Stitches

In one of the nicest beds she had ever seen, or slept in, a six-year old Starla woke up to the alarm clock that sat beside her bed, exactly at six. She looked at the room she resided in with a satisfactory smile, happiness evident in her eyes. She had worked hard on her Voodoo studies and was able to reap the rewards rather quickly. One of the first things she learned to do was weaving somebody's soul into a doll, something that is easy to say, but complicated to do.

Where as during the ceremony Starla participated in took a rather large chunk of her soul and weaved it into the doll, causing massive amounts of pain and agony for Starla during the process, a regular doll only needed a sliver of the person's soul to make a suitable connection, causing discomfort at best. After she got the sliver she had to hold it with her concentration while sewing the doll, inserting the doll. It had taken a while to get used to doing it on living things, but she practiced on dogs and other animals that were easy to keep in place for the process. She still remembered her first dog doll.

When the book discusses dolls for animals and the need for them to still resemble the animal, it had taken Starla over a week to improve her abilities to crafting dolls for animals. The dolls for dogs were easy enough, but ones for birds and turtles were slightly harder and difficult to actually craft successfully and in her allotted time, which she set up herself due to the suggestions in the book.

After she had gotten it down pat, the book taught her how to weave the souls and gave her the assignment of making a doll on an animal of some kind. Lucky for her, Vernon's sister Marge, who breed bulldogs for a living, and brought her favorite bulldog, Ripper. Starla had waited until nighttime before getting near Ripper, not wanting to be seen by anybody, and began the process of weaving his doll.

She got out her thread and needles, along with the scraps of cloth she would need to complete the operation. She began by seeking out the souls around her, having to concentrate really hard to search, and looked until finally finding the soul of the dog. Holding onto it tightly, Starla began her first attempt at weaving the soul slowly into the doll she was making of it. It took Starla almost over one hour to complete, and afterwords Starla was slightly drained emotionally from all the high levels of concentration she had to do, but she did successfully.

When she went back to the book it had unlocked the next few pages, and these one were fun. Starla guessed that the book had expected her eagerness to actually use the doll, and had explained to Starla the mirror effect in which the dolls possessed. Basically, whatever she did with the doll would affect the person or animal it was representing. At first Starla was eager to just burn one of the legs, but she eventually chose one of the small level curses that the book gave her to use.

She sat the Ripper doll down onto the ground and muttered some unheard words while also holding her Familiar Object, which helped her focus the magic with her will easier. What she settled for in the end was a fear curse that made the victim become scared of things that originally didn't faze them at all. She she woke up that morning, along with the rest of the family, she had been pleasantly surprises when they saw Ripper cowering in the corner of the kitchen because of what looked like a small mouse.

Though the fun didn't last for long, no matter how much fun it was to watch Aunt Marge trying to get Ripper into his cage or even the truck when she decided to bring him to the vet, and so Starla tried out one of the more simple and straightforward methods that the book explained. Starla got out the Ripper doll and revealed the cloth scissors that came with her sewing kit and raised them. She held them up for a second, trying to make suspense, and thrust them upon the doll, right in the neck, making sure it was a one shot kill.

Uncle Vernon had gotten a call from a distraught Aunt Marge minutes later, yelling about her dog dying from a mysterious stab wound to the neck. Ah yes, good times, but back to the present, after learning how to sew animals, Starla sped through her studies, since she had quite a lack of other things to do but study, and became quite capable of sewing human souls up too.

Along with the amazing power of making human dolls, Starla had also increased her field of range in which people had to be in so that she could sew their souls. Right now she could reach a few yards without her Familiar Object, and close to a mile with it in her hands. With her new range it had been easy to sew the souls of her Aunt and Uncle, along with Dudley.

Until then, Starla had seen her family as a nuisance and an obstacle in her way, but she quickly found worth in them. No matter how ugly, noisy, annoying, ignorant, stupid, temperamental, and prone to betray people they were, those three individuals were her family...and the most conveniently placed training dummies.

She wasn't able to use any of the curses she knew to disrupt their financial life, since she didn't want the lack of money to affect her, but she could torture them subtle and influence their decisions on social matters.

Since she had gained suitable influence, she put a fear curse on Dudley, causing him to become the one who was bullied now due to his lack of bold confidence, attached an avoidable curse on Vernon, which made people around him want to avoid him his wife and son included, and had taken extra glee in putting a depression curse on Petunia.

The curse would make her have depressing thoughts that would affect her daily day, social encounters, and there was nothing any type of medicine could do about it. The curse even had the chance of making her commit suicide, something that had incensed Starla to use it.

The thought of making the woman who had raised her spirits then crushed them with an iron fist feel the same sadness, despair, and hopelessness she did made Starla want to sing in the air. Sometimes, Starla would just stab them a nit with her sewing scissors or slice them with it, not enough for them to get suspicious, but enough for them to notice it. She once set her Uncles hair on fire, ah the memories.

Starla had also used a very flexible compulsion curse that she used to influence her Aunt and Uncle to give her Dudley's extra room, a hearty upgrade from cupboard. Dudley complained only once before she had given him her best glare, something that when coupled alongside the fear curse had made Dudley pee himself before submitting.

So yeah life was pretty good for herself right now. However, at the moment, she needed to get up for school now. She got up from her very comfortable bed, and put on her cloths. She didn't like standing out very much, so Starla had taken to wearing dark clothing. Today she was wearing a black t-shirt, dark blue jeans, and a black jacket that she wrapped around her waist.

It was with these cloths that made it easier to blend in and become less noticeable. After Starla brushed her teeth, she went downstairs and was met with an amusing picture. Dudley sitting at the table looking utterly nervous, evident from the constant tapping on the table with his pudgy fingers, Petunia slowly preparing breakfast with an unhappy look on her face, all the while Vernon was subjected to his family trying to keep distance from him. I wonder if he can remember the last time he was kissed by his wife or hugged by his son.

Little Whining Elementary School. A two-story school known locally for keeping kids in line, teaching the responsibilities that come with age, and shoving knowledge and homework done student's throats. A school that Starla hated. Though, it might not be school in general that she hated, school, after all, is a place of learning, something Starla greatly enjoys, but Little Whinging Elementary School itself.

The place was filled with double standards and stereotypes, most of them, she found, were directed towards herself. All through the day she had to deal with students either ignoring her, which she didn't mind, or insulting her in the only way kids knew how. One specific group of kids, being lead by a rather strongly built kid, was the worst.

They quickly learned that the insults weren't working on her so they decided to use other means. 'Accidentally' pushing her into mud puddles, which made the teachers have to send her home for more cloths, and other stupid things that would have irritated and angered any other person. Not Starla, however, she had learned after a particularly hard time with Dudley, coincidentally right before she basically neutered his confidence, that if you mask your emotions and just seem indifferent people will slowly leave you alone.

She couldn't be mad at the kids, well not to outrageous levels, fore they were still young and lacked any social teachings. No, what made Starla angry at school was when she had went up to her teacher after the first time she had been pushed into the puddle. He had smiled a little, obviously finding it funny, before saying, and I quote, "There just having some fun, now go to the office and get cleaned up."

His blatant disregard of her state of being had filled Starla with such animosity that even herself was slightly scared of the raging emotions inside her. The teacher was young, around his late twenties, with brown hair that was cut in a rugged looking bowl hairdo along with blue eyes that always seemed to twinkle. He seemed to be new to the job or at least inexperienced in handling kids of her age, but the amusement he found in her woes and dismissal of her concerns reminded her to much of her Aunt and Uncle before she had fixed them. The next day, she brought her sewing kit to class and took a seat in the back.

During recess, Starla had sat down on a stump near where the teachers looked over the play ground and had focused solely on the teacher. Starla had no idea how much discomfort she had caused the teacher, not only because of her messing with his soul, but because she would occasionally stare, unblinking, at the male while working on a doll that he found creepily resembled him. Starla was able to complete the doll just in time for recess to be over and had waited until she was a home to continue her plan.

Since she had no emotional connections tot he teacher, he was the perfect subject for her more fatal curses. She studied all night and gathered the needed supplies to successfully curse him, before going to school the next day. During the middle of his class, she went to one of the bathroom stalls, where she put her plan into action. Gathering up some dirt she had gathered, she sprinkled it on to the Teacher Doll and began mumbling the needed words to help mold the her magic to influence the doll.

When she went back to her seat in the classroom, she was met with a class devoid of their teacher, who had went out for an unknown reason, merely telling the class that he would "Be right back". Starla didn't have to wait for long, before she saw their missing teacher fall from the top of the school, landing in a sprawling mess of unnatural angles and lifeless eyes. The curse she had put on the poor teacher was one from the suicidal division, the falling curse, the name it was known by, made the victim get as high as they conveniently could and unhesitatingly jump to their, hopefully, deaths.

One of the problems of the curse was the chance that the victim wasn't able to get somewhere high enough to die. There had been and uproar at school for the rest of the month. News teams, police men, and irate parents swarmed the scene. The New teams tried to get in a few questions from the traumatized kids, but wasn't able to get out much. The police men were looking into the psychological profile of the teacher and were scratching their heads in confusion about why the teacher would commit such a deed.

However, the most known presence at the school for the rest of that month was the close to rioting parents. All of them were foaming at the mouths in anger at the school system and their decision to hire somebody who had to have been in the wrong mind. Starla almost regretted what she did, not because she felt guilty of his death, but because of all the annoyances that had taken the teachers place.

Speaking of taking his place, a new female teacher that Starla didn't bother learning took his place. She was more experienced with kids and even told off some of the boys who messed with her. Yeah, she was defiantly a keeper.

Three Years Later...

A nine-year-old Starla looks on with bored bright green eyes at the board in front of her, only paying half of her actual attention to the board for when a teacher were to ask her a question.

Over the years Starla had gotten far a head in her studies, both muggle, the term for non-magical folk, and Voodoo, and she had even became more familiar with Magical England. When she was about eight, Starla had reached a point where she had to have more peculiar ingredients to get powerful curses or her secondary study, powders, done. For Voodoo Practitioners, there was a time after perfecting their main craft that they stretched their limbs into other specialties.

These specialties would take longer to learn because of the lack of a Familiar Object for that particular studies. When Starla was suggested by the book to begin her secondary path, it had taken her a while to decide. She thought about choosing Dream Catchers like Eldra, but she realized that the power to manipulate or influence people through dreams didn't appeal to her. So, after a great deal of indecision and blind guessing, Starla finally chose Art of the Voodoo Powder as her second study.

You could compare it to the wizards equivalent of potions, where as they both used a variety of ingredients to a number of effects, but where potions was a liquid and exact, powder was in a fine sand like texture and had less requirements of detail than potions did, relying more on magical influence and incantations on the concoction.

With this new study, Starla had required many things that you can't exactly get at a supermarket or ask for without either getting weird looks or having the police come and take you away. No, Starla had needed somewhere that sold things like that, somewhere...magical.

It had been hard to fins the magical world of England, but in the time she had been with Eldra, she could remember the location of it slightly. So, after many hours of fruitless searching, Starla, who was now wearing a black beanie that she had found at yard sale during her search, had found the entrance of the magical world at a rundown looking bar, the Leaky Cauldron.

It was easy to feel the magic that ran through some of the individual there, and even easier to get the barkeeper to let her in, making up a sob story of accidentally getting lost while trying to find her mother. When she had gotten back that afternoon she had found a great number of things about herself. Apparently, her parents were wizards themselves, something that kind of shocked Starla, and they had died by the hands of an evil and sadistic Dark Lord by the name of Voldemort or he-who-must-not-be-named.

Also, even more interesting, Starla was known in England's Magical community as the girl-who-lived. With all these stupid names flying around in the Magical world, Starla was never more grateful for her name. However, her mood had been dampened by the numerous magical animals that she would have to learn to sew and weave. She didn't know if all the animals would react the same, but she had to give it a try somehow.

Yeah, it had been an eventful few years, something she wasn't complaining about. Even if in the future she had plans to become a hermit, like most Practitioners did at some point in their life, she still liked excitement. Now it was only a few more years before she would go to Hogwarts. A part of her had been against going to Hogwarts in the beginning, but the thought of doing her deceased parents proud by going to the school played a big part in deciding.

Starla yawned once more, muffling it with her hand as she fought the sleepiness that came with the boredom of this class. She hoped that at such a refined and magical school like Hogwarts wouldn't have such boring lessons, but she didn't get her hopes up, it was still a SCHOOL. All she could hope for was that there wasn't a class that, no matter how hard you tried, it would still put you to sleep successfully every single time you started listening to the teacher.

A/N: Hello! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, if not please say why, and I hope you will tune in for the next one. On to the topic on this chapter, I really wrote this chapter so that I could showcase some of Starla's growing skill and her interaction with the Magical World.

Also, this chapter was useful for making sure that I wouldn't make to big of a Time Skip. Next time, Starla's going to Hogwarts after another Time skip.