| "She no longer had the plump, happy-looking face Harry had seen in Moody's old photograph of the original Order of the Phoenix. Her face was thin and worn now, her eyes seemed overlarge and her hair, which had turned white, was wispy and dead-looking. She did not seem to want to speak, or perhaps she was not able to, but she made timid motions towards Neville, holding something in her outstretched hand." |

November 2nd, 1981. London, 11:27pm.

As midnight loomed, the English countryside looked as beautiful as ever. Small houses and charming taverns dotted the green and pleasant hills, trees shaded over the cobblestone and paved streets of towns, and the occasional villager was walking to their homes after long nights - or going to places to begin their long nights.

As a new cop in the village police, you were somewhere within the two. Your shift was not too busy - after all, you were usually assigned by your superiors to the calmer night shift - most of it was spent escorting the occasional too-drunk pubgoer back home, or breaking up a drunken argument outside the pub, or chastising the occasional speeding drunk driver on the roads. You could count on one hand the amount of muggings you had to deal with, and you couldn’t recall a time where you dealt with house invasions - let alone murders.

That was all about to change.

You were driving your small police car through the roads, making the occasional turn and stopping to check on your fellow drivers on the road. So far, nothing unusual was occurring - no drunk drivers, no speeding drivers, no suspicious drivers carrying illegal stuff or worse. In other words, a normal day in your life.

Then you took a turn down Whittaker Avenue.

It felt eerie, for some reason. As though all the noise had been sucked away by a vacuum. The houses’ lights were shut and curtains were drawn, you could not see a single soul walking down the street. A seeming calm had enveloped the avenue.

Then, just as you stopped your car to turn on the radio, you heard it - a massive explosion from the house nearby you.

Horrified, you immediately get out of the car - grabbing your gun, handcuffs, walkie-talkie, and first aid kit - and run to the scene, barging into the now-weakened door with a kick.

It is chaotic. The household is filled with rubble and ash. You could see.the unconscious body of a tall man and what appeared to be a child near the stairwell. Shocked, you make a mental note to call the ambulance. And as you turned around to the kitchen, you saw it.

Four individuals, laughing and taunting and drawing…sticks…surrounding a shaking woman. The individuals were unusually dressed - all-black, with masks and…sticks? They almost looked like one of those goths or wannabe wizards you heard of from the younglings in school these days, but they looked like murderers. And you knew a murder scene when you saw one - after all, you were trained for this, and the intruders didn’t even see you yet.

It was swift. You fired the gun four times - one for every intruder - and they all fell in seconds. The shaking woman looks shocked, stopping…and then turning around. She squeaks, half in horror, half in awe. You feel sorry for her - what they did must be awful.

She speaks shakily, hiding the desperation.

“You…you…” she begins, holding back tears. “You saved me…who are you?”