Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Just a fan with too much free time.

Chapter 1: Helen Parkins

24 hours previously

Helen couldn't remember a summer a this bizarre. During the day it was scorching and humid. In the evening, it was still as humid as if it was the tropics, but there was this weird breeze that chilled you to your bones.

And since the hall of 511 Spinner's Hedge, Spinner's End's only orphanage, where everybody slept, had nothing that could pass as ventilation, she was stuck with the humidity. She had already soaked her cot in her own perspiration and the collective body heat and smell of urine, that was synonymous with the hall itself, made it impossible to go back to sleep once woken up.

She usually slept like the dead till it was customary for all the kids at the orphanage to get up at a hour past dawn, but that was normally when she had something to eat the night before. She winched as a growl from her empty stomach reminded her of her folly the night before.

Helen was usually quite vigilant. Being an orphan in Spinner's End, you had to be. But she careless enough to not look after her bowl of porridge while helping her friend Melonda with her math homework, allowing Hector, the local bully, to slip a dead rodent into her dinner. She threw up for almost an hour after she found out.

She didn't really hate Hector. She understood that this was his own twisted way of coping with the loss of his mother to a house fire late last year. But that didn't mean that she wouldn't punch him in the face first thing after breakfast. Extra chores be damned!

Helen felt rather blessed. Yes the porridge for breakfast was bland and stale, but if you were anywhere near as hungry as her, you could practically inhale anything. And to top it off, she could now give Hector the whack he deserved.

She found him sweeping the front steps of the backyard to 511 Spinners Hedge. The orphanage couldn't afford any staff to maintain the upkeep, so most of the workload was devided amongst the children as chores.

Hector was a heavier boy, compared to most of the other kids. His mother had been a nurse in the local school's infirmary and being a single mother with an only child, doted on him to no end. She remembered that his mother once told her, when she fell sick in school, that he got his thick dark curls and ocean blue eyes from his father who apparently had died of polio before Hector was born.

He gave her a sheepish smile when he saw her approaching and gave a grimace when he noticed the scowl on her face. He'd been expecting this. "Fine, get it over with," he said after a sigh.

Helen rolled her sleeve up to do the business when she was startled by the screech of a cat.

A black cat jumped between them and furiously wagged it's tail to draw her attention when she heard a voice call out to her from behind.

"Helen, we have people who want to see you," said a woman with greying dark hair. Behind her stood a heavy stead man with another lanky man next too him.

You never get adopted in Spinners End. Much less so when your age reaches double digits. Something about you being too old to properly bond with your new parents. But here she was, sitting with her Gran Gran in her office talking with a middle aged gay couple about her possible adoption.

Serana Bingsly wasn't her actual grandmother, but the caretaker and guardian of all the kids in the orphanage. She was hardly a senior citizen, being in her mid to late forties, but her general sense of dour and dying grey attire made to attempt to dissuade the kids at the orphanage to associate her to a grandmother figure.

Being the only relevant maternal figure in Helen's life, it was her who read her those bedtime stories on those long nights she had a fever and couldn't sleep. It was also her who had taught her, her ABCs and was there to see her take her first steps. Unsurprisingly, she had never been so attached to another human being.

The two gentlemen seemed like honest white collar men. Barty and Willem Barry were accountants who had recently moved to Manchester. Barty, Helen thought at first, seemed like one of those Japanese athletes she saw on the telly that wrestled in their diapers. His frizzy short brown hair was almost out of view from the angle where ahe sat, disguised by a forehead that was almost half his head. His thick neck was more suited too a buffalo then a man. Willem on the other hand seemed that he'd be knocked over in the slightest of breezes. His angular face and pointed nose accentuated his small frame.

It was his eyes that caught her attention the most. They had a piercing quality to them, as if they were always on the lookout for opportunity and she was the prey.

It was an odd sensation leaving Spinners' Hedge. Given she'd only had a couple of hours to digest the news, the fact still felt surreal.

What felt odder was cleaning out her things. She didn't really have many belongings, nobody did at the Hedge maybe bar Gran Gran, but that didn't mean, the sight of her box empty and it's contents in a knapsack was all too familiar.

All the kids at the Hedge had boxes. She got hers from the landfill, just north of the river that bisected Spinners End in two. It was a card board box that had initially held a telly in it before it was thrown out. It was soaked when she first got it, so she had to leave it out in the sun to dry in for a couple of days.

She had initially thought of bring her box along with her to her new home but thought otherwise when Gran Gran gave her a glare she only pulled out for when she majorly mucked up.

After stuffing her knapsack with what little clothes she had, Helen took her worn handkerchief, where she had snuck away some of the cracklings from breakfast, and headed out a nearby alley. Once there she yelled out, "FEEBUUS!" and the same cat from earlier on in the morning came running to her from a pile of trash.

This was a daily routine of hers. She would same up some of her breakfast and and give it to Febus. She had first seen the cat, when she was merely a toddler. It had gone a long way to help her fill in the loneliness of not having anyone her age to befriend.

Helen scratched it behind it's ears while it began on it's little treat. The cat hummed its approval as it ate. "I'll miss you little guy," she said morosely. And not just him either. She'd miss a lot of this. She'd been here as far as she could remember. Having asked Gran Gran she knew that her biological mother was an acquaintance of hers and dropped her off at the Hedge when she was still a baby with a nothing but a blanket and a note, imploring Gran Gran to look after her. And that was that. She didn't even know whether her mother was alive or dead.

She'd like to know of course, who wouldn't. It hurt her to remember every now and then that her mother could just leave her like that. But it was different from what Hector and many of the other kids who lost their parents felt. It wasn't like a claw that would gash and gnaw at her, but more like a soft scratch. It would still cut and draw blood yes, but not mutilate her. Then again, Hector and the others wouldn't always bleed. They'd let the wounds scab over and heal with time, unlike hers where she'd continue bleeding. Where the others bled from loss, she bled from never having something in the first place. She bled from the fact that the very woman who gave her life, didn't even want her.

The rest of the day went by slowly. She played in the play park with the other kids in the late afternoon. Had dinner in the kitchen with everyone else, after which everyone sang her their goodbye song. She felt lucky that Hector didn't slip any vermin into her food this time; taking advantage of her not being there to break his face tomorrow. After dinner, Gran Gran sent everyone to bed early. It was a school night.

As she lay in her cot in the hall that night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of the other kids, and the perpetual loud snoring of Hector, god she should have given him that punch in the face this morning, her mind started to wander.

Earlier in the day, her new adoptive parents had promised to send her to a posh boarding school in London. Would she be able to see everyone here again if that were to happen? Pfft, she shouldn't be silly, this school was sure to have summer breaks right? She'd come back then and meet everyone. But…. What if the Defoe's moved? They said that they'd able to get her a seat at this school as most of their highclass clientele was in London. Then wouldn't it make much more sence for them to move back? Then what about Gran Gran?

Visibly worried she sat up and started looking around. Gran Gran's bed was empty, could she still be in her office?Helen crept out of bed, making sure not to wake anyone and went towards her office.

She found sitting in her office studying some papers. There wasn't any electric connection at the Hedge, much like the entirety of Spinner's End, so she was working under candlelight.

The sound of the rusty door hinge's turning broke Serana's attention away from her work. A warm smile spread across her face when her eyes fell on the person that stepped into her office.

"I really need to get those oiled, don't?", surmised Serena.

"Don't fret over it Gran Gran, it'd just be an extra cost at this point," said Helen dismissively before meeting her eyes. "I hope I'm not bothering you Gran Gran."

"Nonsense," dismissed the older woman, "I was just going through your adoption papers is all." She patted the chair next to hers to indicate for to sit on. "What's wrong dear, couldn't sleep?"

"I was worried Gran Gran," she said as she settled on the bareg wooden chair next the matron, "Will I still be able to see you after tomorrow?"

Her initial reply was a soft chuckle. "Why wouldn't you dear? You'd only be moving across the river, not to another country."

"But what if they move Gran Gran?" Fretted Helen, "What if they move back to London? And they're sending me to a boarding school Gran Gran. I wouldn't be able to see you everyday even if I wanted to. How am I supposed to know the other children aren't driving you crazy?" desperation seeping into her voice.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. You shouldn't be worrying about that anymore little one," she said as she traced a finger alond her cheek. God she was going to miss this girl, but while feeling her hollow, malnourished cheeks, a pang of guilt arose within her. She had failed to adequately provide for her. She knew that she was the closest thing to a mother this girl had ever had, and she'd tried the best she could every step of the way to love her like she was her own. But she could never be a real mother to her could she? Not with the responsibility she had to all the other orphans. She was better of now. Finally having of family and parents she could call her own, despite being adopted. They would love her and give her the life someone as amazing as her deserved, away from the rotting mess that was Spinner's End.

But it would still hurt. It would hurt to her very core. She could still vividly remember the day she had first seen her. She was soo small. An acquaintance of hers, whom she had known from her highschool days had dropped her off on the first days of the Hedge. She was just getting out of rehab and had no means to support a child, let alone herself. Even though Helen wasn't technically an orphan, she helped out her friend anyway.

Because she needed her. Oh, how she needed her!

Before becoming responsible for the children of Spinners Hedge, she was supposed to have a child of her own. She still remembers seeing it's delicate little hands and feet on the CT scans. It was to be a girl, the doctors told her. She should have been….

Her lover at the time had kicked her after finding out that the child was not his. The monster had kicked her baby!

He had killed her!

She could never have another child after that. Not only because her organs were irreparably damaged, but even if they weren't she couldn't bear to. She couldn't to have someone else growing inside of her, she her little angel with her little hands and feet had once been. She also couldn't bear the fear of losing a child all over again.

But she had still needed Helen back then. She still desperately wanted to know what it felt like to be a mother. So she needed her. She had used her; without fear….. Because you can't fear losing someone else's child right? So she had needed her and used her to quench her own desires of being a mother….

And now Helen needed her. She needs her to not be selfish and let her have the life she could never give.

Helen noticed that tears were starting to trickle down her Gran Gran's cheeks. Seeing so, she couldn't hold in her own.

Serana felt the sudden clasp of little arms around her neck, and the sensation of tears soaking the shoulder of her sound. The slow hiccuping cries brought her out of her musings. Morosely, she planted a kiss on the crown of her little assailants head. She was going to miss her yes. But she was going to do right by her, the least she could for someone that made her something she never thought possible. For letting her experience what it meant to be a mother.

AN: Salutations readers. It is I, the person that writes this.Despite what the disclaimer says, I have come to the realization that my free time is next to non-existent. Guess its expected with finals week coming up and doing 2 other full-time things alongside your bachelors.Despite this I'll try to keep a fortnightly update schedule. Hope that you enjoyed the story. Haven't ever really written a multi chaptered one before, so I hope I pace the character development appropriately.And also, would anyone be willing to be a beta reader for this story? Only if it would not be a burden of any sort that is.I've personally always enjoyed authour's notes. Hopefully I wasn't too mundane. Goodbye and I'll hopefully see you in a couple of weeks.