Resident Closet Explorer

Prologue

History's Home

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry plays the setting to many stories from many eras. Tales of friendships, of everlasting loyalties, of victorious heroes, of vanquished enemies, and of the first buds of true, undying love. Most end happily while others end poorly. But what of those that are false happiness, full of empty promises and counterfeit relationships.

Under a lake, in a fifth year girl's dorm of that very school, there are four beds each baring a silver monogram. One, RW, is empty, looking hardly used with its curtains open wide and the duvet neatly in place. Another, MG, has a foot protruding through the curtains and is heavy with the sound of snoring slumber. The next, MF, with firmly drawn curtains, plays host to the frantic quill-scratching of teenage angst. The last bed, BV, holds a girl, her black spread over a pillow, and a silver bracelet.

Her bright hazel eyes, today appearing with more green specks in the honey colored background, held nothing but disdain for the shiny metal that hung daintily from her up-held arm. It was a simple flatten, curved plate connected by chain links. A name, her name, Belladonna Maria Gabriella de Constantina Vanderkay, was scrawled onto the plate in miniscule cursive with tiny emeralds dotting the i's. This name was the reason she was in a castle in Scotland instead of with her parents in the States or with her grandparents in Italy.

All she ever wanted was to run from that name and everything it stood for. Running had taken her here where she was just Bella Vanderkay, promiscuous entrepreneur with O's in Arithmancy and Charms and a Poor in History of Magic. To these people, who knew nothing of the world she was from, she was normal; well, almost normal, maybe eccentric with her stripped stockings and bare feet.

Perhaps she couldn't run from everyone. There was one person who knew her birth title and legacy. He was the most important reason that she hated this piece of jewelry. She remembered with a sick taste what was inscribed upon the inside. Lei appartiene a me, la piccola principessa -G

In this castle that laid home to some of the most infamous heroes and villains of the last thousand years, there resided a girl whose tale was not of the norm. She didn't have an overly depressing upbringing nor did she endure the harsh childhood of a many siblings, but neither did she believe in the fairy tales that caused happy smiles and joyful laughs. She was someone that wanted to be remembered for her actions in life rather than the name she was given at birth.

"Belladonna Maria Gabriella de Constantina Vanderkay," she whispered, her voice laden with a heavy accent that did not carry into her normal speech, as an olive toned finger traced lightly over the engraving on the bracelet. "I don't know you." And Hogwarts gladly swallowed her words into the all encompassing blanket of darkness.


Thanks to Princess Padfoot for being my muse and editor.

If you can't translate the Italian on her bracelet, all will be revealed soon enough.

Mini Moony

MM