Chapter 1
Abandoned
I don't remember much of my younger years. I have memories from then but none that truly tell me what happened the night I was abandoned. You see I didn't grow up in the wizarding world. In fact I spent ten years living in a Muggle orphanage in Surrey. I had no knowledge of who I was and more importantly what I was. I was just some orphan picked up off the street with no history and no family, nothing to tell me anything about my past. My earliest memory though I can still recall as clear as the day it happened. I'm not even sure if it really is a memory as I was way too young to even be able to know what was going on but it feels like a memory all the same. It's the one of my mother being killed.
I learnt all I could from Remus and Dad about what happened the day my Mum was killed. It happened very shortly after I was born. A group of people calling themselves Death Eaters, followers of the Dark Lord Voldemort, had killed her. Everyone in the wizarding world knew of this Dark Lord's pursuit for power. That time is even known as the First Wizarding War. He and his Death Eaters had killed countless of innocent victims, wizard and Muggle alike, all in pursuit of blood purity and superiority over the Muggle world. The wizarding community had been scared into submission so no one would have thought twice about helping a lone teenage witch with a baby. It was a time of every wizard for himself. There was no way her death could have been stopped.
It had been a late summer afternoon in September. She and Dad had gone to Diagon Alley as they were running short on supplies. The street, however, was deserted. Wizards and witches alike lived in constant fear at that time. Why would there be people outside when most feared they'd be attacked in their own homes by Voldermort's followers? While Dad had gone to get some gold from their vault in Gringotts, Mum had been waiting outside tending to the restless infant me. The Goblins had asked her to step outside when I'd started crying. Out of the corner of her eye she had spied some known Death Eaters and decided it was best to hide. After that, Dad didn't know what happened. All he knew was what he believed Mum had done before he found her body in a back alley behind Flourish and Blotts, her daughter nowhere to be seen.
It was from encounters with Dementors when I got older that made the memory more vivid. They have the power to make you relive your worst memories and that was the worst one I had. Her voice in the memory is always crystal clear. It was so calm, as if she knew what was going to happen and was prepared for it. I guess you had to be in a time of war. The clearer the memory became for me, the more I learnt about what happened that night. How the three Death Eaters had cornered her in the alley and tried to get her to join them in exchange for her life. Mum had rejected their offer without hesitation. What I didn't understand at the time though was why she tried to reason with them, as if she knew the people about to kill her. It wasn't until I paired the memory with information I learnt over time that I realised she did know them and I understood why she did it.
When the lead Death Eater – the man with white hair, I knew him as until I learnt who he was – gave her one last chance to spare her life, again Mum refused. Her last words still haunt me to this day.
Then I'll die trying.
The green light passed right through her, killing her instantly. She fell to the ground, lifeless and her blue eyes empty. I don't really know how I survived. Dad said I should have died that day as well but whatever my Mum had known or done was what saved me. The Death Eaters Disapparated when they heard footsteps coming from the far end of the alley. It was Dad but he had known already that he was too late. He told me how he cried over her body, no baby in her arms, believing that he had lost both of us. It was only when he heard my cries over his own that he found me. He Apparated the three of us straight to a safe house they'd been living in and reported her death. Mum was the first of the friends to die. James and Lily were devastated by the news; Remus was almost torn apart from the grief. They would never know what Mum had found out, that a once loyal friend was now their enemy.
In time I came face to face with two of my mother's killers. The third had already died, killed shortly after my Mum's death for insubordination from what I could tell. I was horrified by how much they were linked to me: one a friend of my parents, one a relative of mine through his marriage, and one my own family. It was hard for me to deal with seeing these people and not wanting to cause them as much pain as they had caused me but in time I learnt that wanting vengeance for something I couldn't change was not the way to live my life. I'm not saying I forgave them. I just knew wanting revenge would only cause me more grief in the long run.
A year passed. Between them Dad and Remus took care of me while they and James and Lily continued to work for something called The Order. Eventually James, Lily and their baby son, Harry, went into hiding after news was received that Voldemort was after them. Tensions were tight between the friends, so much so that Dad even stopped trusting Remus and began confiding in their other friend, Peter Pettigrew. When James asked Dad to be their Secret Keeper, Dad rejected the offer, instead suggesting that Peter was the better choice, as Voldemort was less likely to come after him. They made the switch with everyone, even Remus, none the wiser. On the night James and Lily died, Dad had gone to check on Peter only to find to his horror that Peter was missing. Unsettled by what he saw Dad had rushed over to James and Lily's house with me on his motorcycle. He arrived to find their home in ruins and James and Lily lying dead in the rubble. Only baby Harry was still alive. Dad made to take him when a man called Hagrid turned up and told him Harry was to go to his aunt and uncle's. Reluctantly Dad agreed and, taking me from the sidecar, gave Hagrid his motorcycle because he wouldn't need it anymore. When Hagrid was gone Dad Disapparated with me in his arms and reappeared near to where he knew Lily's sister lived to make sure Harry was safe. Hiding me in some bushes in the park he'd materialised in, Dad rushed off to wait for Hagrid to arrive. I don't even remember if he came back.