How to see ghosts or surely bring them to you

Title: A Magician and a Gentle Man
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: 15
Spoilers: Pre-game, so no.
Warnings: Violence, angst
Summary: A 20,000+ word Dragon Age fic written for the 2012 annual scifibigbang ficathon. A teenage Anders escapes from the Circle and promptly finds himself in all kinds of trouble. Probably the best 25000 word Dragon Age pre-game fic you'll read all day! Link to AO3, as I';m writing this on a Whistler diner's free wifi and my laundry downstairs has just finished.

Can a magician kill a man by magic?

 So I mentioned a few days ago that I'd signed up to the scifibigbang challenge again. Since finishing AC3 I've started to play Dragon Age 2, and the Anders' centric fic (working title: Seven Hundred Ways to Sing the Blues) that's resulted is fast becoming The Fic That Ate My Brain.

I decided to set myself a challenge based on yuki_onna 's article on narrative machinery, more specifically how to create interesting and/or sympathetic characters.

The rules are simple.

1/ Take one unformed character.
2/ Give them something to want.
3/ Give them something to hide.
4/ Give them something to fear.
5/ Give them something to obsess over.
6/ Then hurt them. 

On a subconscious level I think it's something I've been doing for years as both a reader and a writer. Putting characters through hell is what makes a story interesting-certainly when I wrote my Assassins fics they were never so interesting as when they were backed into a corner. But I am slightly disturbed how easy it was to do n a conscious level. I've written 11,000 words in three days-over half the total story. I've used these words to give Anders a life outside the Tower, friends, a job, a pet.

And now it's time for the fun part. Of course, it'd be more fun if I just didn't feel so damn evil. 

How have you hurt characters in your stories (fanfic or original), and why did you do it?