It had started plainly enough. Aimée Selwyn, née Malfoi was slowly getting used to the Death Eater meetings she was forced to attend, thanks to her husband. Anselme Selwyn, an old pureblood her family had seen fit to promise her to, had been a low ranked death eater during the First Wizarding War, escaping notice most of the time, and he had been looking for a wife. The Malfoi, always eager to secure more 'meaningful' connections, had traded her like a farmer might sell a cow.

She knew her cousin, one Lucius Malfoy, had just managed to free himself from the stain of suspicion with the help of a substantial amount of gold; he had claimed Imperius, and with an infant barely learning to walk, he'd painted the perfect picture to sway the heart of the ministry's fools.

Lucius had gotten out of it scot-free, but it was evident it was a farce, and she didn't know how anyone could've bought it. He strutted among the assembly now, a glass of expensive white wine in his hand, an arrogant smirk on his face. One of the playthings of that evening, kneeling at another Death Eater's feet, tried to grab his robes in a gesture of supplication; the man side-stepped her easily with revulsion written plain on his face. They couldn't abduct wizarding folk as easily now, and so they had to make do with Muggles. She imagined Lucius to be thinking something along the lines of "how abject, how very debasing that I must satisfy myself with this". Narcissa was in a corner of the room, holding her head high as all proper pureblood ladies were expected to, but her eyes were downcast, looking mostly at the guests' feet. Aimée felt a surge of sympathy for her, that she squashed as soon as she became aware of it.

Anselme was discussing whatever strategic holding he was considering next with a man, either Lord Crabbe or his peer, Lord Goyle. She couldn't tell them apart yet, as she had only come to the last three meetings; she'd been married to Anselme for only two months.

Those two months had been enough to make her feel suffocated, and she has to live out the rest of her life with this man… She might take an example from Lady Zabini, but not yet. Two months after `being wed might be a bit early, a bit too obvious, to start plotting murder.

She didn't see him at first, lost as she was in her considerations. A young man that had been absent at the previous meetings, looking morose but making the proper efforts that one had to make to fit in with this… assembly. She spotted him no less than five times looking into the depth of his drink in maybe as many minutes, swirling it in the glass as he did so, pensive. He kept a careful distance from the Muggle girls but she couldn't say for sure if it was because they disgusted him, or if they made him feel disgusted with himself, or even if his leanings were of another sort. That hypothesis made sense, she supposed, as he looked like he could be a Black. The youngest, of course, who was known for his notable attraction to men. The oldest son, Sirius Orion Black, was basically useless as far as the rest of the family was concerned.

Regardless, when her husband declared he was going to Nott's estate (when had he gone from Goyle/Crabbe to Nott?) to discuss investments, she took her decision almost without realising it. She waited until she was sure that Anselme had left, and then she subtly wormed herself into the group's conversation. She was looking for a way to get the young man to go with her and was decidedly stumped, until the man started lightly swaying. Looking at the nearby shelves, she was unsurprised; he'd already downed a bottle and a half of whiskey, it seemed. She took that opportunity.

"Dear, you do seem to be all out of sorts. Here, let me help you." He tried to shove her off without much success, and she dragged him with her into one of the more isolated fireplaces that could be found everywhere in a family manor such as that of the Malfoys. Once she was sure she had a firm grasp on him, she took a handful of Floo powder —enough for two— and she enunciated clearly:

"Selwyn Manor!"

—

Aimée did not realise what was happening at first. Childbirth was a trial for all women, no matter their origin. Witches, Muggles, what did it matter when the world got reduced to the pain of birthing a child you hadn't wanted? She was exhausted, a fact of life she'd gotten used to in the past four months. Poisoning of the blood, the Mediwitch had said, and he'd given her some potion to alleviate the symptoms without eliminating the cause (the baby, the cause was the baby, she was sure of it).

Aimée did not realise what was happening at first, but the smear of blue on her breast brought her back to reality so fast it felt like a physical crash. The baby, a little girl, was pale as snow aside from her face which looked slightly purple. Its eyes were closed, but she did not need confirmation; the blue blood seeping from her umbilical cord was such a bright blue that she might call it turquoise if it weren't for the fact that there wasn't a hint of green to it.

A blue-blood.

She hadn't known that the child wasn't her husband's; he had, after all, insisted on the fact that he needed an heir. A Selwyn heir could only be a pureblood heir, one mothered by a woman from a good lineage, which disqualified most of his bastards. She hadn't known, and were it not for the blue that kept staining her skin, she would've been able to pass the fair child as her husbands. Anselme had been a fair child himself and she could've pegged the excessive whiteness of her skin —and she now suspected, her hair— on the strength of her family's blood; but the Selwyn line was not that of latent bearers of the trait, so there was no way the child could've been a blue blood. Impossible, unless of course, Aimée had cheated on him. Which was obviously the case, with that young man she'd met at a Death Eater meeting nine months ago.

She had to make it disappear. 'Get rid of it, get rid of it now before Anselme sees it' her mind kept screaming at her. 'Kill it off so you can survive'. She looked at her handmaiden, then at the Midwitch, and then she grabbed the thing by one of its arms and held it out to her handmaiden.

"Drown it," she said, "and do not tell me of where you do it. Just make sure no one can find it."

The young woman, a girl really, looked extremely uncomfortable as she nodded. She took the ch- the thing, wrapped it in a blanket, then dumped it in a bag that was usually meant to carry whatever handmaidens had to carry (Aimée hadn't given much thought to what they do have to carry). She left the room, and Aimée turned her focus on the Midwitch.

"The child was stillborn. I know for a fact that there have been other instances in the Selwyn family, so no one should look too close. We'll tell Anselme that this is what caused the blood-poisoning. Understood?" The older woman nodded. "If anyone ever finds out, I'll know it's you. Remember this. Now go, and wait for Anselme to deliver him the news. I must rest."

The woman bowed quickly and eagerly left the room, no doubt glad to leave Aimée's presence. Midwitches and Midwizards did not choose such a profession out of a desire to see children die, after all.

—

Alice kept looking over her shoulder, afraid of being noticed. Hanging from her shoulder, her bag was heavier than she had expected and she was starting to tire out. She had to go as far as she could without Lady Selwyn suspecting her; there was no way she could just drown a baby or kill it in any other way.

She had taken the Floo from Selwyn Manor to a pub in London, the owner of which she knew well enough; he'd been curious as to why she had to come through in the middle of the night but he hadn't insisted when she'd said that it was for 'a trifle'. Pulling herself out of her thoughts, she looked down at her map again until she located what she was looking for… she was almost there.

The building was drab, and one of the wings appeared to be crumbling. It was all made of grey stone, and she was sure it would look ominous even on a bright, sunny day. Over the front door was an overhanging declaring "Spurgeons Orphanage", but she could see the second S in Spurgeons only because the glue that had held the letter had left a stain when the thing had fallen off.

Shaking herself out of her stupor, Alice pulled the bundled child out of her bag and climbed the three steps leading to the door of the building. There, she left the child with nothing more than a cover, hoping that the lack of identification would protect the child from the Lady's wrath. After a final worried look, she just left.

On a night of early November, on the steps of a decrepit orphanage in the suburbs of London, a baby wailed.

—

Phanes was sitting on her cot, once again having to find something cool to put on her arm to stop the newly-formed bruise to grow too visible. The matron was in a good mood this time: she had stopped herself after back-handing her only once, for trying to smuggle some bread out of the kitchen. Lucy had fallen ill two days before, and could not make it to meals. And that was without even considering risks of contagion which would make the matron throw her out of the room anyway. She still needed the food, though, and Phanes liked the little girl enough to try and help her. A fat lot of good that had done.

Out of ideas, she took the fraying casing of her pillow off and went to the faucet to wet it. She applied it to the darkening, hand-shaped bruise on her hand. It offered a striking (ha!) contrast with her small frame: the mark covered almost all of her upper arm, which was a feat in itself.

All the children in Lambeth orphanage were abnormally small in stature, due to the lacklustre meals they got and the taxing chore they all had to do. Phanes did not fit that average, most notably because she'd been pretty tall already when she had gotten to the orphanage at ten. Well, that and the fact that she was living in a 'boy' body. She'd given up years ago on getting the Matron or most of the 14-18 children's group to use the proper pronouns; but most of the younger ones, the ones she cared for, never referred to her with anything but 'she' or 'her'.

She heard a bell sound and got up to make sure all of the children supposed to leave were ready.

"Mark, your bag is open, you're going to lose your books. Adam, Callie, stop fighting. You know the rules. Where is Nichol?" She gave the dorm a sweeping glance. "There you are."

The child, barely four, was sitting on the ground behind Phanes' bed, where Lucy rested; the teen picked him up before lowering him into the group about to leave. Mark immediately grabbed his hand so he couldn't run off. She checked that everyone had everything and then she ushered everyone out of the dorm, then out of the building. "Mark, be careful that Nichol's lace doesn't come undone!" She yelled as she saw the youngest boy tripping not even fifty metres into their trip to school. Mark answered with a wave without even looking back, but he did bend down to check that no lace was trying to wiggle free of the butterfly knot.

Some of the children were allowed to go to school, and subsequently got out of some of the chores, but one grade under the "acceptable threshold" arbitrarily set by the matron meant a beating; another one meant being pulled out of school.

Phanes had been one of those. She gave little importance to that, though, as she cared much more about practical skills that would allow her to keep the little ones safe - never mind that she was only 13-and-something herself. She had become rather adept at managing the kids in her dorm, which fell to her anyway since she was the oldest there; she still had to teach Nichol that eating whatever he found, food or not, was not a good idea, but well. The kid was four, information of this sort didn't stick all that well at that age.

She was interrupted in her musing by the matron calling her and the 15-18 dorm overseer (a 25 years old, lanky man with an obsession for neon shoes) back in. She had them sit at the table, and Phanes was worried this was going to turn sour very quickly.

"We're getting three new children in two days. Two will go with Albin's group," she said while jerking her chin in his direction, "and one to Phanes' group."

"Three at once? That's going to be a mess," protested Albin, "especially if I get two teens! I only just solved the problem with Tina and David!"

"They're children from Spurgeons', the Stockwell orphanage. It got closed because the superintendent cocked up one too many times, and the kids are being allocated to other houses." Well, that explained why Phanes had gotten out of a worse punishment that morning. The Matron simply had better things to think about. "Albin, that's all; you have enough room in your dorm that there should be no issue. Be ready for them in two days." She turned to Phanes when the man had exited the room. "It'll be another issue for you. You'll have to pair up more kids since we don't have the room. And get the Nichol brat to stop peeing his sheet, that'll help."

"Yes, Matron." Phanes hesitated a bit before bringing up what she was thinking about. "Matron, can I please have some bread for Lucy? She can't come to the kitchen without making everyone sick, but she won't heal without foo—"

"No. Since you care so little of the consequence for yourself, this is how this will work. Lucy is getting food when you finally learn how to behave. Is that clear?"

"... Yes, Matron."

She was quickly dismissed after that, with a few more recommendations from the cantankerous woman, and so she made her way back to the dorm. She hadn't gotten much about… Allen? She hoped it wasn't a kid older than she was; her dorm was supposed to have kids up to fifteen years old. A teen or a preteen older than her but still having to defer to her because she had seniority in the dorm might turn... gladiatorial.

Lucy turned around in Phanes' bed and coughed once or twice, a weak and dry, wheezy sound. She brought some more lukewarm water to Lucy to try to quell her thirst, then settled at the foot of her bed to watch over the younger girl, making sure her bruise received as little pressure as possible. She lay there, and sleep was long coming.

—

"Fey! Feyyy! FEY!"

"Oomph!" Was all the answer Phanes could give as she fell from her perch on the corner of the bed. It took her a moment to resituate herself.

"Fey, they're here!"

"Wh- oh. Right. Ok." She turned to the prone form in the run-down bed, she shook her. "Lucy. Lucy sweetheart. Wake up."

"Fey?"

"Lucy, I have to go down to pick up the new kid. I'll be back as soon as possible. If something happens, send Sonia to get me and I'll come back."

"Hmmmmm'okay..." she mumbled as she burrowed further into the blankets. Phanes touched her head to check if the fever was gone. It was still frighteningly hot, but she had to go to welcome the new kid.

—

Aren (and not Allen as she had thought) was a six-year-old girl. She looked like she was four, or a scrawny five-years-old instead. She was frighteningly skinny, terribly small and pale as a ghost. She'd arrived a good hour earlier, and during the whole transfer process, she hadn't piped out a word nor lifted her eyes from her shoes. Phanes knew the child was not deaf (or at least not entirely) because she reacted to sounds, but she hoped her muteness was caused more by shyness or the fear caused by a drastic change in environment rather than more of a long-term issue; that would make living here painful, mostly because of the 14-18 group.

Finally, it was over, and Albin left with the two new teens (Tonio, a seventeen years old boy who kept picking his nose, and Sasha, a fifteen years old gender-ambiguous 'child' who kept jumping at every noise and started shaking if one got within a meter of them). Phanes made sure she had the Matron's go-ahead before turning to Aren.

"Come on, Muffin. The boring stuff is over, time to show you the dorm." The child looked up, her expression placid and uninterested. She grabbed the older teen's hand and suddenly Phanes thought she had her fingers stuck in a vice; she winced but didn't say anything. She looked down again to see the little girl sticking to her like she wanted to fuse herself into her leg. Her expression was calm and focussed, but she kept shooting little glances around them.

It reminder Phanes of a little animal who emerged from a cage into a new environment for the first time. Aside from the animal part of the statement, she supposed it was fairly accurate.

They walked out of the 'office' (Phanes thought it was a glorified closet with chairs and a table in it) and made their way down the hall. She was tempted to get some food from the kitchen for Aren, and maybe for Lucy too, but the Matron's word still rang in her head, so she abstained. She'd have to make do by sneaking some of her own food out of the kitchen to give it to Lucy.

One of the younger-ish boys popped his head out through the door to the dorm just as they got there.

"Hey, Fey, who's the midget?"

Phanes did not have the time to answer before the child let go with one of her hands to look at the boy and flip him the bird.

"Aren! That is not a proper way to communicate!" She turned to Philip, "that's Aren, our new resident. Has everyone shuffled and switched beds?"

"Yeah, we're good." He turns to Aren. "You better not piss my bed, midget, 'cause you're gonna sleep in there. Seriously, even Nichol would not have worried me this much."

"I haven't wet the bed since before I turned three."

It took a second for Phanes to realise that the child had finally spoken. Her voice was light and soft but unwavering, and there was no emotion at all in it; not even annoyance, as one might have expected for such a sentence. Well, at least she talked, that was one less issue. Maybe she'd thaw a bit after a few days?

"You're four at most, shrimp, so I'm not counting on that control."

"Alright, stop," Phanes interrupted, holding her hands up between the two, "there's no need to antagonise anyone here, no one is going to wet the bed; this is just a temporary situation anyway; just until we manage to make some room. Philip, weren't you supposed to be ironing clothes?"

Philip grunted, starting to turn around. "I'm going back. Just had to disinfect my arm, I got myself burnt a bit with the water."

"Did you manage to clean it by yourself?"

"Eh, easily enough. Gotta go, see you later." He paused before smirking. "Bye, Shrimp." Then he simply turned his back to them and left. Aren simply glared, a half-assed expression as if she didn't have the energy to muster more vehemence. Once Philip was out of sight, she simply looked up at Phanes' face, her own back to neutrality.

"Alright, Muffin, let's get you situated." She took the child's hand and they entered the dorms. Well, 'dorm' was a big word. It was really just a room where someone had jammed as many beds as they could, plus a couple of cupboards that were supposed to serve as dressers. That's all they needed anyway, considering that none of them had that many possessions in the first place. "Good, Philip has already taken his things away. Here, that's going to be your bed from now on. Lucy will probably have to share with you… She's using my bed for now, since she's sick and can't share with anyone. She used to share with Nichol, but the Matron frowns anyway when girls bunk with boys." What a load of crap, really.

They spend the next thirty minutes setting up everything so that Aren could sleep comfortably that evening, or as comfortably as she would be able to. There were introductions and explanations —the rules, and some hints about when to avoid the Matron— and banter.

"We try to never fight each other, but sometimes that doesn't work. But a thing we never, ever do is hit each other. We do not punch or slap or kick, because there's enough of that from the Matron when you break the rules."

Aren had silently agreed.

Phanes had shown her the shower (there was only one, so they took turns and showered a day out of two, sometimes three), the bathroom, the workroom… She knew the Matron would not send Aren to school. Too young, too scrawny, and Spurgeons' did not have a good reputation where the education of its wards was concerned; she'd see no point in wasting the resources on such a child.

She was sad but not surprised when she saw Aren take two pairs of tatty pants, a few t-shirts and only enough underthings to last her a week, but nothing more personal, not even a toothbrush. She hadn't actually looked for decay in Aren's teeth, but they hadn't looked that bad; the girl had to be lucky: cavities were extremely painful if one was to believe Sandio —one of the oldest children in the dorm after her and Philip.

—

It didn't take long for Phanes to understand that Aren knew much more than she'd initially guessed. The little girl obviously knew how to read fast enough, though she didn't know if that skill translated to appropriate spelling. She could count fairly well, and do basic calculations as well; addition, multiplication, even Euclidean division. Surprised but enthusiastic, she tested her on other things that she remembered from primary and what little secondary school she'd attended.

Aren was a disaster at anything regarding what the girl called 'the real world'. History, geography, civic rights… She was extremely cynical and considered that anything beyond her immediate perimeter was useless, especially considering how hard navigating what was in her immediate perimeter was already.

That was another thing Phanes could at least partly understand. Aren was bright and had an extremely good grasp of the worst of what humans could be, but she was… to put it bluntly, socially inept. Introspection was alright, and she knew how she worked herself but she didn't seem to understand displays of emotions coming from other people unless it was extremely straightforward. Phanes quickly stopped counting the rhetorical questions she'd asked the child as a joke, only to find herself with a serious, surprisingly in-depth answer.

So instead of teaching Aren the things that she obviously already knew, she tried to teach her the finer points of human communication. How to identify sarcasm. How to tell hurt from actual anger or aggressivity, how to differentiate indifference from disdain. How to get sarcastic herself; that was the one skill Aren took to like a fish took to water. This all had the advantage of both helping Aren fit a bit better in the dorm by not putting her foot in it all the time, and helping her anticipate the Matron's moods, mostly to know when to not ask for things or when to do it, and when to avoid her at all costs.

—

That didn't last. Soon enough, with three new mouths to feed and no other source of income than the children's work and meagre donations, no adoptions and no wards reaching their majority in the near future, the Matron grew a permanent nasty mood. That, in turn, turned into a quickness to anger, and with the help of cheap wine, an increased tendency of beating the children for the slightest mishap.

They had borne with it for a long time (almost a year, Phanes thought) until Nichol had made a simple mistake, or had an incident. She couldn't remember what it had been anymore, but she was sure it had been silly. A little thing, really.

The Matron had not thought as much and had made that clear by stuffing the little boy into a closet and telling him he'd stay there until he'd learned his lesson; and when Sandio, then Phanes had tried to get him out, both had been beaten, thrown out and threatened with an extension of the toddler's punishment. That had kept everyone away. What no one realised was that between the alcohol and what most wards described as 'her natural nastiness', she'd either forgotten or deliberately withdrawn food and water from Nichol.

They'd realised the extent the Matron had taken it to when Phanes snuck out at night when she'd been sure the old woman had been properly knocked off by her usual drink of choice. Upon reaching the back of the pantry where the stocks of the orphanage were kept, she'd smelled it. Rotten meat.

She'd hoped (or rather tried to convince herself) at first that it was a piece of meat that had gone bad. That was unlikely, of course; whatever little meat the orphanage had managed to procure in the past was long since gone and the Matron's new beverage predilection meant the money went elsewhere now.

She made her way to the cupboard to find it still closed with a bar blocking the door, but the smell was hardly mistakable; still, she had to check, so she took off the bar and then pulled the door open… and her first instinct was to twist on the spot to retch anywhere but on the corpse.

She could still recognise Nichol, of course, but he was decidedly other now. The most evident sign was that his cheeks were pale, which had never happened before; they were gaunt but tended to remain rosy. His skin had a weird sort of sheen to it, almost like he had a fever, and the underside of his eyes was discoloured; a greenish sort of purple. His stomach was bloated, to the point where it never had been before, even when Nichol had stuffed himself on the rare occasions it was allowed.

Nichol was dead.

She hadn't even thought about— about anything really. She'd just instinctually closed the door, then put the bar back into place and taken enough food to last a few days, then rushed back to the dorm as silently as she'd been able. She'd woken up Philip, Aren, and Lucy, and they had grabbed bags, shoving all of their things in them, and then made their way out.