50 Sentences on Margaret Anne Dresden
Aka, Maggie the Younger.

01. Walk
Maggie used to walk with her parents in the twilight, until she got old enough to realize that they’d rather be by themselves; then she walked with Julia, sometimes Arthur, or even later than that, with Simon.
Now she walks alone.

02. Beauty
Julia is the beauty in the family, with golden hair and sapphire eyes and a bright ringing laugh; Maggie is her darker shadow, in temperament as well as looks.

03. Catch
Everyone else has someone, her parents, her sister, her friends, even her mentor; but who will catch her when she stumbles?

04. Speak
She has never been shy about speaking her mind; in fact, the adults who know her well only start to worry when she doesn’t say something.

05. Lack
They’re so happy together, and Maggie can’t help but be happy for them; after all, Julia is her baby sister, her other self, Arthur her best friend, and this ridiculous envy has got to stop.

06. Mine
Maggie barely remembers her first kidnapping or her return home, but the tattered teddy bear still resides on her quilt, the one toy she refused point-blank to share with Julia.

07. Laugh
It’s hard not to laugh when Widick mistakes Arthur for a girl. It’s harder when he accuses her of being drunk. But Maggie just gives up when he phones her mother.

08. While
“You mean the whole time we thought you were dead and all this while, you were just pretending?”

09. Youth
The girl’s name is Emily Driver, a small sweet-faced brunette with huge brown eyes and a tentative smile; looking at this baby she’s supposed to teach, Maggie feels old for the first time in her life.

10. Stay
“So how come you broke up with Hal?” Maggie asks, as casually as she can; Simon, not fooled at all, shrugs, and says, “He said it was him or you. No contest.”

11. Fill
Like her mother, Maggie works to fill the emptiness in her life; at least her coworkers love her.

12. Distraction
She is living a lie, walking a thin line between life and death, and she is starting to regret choosing to dye her hair blonde, because every time she looks in a mirror, she sees her mother.

13. Fear
She swallows fear and plunges ahead into the fire, because they need her, and no one can do what she does, and this is what she was born to do.

14. Crash
It was hard, so hard, to step in front of that fireball and follow her orders, harder still to live for two years another life in another world, but it isn’t until she is free to return to her old self that she really starts to break.

15. Look
She’s rather pretty, in her own quiet way, and she’s certainly received enough catcalls and dirty suggestions to develop a death stare as good as her mother’s.

16. Begin
The Lieutenant swears suddenly, clutches at her swollen stomach, grabs the file cabinet to keep upright, and has to be driven post-haste to the hospital; the resulting baby girl, tiny and adorable with her dusting of black hair, immediately becomes the station’s mascot.

17. Second
Maggie’s not quite certain what’s going on, with Daddy all nervous and tense and Mommy all cranky and big; the one thing she’s sure of is that she’s going to deserve that sister when all the fuss is over.

18. Violet
Hana Ruhel resembles a fairy, with long golden hair and ethereal violet eyes, and a surprising capacity for violence; Maggie Dresden looks like a china doll with curling dark hair, perfectly arched eyebrows and a tendency to come from behind.
Simon called it before they even met.

19. Candy
Everyone’s heard about Julia’s little Chick Tract bonfire one eventful Halloween; what no one knows is that Maggie gave her the lighter.

20. Nothing
When her mother died, she felt everything, but pretended she didn’t; when her father died, she felt nothing at all, shut down so completely that not even grief could penetrate.

21. Familiar
Maggie’s style of magic is a strange-yet-familiar mix of her father and Morgan; in some ways, she’s a daughter to both of them, which is where it starts to get weird.

22. Show
The hardest part of training was learning to show only what she needed to; she’s never been good at expediency.

23. Day
Maggie’s a nocturnal predator by choice, though she doesn’t mind daylight; it’s why she takes the night shift when she’s undercover, and why she’s so good at hunting vampires.

24. Ask
No one bothered to ask Simon or Maggie if they wanted to be partners when they graduated, because the answer was self-evident.

25. Think
Julia doesn’t understand her sister sometimes; she’s seen Maggie deep in thought over a book, or spouting off the philosophical implications of a world with magic versus one without, and yet she’s failing school.

26. Hair
Maggie wrestles with her unmanageable hair, frustrated to tears, and is about to take a pair of scissors to the whole mess when someone lifts the mass out of her hands and says in a soft, comforting voice, “Here, let me. I’m Simon, by the way.”

27. Home
Maggie stands outside the front door and runs her hands through her newly-redarkened hair, nervously; she can only hope they will forgive her the lie.

28. Loud
Her father gets loud, screams at her until he’s hoarse and then hugs her like he’ll never let her go; Julia, nearly as furious, tries the silent treatment instead; but neither of them hurt her as much as the silent pain in Simon’s eyes.

29. Travel
It broke her heart to do what she did, even under direct orders, even knowing that for her own safety and theirs, Margaret Dresden had to die; she never wanted to travel this far.

30. Damage
Maggie was seven years old when her mother was shot in the line of duty; Murphy recovered from that one easily enough, but the damage had already been done.

31. Strength
Her father is falling apart (as well he should, it had been over four decades), and her sister is sobbing (as well she should, Julia has always been sensitive) and she cannot cry, cannot grieve; now that her mother is gone she has to be strong for them.

32. Together
“Maggie and Simon fit each other so well!” “Pity they’re both gay.”

33. Push
Getting Morgan to take her on as an apprentice takes her five days of pushing and pleading and puppy-dog eyes, but Maggie is nothing if not persistent.

34. Safe
She held her new baby sister in her lap, because she was too small to hold Julia in her arms, and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll always keep you safe. I promise.”

35. Private
Years later, she stands in front of her namesake’s grave and makes another private promise; “I’ll keep them all safe for you. I will.”

36. Light
The first real spell Maggie ever learned was how to channel light through her own little star necklace; for the rest of her life, whenever she does it, she will remember her father’s big hands on hers, and his instructions in her ear, calm and comforting.

37. Big
On the one hand, being five-nothing drives Maggie crazy, with being offered children’s menus and patronized and patted; on the other hand, there’s nothing quite like the look on a bigger opponent’s face when she takes them down in five seconds flat.

38. Want
Maggie’s not sure when she first realized she was gay—she was maybe fourteen?—but it’s less of a problem than she ever dared to hope.

39. Law
People ask her if hearing her father’s story put her off the Wardens; they are always surprised to hear that it is precisely the opposite.

40. Canine
Mouse recognizes her first, coming around the corner of the house; he freezes, then barks ecstatically and flings himself at her in a burst of canine joy, the first to welcome her home.

41. Truth
Coming out to her parents was the hardest thing she’d ever done, which is why her father gets smacked when all he has to say is “And here I thought you were pregnant. What’s the real news?”

42. Smoke
When Maggie first met Simon, he smoked occasionally, a cigarette in an alley or leaning companionably on a wall; five years later, after incessant bitching about secondhand smoke and cancer, he quit just to shut her up.

43. Order
When she came back home after two years being dead, it didn’t really hit her how long she’d been gone until she saw the obsessive, unlived order of her apartment.

44. Feel
“Hey, I love you. You know that, right?”
Simon ruffles Maggie’s hair, a privilege that is his alone.
“’Course. Ditto.”

45. Finish
She never finished things, leaving half-done projects scattered around her apartment and half-mended clothes stacked in her laundry basket; after she died, Simon sat down and completed everything she’d left undone, and still felt empty.

46. Through
Maggie hums “Into the Fire” when she’s sparring; sometimes that song is the only thing keeps her heart beating.

47. Race
Maggie is an active child, always beating her cousins at soccer and winning races; it’s enough to save her life, once or twice.

48. Need
She needs support like she needs air, someone to hold her hand and tell her it’ll all be okay in the end, someone who will still love her when she’s gone completely mad.

49. Splash
Simon is thinking, and from the worried line between his brows it’s not a comfortable line of thought, not something he should be thinking; Maggie clears her throat several times before resorting to a water balloon.

50. Thrill
The hardest part is the moment right before the fall, the moment of trust that her mother or father or sister or Simon will catch her; falling, all she can feel is the thrill, a moment of strength and glory that she never wants to end.