LUCY:

By the time the rest of the world was beginning to wake up, I was alone on the fourth floor of St. Mungo's. I was in a small room by myself, at the very end of a long hallway. Professor Moody was sorting something with the healers. Professor Lupin had stopped at the second floor to visit an old friend of his. Tonks had to leave, seeing as she was doing Order business that day, but she'd walked with us there.

I heard approaching footsteps and internally braced myself for whatever the day would bring as soon as the door opened. But as they neared, I realized these footsteps weren't those of an adult. They belonged to a child. A hesitant knock at the door confirmed that guess.

"You can come in," I called softly, and the door creaked open.

A young girl stood there, curly hair tumbling around her shoulders. Her eyes, though tired, were bright, and a shy smile made its way to her face.

"H-Hi," she said, stepping in and closing the door behind her. "Y-You don't know me, but I know Cedric. I heard you were here. Lucy, isn't it?"

"I am. And you're — oh Merlin." I swallowed hard. "You're Sloane?"

When she nodded, I jumped up and rushed forward to hug her. If she was surprised by the gesture, she didn't show it.

The young girl's story returned to me in a rush, as clearly as if it had been just yesterday Cedric and I were talking about her, after the Quidditch World Cup.

"There was a little girl bitten by a werewolf. In June. Her name is Sloane. She couldn't have been more than six or seven. She told us that she had gone outside to see the bright full moon when... when..."

"Fenrir Greyback?"

"We think so. He's known to target children."

"She's alright now, isn't she?"

"We were able to stop the bleeding. Powdered silver and dittany. But she was so scared, and her parents, they..."

"They what?"

"They didn't want her, Lu. I saw a lot of horrible things this summer. Some injuries we couldn't heal. Some poisons that moved too fast for antidotes. Some illnesses that had progressed too far. But nothing haunted me more than what happened to Sloane."

"Where is she now?"

"Still in St. Mungo's. Everyone there has more or less adopted her. We worked together to help her make her own space, and unless someone adopts her, we're hoping she can stay there until she goes to Hogwarts. That way we know she has a safe place to transform and access to wolfsbane. I want to take you to meet her next summer. I think you could really help her. She's the sweetest little girl, Lucy. You'd love her."

"Take me. I want to meet her."

"I will. You will."

I held the girl a little tighter for a moment before releasing her. Her smile widened a bit as she glanced up at me. "You're taller than I thought you'd be."

I shrugged and nodded. "I've grown recently." I returned to sit on the bed and patted one end of it. "No one's coming for another little while, I reckon, the paperwork might be... a bit difficult."

Sloane nodded as she perched herself on the bed and crossed her legs the same way I had. "It happens. We aren't always easy."

I couldn't help but stare at her. Cedric was going to take me to visit her that summer. That summer, the one he had never gotten to see. That summer, the one that had stolen him, and Mum, and Dad. Seeing her, sitting with me, was... surreal, in a sense. Like a ghost from the past, from my life with Cedric in it, had just appeared in front of me.

She cocked her head. "Why're you here? You don't look sick."

"My, er... my magic is a bit... broken at the moment."

"Broken?"

"I can't cast spells as well as I used to," I explained, taking my wand out of my pocket and twirling it on my fingers. "Normally, if I wanted to, I could turn your hair blue, but I don't think I could right now."

"Oh." She frowned. "I think I would look good with blue hair."

I couldn't help but grin a bit. "I think so, too. Next time you see me, I'll try the charm, alright?"

"Alright! But, wait." She cocked her head. "Why can't Cedric just fix your magic? He can fix anything! Well, almost anything. He's still working on fixing us, so the monster can't hurt us anymore."

I sucked in a breath, the air in the room having just disappeared. She doesn't know?

"He stopped writing me letters," she went on, her eyes narrowing bit by bit as she gauged my reaction, "but I thought maybe he was just busy trying to fix us and didn't have much time for writing. Is that why he hasn't fixed your magic yet?"

I opened my mouth to try to explain, but the words stuck in my throat. My mouth was completely dry. I closed my mouth and swallowed as best I could, my heart pounding. I swallowed again, past the massive lump that was forming, and managed, "Sloane, he, er... he... hasn't been writing b-because he... he's not here anymore."

"He... left?"

"H-He died," I stammered, voice cracking. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't know that you didn't know."

Her lower lip trembled. "He's gone?"

I opened my arms as her eyes filled with tears, and she launched herself at me, crying quietly. I let a number of tears fall, too, because never once had I dreamed I would ever have to... never once had I dreamed someone wouldn't have...

I hadn't been angry in what felt like an eternity. Sadness had won the war, it seemed, and it had claimed me for itself as a prize. Sadness tugged down on every part of me every moment of every day. It made my eyelids heavy, my limbs heavy, my heart heavy. Everything was heavy. There was no fiery anger to combat the darkness, so the darkness... took over.

But in that moment, I felt it again. Just a bit. A bit of a spark.

I knew in my head that Cedric's death had been covered up, buried, ignored. But in that moment, seeing exactly how well it had been hidden away, I was devastated. And angry. Just a bit. But angry nonetheless.

"I'm so sorry no one told you," I murmured after holding her for a couple of minutes. "I would have myself, but I didn't realize you had been writing to him or else I would have written you back."

"It's okay," she said, pulling away and wiping her nose with her sleeve. "I only wrote if he wrote me first, s-so when the letters stopped in June, I didn't send another one. I-I just kept waiting." She looked at me, tears still shining in her eyes. "What happened?"

I considered my answer for a second. What a dangerous question to ask right now. I opted for the most neutral answer I could find while keeping it truthful. "It happened during the last task of the tournament."

"Oh." She glanced down at her hands, sniffling. "The tournament sounded scary. He was really brave."

"He was, he absolutely was. R-Right until the end." I reached forward and tipped her chin up to face me. "He thought you were really special, you know."

Sloane nodded. "I know. He thought you were special too. He always told me that the two of us were the strongest people he knew. Did you know that?"

"I can't remember if he ever mentioned that to me," I admitted.

"Well, I know he meant it," she said with a tiny smile.

I reached forward and swiped away a tear from her cheek. "I know I'm not my brother, but if you'd like to write me, I promise I'll always write back."

Her smile widened. "Really?"

"Of course." I did my best to send a smile back her way. "Say, I hear you have your own special place here."

She nodded, wiping her cheeks. "I do! Do you want to see it?"

Before I could reply, the door opened to reveal a healer in the same type of lime-green robes that I knew were still hanging in Cedric's room. The young man smiled. "I see you've already found her, Sloane!"

"I did!" she said with a proud smile.

I turned to the girl. "I'd love to see your place sometime."

She nodded again. "Next time!" She hugged me quickly and scampered from the room. "Bye, Lucy!"

"Bye, Sloane!" I called after her as the door closed.

The healer grinned at me. "Lovely, isn't she?"

I nodded. "Ced adored her."

"He did." The healer's grin faded. "I'm so sorry, by the way. I heard the news, somewhat recently. I had wondered why he didn't reply to my letters over summer, but I... didn't ever think he might be gone."

"I didn't realize how much it had been covered up until Sloane didn't know," I said in a somewhat hollow voice. "If you don't have a sibling at Hogwarts or a parent in the Ministry departments helping with the cover-up, there would be no way of knowing."

"Being a Muggle-born only child, I suppose it's something of a miracle I heard at all," he replied mildly.

I nodded as a realization clicking into place. "Were you his flatmate last summer, by any chance?"

He nodded, smiling and extending a hand. "I'm Jabari. Gryffindor, like you, if I'm remembering correctly."

I smiled a bit as I returned the handshake. "Lucy. You're right, I am."

From there, Jabari walked me through the general plan for the next two days. The first day was for trying to find the problem, he said, and the second day was for trying to find the solution.

The first day ended on the fifth floor, in an area that was all too familiar.

My heart raced as we grew closer and closer to the room. The room behind the secret door that could only be revealed with an incantation only a handful of the staff members knew. It was the room where I had transformed. More than that, it was the room where my transformations were watched. Studied. Monitored. It was the room where Arurors learned how to fight werewolves. Learned to fight me.

Jabari seemed to sense my distress as he whispered the spell that opened the door. He glanced at me, his mouth making an O shape. "I'm sorry."

I glanced up at him curiously.

"I know what this room has been for you," he said in a soft voice that seemed sincere. More sincere than most healers who had been in the room with me, waiting to drop the barrier between me and the others should I come too close to biting anyone. "I promise this isn't that. I just needed a place to see what magic you can do without alarming anyone else. I didn't think... are you alright if we go in here?"

I nodded numbly and followed him in, shaking from head to toe.

I wasn't sure where I was in time. I wasn't sure what I was in time either. Five, seven, fifteen, survivor, monster, victim. I didn't know for a moment.

With a flick of his wand, a training dummy appeared in front of me. It looked almost exactly like one of the dummies I practiced on when Fred and George were teaching me spells. I felt a bit of calm wash over me at the thought of the twins.

"I want you to try to have a one-sided duel," Jabari said with a smile. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but I want you to try. I'll give you a spell, and you'll either respond offensively or defensively based on the spell and your own preference."

I managed a nod. "Okay."

"You ready?"

I nodded again. "Ready."

"Incendio!"

"Aguamenti!"

A jet of water shot from my wand, and I drenched the dummy up and down. I staggered backward, surprised by my own sudden display of power.

Jabari grinned. "Well then. Alright, how about expelliarmus?"

"Protego!" A small shield formed in front of me.

"What about a stronger spell, like depulso?"

"Protego!" I said, and the shield in front of me grew.

"Try an attack of your own. Something you'd use to take an opponent by surprise, maybe?"

"Diffindo!" The training dummy sustained a fairly large scratch across the chest.

Jabari nodded, looking impressed. "That would leave a hell of a mark on a human. Alright, say someone fired something at you that you didn't recognize."

"Protego!" The biggest shield I had yet produced formed in front of me, a shield that protected my entire body.

"And what would you fire back?"

"Stupefy!" The spell struck the dummy square in between where a human's eyes would be, and it fell backward almost to the ground before bouncing back up into its proper position.

"Alright, alright! Well, er, this is... certainly eye-opening," he said, watching as the quill at his side scribbled notes on a roll of parchment. "How do you feel about all of that?"

"Er," I stammered, admittedly feeling quite exhilarated. I still had magic. "I'm not sure where that... I don't know why I..."

"Me neither," he admitted. "But that's what I'm here to figure out, isn't it? Now, what spells did you say you've been struggling to perform in school?"

I flushed. "Lately? Silencio and evanesco."

"Alright." Jabari drew his wand and pointed it at the dummy. "Cantis!"

The dummy immediately burst into a horrible rendition of "Do the Hippogriff."

I smiled. "Brilliant." I took a deep breath to steady myself, then shouted, "Silencio!"

Silence immediately descended upon the room.

"Hm." Jabari stared at the dummy. I could tell he was surprised and trying not to show it. "Alright. Well, it's a rather large object, but you can try to vanish it. If you can't, I'll conjure something for you to try to vanish, something smaller. But, well, given everything else, give this a shot."

I nodded, inhaling slowly through my nose, focusing on the spell. "Evanesco."

The training dummy disappeared bit by bit.

Jabari stared at the spot where it had been, utterly dumbfounded. "Well... I mean, first of all, brilliant job. That was very impressive, for a fifth-year no less."

I felt the tips of my ears burning. "Thanks."

He nodded, still deep in thought. After a couple more seconds of silence, he turned to me again, grinning ever so slightly.

"Well... this isn't exactly typical practice, but you're not exactly a typical patient. I want to challenge you to a duel."

"A duel?" I repeated.

He nodded. "I promise I'll immediately heal any damage I do to you."

"B-But what about you?" I asked. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I'll heal it too."

"I don't want to hurt you," I said again.

"I promise I'll be okay," he said, a curious look on his face. "I just want to see how you do when the actual spells are thrown at you."

I managed a nod, then assumed a proper dueling stance. And then it began.

I blocked his attempt to disarm me. He blocked my attempt to disarm him. I blocked all of his spells after that, too.

"Try to hit me with something instead of just protecting yourself!" he said as I blocked for the fifth time in a row.

I held my wand up, hand trembling. "Er, incendio!" He countered it well, but he had nothing to counter. No fire shot from my wand. I tried one of the spells I used to escape in August. Nothing. I tried one of the lesser-known spells the twins taught me. Nothing.

I tried one last spell. "Expelliarmus!"

His wand flew into my hand, and I stared at it for a second before tossing it back to him.

Jabari gnawed on the inside of his cheek. "Interesting. Very interesting."

And with that, my first day at St. Mungo's was done.