Disclaimer: JK Rowling, you did an awsome job, now you are done and we´re left without new books. The characters are all yours; I just borrow them for a while. I don´t make money out of it, so please don´t sue me!

Chapter 1: The lost teenage years

"Oh my Goddess, how much do I hate Monday mornings!" With those words Eva Blythe slammed her hand over the radio alarm clock beside her bed. She had been reading all the way through Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince again yesterday, not being able to find sleep until the early morning hours. And now it was 6 a.m., she was not the Hermione Granger of her dreams, there was no possibility she would meet Harry and Ron for breakfast in the Great Hall, no potion classes with the Greasy Git and certainly no discussing or sneaking after Draco Malfoy. She was Eva Blythe, semi-respectable Spanish teacher in her mid 20th ("Oh my Goddess, how did I become so old?") and she certainly had to take care for herself.

"Good morning, Eva. You have to get up. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Get your hair ready. Make breakfast. Look at the alternative for the listening comprehension questions you can give to your weaker students. And for God sake, you have to tidy up a bit." With this thoughts and the beginning wave of guilt she opened her eyes, looking around her. The floor was a mess – clothes over clothes, in between chocolate papers, empty ice cream buckets, even a plate she had broken the night before by simply dropping it after finishing her Spaghetti Napoli.

Oh, how much she hated herself. She simply couldn´t do it. Why did she let her life become like that? She wasn't able to ever change it, even if she wanted to. Guilt rolled over her like a truck. So instead of attempting the change and doing what she needed to do, she shut her eyes again as she did so often, once again drifting away into dreams about Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. She wouldn't be able to make it anyway, she was a looser, there was no use in trying to even get up and live the way she wanted to – tidy, healthy, energetic, self-respecting, just as she knew Eva Maia Blythe wanted to live. But she had known for years now, and another day lost won't hurt. She was a looser anyway.

But never ever would she become so much a looser, that she wouldn´t go to work anymore. "Well, that´s not quite true. I called in sick just last week, because I really couldn´t handle it after I had hit my nose against the wall during the night in my dreams and practically only panicked the rest of the night." "But that´s no excuse!" "Well, I know. I´m a looser, and one day I won´t be able to make it to work anymore. I will loose everything." That was Eva´s biggest fear, her kids meant everything to her. They were the reason she got up every day – not soon enough to begin her day as she would want to, but soon enough to at least get dressed and run the short distance to school just in time for the 8 a.m. bell.

Today just as usual she was late a second, still chewing on the last bite of the apple she had grabbed, but quickly swallowing while putting on her teaching smile and shutting the door with quite a bang. She was not at all a Snape-type teacher, but she loved to give that door a juvenile slam, signalizing: "Good morning, class. I´m here. I´m alive. I have energy. And by the way I love you." Well the last sentence she mostly expressed in her smile and hand clap while saying: "Hola, Buenos dias. Como están hoy?"

She let her eyes wander carefully over her class while listening to the "Buenos dias, seniorita Eva. Estamos bien!", just as she did every morning. She always looked out for her students, whether they were happy or seemed struggling with himself. In her student days there had been no teachers who looked out for her, but she had always wished somebody would have noticed her loneliness, her being lost and all the desperation she felt then and still. Therefore she worked hard to establish an area of trust and respect in her class.

Today she noticed Michael looking especially happy. That made her smile glow even more, because from his last weekly diary entry she had been revising just the night before, she knew that he been planning to finally ask out the girl he had feelings for. Whoever it was seemed to at least not be completely declined to accept. But who could it be? Chasing after that thought for a millisecond her smile disappeared and her honey-brown eyes took the look of deep concern, shock even panic.

"Anna. My little Anna. What happened to you?" Her eyes lingered on the blond, scrawny girl a bit longer than usual. She had bruises on her neck once again, insufficiently covered by her turtleneck. It wasn´t the first time that Eva had noticed that and those bruises really didn´t look like love bites this times. She would have to talk to her after class, or do something.

But first Eva had a class to teach, so she quickly instructed a homework revising game. Eva was not only adept in the subject she was teaching but also had a wide knowledge of didactics. Over all, beside Harry Potter, learning and books were her favorite pastimes. She could never get enough of thinking about how to improve her teaching skills. "Well, besides that a bit more preparation would help and I could still be a better teaching personality. How about showering ever morning for an instance? You looser!", she thought bitterly to herself, when somebody praised her like that.

But now was not the place or the time for it, the game went quite smoothly, she didn´t have to intervene, so she could let her thoughts wander to Anna again. She actually hadn´t done her weekly duty of writing diary in Spanish for two weeks now, something Eva had already noted in her head and thought of strange because Anna had been an eager and hard-working as well as trustful student for years now. She had problems at home, her parents were divorced and yes, her father had taken a violent side towards her mother before that and even hit Anna several times. But the divorce was finalized last year and Anna hat handled it quite well. Now she didn´t have contact with her father anymore, and even if it wasn´t easy, she seemed to find her path through adolescence quite well. Until last week, when Eva had first noticed the bruises on her student´s neck and thought it quite strange that the teenager had love bruises but seemed to be so distant. "To be truthful, you haven´t found it particularly strange, it just" thought Eva, swallowing hard, wanting to cry right now, "had reminded you of your own first experiences." It seemed to be a life time ago.
But this wasn´t about Eva Maia Blythe, 24 years old, it was about Anna, 16 years old. Reminding her of that she kept the girl after class, telling the class she had to talk to Anna about the unfulfilled diary-duty. She softly took her by the arm, leading her towards the coazy corner of her classroom, where she had a rocket chair and a couch as well as a tea cooker, half the available herbal tea assortment and some sweets in store always.

"Anna. How are you really?"

"I´m fine, Seniorita Eva."

"You don´t seem fine, Anna. You haven´t even given me your diary for two weeks now."

"Hum… I just forgot to write, Madam." Said the girl shrugging seeming careless but still uncomfortable. Eva knew that Anna would never forget such a thing, she hadn´t forget her homework a single time, not even during the divorce of her parents. Especially the diary – Anna was one of the students which didn´t only practice her language in it and retell her day, but she really shared her problems and thoughts with Eva, who of course appreciated that and even spend quite some time replying to them.

"Don´t call me Madam, Anna. I´m not a 60-year-old-maiden. You know that just plain Eva is okay. Look at me please and tell me why you really couldn´t give me the diary. Did you write it?"

"Yes, Eva." She swallowed hard, tears seemed to flash into her eyes. "I even wrote in it every day, Madam."

"So why didn´t you give it to me? You know, that I never judge you for what you write in it. And I never ever tell anybody else."

"I´m so ashamed." Anna´s voice was scarcely audible. But Eva had heard it. Of course she had, and now it was her, who was swallowing hard, trying to hold back tears she hadn´t felt in a long time.

"Anna. Whatever it is, you don´t have to be ashamed. Is that why you are wearing a turtle neck in June for the past two weeks now?"

The teenager looked seemingly surprised and even more uncomfortable, panic written in her eyes. Eva considered what to do, then stand up from the rocket-chair, kicked of her shoes and took a sit on the couch beside the younger girl. "You know, Anna. I know how hard it is to talk or even thing about such things. You may think now – what does Seniorita Eva know, she has a perfect life. I never shared that with a student before, but I didn´t always. Especially when I was your age. My life was so much like hell, that I can´t even remember it for some years. I was beaten, abused and worse. In school, nobody ever took care for me. Nobody ever asked till I was your age. Even then the help didn´t come from school, but from a stranger in the street. I don´t know what happened to you. But I always wished that somebody would have helped me earlier, would have asked me a question just like I do to you know. My life would have been so different, if somebody had."

Eva hadn´t meant to tell the teenager so much. She scolded herself for scaring the girl and for opening up so much. She truly hadn´t told anybody about her missing memories from her teenager years or about her childhood experiences yet. Not a student, not a colleague, not anybody since she had gotten out of the hospital so many years ago. Why did she tell Anna now? This was not about herself. "How could you do something like that? Putting even more cruel stories on that girl was simply irresponsible and the absolute wrong thing to do!"

"Eva," again the voice was barely audible "Thank you for asking. Will you tell me more please? What happened to you? I know it´s hard. But then maybe I could show you the diary. I wouldn´t feel so ashamed anymore. You wouldn´t hate me, would you?"

Eva was surprised. Had she after all with her unplanned break-out touched the right nerve? She prayed not, she prayed her sense about an abused girl was wrong. Still, she had to deal with it, now. She had heard of that 6th sense surviving women had towards others, only that in those 2 years she had been teaching it hadn´t hit her so badly yet and before she never had much contact to anybody.

"Of course I wouldn´t hate or even like you less, Anna. Not for anything. But if you really want me to, I will tell you."

With those words, Eva drew a long breath and began to tell the little of her story she knew: „As you know, I was born on September 19th 1981 in Manchester in England. My parents were dentists, but they are dead now. I don´t have any siblings, grandparents or other relatives. Nevertheless when I was a little child, my Mum and Dad loved me a lot and I suppose I was really happy. Until I went to school. I was eager to go, so I entered primary school one year early, even if I was only 5 years old. I was so happy to be there, being able to discover the world of books and learning, but my classmates didn´t accept me. Maybe theywould have, but something awful happened in the winter of my first school year. I only knew that again when I was 18, but during a skiing day a stranger and an older pupil raped and abused me. I blamed myself for it, especially because the student, who had done it, haunted me through school calling me bad names, even hitting me. I never recognized that it wasn´t my fault, so I hid for all my school life, not telling anybody until I forget everything exept that it was all my fault, that I was disgusting and that everybody had the very right to hate me, call me names, haunt me and that I didn´t deserve any attention or even love."
Eva stopped, she stared into emptiness, trying to put herself together, because after all her telling the story wasn´t about her, but about Anna. She had to help her. But Anna had already helped herself. She softly touched her teacher on the arm, stroking it gently: "Seniorita Eva. I´m so sorry. I promise you, I won´t make the same mistake. Please read my diary, because I´m not so strong, I can´t tell you." The teenager was crying all the tears Eva had never had for herself so the older girl put the younger one in her arms, just holding her. Because she knew, those tears were only for a small part for the teacher, but mostly, luckily for the student itself. They would find a way for Anna. And maybe it would even prove to be helpful for Eva. But this wasn´t about her, this was about Anna.

A/N: This chapter was quite hard to write, and I don´t really like it. A lot remains unclear, just as in Eva´s (and Anna´s) life. But you might already thinking about how everything could be solved – feel free to share your thoughts with me. Especially if you do think it´s all unlogic and crap or if you find too many grammatical errors, please consider to leave a review!