It was quite a shock to Gardenia when she realized exactly when she had been born. Not only she was born during a war, but apparently, she was born before the timeline of the books she had to guide her current life.
It didn't take long for her to make the connection that besides vague details of who she used to be and how she had died, the one thing she remembered with clarity was the story in which she has been inserted. So the fact she was two years ahead of schedule made a mark.
All of this distressed her quite a bit. Her previous life, for all that she could remember of it, had been quite normal, if a tad boring. But this did not mean she was in any way excited to now be part of a world which was currently immersed in a civil war, and that even though there would be a brief period of peace, things would get a lot worse in the future. And to top it all off, she could not do anything about it.
Even with all her knowledge, which included details that she could swear she did not remember ever reading about, she was currently a baby, and quite incapable of doing anything that would amount to something in this state. When the story officially began in a bit more than a decade, she would be in her teenage years and would be able to act, but that did not quell her want to change things before a child was orphaned, an innocent man went to jail and many other lives that did not make into the official story were ended.
Alas, that was not possible. Even if she was able to change those things, that would affect everything she knew, and result in Voldemort not being defeated, and who knows what would happen then.
So Gardenia was forced to begrudgingly accept the reality of her situation, even if it made her quite sad that she was for all intents and purposes, useless for the time being.
The thought of never acting in her knowledge did rear its head a few times, and Gardenia did consider it, but she couldn't say if it was a sense of justice, attachment to what she knew of the people that used to be just characters, or simply the fact that no matter what, her life would end up entangled with the conflicts that had yet to come, but she couldn't simply ignore the chance she had been given.
Of course, it could also be said that one of the reasons she would want to work to change things at all is because she found out who exactly her family was.
Her full named was Gardenia Mimosa Fawley, much to her displeasure. Her first name was alright, she supposed, not the most common when it came to flower names, but considering the Wizarding World and the type of names that some children ended up with, it could have been a lot worse. But Mimosa? Not her favorite. What was she, a cow? And she honestly thought one plant-related name was more than enough.
It was not her father's family that made her pause and reconsider her future though. It was her mother that put things into perspective because while she was now named Lucy Fawley, her maiden name was Tonks.
Tonks.
As in Edward Tonk's younger sister, Nymphadora's aunt, and more importantly, in this scenario, her mother.
This made her a little more invested than anticipated.
She had no knowledge of Lucy from what she knew of this world, but ever since she saw herself be born into it, she was not exactly expecting everything to go according to plan, especially if her future plans involved actively changing things.
However, for now, Gardenia would let thought of destiny and whatnot fade into the background, because she had at the moment the great mission of partaking in social interaction with literal babies, and she was trying her best not to find a way to throw both of the small redhead twins out of the window.
Due to her age, and the fact that the party was truly more of an excuse for the adults to socialize among themselves while they had the children too preoccupied with each other to bother them, Gardenia had been settled on the rug of the Burrow's living room beside the two other children that were close enough to her in age that eventually they would be classmates in Hogwarts.
Fred and George Weasley, while incapable of speaking sentences, were already two troublemakers that caused mischief, resulting in a headache that Gardenia swore should be impossible for a baby brain to even have.
They seemed hell-bent on engaging her in whatever their twin connected minds had come up with to entertain themselves, but to Gardenia's exponentially more mature mind, all they were doing could be resumed in pure chaos. Be it crawling their way to whatever definitely not child-friendly object and doing their damn best to have it in their possession, or try and climb their way into the couches even though that would result in a head being slit open if things went sideways, to even the astounding feat of somehow getting hold of a wand and throwing bursts of accidental magic around.
It could be said that she had her hands full. It should have probably been up to an adult, not a ten-month-old who four months ago couldn't even hold her own head up, to rein in the two menaces, but Gardenia had the mind of a young adult in her head, so she took it upon herself to look out for the two so they would not end up causing great harm to anyone, themselves included.
She was aware of Molly Weasley never actually leaving the room in which they were in, and so effectively keeping an eye on them, but Gardenia simply wanted them to behave a little so she could be at peace.
This was how their parents found them a while later, Gardenia, quite successfully she might say, had managed to make them quiet down enough that both of the twins were playing with objects that were indeed meant for their age group and were not moving around like curious puppies in search of trouble.
"Would you look at that, it seems your daughter is a miracle worker Fawley!" She recognized the voice of Arthur Weasley, the man that had fathered the two probably ADHD children she was currently in the middle of.
It used to boggle her mind a bit that out of all the children the Weasley couple had, the twins were much more Marauder-like then the rest, their personalities not being anything like any of their parents. However, after meeting the two younger brothers of Molly Weasley née Prewett, she understood perfectly who they had taken after.
"I think she takes after her father, he was after all the only person that could rein in Gid and Fabe during our school years." Her mother commented, sounding amused.
That made sense in a way. From what she could gather, her father Jacob Fawley was pretty much the best of friends with both Gideon and Fabian Prewett, having attended Hogwarts in the same year, and even though he ended up in Hufflepuff while they had gone to Gryffindor, their friendship had remained strong. That he, a man she knows to be a calm and kind soul, could be the calming agent for the two men that she could only describe as older versions of the Weasley Twins, made a lot of sense.
The fact she knew they weren't going to live past 1981 was something she tried not to dwell on.
"I do hope they become friends, wouldn't it be wonderful for them to attend Hogwarts and have each other for support?" Molly Weasley sounded quite enamored with the idea.
It was not, however, in Gardenia's plans to become best buddies with the twins, because not only could she foresee years of headaches for her in that path, she was sure they would end up getting her involved in their future pranks and schemes. That didn't sound very appealing to her. Not to mention the fact that one of them would not make it out of the war alive, and Gardenia, not sure that she could ever truly change anything enough to prevent such a death, did not want to become very attached.
It was then that Fred, which she could tell by the knitted onesie that had a very big red F on it, started crying with a vengeance, and she realized that he had somehow hurt his finger on one of the toys. She could see a small drop of blood and her immediate reaction was to grab his tiny wrist and stick the injured finger in his mouth. She remembered vaguely that paper cuts used to be quite a common occurrence in for her in her old life, and she knew that her reaction was always to suck on the cut and wait for the pain to fade, so she didn't really think before acting. Having his finger now on his mouth made Fred pause his crying, and he seemed to do exactly what she had intended and sucked on his thumb as if it was a pacifier, his red-rimmed eyes looking at her.
Molly had crouched down in front of them in the few seconds that it took for all of that to happen, and she had a warm smile on her face even though her child had just been screaming bloody murder. She took Fred's finger out of his mouth and quickly muttered a spell, placing a kiss on her son's forehead before he started sniffling like he wanted to cry again. She then reached out to Gardenia, caressing her soft cheek. "Thank you, dear."
She couldn't exactly say 'You're welcome', so Gardenia settled for what she hoped was a cute smile, and from Molly's face, it looked like she succeeded. It probably wasn't very baby-like to do what she has just done, the common reaction for when another infant started bawling their eyes out usually was to copy them and cry as well, but maybe it was passable as her just being an intuitive kid or something.
"Look at that, she's already taking care of them! They'll be best friends by the time they get to Hogwarts," Arthur looked very happy about that prediction, and from the looks on the other adults' faces, so did they.
Gardenia hated letting people down, but unfortunately, their hopes of a future friendship would be for naught if she could help it.
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I hope this was an enjoyable read, please do leave a review if you can, it'd be wonderful to hear someone's opinion on it.
I'd also like to know whether shorter chapters like this or longer ones are better, for future reference so I can organize their divisions sz
