A/N: Here's the first chapter of 'Disenchanted'! It's a little longer than the prologue. I'm going to try and stick to short chapters like this so that I can update a chapter a day or so.
The year was 1971.
It had been a couple months since I first found myself in this nightmarish situation.
Time is hard to grasp when I'm constantly left to myself in a crib with only an astronomically correct night-sky charmed to my ceiling. People who say there are too many stars in the sky to count just aren't bored enough.
I only know its been a couple of months because Reg had a birthday party the other day, and from the whispered conversations I managed to learn that his birthday is in March and I was born in December, the 19th to be exact. I will say I'm happy to not have had my birthday changed from my first life.
Over the past four months I've managed to come to terms with my new family, of course I missed my own family, I mourned the loss of my mother and younger siblings but having lost a father at a young age I knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, after all I could have just as easily been reincarnated into an orphanage, or into a family like the Crouches, no matter what the books said about the Blacks the fact remained that Orion and Walburga...excuse me...father and mother, managed to raise two amazing sons.
Besides, I know I'm going to be a Slytherin, every quiz I've ever taken-including pottermore-has told me so, not to mention the fact that I simply like Slytherin. Obviously I don't buy into the whole blood-superiority crap that I'm bound to be hit-over the head with for the next few years, but I don't think that Cunning and Ambition are bad traits, in fact...for someone with knowledge of the future they are perhaps the best traits.
They helped me to decide early on that I'm going to prevent my brother's deaths-ambition-and I'm going to do so by establishing myself as a Seer-cunning.
I had many nights to sit alone pondering just how I'm going to affect the 'story,' in doing so I managed to work out just where I was and I can tell you my shock when I realized how bad my timing was. It was currently 1971, granted it was March, but still I wasn't even able to sit up on my own yet, by the time September rolls around I'll be barely able to walk! Which will be very useful as that's right around the time Sirius gets sorted into Gryfindorr.
When the First War is going full swing I'll be seven, maybe eight and no one would be willing to listen to my opinion not when I can't explain how I simply know stuff. The problem seemed insurmountable at first until I remembered that I wasn't in the same universe as my first life. Here it is totally possible for an eight year old child to know things she ought not to, if she was, you know, a Seer.
Now I've read plenty of fanfiction through my life-time, so I knew well enough that telling people to 'listen!' because you can 'see the future!' will get you nothing but laughs, or in my case extremely odd stares seeing as I hadn't said my first word yet, let alone a complete-if irrational-sentence. The only way this plan would work would be if I managed to convince my family that they thought of it. If they saw all the 'signs' and thought I was a Seer then when I came to them with my 'unexplainable feelings' or 'odd-dreams' they would be more open to listening.
My plan was actually rather simple. I only had a handful of things I knew about that happened in 1971, and nearly all of it had to do with Sirius attending Hogwarts. I knew I couldn't draw too much attention to myself, so I had to show my 'talents' like with all baby-magic accidentally. A child of my age should have no concept of time so if I were to say 'See' Sirius heavily aligned with the colors Scarlet and Red well, as a baby, how am I supposed to know that is in the future? And if, the day before he leaves for Hogwarts I 'accidentally' turn his hair scarlet and eyebrows gold, and then let out a cute squeal, well that's completely innocent, right?
I thought so.
Now if only magic were that easy to control. When I first woke up in this world and learned that I was a witch I expected to feel different. I always had this image of magic circulating through my veins, pulsing, and just waiting for a way out. I was wrong. Magic is far more subtle than that, in fact I can say with certainty that half the time I forget I'm even a witch. Magic isn't tangible at all, it's like a flame, get close enough and you can feel its effects see them even, but you can never actually touch it.
Accidental magic is even harder to explain. At first I thought it was simply wand-less magic, that kids hadn't been told how difficult it is and thus were not restricted by societal views on what their magic 'can' and 'cannot' do. However, over time I learned that it was more of a pressure-release system. Like a boiler with too much steam our bursts of accidental magic was a way of dealing with our ever-growing magical core.
There is a reason Hogwarts only accepts students when there 11, and that is largely centered on the fact that our core is not stable before then, it is ever-growing and latches on to any heightened emotion as a way of 'letting off steam' so to speak.
I personally think this is when our emotions become keyed in to our magic and thus become keys to various spells, such as the Patronus, or Unforgivables.
I managed to figure this out over the months leading up to Sirius' departure for Hogwarts. It was a lot of trial and error, and I'm sure my 'parents' were surprised by the amount of magic their less-than-a-year-old little girl was showcasing, but I needed to be able to do this. In the end I managed it, and when Sirius got his Hogwarts letter and was smiling at the world despite mother's admonishments of "your too old to be openly showcasing your emotions" I crawled over to him and demanded to be picked up.
I had been planning for this day for months, and saving every trick in the book to make sure my parents wouldn't just brush this moment off as another one of their daughter's accidental bursts of magic.
Thus I made sure it was an already important moment; Sirius getting his Hogwarts letter. Then when Sirius picked me up I made the moment that much more precious by uttering my first word, "Siri!"
And while I let that sink in, and my mom and dad started whispering to themselves in the background I just concentrated on my eldest brother's hair. I thought about how happy he was going to be in a few short days, but more than that I thought about him. That slimy, good for nothing traitor of a rat, and how he was going to make my brother...MY brother's life, a living hell. I thought about the next 7 years and how I was going to have to watch my two favorite people in this world, Siri and Reg, grow further and further apart.
I thought about Lily Evans and Severus Snape and how these colors these stupid colors were going to ruin such a beautiful friendship, they were going to ruin everything! And I allowed myself to feel true anger that kids from all over would allow themselves to be brainwashed into thinking that they needed to end friendships, and ignore their family all because of some shoddy-old hat and a millennium old feud. Then just when my righteous indignation was reaching its peak, just when I couldn't take it anymore and just wanted everything to stop because he's gonna hate-hate-hateme whenIweargreen, his hair changed.
And with a whoosh, the relief that it's okay, I could still fix things, rushed through me, and I was able to put a half-a-year plan to rest with a smile, and tug of my brother's Scarlet colored hair calling "Siri! Siri!"
Thank you very much for all your favourites/alerts/and reviews,
I hope you liked this chapter!
