Wool's orphanage was a tedious place.

There were worn floorboards, creaking cupboards, and children crawling from every one of the beaten down rooms.

If one were to enter the ramshackle house and walk through the kitchen to the servant's staircase, they would find a nursery three levels up.

Cradles woven of crumbling wicker lined the shabby beige walls and were layered in blankets of scratchy cotton.

And in those cradles were sweet little infants.

Lena Black was the oldest one there at a whopping nine months.

Unlike the others, people had tried to adopt her three times before bringing her back.

"She's just so quiet," they would whisper with panic lacing their voices, lying straight to the matrons' faces.

"She's a hazard! Everything always explodes when she's pouting!" Because Lena did not scream when she was angry.

"I've never seen such cold, dead eyes." The only honest one explained with tears dripping onto the floor.

So Lena was back in her worn wicker cradle, and she hummed softly to herself each night.

The matrons would try to do right by her in the beginning.

They would read her stories each night while she fed because it was the only thing that chased the shadows from her weary gaze.

They made sure her blankets were soft and clean, and that she always had books to "pretend" to read when they left her to care for the other children.

But eventually they grew wary as well.

Maybe it was hearing her speak in a mish mash of languages at night when she had thought no one was around to listen.

Maybe it was that she would get a glassy look in her eye while the matrons swore her features morphed and stuttered into faces older and younger.

Or maybe it was just that harrowing stare that seemed to see straight through each person's soul.

Even in the dark.

Who would have thought that grey eyes could hold such a storm?

—

Lena grew, and her strangeness grew with her.

One year, two years —

Three.

She learned the piano with the other girls her age, and helped the matrons keep everything neat.

(Though sometimes they wished that she would just go away)

Lena played with the rest of the children until no one was looking, and then slipped off somewhere to read her books and play with the magic in the air.

And when she learned she could change her appearance at will, she stole Matron Agatha's clothing and went into town.

She knew adventure when she tasted it after all, and this world was ripe with the thrill of it.

—

When Lena was four someone tried to adopt her, but they brought her back the next day with a shriek.

(Much to the matrons' dismay)

He had wandering hands, in Lena's defense.

So she made sure he wouldn't ever do that again.

But she also made sure to steal his beautiful briefcase of ebony leather and bright silver clasps.

A flick of her wrist had the serpent emblem switched to her favorite night blooming rose — only found in her vivid imagination — and the initials switched to her own name instead.

She never forgot the basics, after all.

In her room — because the matrons gave her one to herself after enough annoying brats sprouted tails — she flipped open the lid and got to work.

Because every witch needed a hide out, of course.

She made it so there was a ladder dropping into a store room with a massive stone work table and floor to ceiling shelves lining the walls.

Then she forced her errant child's magic to recreate what little books and scrolls she remembered verbatim from her tangled memories.

Oh how the magic here sang.

Beyond the workroom was a small kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom where she kept the essentials. And beyond the living quarters was a lush yard and a porch complete with a swing.

She would keep her garden there when she found the right seeds.

Finally home once more.

—

Five years old meant that Lena was traveling to various wizarding places with different faces each time.

She made gateways from blood runes — which were somehow dark magic in this world — and anchored them to her quaint little pocket dimension.

"Always have a back door, my dear."

She had a gateway to France, Italy, Scotland, Romania — and the list went on.

Though when she left Wool's, she never wore the same face twice.

She worked quickly in those early years, because she knew that the details of her past lives would begin to fade in time —

They always did

— and she wanted the groundwork laid for an extraordinary life.

And as much as she wanted to disappear into the world of magic, she made sure to come back to the orphanage each night.

This was a world that took missing children more seriously than others.

She wasn't sure if it was annoying or not.

—

At six years old, Lena made her first friend.

His name was Tom Riddle, and he only appeared in her dreams.

"Who are you?" She asked when he found his way into her mind.

The antechamber at least.

"My name is Tom," he said slowly, eyes flinty and distrusting where he stood in the grass.

Apparently this world had mental magic, so she crafted an oasis there too.

A sprawling forest cupped by towering mountains and framed by the sea.

Her favored cove had a river running through it that roared with joyous abandon. It flowed into crystal sea caves that were shrouded from view by a rolling fog.

Atop the network of stone was a beast of a wisteria tree, the bark old and gnarled.

Within its trunk lay a grand library full of grimoires that she painstakingly translated from her memories so that she'd always have guidance when her past selves were gone.

Between the library and the harrowing depths of the sea-catacombs beneath it, Lena was able to organize her memories enough that she might not go mad in this life when they began to fade.

Oh, how she loved this world.

"Nice to meet you, Tom Riddle," Lena said mildly, eying his wool's uniform. "Why are you in my mind?"

—-

First it was an acquaintance-ship.

Tom liked to sit by the beach with a story Lena had plucked from the more nostalgic shelf in her library.

She would swim while he did that, or ponder her latest travels as she wondered what kind of research to conduct when she got the resources.

How much she could do with the madness at bay.

"Where did you get these books?" Tom demanded.

"I wish I could remember," she told him honestly. "Sometimes the 'where's' and 'who's' fade."

And oh, how quickly they did.

—

Talking became laughing became playing strategy games.

"How can you be this terrible at chess?" Tom asked her, aghast.

She pouted and huffed, blaming the annoyance on the child's body.

"Let's play shogi instead."

—

Eventually friendship.

She made him a hut by the sea so he could stay if he ever wished it so.

"I can teach you how to fight if you'd like." She told him when he came to her with a swollen nose and blackened eyes. "And I think some healing as well, to be safe."

He let her fuss and patch him up, and as much as his mind was great —

His body was pathetically weak.

"This is impossible!" He hissed.

"It's literally the most basic combination I know."

So he learned combat with a grudging respect.

—

The matrons despaired as Lena continued to grow, her hope for adoption dwindling with each year.

Seven.

Eight.

The children thought it would be funny to mess with the freak, and came after her while she slept.

They had seen a movie about a mob boss and his thugs, and wanted to recreate the scene where they mugged someone.

Foolish brats.

But when Lena's dead eyes snapped open with fury at the knife along her throat, they were so startled that their hands simply slipped.

She'd always have the scar.

—

"Who did that to you?" Tom demanded when he saw the stitched line.

It stretched ear to ear —

"A miracle she came in alive!" The nurses claimed.

— and was puckered and ugly and red.

"Children are stupid." She harrumphed as she glared at the sky.

It was her mind, so it made sense that a storm was rolling in.

He held onto her the whole visit that time, hand tight enough around hers that it seemed he thought she'd disappear.

I knew you cared.

—

Lena was nine when she made her first friend that wasn't a figment of her imagination.

The girl's name was Marie, and she had blonde hair that coiled tightly around a pretty face.

"The other children told me you're scary." She informed Lena after dinner on a hot summer night.

"And do you think I'm scary?" Lena replied.

"No, you remind me of my dad," Marie said with a melancholic smile. "He was a scientist, you see."

"Ah," Lena nodded, pointing at the empty bed across the room. "That one's always empty, so it's yours if you want it."

And Lena finally got a roommate.

—

Ten years old and she met her first dragon.

"Stand back, you idiot!" A poacher roared as Lena walked up to the beast.

A flick of her hand and the poacher dropped like a stone, and the dragon bellowed with glee.

She let the creature see her true face as she approached, letting the old man's features she was wearing fade away.

"Would you like sanctuary, my friend?" She asked it as she admired the silvery blue scales.

It was then she learned dragons could purr.

Oh, how she loved this world.

—

"Will I see you at Hogwarts?" Tom asked her one night in her dreams.

She smiled at the cautious hope on his face and leaned into his side.

He had just finished his third year, and was tired of the children that attended.

"If I never saw you at Wool's, I doubt I'll see you at Hogwarts, Tom."

He scowled, but pulled her closer anyway. "How annoying."

"Indeed."

—

"Oh, you're a headmaster? For a boarding school?"

The Matrons were practically frothing at the mouth.

"Yes, it's for gifted children, Matron Hannah," the ancient man with a magnificent beard explained kindly.

Though there was tension in his shoulders and a watchful gleam in his eyes.

"We would like to extend Miss Black an invitation to—"

Matron Hannah cut him off with a grin.

"Right this way, sir," she sighed, nearly skipping down the hall in her excitement. "She should be in her room at this hour — she's a bit of a bookworm, you see."

"Of course," he said as he tried to push down his unease.

(Hannah's attitude wasn't fearful like the last matron he spoke to about another orphan, but the eagerness was still concerning)

They came to a stop outside of the door in the most isolated hallway, and he paused at the signs on the door.

'Beware of dog,' was written in elegant script, and scribbled below it: 'she means Marie, and I'm not a dog.'

'Enter at risk of transfiguration,' in a childish scrawl, and in neat cursive below it: 'I never should have told you that story, brat.'

And finally: 'the evil lair of the terrible twins, mortals take caution, if you'd please.'

Well, Dumbledore mused in cautious optimism, that was certainly different.

—

Lena frowned as the door rattled in its frame.

She glanced at Marie where she lay strumming a ukulele while Lena read, but the girl just shrugged her bony shoulders.

"Come in?" Lena called suspiciously.

If they ended up being hostile, Lena would just cut off their head.

Or knock them out.

Yes, that would be more humane.

She'd always struggled with being gentle.

"Marie, dear," the frailest matron crooned as the door swung open. "Come with me for a snack while this nice man speaks with Lena, please."

Lena's brow crept up on her face, and Marie gave her a long suffering look.

Another shrink then.

Sometimes she hated this world.

—

Albus Dumbledore watched the two girls have a conversation with their eyes before the shorter one padded out after the matron.

Not without shoving past him with her elbow out — much to the headmaster's chagrin and Lena's amusement.

"Hurt my friend, and suffer."

Is what that elbow said.

How interesting.

"Hello, Miss Black," Albus said kindly. "How are you doing this afternoon?"

"I'm fine, Mr. Stranger. To what do I owe this delight?"

Her voice was wry and leaning towards mocking as if she was bored of encounters like these.

"What do you think I'm here for, child?" He humored her.

Her face was expressive and inscrutable at the same time. The structure of it was sharp and grim — aristocratic, some would say — and her hair was as dark and untamable as the night.

"Well I know you're not here to adopt me." Lena informed him. "I'm far too 'troubled' for that."

It wasn't said with a child's bitterness.

No, it was spoken with an adult's dry sarcasm and the dull edge of apathy as if he had interrupted something exciting.

Judging by the book that was only half closed on her lap, he likely had, and he also probably had scant moments before she decided he wasn't worth her attention at all.

So Albus forced a chuckle, and conjured a plush plum chair to sit on with an overly dramatic wave of his wand.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," he said as her eyes sparked with interest. "My name is Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

—

Tom had told her of the headmaster.

He had said he was uptight, rude, and hateful.

(But only to him and his friends)

Though within seconds of meeting his bright gaze, Lena decided he was just a crafty old man with mountains of trust issues.

He also had a funny sense of fashion — like the warlocks in the books Marie favored.

"Witchcraft?" She repeated slowly, gauging how far she could push him.

He'd interrupted her studies, to be fair.

"Like this?" The furniture rose off the ground with their occupants firmly attached, and spun into an off kilter waltz.

Dumbledore's eyes were alight when she eased everything down, and she smirked as she watched him study her warily.

"Exactly like that, Miss Black," he murmured. "How long have you been able to do this?"

"Since I found out I could turn book pages with my mind, Headmaster." She replied with twinkling eyes, "it was a whole new world after that."

A startled laugh and a wary: "how interesting," was his only response.

—

"What happened to her neck?" He demanded from the matron after he'd given Lena her letter and Marie returned to her bed.

Only after giving him another well placed elbow that is.

"Ah, well that was a bit of an unfortunate accident, you see." The matron twittered. "Some of the children had seen a nasty little movie and tried to recreate a scene."

"And?"

"Their hands slipped."

Blue eyes flashed with a dangerous fire. "What happened to the children?"

"No charges were pressed and they were adopted into nice homes." The matron blustered. "We tried to find one for Lena, but no one wanted a child as damaged as that."

"I see," was the frosted reply.

—

"What did he say to you?" Tom worried as he checked her for injuries.

As if the headmaster would hurt her so obviously.

"He told me that I was a witch," she laughed as she stretched out on the black sanded beach. "I told him 'obviously,' and then he gave me a letter and went on his way."

"Did he set your wardrobe on fire too?" Tom asked impishly as he gingerly sat down beside her.

"What?" She gasped.

"Why the fuck does he hate me so much?!"

Lena laughed at the complete exasperation.

"It's okay Tom, I'll love you no matter what."

He huffed a little: "you better, Black," but blushed a light rose all the same.

"Care for a swim?"

"If you splash me again I'll sue."

"Good luck winning that case, Riddle."

"Shut up."

A/N: when I said I had too much time on my hands, I really, really meant it, so go crazy friends. If this site lets me upload more than one part today I will.

Like and review! Or don't and stomp my heart to pieces, whichever works best for you!

(PS that was sarcasm)