On a church yard, in the middle of a cloudy day in June, stood a teenage girl in front of a tombstone. She had chocolate colored hair, blue jeans and a washed out t-shirt. Her piercing green eyes rested on the unfamiliar name on the tombstone.

She carefully placed a small bouquet of hand picked flowers in front of it. Then she sat down in the grass and looked around at the other tombstones. Ten of them now had a similar small bouquet.

Her fingers pulled up some of the grass, and broke the long strays into little pieces. After making a small pile, she looked up at the name again.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Bertha Jenkins had been someone's daughter. Maybe someone's girlfriend or mother too. But on a November night she'd been wiped out from the face of the Earth.

The girl's eyes filled up with tears, and she sniffled. The death of Bertha Jenkins, and all the others, was such a waste.

"I'm sorry, love, but we have to go back." Miss Daisy, the nurse at the orphanage, touched her shoulder lightly.

The girl nodded, eyes still glued to the tombstone, and slowly got to her feet again.

The two walked in silence towards the parking lot, but as Miss Daisy closed the black iron gates to the cemetery behind her, she paused for a second.

"Cora?"

"Hmmm?" A pair of brown eyes gave her a knowing look with warmth. Miss Daisy had always somehow reminded the girl of Miss Honey from Matilda. And she'd secretly wished for the 35 year old woman to adopt her and give her a proper home. Sadly, the opportunity of an adoption was now long gone. Cora Green wasn't an orphan anymore.

"I know these last couple of weeks have been hard on you." Miss Daisy drew in a sharp breath. "Especially with your father and all."

The teenager looked down on her black Converse shoes, and didn't look up again until she felt two strong hands on both of her arms.

"It's not the cards we've been dealt that define who we are."

"It's how we play them," Cora finished. She'd heard that phrase most of her life. Being an orphan, she had always felt at a disadvantage. She never had a parent come to her school concerts. No one had ever told her where she got her talents from, or which relative she looked like the most. The fact that she was all alone in the world, made her really angry. If Miss Daisy hadn't come along before she attended Hogwarts, she would have set the whole orphanage on fire. She felt like she was playing Uno in a poker game, but still she tried her best to stay in the game.

Now she knew where her anger came from.

"You are not him," Miss Daisy said sternly. As if she was the one who could read minds, and not the opposite. "You decide who you want to be."

Cora nodded, but wasn't fully convinced. Miss Daisy drew her into a hug, and the 15 year old clung to the beige trench coat for dear life. "He may be your father, but he is not you. You don't have to repeat anything of what he has done. Alright?"

Cora nodded again. She didn't know what was worse - to be an orphan or to find out that her father was a serial killer.

The two of them walked in silence towards the car. Little raindrops hit the windshield, and it was like the sky was crying. In the corner of her eye, she could see how misty Miss Daisy's eyes had gotten. To see her so emotional, gave Cora a little ray of light. At least there was someone in this world who genuinely cared about her. But she's still not adopting you. And now it's too late.

The nurse cleared her throat before getting in the grey Toyota Auris. As they drove in silence back to the orphanage, and whatever fate that awaited her, Cora wondered how long it would take before the Death Eaters caught up with her. Before they found out who she was and drafted her into their ranks.

Would they force her to kill Miss Daisy and the others, or would it be sufficient to leave them and that world behind?

Cora really hoped for the latter.

Why couldn't her parents just have been normal people?