Figg had done to her, but she does it anyway; for the first time, understanding something new about her guardian's intentions.

Months pass, and turn into years. Alice is the one to teach Harry how to read, and how to fend off bad thoughts. But there are experiences he has in the outside world which she can never help him to process: bullying at the hands of his peers at the public school and at the hands of his own cousin, insecurities from simply being outside in the world. But they navigate through the years together, waving at each other and making gestures of hope and support from their windows, which face each other across the street, before going to bed each night.

When Alice turns thirteen years old, the growth in her appearance finally slows down to match her real age. Harry is just a month shy of his eleventh birthday, and she is hard at work planning a secret celebration for him, with his favorite sweets, some books she thinks he will love, and a new game she's invented. But, as the last day of July approaches, her plans are derailed suddenly by the appearance of owls, crowding the street, causing a ruckus, perched on Ms. Figg's own roof day and night, all of them carrying letters tied to their wiry ankles and dropping them into the Dursleys' house in any manner possible.

And one day, while she watches from the window, the three Dursleys with Harry in tow hurry out the front door of their letter-stormed house, pack themselves into their car and speed off down the road.

A day comes and goes. And another. And another.

Alice soon becomes worried at Harry's long-lasting absence, and finds herself wringing her hands to herself, the lights flickering on and off through the long days. A week later, Ms. Figg receives a letter, brought to her by a tawny owl which balances on the windowsill, reads it, and assures Alice that Harry is safe at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"What's that?" Alice asks, her relief at the news of Harry's safety threatened by the sudden introduction of this School into her awareness.

"A school for young magic people," answers Ms. Figg ambiguously.

"Then why don't you send me there?" Alice says, after a minute of consideration, keeping her sadness and confusion under control.

Arabella Figg stays silent.

Over the next days, Alice finds herself staring at the scar given to her by Mr. Paws, more and more. Eating is difficult for her, as is sleeping, and she cannot seem to do much of anything with herself, ceasing in her reading, and incapable of retaining the information she receives from her guardian in their sessions of homeschooling (which have already begun to seem more than pointless).

Ms. Figg recognizes the symptoms of a dangerous self-loathing, and quickly scrambles for a solution, which she finds soon in the form of a letter from Dumbledore, suggesting that Harry and Alice maintain a correspondence throughout the year.

Alice jumps at the opportunity to pen long letters to Harry, which are sent back to Hogwarts around the ankle of the tawny owl that brings Harry's notes back to her. But even this can do little to cure the deep gnawing jealousy she feels, and the pain that keeps her awake at night, doubting whether Ms. Figg had told the truth when she assured her that she was not a danger to the other witches and wizard that belonged to her world.

She passes the year in a constant pain from a hole which seems punched out of her center. But when, that summer, Harry arrives back home from the magical school, the wound seems to be patched up, if only slightly, by his presence.

The Dursleys suddenly enforce much stricter rules for Harry than they ever had before, and he is not allowed to go across the street to stay at Ms. Figg's house at all. So, for the first few weeks of summer they are confined to making gestures at each other from their windows, only guessing at what the other might be trying to communicate. Alice stays up long into the nights trying to figure out how to surpass these barriers—and one night, it comes to her: something so simple that she thinks herself stupid for not thinking of it far earlier.

It starts with the memory of the wizard—whose name she now knows is Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts school—flicking his wand and making the lemon drop candy levitate its way up to her window. And soon Alice realizes that if she can only figure out how to do it herself, how to make a notebook, for example, fly over to Harry's window, then they will be able to write to each other.

The next morning, bright and early, she sits up next to the window and waits until Harry wakes up. When he does she gets his attention by waving her arms in front of the window, and he looks out at her, making their gesture for 'what is it?'

She takes a pencil from her bedside table and with it, makes a flicking motion, as though it were a wand. She does it once, then twice again, until understanding dawns on Harry's face. He holds up a finger for her to wait, and she watches as he bends over, rifles in a dresser drawer, and draws out a long, thin box, from which he takes a wand—a real wand, Alice realizes with a skip in her heartbeat.

She makes a motion with the pencil, encouraging him to use his wand somehow, to solve their dilemma. But Harry sakes his head in the negative. Alice is more than upset for the remainder of that day, incapable of understanding: she simply doesn't believe that after a year at a magic school, Harry would come home not knowing how to use his wand.

But regardless, she understands that she must solve the problem herself. She knows that the thing to do is to figure out how to make a notebook levitate with her mind, and tries to do so with extreme focus, but no matter how she stretches and strains, she simply can't. Over the days as she continues trying to train herself to channel her power towards one specific aim, she becomes increasingly exhausted, and finally after a fruitless week has passed, she collapses onto her bed and cries from her incapability.

Her feelings roil inside of her—she needs the notebook to fly, she needs it more than anything else in the world. With the flood of tears and emotion comes a release of stress, and after a few minutes, she looks over towards the notebook to find it in midair—it had happened on its own, as though in a response to her need. Allowing herself to remain at ease, the girl practices keeping it in the air, and then makes it fly around the room slowly, letting her will lead it without turbulence on a track of her own devising.

By the time night comes, she's found complete control over the object, and when Harry comes into his room and approaches his window, she sends the notebook out into the night, causing it to travel across the gap between their windows and arrive into the waiting hands of Harry, whose eyes are bright and wide at the realization of Alice's powers.

Harry takes the book and writes something in it, then holds it out the window. Alice makes it fly back across the street to her, opens it, and reads his words: "I'm not allowed to use magic outside of school."

Seeing his words written there, and feeling the magical power—her own magical power—sizzling off of the notebook, Alice looks up at Harry and grins widely, her heart taking wing.

Every night they stand at their windows and write back and forth to each other in the flying notebook. They write through their commonality, both feeling trapped in their houses, Harry longing to return to the world he's found and Alice longing to join him in it. She is enthralled with the tales he tells her of Hogwarts and the things that took place over the course of the year. She believes his every word, wondering at the wizard history he tells her—though he never, ever tells her who he truly is, that he is the Boy Who Lived, the one who defeated Voldemort.

That summer, Harry slowly grows depressed despite the lifeline provided to him by a friend who doesn't approach their friendship with the knowledge of his celebrity. Throughout the whole summer, he hasn't received a single letter from Ron or Hermione.

Alice feels slightly spiteful towards Harry when he complains sadly of this to her. He writes about how displaced he feels in the muggle world, how desperate he is to get back to Hogwarts as soon as he possibly can. But she knows that he only has to wait the summer, whereas she may be waiting for years... But for the time being she soaks up Harry's stories of the Wizarding World, imagining his experiences to be her own—though she is always proved to be a fake when the magic he describes fails to work itself into her dreams at night.

On the early morning of Harry's twelfth birthday, before the sun comes up, Alice sends a package of sweets across the street to him. But the candies do little to cheer him up: the Dursleys, he writes to her in their third notebook, are inviting their friends the Masons over that night, and he will be confined to his room for the whole evening. Alice understands that Harry's misery springs not from the fact that he will have to be in his room, but from the Dursleys' cruelty to him.

She makes the shape of a heart with her hands that evening before he has to go downstairs to be lectured by his uncle, waving at him encouragingly before he leaves the room.

Once he's gone, Alice lingers at the window, absentmindedly watching the street as the sun sets and dusk ensues. She looks up and down Privet Drive, wondering whatever happened to the cat that used to linger on the fence-the cat which was really a witch.

But her thoughts are interrupted when she senses an abrupt movement in Harry's room across the street. She turns to look through the window, and finds that Harry hasn't come back through the door. But in his room, standing on his bed, is a strange looking creature, like a miniature person with wrinkled skin, a bald head, giant orb-like eyes and a long pointed nose. After a few moments, the creature starts to jump up and down on the bed, and Alice watches in mingled wonder and worry, until Harry opens his bedroom door and enters upon the unexpected scene.

She watches with furrowed eyebrows as Harry converses with the strange, surely magical creature on his bed, and the latter begins promptly to hit himself on the head with the base of Harry's lamp.

Mr. Dursley comes into the room soon, Harry hiding the small person in the closet, only letting him out again after Mr. Dursley has left, shutting the door behind him. Alice watches them converse further, and then suddenly, notices the creature pull out a stack of letters from its ragged clothes. The girl gasps quietly as she infers these must be the letters that Harry had been missing from his friends at Hogwarts. The strange creature must have been keeping them from Harry somehow.

Just moments later, the creature runs suddenly out of Harry's room, and the boy chases him out the door, after the bundle of letters he'd been wishing for, for so long.

The next morning, Vernon Dursley sets a ladder against the side of the house and puts bars over Harry's windows. But Alice can still manage to maneuver the notebook through the bars, and she is shocked to read what had happened: the creature (whose proper name was a house elf, and who was called Dobby), had kept the letters from him in an attempt to keep him from going back to Hogwarts. When Harry had refused to agree with him, the elf had caused a cake to fall on top of the Dursleys' guest's head, and then disappeared, leaving Harry to be blamed for the catastrophe.

For a long time, Harry is confined to his room day and night, being given meager meals three times a day and being allowed out twice to use the loo. Alice does her best to improve upon his miserable days by contributing more tasteful food to add onto the meager plates of food the Dursleys give him, but in reality there is little she can do to ease the pain of his predicament. He soon begins to worry whether he will be capable of escaping when the time comes for him to go back to Hogwarts in the fall.

One early morning, though, in the beginning of August, Harry is rescued. Alice wakes before the sun has risen to a rumbling sound somewhere in the sky—a sound familiar to that of the engine of the motorcycle which had brought Harry to Privet Drive in the first place all those years ago. She runs to her window and squints up at the sky, seeing two headlights, this time, appear out of the clouds.

It is a light blue flying car, and it swoops down into the space over the street below, pulling right up to Harry's bedroom window. Alice squints out at the group of redheaded boys in the front seat, knowing that these must be the Weasleys, who Harry had told her about.

She watches, intrigued and excited by the sudden turn of events, as they hook a rope to the bars over Harry's window and drive down the street a ways, pulling the bars clean of the house, and taking away a sizable part of the window itself, too. Her heart thumps in worry and anticipation while Harry throws his trunk into the back of the car, and passes his white owl Hedwig into the car. The boy himself comes last, stepping over the gap between his windowsill and the car just as Mr. Dursley throws open the bedroom door, entering upon the spectacle and running to the window, grabbing onto Harry's leg before he can make it all the way to safety.

A few stretched-out seconds of angst pass, but soon enough the car flies away, carrying Harry Potter inside of it, and Vernon is left to tumble out of the window, landing in the bushes beneath the window.

At first, Alice has to keep herself from shouting aloud with happiness at her friend's victory. But soon, the adrenaline wears off, and frays to the point of no return. Within a matter of days her entire disposition changes: she becomes depressed and darker than ever before, not wanting to do any work, feeling constantly ill and exhausted. She retreats into herself, almost dormant, knowing she will never be rescued, will never really enter upon that magical world to which she belongs, which she so desires to be let into. Letting Harry's words give her hope had been her own fault, and she believes herself to be foolish, now, for letting herself kindle such hope in her heart in the first place.

The girls menstrual cycle arrives for the first time as August turns to September. Ms. Figg hopes that all of this anxiety and horrible emotion in her charge had only been perpetuated by this new development in her changing body. But once the first cycle has passed, it becomes clear that this hadn't been the case, and Alice goes right back to being depressed and sad.

She cries all the time—except for when she cannot—and never feels anything but anxious and sick. She barely eats anything at all, and spends her nights and days laying down on her bed, refusing to close her window, even at night. She leaves it wide open, hoping that someone might come to steal her away...

But no-one does. So, Alice remains... and remains... and remains...

Spells used in this chapter:

1. I like to think that Dumbledore used some sort of warmth-bubble charm on Harry before leaving him to stay the night on the doorstep... I don't have a name for it, but there it is.
2. "Wingardium Leviosa," the levitation spell. Dumbledore doesn't actually say this spell aloud, but it's what he uses to send the lemon drop up to Alice's window.

With this chapter, I wanted to make sure that I built a solid foundation for Alice's friendship with Harry, but there were some times when I had to hurry through it (or skip over a few uneventful months) for the sake of your brain cells. (I wasn't about to dump eleven whole years' worth of storytelling on you). I hope it didn't feel too rushed!

I thought that having Alice's depression spring from the morning Harry is rescued by Ron and the twins in the flying car would give the scene an interesting new perspective. It's an extremely happy one from Harry's point of view, but for someone who is left behind without hope of a similar rescue... not so much.

Even so early into the process, I find myself looking forward to the next chapter from the moment I post the one I've just finished! I hope you feel the same, reading them! Please let me know what you think of the story—something short and silly is far better than nothing at all!

Our favorite Remus Lupin is showing up in the next chapter, and I am so excited!

Thank you for not plagiarizing my writing!

On_Errand_Bad

6,100 words

Wednesday, 14 October 2020