It was nine AM.

She sat at the door in her pretty blue dress, bouncing her heels against the legs of the old kitchen chair. Her eleven-year-old fingers were already grimy from sneaking early tastes of her own birthday cake. They left smudges left and right of the pig-nosed mark she left as she pressed her face to the glass. The driveway beyond was full of cars, but none were a blue Toyota Corolla. None had ridiculous flame decals and bullet hole stickers.

None belonged to him.

It was noon.

Behind her, the other children were playing party games. Her mother had bought her a pinata; Simba, someday destined to rule the Pridelands. He hung high out of reach, because that was special. That had to wait. Robert had promised he'd help her swing, because she could never swing hard enough herself. Because she was small and every swing she took never did much, and the other children would laugh. Because she had always been a little too short and a little too skinny. Her lips a little too big and her eyes a little too wide.

She had always just been a little too something, or just plain old little.

But nobody laughed at Robert. Robert was strong and big and could always hit it in just one try. Robert was sixteen, and he could have cracked the pinata in a single swing.

Robert was her big brother, and he was coming to her birthday party.

It was three PM.

The ice cream was melting on the table to her left, and her mother was opening her presents. The background noise was an uncomfortable silence interspersed with whispered questions. Who was she waiting on? What was she looking for? How could someone look so sad on their own birthday, and why wouldn't she leave that chair in front of the door?

Isn't this a nice Barbie, sweetheart?

Yes. Uh huh. Thank you.

They were muttered responses. Distant. Quiet. She showed more excitement and sat upright when the roar of a car engine came screaming down the hill, only to pull her knees back in to her chest as it passed. It was like watching winter and spring in rapid alternation, that blue flower of a girl blossoming with hope and withering in despair as the temperature of her emotions changed.

Momma, when will he be here?

Soon, sweetheart. It was always soon. Always half an hour. Forty-five minutes.

Tops.

Her mother pressed the keys of their old landline phone with a furrowed brow and a frown. There were heated whispers and strict curfews that came and went within the hour. She called again, and hung up without an answer.

It was six PM.

She mumbled her goodbyes from the cherry wood perch that her mother had pulled back from the door just far enough so that the guests could get out. They filed out with forced smiles and genuine frowns, looking down at that sad little girl who could not bring herself to cry. The glass of the door was almost opaque with smudged handprints and fish-lipped kiss marks from dozens of hopeful moments, the fingers swiping downwards when disappointment pulled her body away.

“Do you want to open his present?” Her mother whispered, an apology in every word. She pressed the hard, wrapped rectangle into her hands, and pulled the paper away. Her mother pulled open the cover, and the words stared up at her even as the tears blurred them away.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense."

It slid from her lap as she stood, and hit the ground with a dull thud.

Simba lay in pieces, as though he had followed in Mufasa's mighty footsteps and been trampled beneath the stampede. The hooves of a dozen excited children had ripped his paper mache body open; the only candy left were the things nobody wanted. Tootsie Rolls and Starlight mints. The little girl gathered them up with all those brightly colored bits of tissue paper, scraped her fingers over the carpet until she'd collected her little pile of the used and undesired. She curled up around it, eleven years old and already jaded. Eleven years old, and seeing the darkness in the world long before that robed figure offered to show her.

Because that was the story of Gamma Three's life.

That was the story of how Poe Morris became so angry and jaded and full of hate.

The story of why she'd gone into that darkness eight years later, looking for a place to be first.

Because Alpha Seven had been a better brother in death than he'd ever been in life.