Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and no money is being made.

AN: That's my take on the rather popular plotline about Bellatrix' daughter. The idea's very old, actually from the time between GoF and OotP but I tried to adept it to the new stuff. For anyone who's Mary Sue-alarm is going off due to the OC bearing my nickname: The character actually came first and I used the name for my HP-related internet presence later. I didn't really wish to change it now for reasons that might become clear in the story.

The Lestrange Legacy

Muggle School's Finished

Our last day in primary school.

One by one we were being called to the front of the room so we could get our school certificates. Our classmates' parents were sitting in the back of the room. Their children could join them after receiving their certificate.

Mandy clicked her fingers nervously.

"What are you so nervous about? I asked her in a whisper. "We know what marks we're going to get."

Neither Mandy nor I had anything to worry about. We did well in class. "You have a bit of a disadvantage but if you work hard, you will be successful despite of it," Mrs Richards always told us. She was quite strict but we both believed her that.

"Brocklehurst, Mandy," our teacher Mrs Smith called. Mandy stepped to the front and received her certificate as well as a special prize for her math achievements. I smiled slightly. I had known this before.

The parents were clapping politely, some of them whispering to each other. They probably weren't too happy about that. A child from St-Catherine's Orphanage received the math prize, not one of their own. Some of those parents even told their children not to go anywhere near us. We might have contagious diseases or contact to dangerous people they said.

We had gotten used to it.

When Mandy returned to her seat next to mine, tears were shining in her eyes. "Mum and Dad would have been so proud if they knew," she said, sobbing.

I put an arm around her. "I'm sure they are proud," I whispered. "Remember what Ms Thomson said, they're watching you from where they are now."

"I'd rather have them here," Mandy said.

"I know."

Sometimes, I really wasn't sure which one of us was better off. Mandy had known her parents and knew that they had loved her but she had to deal with losing them.

I had simply been left on the door of the orphanage when I was almost three years old with nothing but a note tied around my neck with my name on it. No one knew where I came from or who my parents were. Maybe a teenage mother who had gotten tired of her responsibility or a drug-addicted prostitute.

At least, I wasn't missing anyone this way.

I was all alone.

On days like this one it hurt most.

"Lestrange, Vivien," Mrs Smith called.

I walked up to her, the parents in the back of the room whispering to each other. I could guess why. My last name was a bit unusual to say the least.

"Well done, Vivien," Mrs Smith said with a smile as she handed me the certificate. I looked through it. The marks were pretty good but not prize-worthy.

"Thank you, Mrs Smith," I said before returning to Mandy.

Mrs Smith gave a short speech and wished us good luck at our new schools. After that we were free to leave. Another parentless boy joined us on the way to the door. Andy's parents were both in prison. They had robbed a bank and shot a police officer. He wasn't dead but had turned into a nursing case who couldn't even leave his bed anymore.

Andy had had to endure plenty of nasty talk from other children and parents when this story had became known. As if this was his fault.

He didn't believe that his parents were evil either. They had needed the money and only shot at the police officer because he had wanted to arrest them. I wasn't telling Andy but I still thought that robbing a bank was wrong. If you needed money, you should work to earn it. Mrs Richards always told us that as well.

"Let's get away quickly," Andy said. He wasn't keen on meeting the other parents.

"We have to wait for Aurora," Mandy told him.

Aurora was a year younger than us and staying in the same room. When I had heard someone say her name for the first time, I totally freaked out. I had no idea why, but I was still really uncomfortable if someone called her name loudly. It made me think of another word, Auror, or Aurors, or something. This didn't make any sense because Auror wasn't even a word but it still happened to me. No idea why.

"Oh no," Mandy said with a sigh. "Aurora's in trouble."

The blond girl had been cornered by a group of four boys. Two of them were rather big. They pushed her around and made fun of her unfashionable clothes.

"Leave her alone!" I called.

The three of us walked over to them.

The largest boy grinned. "Why should I do what you tell me?"

"Four on one is for cowards," Mandy said. "Come on, Aurora."

Aurora tried to get away from the boys but one of them grabbed her by the arm and tried to twist it around. He didn't get far though. A few seconds later, the boy was the one screaming in pain. He held onto his hand as if it had been burned.

Aurora got herself free and joined us.

Mandy and I shared a meaningful look. This kind of thing happened around us rather frequently. I wasn't quite sure if it had been me or her this time. Things tended to get burned around Mandy, people who annoyed me were simply feeling pain. Or if someone I liked was in pain, it would stop and small wounds would close.

"If I were you, I wouldn't try to mess with us again," I told the boys.

They seemed to agree and trotted off. We had to deal with idiots like these quite often. People without parents were easy targets or so they thought.

No one bothered us anymore on the way back. I was looking forward to secondary school, especially to new subjects like chemistry. I wasn't quite sure why, but I really liked the idea of mixing substances to create new ones with different colours and smells.

The fact that it would take a while until everyone knew that they had to leave us alone was bothering me though. I hated those arguments and if I'm supposed to be honest, sometimes, I thought that other people starting to feel pain when I was angry at them was really creepy. I wasn't doing this on purpose and I had no idea how to stop it but this didn't make it any less creepy. It always felt quite useful when I was in such a situation, but afterwards, I tended to feel bad about it.

Mandy quickly noticed my subdued mood though and started to distract me with speculations about our new school. Normal children preferred their holidays but I liked to learn new stuff. Holidays at the orphanage were pretty boring as well. We barely ever went anywhere, not like those wonderful travels some of our classmates were making.

Andy had worries similar to mine. He hoped that people at his new school wouldn't find out about his parents but he probably wouldn't be that lucky. Other people from our old school would come with us after all.

When we reached the orphanage, we met Ms Leakey, my favourite care worker.

"Hello. Did everything go well at school?"

"Yes, it did," I told her.

"Only a little argument at the end. A few boys have attacked Aurora," Mandy added.

I would have preferred to keep this incident quite.

"We sorted it out though."

Ms Leakey turned to Aurora. "Are you alright?"

"Yes. They weren't doing anything too bad. It's okay Ms Leakey."

Aurora knew what "bad" meant. Her father had always beaten her mother and sometimes Aurora herself as well even though she had been only four years old. In the end, he had thrown his wife down a staircase and refused to call an ambulance. She had died.

"Good. You know that you can always come to me if someone is giving you trouble," Ms Leakey said. "I'll do my best to help."

"Thank you," Aurora said.

Ms Leakey turned to me. "Vivien, did you finish the book I gave you."

"Yes. I know I'm supposed to give it back. I'm sorry. It was really good by the way."

Ms Leakey smiled. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'd like to read it again myself though."

"Of course, I'll fetch it right away," I said.

Our room had a window to the playground in the backyard. There was a large tree right in front of our window. I really liked the view. Better than the street at the front.

Mandy had a picture of herself between her parents on her bedside table, Aurora only kept one of her mother.

I had no idea what my parents might look like.

I imagined my mother to look like the picture of Morgan LeFay on the book Ms Leakey had lent me though. That was the real reason why I kept it even though I did like the story. The woman on the book cover had long, black hair and dark robes. She looked proud like a queen.

I knew that my mother had probably been a lost, broken and hurt woman who couldn't care for her child but I still preferred to imagine something different.

Morgan LeFay had totally fascinated me from the first time I had read about her, right after I had learned to read. She was such a powerful woman, skilled in both healing and dark sorcery and I had hated how most stories portrayed her as evil. A fate witches almost always suffered and it had made me sad every time I heard or read it.

Ms Leakey had her own theory about this though. She believed that men had been afraid of powerful women and had therefore turned them evil whenever they turned up in old stories like Morgan or Medea. She gave me books that told these stories in a different way, like the one lying on my bedside table at the moment.

Back when I read about Morgan for the first time, her last name had reminded me of my own. I had started to ask myself, if Lestrange might be a magical name too. I might be a lost or exiled child of the Fey. It would have explained why I had turned up on the doorsteps without anyone knowing anything about me. It would also have explained why I was so different from the others. I used to hope that Morgan or a descendent would come and take me with her to Avalon.

When Mandy had arrived I had stopped thinking things like this. I soon discovered that she was different in the same way I was different. Mandy was the daughter of completely ordinary people though. At this point, I had stopped believing that I was so special. Instead, I had found a friend.

Still, I had never quite lost the belief that there might be a secret world of magic that was different from our own.

I looked at the picture of Aurora's Mum again. Aurora had only been one year older when she came here but she remembered quite well what had happened between her parents. Sometimes, she'd still wake up because she had nightmares about it.

I on the other hand didn't remember anything. At least nothing that was real. My memories were more like wishful thinking.

After reading about Morgan for the first time, I had "remembered" my mother who happened to look just like her telling me her own stories about Morgan while I was lying in my bed in a beautiful room that belonged to a large house. Her story had been about Morgan's old magical world that had been destroyed by traitors.

When Ms Leakey and Mrs Richards had taken us to the countryside and told us about various plants, I "remembered" a man with flaxen hair and grey eyes like my own telling me about plants in a large garden. I even remember his words: "There are plants that heal and plants that harm. Some however do both if you know how to use them."

I had read about plants as much as I could and with some plants, he had really been right.

The third memory was the strangest by far. After listening to a story about witches flying on broomsticks I had remembered a boy in his late teens with freckles and straw-coloured hair who had lifted me on a broomstick and flown through the air with me. If I try hard enough, I can still feel the wind in my hair. I remembered the boy as something like an uncle.

When I had told the counsellor about these memories, he assumed that my parents had been using drugs and even given me some. He suspected that my father had been growing plants for drug production. He had also talked about "magical thinking" as if it was some sort of disease.

I didn't know what to think about it. I was quite aware of the fact that these couldn't be real memories but I still cherished them.

I picked up the book, looked at the cover one last time and returned to Ms Leakey.

"Sorry that it took me so long," I told her. "I was thinking about some things."

"That's alright," Ms Leakey said. "Do you want to tell me what you've been thinking about?"

I shook my head. People didn't understand this, not even Ms Leakey. She believed that Morgan was a representation of the Mother Goddess and that it was normal for a motherless girl to feel drawn to her. I didn't really believe that that was it though.

I wasn't sure if I believed in a Mother Goddess or in Ms Thomson's God. I didn't really want to offend either.

"Thank you for lending me the book," I said and left the office. I wasn't sure if it was only my imagination or if she did give me a worried look.

Back in our room, Mandy and Aurora had started a game of cards. I joined in and soon stopped thinking about my mother and my lack of real memories. It was still better than the things they or Andy had to endure.

Probably.