The entire wizarding community knows of Lord Voldemort's defeat, but do they know that the recording of it is wrong?
It's presumed that the only daughter of James and Lily Potter defeated the malicious Dark Lord, despite only being a few months old. After all, Mariana Potter was the only survivor in the Potter's home at Godric's Hollow that night, so who else could've defeated the Dark Lord that night?
Oh, everyone praised little Mariana for defeating the threat to their existence. Happiness returned to the Wizarding World once more.
But happiness was far in reach for Mariana Potter, and the story everyone was told happened to be false.
Mariana Potter did not defeat Lord Voldemort on the 31st of October, 2000. Her mother did.
Lily Potter feared so strongly for her daughter, that her love reached out and created a barrier around the small child, to protect her.
When Voldemort forced his way into the little girl's nursery, Lily's pleas were ignored and soon the red-headed mother joined her husband in the afterlife. Pleased with his work, the monster cast his next spell at the baby girl who was the greatest threat to his existence.
Lily's lingering love for her daughter took action and quickly, Voldemort's killing curse was reflected back at him.
The Dark Lord was defeated by his own spell, thanks to the protection Lily unknowingly bestowed upon her child.
Many things happened shortly after that moment, including most of Lord Voldemort's unwilling followers rejoicing over their newly found freedom, and Mariana Potter being retrieved by a member of Hogwarts' staff and taken to her only remaining relatives.
Albus Dumbledore, defeater of Dark Lord Grindelwald, Headmaster of Hogwarts, and a very respected man in their community knew Lord Voldemort as a student. He understood the man's clever, manipulative nature and feared that he may find a way to return, even from death.
This meant little Mariana Potter was not free from danger in his eyes, and knowing that love itself was the most powerful of all magic, decided to leave the baby girl with her mother's aunt.
Dumbledore assumed that she would be loved by Petunia and her husband, because who would turn away a sibling's child? If all went as he wished, protective wards would appear around the family's house and Mariana would be safe from harm until she could learn to defend herself and graduate from Hogwarts.
As it turns out, he couldn't be more wrong.
Petunia Dursley and her husband hated magic, which in turn made them hate their niece. Poor Mariana was made to suffer throughout her childhood, always having the left-overs and bare minimum of care.
However, as Mariana began to grow older, Petunia noticed something peculiar about the girl. From her memory, she looked nothing like James Potter and suspicions of the girl's heritage began to worry her. Was this actually her sister's child, or had they been given someone else's child?
She demanded an audience with Dumbledore, of course. Though she hated magic, Petunia Dursley hated not knowing the truth even more. With utter disdain painted on her face, the Dursley woman sent Hogwarts' headmaster a letter using the wizarding world's odd methods.
A meeting was quickly arranged between the two of them, and Petunia spoke to the oddly clothed man in her garden. She showed him a picture she had recently taken of the little girl in their care, who had been overjoyed to finally have her picture taken like her cousin Dudley, Petunia and Vernon Dursley's son.
Dumbledore denied her claims that the girl's father was not James Potter. He stated that perhaps some of her looks had come from older generations on both sides of the family, and that perhaps the Wizarding World's saviour had been lucky enough to be blessed with them.
That was the end of the conversation, and Petunia had been appalled at the fact that the little girl who would no doubt do magic when she was older, had to stay in their household.
And whilst the years dragged on for Petunia Dursley, they flew by for Mariana Potter, who wanted nothing more than to escape her relatives. That opportunity came when a man named Severus, a professor at Hogwarts, visited shortly before her eleventh birthday.
Apparently, she was a witch.
Mariana told Severus that this was a horrible thing to tell a little girl, to which the dark-haired professor looked irritated at. He then asked her if anything strange had happened when she was younger, and Mariana came to realise that she was being told the truth.
Mariana started her first year at Hogwarts on the 1st of September, 2011. She had been sorted into the house of Godric Gryffindor, like her parents, and quickly gained a bit of happiness from being in a new place with buckets of freedom.
But, not everything was meant to be in this girl's favour.
Her friends became jealous of her fame, and the attention which came with it, which caused Mariana some struggle.
She never had friends before, thanks to her cousin scaring people away from her when they were in muggle school, and desperately wanted to keep the ones she made in the Wizarding World, so she began to buy them gifts and help the ones who were too lazy to do their homework.
Alas, Mariana was a kind girl who feared being alone. The House of Gryffindor saw this, and like the predator that it was named after, circled around her until she gave them what they wanted.
Other houses followed suit once word spread, and Mariana Potter was used for her money, brains and fame. Her selflessness and her concern for other people was not appreciated the way it should have been.
Now, her Sixth Year at Hogwarts was approaching, and Mariana had practically begged her heart and mind to become stronger in hopes of rejecting her friends' requests.
She didn't want to keep staying up all night, finishing other people's essays whilst hers were left until the last minute, where she ended up getting low marks because she didn't use her full mental capacity on it.
She didn't want to spend the money her parents had left her for her studies and her own well-being, on people who didn't care for her state of living. Don't get her wrong, Mariana loved giving gifts, but she wasn't making herself happy in the process and it had to stop.
So, this was the year she was going to change it all. This was the year she focused on her, starting with getting answers as to why she had someone's initials practically burnt into her inner left wrist.
A/N: Thank you for reading the first chapter of my newest fic, Meant To Be! I hope that you enjoyed it and that you're excited for chapter two; Don't forget to follow or favourite this book to add it to your library if you wish to receive the latest updates! See you soon :)