Chapter one: Meredith Said

Meredith said he was tall. She said he was easily six feet and walked with a power that resonated with each step he took, the rain rebounding hard when it hit him like bullets. Meredith said he was dark; sallow skin and dark features. She said she was slightly nervous, that he gave off the feeling of someone who could be dangerous, though he was nothing but polite. She said she didn't get a good look at him, what with the blanket of dark sky and his hood that he didn't lower; but I had his eyes. She said he was the only other person in the whole world that she'd ever known to have eyes as black as mine.

Meredith said I was wrapped in a deep green blanket, that I looked very out of place- a small bundle being held close to such a tall and somewhat foreboding mass. She said he held me so close that it was obvious he didn't want to give me to them. That he was having second thoughts. Meredith said when he did finally place me in the matron's arms, that he very tenderly kissed my forehead and brushed aside the short, thin wisps of hair from my face. She said I wasn't more than a few weeks old. She said I didn't make a sound. I was asleep; dreaming for the last time in my father's arms.

Meredith said he didn't say much. He told the matron how old I was, the date I was born, and he asked her to take good care of me for however long I was to be in her care. My father said I was to be named Lilia, and that it was not to ever be changed. My father said I had no last name and refused to give his own.

"It's my last gift," he told Meredith. "Were she to carry my name, there is too much harm that could befall her because of it."

Meredith said, when he left, it was like he'd never been there at all. She said there was a silence that followed his departure that hadn't been there before, and the only way they could even be sure he'd come at all was the small, slowly waking bundle in Meredith's arms and the still lingering echo of the door behind him. The matron of course always swore there was nothing special about it. Yes, the man was very polite and yes, he might have been a bit odd, but nothing even close to the near supernatural occurrence Meredith made it out to be. And if his retreating footsteps were not to be found the next morning, well, that could blamed on the rain.

Meredith said she knew immediately that he was a wizard. Her brother and father had been wizards. Her mother had been a witch. She said her parents had met at a school for such people, called Hogwarts. She said she always knew I was such a person with such a gift. And she always knew she wasn't.

"I think myself capable of many wonderful things," Meredith said, always wistfully looking out the window of our small home with a small and strange sort of smile on her face. "The roses are in perfect bloom, I have notebooks of poems and stories written about beautiful things I've seen with my own eyes, and I've raised you."

At saying this, Meredith always turned her smile to wherever I might be; whether I was playing with my dolls or being entirely captivated by her words. My Meredith was a poet, you see, and sometimes that was better than magic.

"Besides," Meredith said, looking at me in a way I now know to have been loving. "If I'd gone to Hogwarts myself I might never have found you and that, my flower, is infinitely more important."

Meredith said I was four when she finally left Strawberry Fields Orphanage and took me with her. She said that, from the moment she held me in her arms on that first night, I'd bewitched myself into the deepest cockles of her heart as perhaps my first real display of accidental magic. She said she was only sorry it took her four years to realize I wouldn't leave it so easily. Meredith said she knew at once I was special. Meredith said others knew when I was six and answered a question that I was never asked aloud.

Meredith said they didn't understand. She said I scared them, they were only muggles afterall. She said I should learn to ignore my Legilimency. She said that people didn't like the idea of their thoughts not being private. But Meredith never seemed to care. Meredith said there would be people at Hogwarts who could help me. People who could keep the only voices in my head my own.

Sometimes, when I am laying in bed and thinking about things Meredith said it was unhealthy to think about, I try to think about that man. The man who brought me to Meredith. The man I liked to believe loved me. Sometimes I would swear that if I concentrated, I'd see his face. Sometimes I could even almost hear his voice. I always assumed this to be because of Meredith's memory of my arrival, which she thought of often. Or perhaps Meredith told the story so often that it was as though I remembered it myself.

Meredith said I wouldn't miss her at Hogwarts. She said that I would make new friends. She said that I would forget to write. She said that I would eventually fall in love and forget about her. She said that I might even find the people I belonged to.

"But I belong to you," I would say, always emphatically.

She would smile. Meredith said I wouldn't always.

I didn't believe her.

But then, when I was eleven, I received my Hogwarts acceptance letter just like Meredith said. And that was just the beginning.

A/N: So, I've had this in the makings for a while. Let me know what you think. The first two chapters are written similar to this, and then our story starts. I think I made it pretty obvious who her father is, but when I read it to my mom she got it wrong. So maybe not. Any theories on the mother? I hope you like it. And I promise, the chapters will get longer. I wrote the first two kind of short because it felt right. But they'll get longer.

Mia.