Meet Alice Jones, the woman who never truly dies. She has died seven times now, every time coming back as another person, with different parents, in a different time. Normally when people speak of reincarnation they think that the person only remembers some small things about their past life, but that doesn't happen with Alice. She remembers all of the things that happened in her previous lives, with some memories it being a blessing, like the birth of every child she's ever had, every love she had, and many other things. Other times it was a curse that she remembered, like the time her first child from her first life had gotten sick when the small boy was only eight months old, breathing out his last breath of his short life in her arms, Alice sobbing as she felt that her heart was getting ripped out and torn apart.
This is her eight life, her eight change at life. And oh boy, is she in for a ride.
OxO
She was three when the first weird thing happened. She was running in the backyard of her parents' house, chasing a butterfly when she stumbled across a rock and tripped, a burning pain on her knee. She sat up and looked down, seeing her knee scraped up, small droplets of blood appearing.
She knew this was no big deal, having lived so many years she knew that all she had to do was get it cleaned up and give it time to heal. Her three year old body however, didn't know this, and she felt tears well up as she frowned, not wanting to cry. It was a battle between body and mind, and it seemed like her body was going to win, a tear already sliding across her cheek.
If only this damned scrape wasn't on my knee, she thought. Then her knee began to get warm, not an uncomfortable warm, but a comforting, safe kind of warmth. Her eyebrows raised and her small mouth dropped open in shock, seeing the skin start to heal in front of her eyes. When the only prove that the wound was ever there were the small drops of blood, she jumped up, patted off the back of her light yellow dress, and ran back towards the house, a grin on her face.
"Mommy, mommy!" She called out as she ran through the back door, entering the kitchen where her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book about what looked like sticks. When her parents had started learning her to speak, she only thought it fit if she would call her parents 'mommy' and 'daddy' instead of mother and father – those words didn't fit a small child.
"What's wrong, dear Alice?" Her mother asked her, sticking the pen she always had tucked behind her ear between the pages and laying the book down on the table, giving little Alice her full attention.
"I fell and scraped my knee and made it go away!" Alice lifted up her dress and stuck out her slightly blood covered knee. Alice always felt a child-like enthusiasm at discovering new things, in every life it had been the same.
Her mother gasped as she looked down at her daughter's knee, Alice seeing a slight wetness to her eyes as her mother looked up at her with a big grin on her face.
"My baby's magic." She breathed. Alice pouted as her mother called her 'baby' – she's never liked it. "You're a witch."
"A what?" Alice asked, feeling slightly insulted as she first thought her mother had just called her a bitch.
"A witch, my dear Alice, you can do magic." Her mother pushed her glasses further up her nose, like she always did when she was about to explain something. "Mommy is a witch, too, as is daddy. There's a magical core inside of all three of us, just like many generations of our family." Her mother was never afraid Alice wouldn't understand something, as the little girl was, in her eyes, way too smart for her age.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Alice asked as her mother jumped up and started walking towards the hall, leaving Alice no choice but to follow if she wanted answers. Her mother, muttering to herself, stopped at the double doors. Alice felt a spark of excitement, ever since she could walk, she's been told not to try to go in there. Of course she had tried, she was as curious as they come, but the door wouldn't open, the handle wouldn't even turn.
But her mother was able to turn the door handles, and she swung the door open with a dramatic flair.
Alice gasped as she looked around her mother, into the room. This was not what she was expecting at all.
It was an office, just like her parents had told her when she asked, but nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she looked inside. As soon as the doors had opened, the entire room came alive, the candles on the chandelier hanging from the ceiling flickering alive. Books flying across the room to land on the shelves. It almost looked like Alice had forgotten to clean her room and she started as soon as one of her parents came to check on her.
"The reason we haven't told you sooner about our magic is because we weren't sure that you would have it too." Alice's eyes slid over to her mother as she spoke, understanding the reason.
Alice took a step into the room, and as soon as her foot crossed entered the room, a blue light engulfed her, a slight tickling sensation making her giggle. She then gasped as the furniture in the room shifted. There were two desks when she first saw the room, but they were pushed aside by some unseen force, magic, she thought, to make room for a third desk. She glanced at her mother, who smiled at her with tears in her eyes, awaiting her reaction, before she walked over to the third desk.
As she sat down on the dark red leather chair, from which the seat went up as soon as she sat so she could rest her arms on the desk, a book flew from the shelf to rest in front of her, oddly enough there was a picture of a broom on the cover.
Alice almost opened the book, but then she remembered something. Her parents have not yet taught her to read.
"Mommy," Alice looked up at her mother, "I can't read." Her mother laughed, picked Alice up to carry her – which Alice pouted at, she didn't like that too –, grabbed a book from a nearby shelf and carried her to the living room, where they sat for the rest of the afternoon until her father came home from work, her mother teaching Alice how to read – which she knew how to do, of course, but just like speaking, let her parents teach her –.
OxO
It was six years later when she, for the first time in this life, ran away from home. She had thrown some clothes and a toothbrush in a small bag, grabbing a small loaf of bread before she ran out the front door, slamming it behind her.
Why was she running away, you must be thinking.
A lot had changed in these past six years. Her father had gotten into an accident involving some vampires, he didn't survive.
Her daddy was dead.
Mommy changed a lot after that, locking herself up in her bedroom, which were filled with daddy's old clothes, pictures of the two of them, a few with Alice, and all sorts of belongings. She also was going slightly mad, taking her grief out on Alice, who had the same grey eyes as her father.
Just half an hour ago, mommy and Alice were drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen, when mommy looked Alice in the eyes and called her by her daddy's name. Mommy then burst out crying, throwing her cup and saucer across the room, yelling at Alice to 'get out! Get the hell out!' and not listening to a word Alice was saying in an attempt to calm her mother. When her mother started glaring at her Alice decided this environment wasn't safe for her, and grabbed a bag and left.
Now the only question was, where was she going to go?
First, off the property. She thought, as she started walking towards the big, iron gates two hundred meters ahead. When she reached them, they opened on themselves, sensing the presence of a Jones nearby.
If I remember correctly, Alice thought, looking across a field towards the east, somewhere over there is a funny looking house. Maybe they can help me. And she started walking.
It was early April, so it wasn't all that warm and the sun went down quick. She pulled a sweater vest out of her bag and put it on as soon as the Goosebumps came.
When she reached the funny house, which was even funnier up close, she could see the sun over the treetops in the distance, which meant it was around dinner time. She walked towards the front door, which was crooked, and she knocked. While she waited for someone to open, she heard loud voices from the other side. When she looked back to find out if she could see her house, she could only see the attic behind the rolling hills.
"Hello, dear, can I help you?" Alice's head shot back around to see a plump, red headed woman standing in the doorway, a friendly smile on her face.
"Hello, ma'am. My name is Alice Jones, I live with my mother across the hills in the white house, I was wondering if you have some food to spare for me." Alice said, widening her eyes to look more innocent.
Alice could see the woman melt before her eyes, and she knew she was in. "Such manners, come on in, we were just getting ready." The woman stepped aside and Alice's eyes widened as she stepped inside, slightly overwhelmed by the amount of red heads, there were only five, the kind woman included, but still more than she had ever seen. There were three boys, two of them were twins, the other looked her age, and one girl, who looked a year younger. "The twins are Fred and George, that is Ron and that is Ginny." Alice smiled and waved as a weird feeling washed over her, familiarity, shock, all sorts of emotions overwhelming her. Their names sounded so familiar…
"And I am Molly Weasley." And then it came crashing in. This was the Burrow, those were the Weasleys, well, some of them, but still. Alice knew that she had been born into a world of magic, but hadn't made the connection until just now.
She read the books for the first time in her first life, and has done so every life if she was living at the time that the books existed. She has grown up with these books, was also slightly disappointed when she found out what year she was born and that she had to wait a few decades before she could read them again.
But this was even better.
This was now officially the best life ever.
She was going to go to school with Harry Potter.
In a few years she's going to Hogwarts.
She's able to save a few characters.
"It's nice to meet you all." Alice smiled when she realised she had been silent for a few seconds too long.
After dinner, which Arthur couldn't be at because of a small emergency at the Ministry, Alice explained to Molly why she ran away from home and knocked on their front door. Molly told her she could stay here for the night, and that she was going to talk with Alice's mother when Arthur was home.
After that talk, Alice sat down in the living room with the four Weasley kids, and started a friendship that would last for years to come.
OxO
Alice let out a small cheer as she flew on her broom. It wasn't just any ordinary Cleansweep or Nimbus, no, it was her own broom, her own model. Her first self-made broom.
And it was awesome.
She flew around in circles for a few minutes before she started to get bored.
"I'm going to the Burrow!" Alice called down to her mother, who was watching her daughter with a proud smile.
"Be back home for dinner!" She called back, and waved her off.
Alice was at the Burrow in record time, being there in under fifteen minutes.
"An eleven year old making a broom?" Fred asked as Alice stormed in through the back door, excitedly yelling about her new broom, which she left outside, following Molly's rule about 'no brooms in the house'.
"I don't believe you." George added.
"Well come and look." Alice stuck out her tongue, turned on her heel and walked outside, the Weasley twins, who were the only ones in the kitchen at the moment, following her. It was the summer of 1990, the year she started at Hogwarts, and she couldn't wait. When she got her letter, two weeks ago, she ran over to her mother and almost pulled her along do Diagon Alley, to get all her school supplies.
Alice skipped over to her broom, which she had dropped in the grass, and picked it up.
"It looks just like any manky old broom." Fred teased, secretly amazed. George, however, ripped it out of Alice's hands to try it out, jumping on it and shooting off into the air.
Alice elbowed Fred in his side, looking after George.
"You're not even a first year, you just bought it." Fred jokingly said, knowing she truly had made it, as she spoke about it often, but trying to make it hard for her.
"I did make it, you liar." Alice snapped, before she tried to tackle him. Fred, having known her for three years now, saw it coming and just took a step back, causing her to fall face first into the grass, at which he burst out laughing. Alice just crawled back up and crossed her arms, pouting at him until he stopped. "I was thinking about making two more for you and George, but now I won't, you meanie." That shut him up. Fred glared at her.
"This thing is awesome! It's the fastest broom I've ever been on!" George exclaimed, landing in front of them. "Fred, you have to try it!"
Fred gave Alice a friendly push and jumped on the broom, not seeing her fall but smiling as he heard her undignified squeak as she hit the grass again, flying off and reminding himself not to tell the girl how amazing the broom really was.