Prologue

"Hey, dad?"

"Hm? What is it?"

"What would you do if you were a character in the Harry Potter series?"

"I would travel the world."

"Mooom, I want to know what dad will answer." Laughter.

"Well, you're asking the wrong person honey, your dad never read Harry Potter before."

"What? Really?"

"Yup, what she said."

"Ok then. Mom, you'd like to travel? But...don't you already do that anyway?"

"With port keys you never have to pay another plane ticket again. And what I do is business not vacation. Besides it takes little time to arrive at the destination and I could have holiday anywhere I like."

"Ah, I see. So you would ignore the war?"

"Oh, there's a war?"

"Yeah, Harry Potter, the main character, against the dark Lord Voldemort. There's this prophecy and a lot of prejudice in the British Wizarding world."

"I don't know, dear. Your mom is not that strong to get involved. War takes a lot from you, whether it's mentally or physically. I wouldn't want my family to become a target either."

"How about you, dad?"

"I would never just stand by."

"Even if it's hard?"

"Even so."

"Why?"

"Is a reason necessary? I mean, I don't know why anyone would start a war, but as for saving someone, a logical mind isn't needed, right?"

"Right!"

× × × × × × × × × ×

Thea died in moments of freedom.

You see, Thea Huntington was one of those unfortunate kids whose dad had died early in an accident. Leaving her with her mom alone by being the hero that he was; rescuing people as was his job as a police officer.

"How did he die?" Her mom had asked. "He wasn't on duty today, he was just--!"

"Ma'am, please calm down. According to bystanders, your husband was just walking down the street when suddenly there was a gunshot and he pushed the target out of the way....but he got shot instead. Right in the chest."

"I see." And then she burst in tears, sobbing so hard her body shook.

By research and CCTV, the police found out that the person her dad saved was a gangster boss he had been investigating. One of the two subordinates accompanying him had unceremoniously shoved him into the back of a black sedan and escaped while the civilians called for an ambulance. Her dad died from a collapsed lung and blood lost.

Three months after he passed away her dad's superiors judged her dad for being too rash. Failing to use a three-factor system or too quick to interfere or whatever. He's demoted. Shamed.

"It was just too convenient that he saved the boss he was investigating." Even though he's dead, others just couldn't let it go without getting the last word. And Thea had never been so angry in her life.

(The gangster boss and his wife visited once. They said their condolences and went to her dad's grave to say thank you. It's funny how their words and actions didn't grate as much as her dad's coworkers. It helped that the suspicious movement her dad was investigating was the boss actually just trying to legitimize his business.)

She's seven when Zake came into the picture.

The man's rough, all loud posturing and cloying musk that made Thea's eyes water and her throat itch, but he made her mom laugh so Thea grinned and bore with it.

Anything that made her laugh like that, that makes her eyes light up just so, was worth a little bit of irritation in her opinion. Especially when her smile had been scarce ever since dad died. Zake would never be her dad, would never replace the man whose memory still lived fresh and vivid inside of Thea's mind, but maybe they could be a family someday anyways, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Besides Zake seemed nice in a gruff kind of way. Even though she didn't really want him in her home.

Others might say she should be grateful for it, but she's not, well maybe just a little. Call her ungrateful, however she didn't want to replace her late father for Zake. Unwilling though she was, she couldn't deny the benefits either; her mom couldn't work if she had to take care of Thea as well, no matter how much Thea told her she would be fine alone.

Thea knew that her mom had a case of wanderlust, always wanting to move and her work had helped with that. Once she married Zake, she could go work again and not worry about Thea was what she was thinking and Thea understood.

Her mom was still not working, they lived on dad's insurance money for one year, so they spent most of the time together if not with Zake as well. That one year she spent with Zake visiting their house was an exercise in patience and endurance. But it's not all that bad.

Thea's wrong about that. Wrong about Zake. Wrong about a lot of things.

Zake wasn't nice.

Not for long.

Not at all, Thea realizes sometime later.

But it's too late then, her mom had married the man, tied herself and Thea to this puffed up man who goes from someone harmless who made Thea's throat itch to a snarling drunkard that kicked and spat at her, that made her bones hurt when he grabbed her too hard whenever Thea wasn't quick enough to do something.

Thea slept under her covers now with her hands clapped tight over her ears to drown out the yells and shouts and everything else.

Thea'd never been so frightened but her mom didn't do more than press a kiss against her forehead and send her to her room whenever she said something, told her to 'hush up now babe and go play'.

At age ten, Thea thought she'd probably set the house on fire sooner rather than later, because sober Zake was kind of an asshole, manageable but an asshole, but drunk, he turned into a freaking raging psychopath, and okay, these days Thea herself was probably not the most well-balanced child in the world and was angry enough at the world in general on her own, so mixing the two of them?

Disaster. Utter disaster of the apocalyptic kind. Mom was long gone at this point, what's with all her business trips and Thea sometimes felt so angry that she didn't feel like all of the world was big enough to contain it.

She couldn't be bothered doing her homework, not when her life was going in a downward spiral anyway. Everyone in school thought she was weird and too quiet, and mom stayed in touch thrice a year, maybe, and said that school would get better and to keep her head down at home and all will be fine. These days Thea didn't say much to her either.

(She wanted to scream. Wanted to shout to her mom to leave Zake since the beginning so much that her throat itch with the urge. She hadn't want a step-father. She wanted to yell that as long as she had a mom who still treasured her dad, she would be happy with that.)

To make things a bit more bearable she picked up and discarded hobbies rapidly so that Zake didn't have the pleasure of taking the fun away every time she enjoyed something.

She learned how to cook better than before, since Zake couldn't be bothered to go into the kitchen. She learned to dance, ice skate and play the piano. Other things like a morning jog or spending her time after school at the public Library also let her stay out of the house where Zake liked to laze around in.

She made sure not to show how much she loved any one thing in particular because she knew Zake would just take it away from her; he's a bully that way. She couldn't do anything when he threw away her sketchbooks every time she bought a new one and he found it.

Aged almost thirteen, she broke Zake's phone in retaliation. The fallout was glorious. Her ears rang and her ribs ached and suddenly she couldn't stand it anymore. So she begged her mom to let her go away, somewhere else, anywhere but Iowa with Zake, because no matter how distant her mom became, she believed her always.

And Thea nearly cried with relief when the taxi her mom rented came to bring her to the boarding school her mom enrolled her in and she saw the town get smaller through the glass window.

That was two hours ago.

She had been dozing and generally just enjoying the peace and quiet and the rumbling of the car's engine. The night and the breeze and—

The bus hit them.

It drove forward like a rocket and smashed into the car with a loud crash. Thea experienced it the way anyone would experience getting hit by a bus. Sudden and hard, and knowing something bad was happening without knowing what yet.

And then knowing and being afraid.

She felt what was happening with terrible clarity—the awful tearing, crushing—and she screamed and yelled just like anyone else.

Too bad. She had always kind of thought she would go into death like an explorer, in a golden flash of peace and wholeness, and here she was being squished up like a burger.

The voice in her head began to go quiet; the light inside her started to go out.

Mom, Thea thought, before she went totally dark, would finally be smart enough to go find a new husband, someone who would appreciate what a fine woman she was. It was a good and kind thought, a wise thought, and then something like a fast-moving interstellar night flooded through her and snuffed her out like a—