Disclaimer: I own nothing. JK Rowling owns everything (except Lyra I guess).
A/N: I've rewritten so much of this story. I know I've been on a two-year hiatus but I plan to fix a lot of what is going on. Plz bear with me. This is also currently the only chapter rewritten because it doesn't impact anything else of the story as of yet. My plan is to rewrite the other 10 chapters very quickly and fix all I can and also finally post the 12th chapter that I have an abandoned plan for. Some bits might be altered here and there and I might end up mashing chapters together and making them longer and shorter. Basically, I don't know what anything is going to look like right now but I always had a very rough outline of the story in my head and then on paper and I'm not changing any of that. I've lost some of the plans for the other chapters published but I'll be able to pull it all back together when I get in to things. My biggest concern is continuity and when things happen and what to focus on but don't worry for now. It'll all work out.
Chapter One
At the age of twenty-two, it finally dawned on her how differently things could have turned out had she followed the route of life set out from the day she was born. It was a thought that she never admitted to having, yet had recently crept in to her worries at night when her mind was occupied with other matters. It hit her during the day at the oddest times, while making lunch, running any errands, replying to the mounting letters that had gathered on the desk by the window in her bedroom. And it was a thought that overtook all others as she stood on that blacked-out city street close to midnight in the pouring rain, facing the one person she knew had always held the real power over her. It was a split-second thought, but one that stalled her.
Everything could have turned out differently.
Should she raise her wand to fight or should she submit like she had always done before? Would she be killed either way or would she somehow survive once more, out of pity or their need for her? She had never understood why her path had veered, and whether she had ended up on that street at that moment accidentally, or if the universe had brought her here to change her perspective. To save her.
"I told them," she said quietly, keeping her eyes low to the ground. A flickering light hung from the abandoned shopfront midway between the two figures. The rainwater had filled the pothole in front of her and she kept her eyes on it. Neither figure moved. The rain kept falling.
Her parents had named her Lyra.
Despite their longing for a boy, they were blessed with their fourth daughter. Had it been that Cygnus and Druella were finally the parents to a son, then certainly this story would have ended much differently. A son would mean they would be the parents to the heir. A son would have meant their youngest child would have been treated like royalty, equally if not more respected than his older sisters. The heir to the Noble House of Black had, in each generation before, commanded respect from the moment he entered the world. He was the successor to the name. He would be raised precisely to what the family expected. The traditional family beliefs and history would be taught and ingrained from childhood. The House of Black's significance to the wizarding world would be emphasised. As he grew older, he would acknowledge his superiority to other wizards, acknowledge how his family remained true to the magic of the wizarding world. How, despite what others said, there was no doubt he was more magical than the half-bloods and Muggle-borns that claimed their own place in the world. And when he grew old and met a suitable pureblood wife, they too would have their own son who would carry on the tradition.
However, For Cygnus and Druella Black, things did not work in their favour. An overcast night in October they were given a daughter instead. They named her Lyra for the constellation.
It was being the fourth of four girls that allowed Lyra to grow up the way she did. Two weeks after she was born, the true heir to the House of Black had been born. It was this moment that Lyra looked back on in later years as the true reason for the reality of her childhood. As a young girl, she learned that by blending in she never drew attention to herself as the problematic fourth daughter. Although she had never been told, there was no question she was a disappointment to her parents. She did not compete with her sisters in anything at which they were knowingly superior. She learned to speak when spoken to, how to curtsy and smile, and how to avoid speaking of politics, but she lacked grace and poise and any sort of patience. Her hair never sat perfectly straight or curled, but a waving somewhere-in-between with a manageable cowlick on the right side. Her left knee had purple scars scattered across it from when she had fought with Sirius when they were five and he pushed her through his front door on to the cement steps that lead into Muggle London. Her balance made her wobble when she curtsied. She sometimes dropped her T's from the end of words. She smiled too big and wide. She had a temper.
Watching her older sisters from afar ignoring these social conventions in favour of standing out created allowed the young witch to pull herself further in to the shadow of her family. She would never be the perfect child, so she sunk into the crowd, avoiding strangers when she could. Her grandmother Irma had told her that anything she did reflected on her parents. Lyra had decided doing nothing was safer than doing the wrong thing.
Certainly, though, the fourth sister, Lyra Vega Black, was known in all wizarding circles and she knew how to play the societal game. It was this game, played blindly by the young witch as she grew up amid a war, that led her to that moment, where she stood on the flooded street, eye to eye with danger.