A purely indulgent self-insert. As I assume to know myself fairly well, this will pretty much just follow my stream of consciousness. Read it if you want, I can assure you, at the very least, that I won't be calling myself ebony darkness etc. and don't plan to give myself a harem of Hogwarts' finest OoC idiots. I do have delusions of grandeur though and will probably end up acting like something out of r/iamverysmart so be wary of that
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It's something she knows immediately, it almost feels as if she's always been aware of it, it's a piece of information that has suddenly become her sole defining trait, just as she knows her name, just as she can feel her her limbs, her body, she is now acutely aware of her death.
As soon as she learns it, the panic sets in. It's happened, the far away concept which only appeared on gloomy evenings or perhaps a particularly long road trip, one which had somehow allowed her brain to slip away from familiar daydreams and into the dreaded concept of the future, along with its inevitable end.
The far away end to her life. Previously perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, close, but generally, a distant end to the road. She can't help but feel cheated. What does it say of her, she thinks, that the first thing she associates with her death is one of those shitty mobile games, the kind where you end up forced to pay just to keep playing, except she doubts any money will allow her to "buy more hearts", there will be no weekly offer for 99 cents, popping up every time you log into the game and hounding you with its desire to bleed you dry.
How irrelevant everything seems now, how distant. She had just earlier today worried about the awkwardness of some interaction she'd had years ago, one forgotten, surely, by everyone but her. How silly her desperate attempts to please everyone, to be liked. But now, now nothing mattered, she was dead!
How did it happen? She's overwhelmed by the need to know, it's what caused the end of her life, her reality! Yet her mind is blank, how can she not even be aware of what so suddenly stole existence from her, she asks frantically, the beat of the heart that should have stopped by now beating out a rising crescendo, an overwhelming sound, muffling all other sensation through its constant battering.
Suddenly, a change is occurring. She'll get to live again! The knowledge is not spoken, like her death, she simply has it, is aware of it. She'll be able to do as she likes, she can't return to her own life, that's impossible, she died, but she can do anything else. Will this cycle continue, if she dies in the next world? Will she continue to have this freedom? She doesn't know, but she is far too overtaken by the wealth of possibility before her, she could...appear in the 1950s, work as an undercover operative in east Berlin! She could..fool an ancient civilisation into thinking her to be a god! Anything! She could give herself magic! Yes, yes she could! She could..go live in the world of Harry Potter! She could do anything, just show up in fourth year and...participate in the triwizard tournament! Why not? Apart from her own life, she could appear in anyone's, so why not the world of Harry Potter? She was sixteen so logically she'd appear in sixth year, ah but the plot would be much too far ahead by then, no fun. What if she appeared in 1981? When Harry Potter was born? Seeing the Berlin Wall would be fascinating, but she didn't particularly feel like taking care of Harry Potter as a child and she wouldn't get to experience all the intrigue within the school..She wanted to meet Tom Riddle as well, would he be different from Voldemort? She was curious. He was supposed to be bloody attractive as well, so that certainly would be nice to see. He would probably be insane though, wouldn't he? As great as he was in concept, in practice, psychopathy? Not all that great.
Fuck it, she would enter Hogwarts in Harry's fourth year, that's when things really became interesting anyway, but she'd need time to prepare, to create an identity. How would she go about that? The imperius? What methods did the ministry have of tracking use of the unforgivables? Muggle methods then, money was always effective, but how would she make it? She could sell transfigured valuables?...Theft! That was absolutely an option! Some valuable museum artefact could easily be stolen with magic. But she knew little of the black market, she'd need to build up a reputation, have people come to her...
Oh god what an idiot she's being, here she is talking about theft without even considering the most obvious option. Why steal valuables and sell the when she could steal money in the first place! A bank robbery, that would be amazing! Magic would take most of the thrill away, not much in terms of getaway drivers and shotguns, but a bank robbery none the less.
She'd need to acquire a wand as well, she could probably get away with some magic though, it's not as if she existed within the system, she rather doubted the trace would apply to her. Oh this would be great! The previously overwhelming anguish at the thought of her death was now little
else than a memory at the face of the once again bright future. Yes, she'd appear in London, 1993, give herself the time to establish herself, near the end of the year, December maybe? That would give her half a year to get into Hogwarts, she didn't want to age too much, she wanted to enter fourth year after all.
Ah how wonderful this would be! Her unawareness in regards to the reason of her death, her death in itself now no longer seemed so unfortunate, in this moment at least. She closed her eyes, though it made little difference in the encompassing darkness of the world she found herself in, and allowed herself to relax, to drift off.
Well fuck. She hadn't exactly taken the time to consider the fact it had been summer before she died. Her skirt and light coat did little to warm her. Her skirt ran to mid calf, and though the thin, airy material did little for warmth, at the very least she stood out less than in the shorts she had been wearing yesterday.
She'd originally planned on staying outside, practicing on some park bench where she could pass off the rise of a leaf or newspaper page as a flutter of the wind. She could still do that, but she'd need a warmer coat, Katheryn's thin jacket, which she had borrowed earlier, having neglected to bring one of her own, as nice as it looked, was not exactly suitable. She could transfigure it? Could she though? There seemed to be a specific spell for each transfiguration and she hardly knew the one to turn a jacket into a winter coat, as specific as rat to goblet was, it wasn't much use here.
Perhaps it was the biting cold or her rather disparate mood, but on December 1st, 1993, if the newspaper she had glanced at later in the day was to be believed, Sofia Oliveri performed her first bit of magic. It was not ideal, she was still freezing from the waist down, flats not generally being considered warm winter footwear, but at the very least she no longer felt as if she were dying from hypothermia.
In some dead end alley which stank of piss, somewhere in London, fuck if she knew where, Sofia Oliveri revelled in a sense of uncontainable joy. Her freezing feet, the nudging anxiety forcefully repressed at the back of her mind, vanished, because she had just used magic. Magic for fucks sake! Her friends, her family, the aftermath of her death, all were momentarily forgotten because Sofia Oliveri had just defied the primordial laws which defined the universe. She'd created something out of nothing, she felt like a god for this one fleeting moment. Struggling to contain her excitement, in some dark alley where people probably primarily spent their time getting mugged, she felt on top of the world.