Post by LYDIA G. VAN HELSING on Aug 19, 2015 1:55:36 GMT
When Lydia’s was born, things were perfectly for the small but happy family. Victor Van Helsing and his wife, Cassandra, were ecstatic over the birth of their daughter. She was everything they had ever dreamed of. Unfortunately for Lydia, this happiness didn’t last forever and Victor and Cassandra led their daughter down a path that would lead to a great deal of heartbreak.
It all started with the trouble in their marriage. Well, that’s what it looked like to Lydia at least. She didn’t know that there was an underlying issue. You see, everything wasn’t exactly peaceful in the wizarding world back then. Voldemort had finally fallen, yes, but many of supports were still at large. As an auror, Victor had actively fought the death eaters and Voldemort during the war… or had he?
When Lydia was five years old, her father completely abandoned her, tearing her little heart to shreds. She’d been so close to him and he’d promised to always be there for her. So why did he leave her like that?
In reality, Victor hadn’t left his daughter by choice. When he was discovered to be a double agent and a death eater, Victor had every intention of taking his wife and daughter far away. When he arrived home though, he was met with more than he bargained for. Cassandra had known about his deceit for some time now, but she wasn’t going to let him convince her to leave with him and he sure as hell wasn’t taking Lydia. Oh, he certainly tried, but it was the aurors who stopped him and not just any aurors.
Victor had been best friends with James, Eli, and Lucian since they were children. They’d grown up together, went to school together, trained as aurors together… they were supposed to remain loyal until the very end, but Victor had broken that promise and they repaid the favor by carting him off to Azkaban to rot with the rest of the death eaters.
Rather than tell her the truth, Cassandra, along with her closest friends who were much like family to Lydia as well, decided to allow Lydia to think that her father had abandoned her. In a way, he had though. Victor had chosen a life of evil and power in favor of the life he could have had with his wife and daughter.
While Lydia’s father had physically abandoned her, her mother slowly started to abandon her on an emotional level. She was hardly there for her and slowly but surely, Lydia started to connect a great deal more with her mother’s best friends, Sophia Scarborough especially. Hell, she even saw Sophia more than her own mother and started to think of Sophia’s children as her own siblings. This was especially true for Mercy who was one of her best friends, along with Katerina Montgomery.
The three were practically inseparable and, after they finally made their first trip to Hogwarts, one more face was added to their group, despite the overwhelming pressure from their parents to stay away from the Slaters. The three girls didn’t care about Athena’s father being a death eater. They welcomed her into their group and made friends with her brother, Keiran, as well. It was Mercy who took the most interest in Keiran though. Of course, that’s an entirely different story.
They say you never forget your first love and that was especially true for Lydia. She’d known Aiden Backwell her entire life and had always had a bit of a crush on him, but when she entered Hogwarts and was around him a great deal more, this crush only grew stronger. She was head over heels for Aiden, often prompting her best friends to tease her relentlessly. Quite often they would try to push her and Aiden together, along with Aiden’s friends. Playing on the quidditch team with him was often difficult only because she often found herself being distracted by him
It didn’t actually happen until Lydia was in her fifth year at Hogwarts. It was quite an eventful year to say the least. When they finally did get together though, there were fireworks between them and Lydia could honestly say that she trusted Aiden more than she trusted anyone. He would never abandon her like her parents did and she gave him everything she had to give. Lydia loved Aiden.
He was with her through everything. He was there for her when she fought with her mother; he supported her during the awful revelation that her father was actually a death eater. She never had to be alone again because of him.
When tragedy struck Aiden’s family, she was there for him and supported him the same way he would support her. Things grew more complicated. Aiden didn’t just have to worry about himself any more; he also had a young niece to take care of after death eaters had murdered the rest of their family. Lena was still so young and Lydia did everything that she could to help him out. She bonded with Lena and loved her dearly, that was for sure.
Lydia was stupid though. She thought that she and Aiden were meant for each other and that they could get married. They could settle down and have a nice life together… start a family and grow old together. She was ready to spend the rest of her life with Aiden and Lena, but apparently Aiden wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life with her.
She was fresh out of Hogwarts when he broke things off with her. She hadn’t seen it coming at all. This tore her heart to shreds, probably even worse than the day she was told her father abandoned her and the day she found out he was actually a death eater put together. Why? Because she thought that he was the one person in her life who would never abandon her. It wasn’t that she thought her best friends would ever abandon her… that was just different. She thought that Aiden loved her the way that she loved him.
It was shortly after this painful breakup that Lydia discovered something terrifying: she was pregnant with Aiden’s child. There were many reasons for her to do what she did next, but most of them stemmed back to her being alone and afraid. She knew she should have told Aiden, but the last thing she wanted to do was face him and she didn’t want him to stay with her for the baby. Perhaps a part of her even wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt her. There were so many complicated reasons for her to not tell him that she refused to give in and do the right thing. And so, she ran.
There were only a handful of people who knew that Lydia was even pregnant: Mercy, Keiran, Katerina, John, Athena, and Luke. Though they may not have agreed with her decision, they agreed to keep her secret. Though there were some people that Lydia cut out of her life entirely, she always made sure to keep her friends as close as she could, writing to them often.
There was even one surprising person who kept in contact with Lydia over the years: Lena. She’d been so young when her parents died that Lena had started to view Lydia as a sort of mother figure… right before she was wrenched out of her life that is. Lena may have only been a few years old, but she had formed a strong bond with Lydia and missed her dearly, just as Lydia missed her. It started with Mercy or Kat sending her letters with drawings from Lena attached, but when Lena learned to write for herself, she wrote to Lydia as often as she could. Though she knew Aiden probably wouldn’t appreciate it… Lydia always responded.
When Lydia first ran away from home, of course she was scared. She had nowhere to go and she was pregnant. How would she support her baby without a job? It was an old woman witch who took her in, having found her living out on the streets and in search of a place to stay. It was thanks to Mabel that she had a roof over her head and food to nourish not only her, but also the life growing inside of her. Mabel didn’t have much, but she had a large heart and a desire to help others without expecting anything in returned.
She was going to put the baby up for adoption. She couldn’t do it by herself and the last thing she wanted to do was go crawling back home, begging Aiden to help her. She was so scared. What if she was an awful mother? How would she pay to take care of this baby?
When he was born, her heart broke into two. She didn’t want to hold him, but it was Mabel who made her. The very thing that she was afraid of happened the moment that she looked down at the baby boy in her arms. She fell in love. She’d intended to never fall in love with anyone ever again, but he was different. He was hers… but she had to give him up. Or did she?
Mabel convinced her to keep the baby whom she named Henry Stryder Van Helsing. Not a single day went by that Lydia wasn’t grateful for Mabel’s help during such a painful moment in her life. If it hadn’t been for Mabel, Lydia would have given up the one thing in her life that would keep her going strong from that moment onward. Without her son, Lydia never would have gone on to accomplish the things that she did.
Lydia found work soon after, determined to give her son a good life and to pay back Mabel as best she could. It was when the Holyhead Harpies held open tryouts that Lydia decided to take the leap. After all, she had been Quidditch captain of the Gryffindor team her seventh year at Hogwarts, so she had the talent and Quidditch had always been her passion. It had been her dream to play professionally since she was a little girl and a number of scouts had had their eye on her during her last year at Hogwarts. She had nearly been signed for another team after leaving Hogwarts anyway, but had backed out of the deal after finding out that she was pregnant.
When Lydia made the team, Mabel couldn’t have been happier for her. With Mabel’s help, Lydia made it happen. The old witch watched over Henry whenever Lydia was away or at practice and Lydia was finally able to pay Mabel back very handsomely.
When Henry was five, Mabel decided that it was time for Lydia and Henry to do it on their own. She’d grown to love both of them, but she told Lydia, in the most loving and inspirational way, that she had to find her own way now. And so, they went their separate ways. Lydia found an apartment and made a home for herself and Henry while Mabel packed her bags to travel and perhaps find missionary work to do. She didn’t forget about Lydia and Henry though, always making sure to send them letters and gifts and sometimes dropping in to see them whenever she was in the area.
It was around this time that Henry, thanks to his godfather, John, started going by his middle name as opposed to his first. It was thanks to her playing Quidditch that Lydia and Stryder saw so much of the world. Whenever Lydia travelled, Stryder was right there by her side. The two of them were a team and they were always there for each other through thick and thin.
As much as she loved Stryder with all of her heart, it wasn’t always enough for the boy. He often asked questions about his father, wanting to know who and where he was. Lydia evaded them for as long as she could, but he was persistent. Though the questions hurt her, she understood why he wanted to know. His questions were a painful reminder of the fact that she’d not only denied Aiden the opportunity to know his son, but she’d denied Stryder the opportunity to know his father. There were many nights that Lydia stayed up with a pen in hand, wondering what she could possibly tell Aiden in a letter. She never got far with these letters before tossing them right into the trash.
Stryder’s questions weren’t the only reminder of Aiden that she had. Lydia may have carried him for nine months and given birth to him, but there wasn’t much of her in his features. Everything about him was entirely Aiden, right down to many of his habits. Sure, he inherited some of her traits such as her stubbornness and her tendency to roll her eyes, but he was so much like his father that she sometimes felt like she was talking to or looking at Aiden. Sarcasm was a trait he’d been cursed with by both his mother and his father though.
When Stryder found the picture of her and Aiden, everything started to change between them. He was unrelenting in his desire to know who his father was and he often acted out. Part of this was just him being his usual, troublemaking self, but she knew what sort of troublemaking was normal for him and what wasn’t. He insisted on keeping the picture, of course, and took it with him wherever he went, hoping it would help him to identify his father if he ever saw him. Stryder grew distant from her, seeking to fill a hole in his life that she would never be able to occupy.
Life had been perfect for them up until then. She still held onto the hope that Stryder would come around to the fact that he didn’t need Aiden in his life… If he didn’t though… well, she would do the one thing she dreaded the most if it meant making her son happy.
Lydia’s world came crashing down one night in particular, destroying the seemingly happy life that she had built for herself and Stryder. She would forever be grateful for the fact that her son hadn’t been home that night, having insisted on having a sleepover with one of his friends.
After having a run in with Marc Valen, a face from the past (and one that she’d never been too fond of), she returned home, ready to put the unwelcome reunion behind her when someone knocked on her front door. She’d assumed that it was the neighbor, probably coming over for the millionth time to borrow something that he probably wasn’t going to return anyway. She’d been wrong. Very, VERY wrong.
Marc must have followed her home. Before she could slam the door shut in his face, he wedged his boot between the door and the frame. She made a mad dash for her wand that was sitting on the kitchen counter, but she wasn’t quick enough. He knocked her to the ground before dragging her back to her bedroom.
What Marc did to her that night changed Lydia. She felt dirty, broken, and more helpless than she ever had before. She didn’t know how long he’d stayed. She lost sense of time, to be honest, but it felt like an eternity. When he finally did leave her, she was bleeding and crying on the bed, her torn clothes lying on the floor.
She just wanted to lie there and die, but there was one thing that forced her to get up: Stryder. She cleaned herself up as best as she could and hid behind a mask of her former self before going off to bring her son back. She never even noticed the picture of her and Stryder that had gone missing the night that Marc raped her. She assumed it must have been misplaced. After all… who would want to steal a picture of Lydia and her son?
They didn’t stay there much longer. Lydia could no longer sleep in her own bedroom or on her own bed. She had nightmares and she pulled away from her dream: playing quidditch. Fans and teammates alike were stunned to hear that their captain was retiring from quidditch. She’d made the final decision after having a full-blown panic attack during a game. She’d blacked out before the bludger even hit her, knocking her off her broom and landing her a bed in St. Mungo’s. Everyone associated the news of her early retirement with the injury she sustained and she went on allowing everyone to believe this. In reality, she could hardly even get herself out of bed every morning and her panic attacks were only getting worse. They were sometimes debilitating.
After quitting the league, Lydia knew that she needed to find some way of making ends meet. Her quidditch career had left her well off, but she couldn’t let Stryder see her just fall off of the deep end. He needed stability, especially with his first year at Hogwarts coming up. So, Lydia packed her son up and opened up a Quidditch supplies shop in Diagon Alley. She missed Quidditch dearly, but she wouldn’t be able to handle another incident like that and she was just too… afraid. She was afraid of everything.
She had every intention of patching up old relationships, but it was hard. Instead, Lydia practically hid inside her shop, her son pulling away from her more every day, in search of something better. She would often look outside the window of her shop or her apartment and see Marc standing out there, watching. Twisted as he was, he would sometimes give that sick and twisted smile of his or wave to her.
As if fate hadn’t been cruel enough to Lydia, two death eaters attacked not just her, but Stryder as well. Though she didn’t know why the death eaters would want her and her eleven-year-old son dead, the aurors had reason to believe that they were now targets and that they needed protecting. Of course, Lydia hadn’t bargained on Aiden Blackwell, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her son to be one of the aurors who would be watching over her.
It all started with the trouble in their marriage. Well, that’s what it looked like to Lydia at least. She didn’t know that there was an underlying issue. You see, everything wasn’t exactly peaceful in the wizarding world back then. Voldemort had finally fallen, yes, but many of supports were still at large. As an auror, Victor had actively fought the death eaters and Voldemort during the war… or had he?
When Lydia was five years old, her father completely abandoned her, tearing her little heart to shreds. She’d been so close to him and he’d promised to always be there for her. So why did he leave her like that?
In reality, Victor hadn’t left his daughter by choice. When he was discovered to be a double agent and a death eater, Victor had every intention of taking his wife and daughter far away. When he arrived home though, he was met with more than he bargained for. Cassandra had known about his deceit for some time now, but she wasn’t going to let him convince her to leave with him and he sure as hell wasn’t taking Lydia. Oh, he certainly tried, but it was the aurors who stopped him and not just any aurors.
Victor had been best friends with James, Eli, and Lucian since they were children. They’d grown up together, went to school together, trained as aurors together… they were supposed to remain loyal until the very end, but Victor had broken that promise and they repaid the favor by carting him off to Azkaban to rot with the rest of the death eaters.
Rather than tell her the truth, Cassandra, along with her closest friends who were much like family to Lydia as well, decided to allow Lydia to think that her father had abandoned her. In a way, he had though. Victor had chosen a life of evil and power in favor of the life he could have had with his wife and daughter.
While Lydia’s father had physically abandoned her, her mother slowly started to abandon her on an emotional level. She was hardly there for her and slowly but surely, Lydia started to connect a great deal more with her mother’s best friends, Sophia Scarborough especially. Hell, she even saw Sophia more than her own mother and started to think of Sophia’s children as her own siblings. This was especially true for Mercy who was one of her best friends, along with Katerina Montgomery.
The three were practically inseparable and, after they finally made their first trip to Hogwarts, one more face was added to their group, despite the overwhelming pressure from their parents to stay away from the Slaters. The three girls didn’t care about Athena’s father being a death eater. They welcomed her into their group and made friends with her brother, Keiran, as well. It was Mercy who took the most interest in Keiran though. Of course, that’s an entirely different story.
They say you never forget your first love and that was especially true for Lydia. She’d known Aiden Backwell her entire life and had always had a bit of a crush on him, but when she entered Hogwarts and was around him a great deal more, this crush only grew stronger. She was head over heels for Aiden, often prompting her best friends to tease her relentlessly. Quite often they would try to push her and Aiden together, along with Aiden’s friends. Playing on the quidditch team with him was often difficult only because she often found herself being distracted by him
It didn’t actually happen until Lydia was in her fifth year at Hogwarts. It was quite an eventful year to say the least. When they finally did get together though, there were fireworks between them and Lydia could honestly say that she trusted Aiden more than she trusted anyone. He would never abandon her like her parents did and she gave him everything she had to give. Lydia loved Aiden.
He was with her through everything. He was there for her when she fought with her mother; he supported her during the awful revelation that her father was actually a death eater. She never had to be alone again because of him.
When tragedy struck Aiden’s family, she was there for him and supported him the same way he would support her. Things grew more complicated. Aiden didn’t just have to worry about himself any more; he also had a young niece to take care of after death eaters had murdered the rest of their family. Lena was still so young and Lydia did everything that she could to help him out. She bonded with Lena and loved her dearly, that was for sure.
Lydia was stupid though. She thought that she and Aiden were meant for each other and that they could get married. They could settle down and have a nice life together… start a family and grow old together. She was ready to spend the rest of her life with Aiden and Lena, but apparently Aiden wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life with her.
She was fresh out of Hogwarts when he broke things off with her. She hadn’t seen it coming at all. This tore her heart to shreds, probably even worse than the day she was told her father abandoned her and the day she found out he was actually a death eater put together. Why? Because she thought that he was the one person in her life who would never abandon her. It wasn’t that she thought her best friends would ever abandon her… that was just different. She thought that Aiden loved her the way that she loved him.
It was shortly after this painful breakup that Lydia discovered something terrifying: she was pregnant with Aiden’s child. There were many reasons for her to do what she did next, but most of them stemmed back to her being alone and afraid. She knew she should have told Aiden, but the last thing she wanted to do was face him and she didn’t want him to stay with her for the baby. Perhaps a part of her even wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt her. There were so many complicated reasons for her to not tell him that she refused to give in and do the right thing. And so, she ran.
There were only a handful of people who knew that Lydia was even pregnant: Mercy, Keiran, Katerina, John, Athena, and Luke. Though they may not have agreed with her decision, they agreed to keep her secret. Though there were some people that Lydia cut out of her life entirely, she always made sure to keep her friends as close as she could, writing to them often.
There was even one surprising person who kept in contact with Lydia over the years: Lena. She’d been so young when her parents died that Lena had started to view Lydia as a sort of mother figure… right before she was wrenched out of her life that is. Lena may have only been a few years old, but she had formed a strong bond with Lydia and missed her dearly, just as Lydia missed her. It started with Mercy or Kat sending her letters with drawings from Lena attached, but when Lena learned to write for herself, she wrote to Lydia as often as she could. Though she knew Aiden probably wouldn’t appreciate it… Lydia always responded.
When Lydia first ran away from home, of course she was scared. She had nowhere to go and she was pregnant. How would she support her baby without a job? It was an old woman witch who took her in, having found her living out on the streets and in search of a place to stay. It was thanks to Mabel that she had a roof over her head and food to nourish not only her, but also the life growing inside of her. Mabel didn’t have much, but she had a large heart and a desire to help others without expecting anything in returned.
She was going to put the baby up for adoption. She couldn’t do it by herself and the last thing she wanted to do was go crawling back home, begging Aiden to help her. She was so scared. What if she was an awful mother? How would she pay to take care of this baby?
When he was born, her heart broke into two. She didn’t want to hold him, but it was Mabel who made her. The very thing that she was afraid of happened the moment that she looked down at the baby boy in her arms. She fell in love. She’d intended to never fall in love with anyone ever again, but he was different. He was hers… but she had to give him up. Or did she?
Mabel convinced her to keep the baby whom she named Henry Stryder Van Helsing. Not a single day went by that Lydia wasn’t grateful for Mabel’s help during such a painful moment in her life. If it hadn’t been for Mabel, Lydia would have given up the one thing in her life that would keep her going strong from that moment onward. Without her son, Lydia never would have gone on to accomplish the things that she did.
Lydia found work soon after, determined to give her son a good life and to pay back Mabel as best she could. It was when the Holyhead Harpies held open tryouts that Lydia decided to take the leap. After all, she had been Quidditch captain of the Gryffindor team her seventh year at Hogwarts, so she had the talent and Quidditch had always been her passion. It had been her dream to play professionally since she was a little girl and a number of scouts had had their eye on her during her last year at Hogwarts. She had nearly been signed for another team after leaving Hogwarts anyway, but had backed out of the deal after finding out that she was pregnant.
When Lydia made the team, Mabel couldn’t have been happier for her. With Mabel’s help, Lydia made it happen. The old witch watched over Henry whenever Lydia was away or at practice and Lydia was finally able to pay Mabel back very handsomely.
When Henry was five, Mabel decided that it was time for Lydia and Henry to do it on their own. She’d grown to love both of them, but she told Lydia, in the most loving and inspirational way, that she had to find her own way now. And so, they went their separate ways. Lydia found an apartment and made a home for herself and Henry while Mabel packed her bags to travel and perhaps find missionary work to do. She didn’t forget about Lydia and Henry though, always making sure to send them letters and gifts and sometimes dropping in to see them whenever she was in the area.
It was around this time that Henry, thanks to his godfather, John, started going by his middle name as opposed to his first. It was thanks to her playing Quidditch that Lydia and Stryder saw so much of the world. Whenever Lydia travelled, Stryder was right there by her side. The two of them were a team and they were always there for each other through thick and thin.
As much as she loved Stryder with all of her heart, it wasn’t always enough for the boy. He often asked questions about his father, wanting to know who and where he was. Lydia evaded them for as long as she could, but he was persistent. Though the questions hurt her, she understood why he wanted to know. His questions were a painful reminder of the fact that she’d not only denied Aiden the opportunity to know his son, but she’d denied Stryder the opportunity to know his father. There were many nights that Lydia stayed up with a pen in hand, wondering what she could possibly tell Aiden in a letter. She never got far with these letters before tossing them right into the trash.
Stryder’s questions weren’t the only reminder of Aiden that she had. Lydia may have carried him for nine months and given birth to him, but there wasn’t much of her in his features. Everything about him was entirely Aiden, right down to many of his habits. Sure, he inherited some of her traits such as her stubbornness and her tendency to roll her eyes, but he was so much like his father that she sometimes felt like she was talking to or looking at Aiden. Sarcasm was a trait he’d been cursed with by both his mother and his father though.
When Stryder found the picture of her and Aiden, everything started to change between them. He was unrelenting in his desire to know who his father was and he often acted out. Part of this was just him being his usual, troublemaking self, but she knew what sort of troublemaking was normal for him and what wasn’t. He insisted on keeping the picture, of course, and took it with him wherever he went, hoping it would help him to identify his father if he ever saw him. Stryder grew distant from her, seeking to fill a hole in his life that she would never be able to occupy.
Life had been perfect for them up until then. She still held onto the hope that Stryder would come around to the fact that he didn’t need Aiden in his life… If he didn’t though… well, she would do the one thing she dreaded the most if it meant making her son happy.
Lydia’s world came crashing down one night in particular, destroying the seemingly happy life that she had built for herself and Stryder. She would forever be grateful for the fact that her son hadn’t been home that night, having insisted on having a sleepover with one of his friends.
After having a run in with Marc Valen, a face from the past (and one that she’d never been too fond of), she returned home, ready to put the unwelcome reunion behind her when someone knocked on her front door. She’d assumed that it was the neighbor, probably coming over for the millionth time to borrow something that he probably wasn’t going to return anyway. She’d been wrong. Very, VERY wrong.
Marc must have followed her home. Before she could slam the door shut in his face, he wedged his boot between the door and the frame. She made a mad dash for her wand that was sitting on the kitchen counter, but she wasn’t quick enough. He knocked her to the ground before dragging her back to her bedroom.
What Marc did to her that night changed Lydia. She felt dirty, broken, and more helpless than she ever had before. She didn’t know how long he’d stayed. She lost sense of time, to be honest, but it felt like an eternity. When he finally did leave her, she was bleeding and crying on the bed, her torn clothes lying on the floor.
She just wanted to lie there and die, but there was one thing that forced her to get up: Stryder. She cleaned herself up as best as she could and hid behind a mask of her former self before going off to bring her son back. She never even noticed the picture of her and Stryder that had gone missing the night that Marc raped her. She assumed it must have been misplaced. After all… who would want to steal a picture of Lydia and her son?
They didn’t stay there much longer. Lydia could no longer sleep in her own bedroom or on her own bed. She had nightmares and she pulled away from her dream: playing quidditch. Fans and teammates alike were stunned to hear that their captain was retiring from quidditch. She’d made the final decision after having a full-blown panic attack during a game. She’d blacked out before the bludger even hit her, knocking her off her broom and landing her a bed in St. Mungo’s. Everyone associated the news of her early retirement with the injury she sustained and she went on allowing everyone to believe this. In reality, she could hardly even get herself out of bed every morning and her panic attacks were only getting worse. They were sometimes debilitating.
After quitting the league, Lydia knew that she needed to find some way of making ends meet. Her quidditch career had left her well off, but she couldn’t let Stryder see her just fall off of the deep end. He needed stability, especially with his first year at Hogwarts coming up. So, Lydia packed her son up and opened up a Quidditch supplies shop in Diagon Alley. She missed Quidditch dearly, but she wouldn’t be able to handle another incident like that and she was just too… afraid. She was afraid of everything.
She had every intention of patching up old relationships, but it was hard. Instead, Lydia practically hid inside her shop, her son pulling away from her more every day, in search of something better. She would often look outside the window of her shop or her apartment and see Marc standing out there, watching. Twisted as he was, he would sometimes give that sick and twisted smile of his or wave to her.
As if fate hadn’t been cruel enough to Lydia, two death eaters attacked not just her, but Stryder as well. Though she didn’t know why the death eaters would want her and her eleven-year-old son dead, the aurors had reason to believe that they were now targets and that they needed protecting. Of course, Lydia hadn’t bargained on Aiden Blackwell, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her son to be one of the aurors who would be watching over her.