As soon as Lily had announced she was pregnant, Sirius and James had made a bet.
"It's definitely gonna be a little Prongslet and he's going to be a real prankster, just like his dad!" Sirius had declared with smug certainty.
"No way, I have a feeling about this," James had argued back just as vehemently, "It's gonna be a little Lily flower and she's going to look like her mom!"
Of course Lily's opinion, you know, the woman currently carrying said baby, was not asked. But if they had asked her, she would have said that she was on James' side on this one.
The pregnancy itself takes ages it seems like, especially in the midsts of a war. Lily finds herself just wanting to give birth already more often than not. Of course, all James and Sirius are focused on is which of them will win the bet.
"I've got a lot of galleons riding on this, Lils!" Was a common phrase exiting James' mouth these days.
"I'm so gonna win, it's gotta be a boy for how much hell he's putting Lily through!" Was Sirius' regular exclamation.
James ends up winning the bet but Sirius can't find it in himself to complain when he meets the little flower bud for the first time.
"What are you going to name her?" Sirius asks while not so subtly handing over a sack full of coins to a grinning James. Lily pretends like she can't see them shamelessly gambling in front of her newborn.
"We were thinking Sunflower Jamie Potter," James says, "We'll call her Sunny for short."
And that's the story of how Sunny Potter came to be in this world.
…
Sunny Potter recalls very vividly the moment she gained clarity. It was like a switch had been flipped and all of a sudden she was awake in a world and in a body that was not her own. Blinded by blood flowing into her eyes and breathing in the noxious fumes of some nearby fire, she had gained consciousness.
Things are such a blur from that night. All she can really remember are the tortured wails of someone when they pluck her up as if she weighs nothing. Whoever it was that picked her up had smelt like cigarettes and had jostled her about as they moved with her in their arms. Eventually they had handed her off to someone else and the roaring of a motorcycle drowned out anything that came after.
The idea that she might be reincarnated doesn't cross her mind until much, much later.
…
It takes her a very long time before she learns anything about who she is or her situation. Hell, she doesn't even really learn what her own damn name is until she's well into her toddling years. Up until that point, the people raising her had only called her 'Girl' or 'Brat'. Logically she knows that those can't really be her name, but when they're all you hear, it becomes hard to separate from them mentally.
She knows that the situation she's in is deplorable, that no child should be treated the way she is but there's very little she can do about it. She can barely reach doorknobs, how is she supposed to do anything to fight back? Oh, but she wishes she could.
The first time they beat her, it's because she dropped an egg while helping her Aunt Petunia cook breakfast. She's three years old, and before she could brush off their neglect and their obvious favoritism towards their son. But being given a black eye so bad her left eye swells shut really puts things into prospective for her.
That's when she starts planning her escape.
The adults around her pretend they can't see the bruises and the teachers at the elementary school don't ever ask her about how thin she is or why she flinches away from grownups if they get too close to her. So, Sunny knows that the only person who's going to help her is herself.
She bides her time and an opportunity arrives when she's six years old.
Normally, her relatives leave her with a neighbor when they go on their day trips. However, Mrs. Figg has a broken leg and with scowls, so severe Sunny wonders if their faces will stick that way, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon take her with them on their day trip into London.
She waits until they're well into the day and pressed among the heavy crowds of tourists and locals all trying to enjoy the unusually nice weather. When they're crossing a street, Sunny slips away into the crowd.
The first thing she does is duck into the nearest alleyway and change into the clothes that she'd stuffed under her oversized castoffs from her cousin. These clothes, also hand-me-downs, suffice in changing her appearance enough that if her relatives try to give police a description of what she was wearing, she won't match. The next thing she does is steal a baseball cap from a distracted street vendor. She stuffs her wild, unmanageable black hair into it and tugs it down far over her face also hiding the distinctive scar on her forehead. Then she spends the next several hours wandering aimlessly, taking random turns and going down unfamiliar streets in hopes to lose whoever might be looking for her.
Despite her worries, the plan works. She's free.
Before the night can get too dark, she manages to locate an old plastic milk crate and a ratty, moth hole covered tarp that she makes her new home with. She builds her makeshift home at the back of a grocery store, in-between the dumpster and the brick alleyway wall. Her location is perfect, it allows her to dig out the tossed out expired food the grocery store throws away.
Sunny lives like that for a few weeks, perfectly content with her new situation.
However, about a month after she runs away, a homeless man digging through the dumpster spots her. He looks down at her with a sort of stunned expression and then looks around as if he's expecting her parents to pop up. He stares at her for a bit before returning to his dumpster diving and grabbing the loaves of expired bread and stuffing them into his satchel.
When he's finished fishing out what he wants he looks back down at her and then again at their surroundings. When she doesn't move, he lets out a huff and stomps away only to return, minutes later, cursing under his breath about "stupid kids alone in stupid alleys" and he plops himself down across the way from her.
What proceeds is what Sunny can only describe as the weirdest Mexican standoff she's ever been a part of. He keeps looking at her like he's expecting something from her and all she can think is that if he wants her to move so he can take her spot, he's in for a long wait because she's not going anywhere.
Only after hours have passed and the sky starts to lighten with the promise of the morning does he finally speak to her directly, "You're parents aren't coming for you, are they?"
Sunny lifts her head groggily from where she had been resting it on her forearms and she shakes her head.
The man lets out a long sigh and stands up. He dusts himself off before reaching down and pulling her from her milk crate home. At first she panics, kicking her legs wildly and letting out shrieks that sound more like a frog dying than a little girl in mortal peril. The man lets out a grunt and pins her flailing limbs to his chest and snaps at her to calm down.
"I'm not gonna hurt you!" He tells her with an annoyed huff, "Merlin, kid, calm down!"
She stays tense the whole time he walks with her in his arms, her eyes wide and darting about them, searching for someone to help. This early in the morning, there's no one and for the first time since running away, she realizes she's made a horrible mistake.
The man takes a really strange path through different alleyways before coming upon a rather suspicious looking hole in a brick wall that he ducks down to crawl through with Sunny still cradled to his chest. The other side of this wall is remarkably different from where they'd just come from. Sunny looks around them with a puzzled expression, trying to place why this street looks so odd. Everything is dark and gloomy and people give them funny looks as they pass but, there's something else about this street that Sunny finds disconcerting even if she can't figure out why.
Eventually, the man takes her to a run down apartment building that is shaped sort of like it's upside-down. The bottom levels are smaller than the upper ones, giving it a sort of cartoonish appearance. The inside of the building is just as odd as the outside with its peeling wallpaper that Sunny swears has a moving pattern to it and its derelict doors leading to various apartments.
They climb a frankly ridiculous amount of steps, far more than what the building looked like it had from the outside, before they make it to this man's apartment. Not homeless then, just on a tight budget. He struggles to get the sticking doorknob to cooperate while also juggling her in his other arm. Eventually he manages to force the door open and he brings her inside with a relieved sigh.
"It ain't much," he tells her and that's certainly an understatement. Sunny is doubtful that this apartment is any better than living in the gutter.
She scrambles away from him as soon as he sets her down on the thread bare couch that appears to be his only furniture other than a terribly wobbly kitchen table and table lamp that has no table to sit on so it sits crookedly on the floor next to the couch. The man ignores her and begins unpacking the food he got earlier, placing it neatly onto the kitchen shelves. His expired or otherwise defective foods from the dumpster don't help in making his apartment look any more habitable, if anything, it sort of makes it look sadder.
When he's finished he plops down on the other end of the couch with a world weary sigh and looks over at her.
"I got some of that muggle food if you're hungry," he tells her while pointing to the recently put away groceries in the kitchen. Sunny quickly shakes her head, not too keen on taking food from a stranger who's kidnapped her.
He tiredly nods and gets back up, heading through a door Sunny hadn't noticed before. When he doesn't come back out, Sunny slowly slides down off the couch and tiptoes across the room to get a look. It's a bedroom with a bare mattress on the floor and the man star-fished across it with an arm thrown over his face. There's another door in that room that Sunny assumes leads to the bathroom.
"Either go to the bathroom or go to sleep," the man eventually pipes up from the floor before turning his back on her and facing the wall to sleep himself. Sunny stands there uncertainly for awhile, not really sure what to make of this situation. If he's a kidnapper, he's certainly not a very good one, Sunny thinks.
Eventually, her own exhaustion wins out and she returns to the main room and gets comfortable on the couch. She falls asleep quickly.
….
His name is Marius and he's one of the oddest people that Sunny has ever met in this life or the one before it. He doesn't have a job, "Can't get work 'cos of my condition, prejudiced bastards." And he tells her under no uncertain terms that she shouldn't leave the apartment without him, "Lots of unsavory folk just waiting to get their hands on a lost pup like you."
Sunny appreciates the weirdly biting concern from the man, but she's been taking care of herself for weeks now, she was fine before he brought her here. She tells him as much, trying to sound certain and authoritative despite the lisp from her missing front teeth that have yet to grow in.
His severe face cracks into a bit of a smile at that before returning to its perpetually gloomy state. He doesn't take her back to her milk crate home and Sunny finds herself having to adapt to living with this stranger. Sunny supposes he's not too bad, certainly better than the Durselys that's for sure. He never hits her or locks her in a cupboard and he feeds her as much food as he can spare even if it means he goes hungry himself.
He would've made a wonderful dad if his circumstances weren't so dire.
They don't leave the apartment much, Marius insists it isn't safe outside. They live in some place called Knockturn Alley and despite having just as much access to the sky as any other street, it's perpetually shaded as if the sun purposefully avoids it. Sunny mentions it one time and Marius just grumbles something about a curse before changing the subject.
Up until this point Sunny had steadfastly refused to acknowledge the similarities to a story from her previous life, and she's hell bent on continuing on pretending that this all isn't so horribly familiar.
They actually live in harmony for a few months. There isn't much to do, no television or radio, but Marius goes out and digs in dumpsters every night and sometimes returns with half torn books that people throw away. Sunny reads whatever he brings her with enthusiasm that Marius matches. She learns quickly that the man is illiterate and her reading out loud to him is the only experience of books he's ever received.
For three days every month Marius disappears, though. He stocks the apartment up with enough food to last Sunny and tells her to stay inside while he's gone. When he returns, he's always pale and sickly and covered in oozing cuts and scratches. He won't say where he goes or what he does and Sunny is more concerned with tending to his wounds than figuring those things out.
…
He leaves her life as quickly as he'd entered it. About four months after Sunny starts living with Marius, he leaves for his monthly three day whatever he does. Except this time he doesn't come back.
Sunny waits as long as she can stand, the food he'd squirreled away for them long gone, before she ventures out of the apartment. She doesn't know how she knows, but she knows that Marius isn't coming back.
She makes a new home for herself in between two oddly shaped buildings a few blocks down from where Marius' apartment was. Despite having the odd name of Knockturn Alley, it is far larger than an alleyway and seems to only house those of unfortunate circumstances. Sunny learns quickly that if she keeps her head down and doesn't make herself too obvious, people leave her alone for the most part.
Those first few days she'd tried asking around about Marius but no one has any answers for her. She never does find out what happened to him.
…
Sunny's weeks living on the streets of Knockturn Alley are some of the hardest she's ever endured. Food is difficult to come by, for some reason stores and restaurants don't have garbage to get rid of so there's no dumpsters for her to dig through. She ends up making her way towards Diagon Alley don't think about it don't think about it and sits herself out of the way. Most of the time she looks pathetic enough that someone will buy a loaf of bread for her or on one memorable occasion, buy her an ice cream cone. She can't always rely on that, however, and spends more days going hungry than eating.
She loses track of how long she lives out there and her interactions with other people are minimum. So, it's a bit of a surprise for her to get stopped by someone while she meanders along Knockturn Alley. The man is tall and thin and looms over her with his billowing black robes. He looks down at her with a severe frown that seems to emphasize his large, hooked nose.
She can only look up at him in surprise as she cranes her neck back with how short she is.
"Sunny Potter?" The man mutters with a deep voice. Sunny lets out a gasp and makes a mad dash to get away. She uses her tiny body to her advantage and squeezes past people and buildings, trying to put as much distance as she possibly can between herself and that man. She only stops running when her legs finally give out from under her and she's safely back in her little cardboard home between the two weird buildings.
…
Severus Snape had loved Lily Evans with everything in him. She had been his only true friend, the only person who ever really understood him, and he'd betrayed her. And Gods does it keep him up at night.
When he'd made it to the Potters that night he'd realized instantly he was too late. The home that had once been certainly pleasant, was a smoking, ramshackled heap now.
Severus remembers tripping over James Potter's body at the bottom of the stairs and the horror that had filled him as he scrambled up in search of Lily. The room he finds her body in was clearly once a nursery even if all that was really left of it was smoking shards of lumber and tufts of insulation.
The baby, against all odds, had survived. Wailing with choked gasps from a debris covered crib that Severus had had to clear away to get a good look.
He'd heard that they'd had a little girl and that they had given her a rather unfortunate name. He doesn't know what he expected her to look like, perhaps a little clone of James. She looks like Lily, though, even if her hair is dark like her fathers. Severus would know those impossibly green eyes anywhere.
Imagine his surprise then, that he would encounter them once more while making his way through Knockturn Alley. Those killing curse green eyes had looked up at him past caked on dirt and matted hair. He didn't even need to see the scar, though he glanced at it to be sure, that this was the only child of the woman he'd loved.
Then she runs away from him and he's left with the horrifying realization that this little girl, the savior of the wizarding world, is living in the gutter of the seediest neighborhood in wizarding Britain.
The curses he lets out are colorful and explicit.
