A/N- So this is just an intoductory chapter. If I get some possitive feedback I will continue. If not, then I might just 86 the whole thing.


Sinister Intent: Pilot


Lex has a secret. A secret only she knows. Alexis Tautou has power. Fierce power one could only refer to as Magic. She had no clue how, but she knew that ever since she was young she could do things other children, other adults even, could not.

The girl in question sat at a shabby vanity, examining herself. She was dressed in a black shift and matching black Mary Jane's, appropriate for a ten-year-old. She looked rather drab, as one would expect, seeing as she was to attend her mother's funeral in a half hour. However, tears were not falling from the young girls eyes; eyes that were a speckled golden brown, with piercing black pupils and dark, thin rims around both irises. How could she cry over a woman whom she hardly knew? Who hardly knew her? Lex swung her feet beneath the vanity stool she sat upon. She took in her hair, long and dark; it might have been curly had it been shorter, but the weight dragged down the would-be curls into defined waves. It was parted on the side, surrounding her fair-skinned face. She leaned forward towards the mirror, scrunched up her little nose then parted her pale lips to examine her teeth. She made a 'grr' face out of boredom, and then slumped back away from the mirror, idly continuing the swaying motion of her feet.

Lex was a result of the roaring 20's, a time when people lived for champagne and Swing. Her mother, Cynthia Tautou, had shimmied her way into the lives (and beds) of many wealthy men during her partying days and soon enough was twenty-one, with a baby and no confessed father. Having a baby did nothing to cease her wild rendezvous however, and she ended up six feet under. Cynthia Tautou had been shot in the head twice by an overzealously jealous boyfriend. Lex, ten years old, was left alone with the title of "Orphan" stamped across her forehead, and legal documents.

Lex might as well have raised herself though, for how seldom she actually had spent time with her mother. Cynthia had been too young and too free to bare the burden of a child. Instead she left her alone quite a lot. Lex learned at an early age that she could never depend on her mother. Although she was spiteful of being left alone, she learned to accept it, even enjoy it. Lex had always been an independent child and she quickly figured out that more time alone meant more time to practice her "special" power. Lex spent most of her young years eating too many Charleston Chews and listening to Jazz on the radio too loud. Lex had loved to sit back away from the radio and listen, as the volume would rise higher and higher as she moved the knob with her mind. While growing up, she learned she could do many things with her mind. When she was two she learned she could make her rattle shake without touching it, though then she was too young to realize. When she was four she learned she could put broccoli in her mouth and taste candy instead. When she was eight she learned she could make her mother very angry by rearranging everything on the highest shelves, and not get blamed because she was far too short to reach. And when she was ten she learned she could make the wind blow and howl as her mother's coffin was lowered into the ground, of course everyone else thought it was a merely due a brewing storm that never came.

She supposed she loved her mother, in some incumbent way. The way you say "thank you" and feign fondness over a gift you hate from a person you barely know. That was the way she loved her mother. She didn't mourn her violent death; a death that stole a young soul too soon, or that was what the obituary had said anyway. She had stood lamely at the funeral, in all black, staring not at the coffin, but at the many people around her whom were all weeping for her late mother. This had made her angry, for who were they to stand there and cry over her mother. Her mother: who had hardly given her the time of day whilst she was alive. Did they all have false memories of her? Were they simply crying because that's what you did at funerals, when someone died? Or did they know someone she did not; had her mother been kind and thoughtful to all but her? Did Cynthia Tautou truly deserve an ocean of tears?

But ten-year-old Lex could not cry. No. She would not cry. Perhaps she could, if she really tried, if she wanted to put on a show for these nameless people who apparently knew her mother; knew her. But they did not, and she would not. Lex had been hardened by ten years with no father and a less than adequate mother. They would be fake tears, for although Alexis Tautou was burying her mother that day, she might as well have been burying a stranger.

The date was September 1st, 1937.


The day after her mother died Lex was informed she would be moving in with her Aunt Mary or Claire or something like that. She had never met her aunt, but had received cheerless, impersonal birthday cards from her annually. Aunt Marie-Claire, she later learned, was ten years older than her late mother. She lived across the Atlantic in England. It sounded so foreign to Lex, so remote and exotic. However, once she arrived at her aunt's grimy East London apartment she realized that it was far from it.

Aunt Marie-Claire lived in an old, dilapidated apartment building on Colvestone Crescent in Hackney. It was not a particularly nice neighborhood, to say the least. She had moved to England twelve years ago in 1925, two years before Lex was born. Why she had moved to England, Lex had no idea. She remembered noticing the smell first; it smelled dank and moldy in Aunt Marie-Claire's apartment. Lex decided it suited Aunt Marie-Claire well, because her aunt wasn't exactly a bunch of daisies.

Aunt Marie-Claire was in her early forties and looked as bleak as the rainy English weather. Lex wondered if she had always been that way or if she had changed to sync with her apartment and the forecast. The first time Lex was brought to the apartment, she had been shown the rusty key to the front door, which led to a landing. One then had to walk up four more flights of stairs; Lex was shown the steps to skip in order to avoid falling through, but unfortunately Aunt Marie-Claire had mentioned the last broken step to late and Lex's leg dropped through the wood. Finally after many minuets of Aunt Marie-Claire trying to pull Lex free and almost causing both of them to fall down the four flights they had just climbed, they reached her front door. When Lex entered the apartment she was not surprised to find it cramped and smelly. She was led to her room where she'd put down her lone suitcase and looked up at Aunt Marie-Claire expectantly. Lex soon discovered that Aunt Marie-Claire was no more interested in her that her mother had been.


Days turned into weeks in the dreary apartment. Between meals, which consisted mostly of day old bread and queer smelling stews, Lex mainly stayed in her room. With no radio to listen to she had spent most of her time trying to levitate objects and send them flying across the room, which was only about ten feet wide.

She had no school because her aunt had failed to enroll her. This suited Lex fine at first. But as the weeks past she soon longed for school, which woudl be an excuse to leave the dreadful apartment. However, with nowhere else to go, Lex remained at Aunt Marie-Claire's, inside all day everyday, while she went to work as a telephone operator.

Christmas had come and gone, quite uneventfully. Aunt Marie-Claire had given Lex a wool jumper, which itched whenever she put it on.

As more weeks passed Lex fell into a rhythm. Her daily routine of waking, dressing, eating toast, saying goodbye to Aunt Marie-Claire, walking back to her room, watching objects float across her room, welcoming Aunt Marie-Claire home from work, eating stew for supper and going to bed became a mundane, mindless ritual. Conversation between Lex and her aunt was rare and impersonal; it usually went something like:

"What did you do today then?" asked Aunt Marie-Claire, regarding her stew.

"Nothing really," replied Lex, "braided my hair, took a nap, unbraided my hair…" Made my hairbrush spin around the room.

"Ah, good," said Aunt Marie-Claire absently as she re-read the day's paper. "Damn the German. Damn them all to hell."

Now January was drawing to a close and with the bitterly cold weather, Lex's birthday drew nearer. She awoke on a particularly cold day to a tapping noise. She rose from her bed and shoved the itchy, woolen jumper over her head and looked around for the cause of the noise. Her eyes flew to the window, where to her amazement, was an owl lightly tapping as if pleading for entrance. Lex approached the window and wondered if she should indeed grant the owl access to her room. Deciding she would send her hairbrush after it should it choose to attack, she opened the window. The owl fluttered in and landed oh her bedpost where it proceeded to stick out it's leg, or was it a talon? She wasn't sure. Her attention was then turned to an envelope attached to the leg/talon. It, the owl, wanted her to take the envelope. She did. Lex reached out towards the owl and untied the letter. She stared at the envelope in her hand, written on it in bold emerald ink was:

To Miss A. Tautou

Apartment four

19 Colvestone Crescent

Hackney

Greater London

Who could this possibly be from? Lex wondered. She didn't know anyone that would send her mail, and certainly not by owl. She opened it carefully, not knowing what to expect.

Dear Miss Tautou,

I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins September 1st. In light of you being muggle-born, a member of our staff will stop by shortly to discuss the meaning of this letter with you.

Yours Sincerely,

Albus Percival Walfric Brian Dumbledore

Deputy Headmaster

Lex could not breathe from excitement and awe. Her mouth gapped and her eyes stared unseeing at the words she surely had misread…


Not even six miles away across the River Thames in Stockwell, an eleven-year-old boy sat on a hard mattress worn with age, in a dreadfully noisy orphanage. He simply stared out of the window in front of him, silently waiting for September 1st, a glint of sinister intent in his stormy-grey eyes.

The date was February 11th, 1938.


Next Chapter:

Not even two hours after receiving the letter from Hogwarts, there was a knock at the door... Standing straight, she opened the door. She gawked... What was shocking was the fact that he stood there brazenly head to toe plum colored velvet. It was a ghastly suit, and Lex crinkled her nose in distaste and the man chuckled slightly.

"That tends to be the common reaction to this ensemble," the man mused, "Though I admit, I am quite fond of it. Plum is my color, you know, but perhaps being velvet, it is a bit much."


Review please, so I know whether or not to continue :]