Even in the wildflower-covered jagged cliffside, Fay Dunbar did not feel safe. She hugged her knees to her chest, wand in her clenched fist as she watched the waves foam white and crash below.

This little piece of paradise was hidden from others living in Dunbar Castle, mostly because the others did not live in Fay's room, where there was a secret passage leading out to this bit of land.

Fay leaned against the cool rocks, centuries old and still stronger than she felt. The walls had stood for so long— but would they stand against what was to come?

All too well, the Gryffindor witch remembered the previous year. It started with the Quidditch World Cup. She'd been so excited. With her dad and the other parents and kids who inhabited Dunbar Castle, she was cheering for Ireland. Loaded with a flag, hat, and a little figurine she'd never admit to buying of one of the Irish Beaters because she found him handsome, she went to sleep in their large tent content, vindicated by an Irish win.

Then she woke to fire in the night. Only flashes of the last night of the Quidditch World Cup remained in Fay's memory. She remembered turning just as she saw Ewan Dunbar, former Auror, keeper of Dunbar Castle— and more importantly, her father— run into the flames with his wand, after the men in hooded masks. She called out his name, but she was dragged away by someone.

She remembered how the woods twisted, and how dirty she felt for running, running when there were muggles in trouble. It was against every doctrine she'd been raised to believe, to leave like this.

It was supposed to be one of the best nights of her life. Instead, all she could call to mind was fire and twisted tree limbs in the darkness.

It should have gotten better. Oliver Wood was no longer Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. He kept tryouts closed while the Weasley twins were still at the school and there were no vacancies from previous years— a practice Fay found unfair. She put in several hours training with Ewan over the past four years, and played for the Junior Montrose Magpies in the Summer Junior Quidditch League. Surely she'd be chosen over the Weasleys, if the new captain let her try out?

Too bad Quidditch was cancelled for the Triwizard Tournament.

And even that had been fun, despite whatever was going on with Harry Potter. Fay had enjoyed herself at the Yule Ball, and even managed to get a date with one of the seventh-year Ravenclaw Quidditch players (who never talked to her again, but that was hardly the point) and she somehow got her crush to dance with her.

She even made friends with another girl, Dagny, whose family ran magical horse bloodlines in Iceland. They still wrote.

But then her crush ended up dead.

Fay gripped her wand so tightly, she thought for a moment that it might break. She sat next to Alice that night. The redhead kept glancing down to the panicked judges, then back to Fay. Viktor Krum was under the Imperius Curse— Fleur Delacour was unconscious— and Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter had disappeared altogether.

"Fay, what's going on?" Alice's dark blue eyes pleaded with her friend and roommate, silently pleading that it was just an ordinarily strange witching thing— not a tragedy taking place before their very eyes.

"I don't know," Fay was forced to admit. Her voice did not sound like her own— too low, too calm for her pounding ribs, for the way her knee jiggled as she realized at the same exponential rate as everyone else that something had gone terribly wrong.

Then, Fay blinked.

There was Harry Potter, sweating and bloody over Cedric's dead body.

Fay got to her feet, determined to see the rise and fall of the boy she fancied's chest— surely he was unconscious— he wasn't dead—

Alice rose beside her, hands flying to her mouth to muffle her own unconscious shriek.

Amos Diggory leapt from the stands, fighting Ministry officials to get to his son.

Fay could only hear her heartbeat and her rapid breaths. Colors were too bright, everything a blur. No one knew what happened in that maze. But Cedric Diggory was dead.

"Hogwarts is the safest place in the world, my arse," Fay muttered as she tried to forget the previous years.

She wasn't sure what to believe about the entire thing, either. There was what the Daily Prophet said, and what her stepmother, Briallen, declared about what Harry Potter had said.

"I don't think the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is what happened," Briallen said the first night Fay returned from Hogwarts. "Something terrible happened to that boy, and it may be linked to Barty Crouch Jr., and the men who were once Death Eaters— I have no doubt about that. Cedric was killed by bad people, and Potter was attacked. But magic can't bring back the dead— any child raised in our world knows that."

But was You-Know-Who ever really dead, Fay wondered. Or was that a fairytale the adults told themselves, because they didn't want to believe any alternative?

Fay was finished with fairytales.

She stood up. Yes, Potter's story was crazy. And she didn't want to believe it. But what if You-Know-Who really was among the living once more? She couldn't stand blind to it. The Dark Lord killed her mother.

That was why her father didn't want to believe it, Fay decided. Because he didn't want to believe that his first wife's murderer was still out there. That brought a whole slew of fears too deep and profound to ever be explained.

But Fay knew the truth.

As she stared out into the Scottish shore, she wondered what the next school year would bring. Actual Death Eaters? Would the Dark Lord fight her? Kill people like her friend, like Alice?

No, she couldn't think like that. There would be happy memories made this year, just like the previous years. Fay closed her eyes, forcing herself to remember the memories more vividly than she was experiencing her present.

Buying Ireland swag with Morag. Reading A Wrinkle in Time with Alice and speculating on whether the Murrays would be wizards. Playing Gobstones and winning the Hogwarts tournament. Dancing with that Ravenclaw boy. Dancing with Cedric. Talking to Dagny. Laughing into her tea mug in Divination with Lily.

There would a future, and if she could just be a candle in the sea, it would be better. It had to be.