Flower of Life
"You'll be a demon, like him... I should just kill you…"
The first month of her life had been eventful, in a manner of speaking. Certainly not what she would have preferred, but there was little she could do in a tiny baby body, especially one that was not being fed enough due to her mother's seeming hatred of her. She wasn't sure why the woman hated her newborn daughter, but it seemed to have something to do with a man, probably her missing father, who the woman referred to only as "him" or "he".
She also couldn't see color, or very clearly at all for that matter. She was hoping that would change over time, but for now she was simply a passenger in her own body, unable to do anything more than passively move her useless limbs and ignore the gnawing void in her stomach.
It had been some time since she'd lacked control in her life, much less to this extreme of an extent, and it was driving her mad. She'd spent much of the first day having panic attacks over her own lack of agency, terrible memories springing back into the forefront of her mind…
She'd gotten over it, simply resolving to do what she could for now. Well, she liked to think that anyways, she still flinched internally when her 'mother' picked her up, or indeed did anything with or near her.
"Yes, that'll be appropriate, perfect for a witch like you." The woman murmurred nearby, along with sound of pen on paper.
The woman picked her up, and she looked at her 'mother' for what felt like the hundredth time. The woman, through her blurry and colorless vision at least, was reasonably pretty. A dark haired woman with a relatively plain, but still attractive face. It was hard to tell much more than that with how poor her vision was right now. Perhaps the woman had freckles? It was hard to tell.
She shivered. The woman had taken her outside again. No great care was given for her daughter's wellbeing, just a thin blanket over simple baby clothes to protect her from what was clearly the winter chill judging by the snowflakes that kept landing on her face. After what felt like hours the woman stopped and looked down at her.
"Goodbye, monster."
The woman set her down on the ground, knocked loudly on a door, and walked away. Had she just been abandoned on a doorstep in the middle of winter? She felt the cold start to set in, along with panic. Was anyone even home, or awake? It seemed dark outside, was she going to just freeze to death while whoever her negligent mother had left her for simply slept peacefully? Her vision faded into darkness, hopeless thoughts slowing down as she fell into unconsciousness.
~FoL~
She whimpered quietly as she awoke, thankfully feeling warm again. Oddly, she seemed to be… moving back and forth? Oh, she was being rocked back and forth.
"Oh, good morning little Morgana." A voice came from above, and she opened her eyes to look. It was an older woman, it was hard to tell how old with how blurry her vision was though. Wait, Morgana? Was that her name now? She couldn't recall her 'mother' having called her that.
The woman holding her sighed. "I don't know why whomever left you on our doorstep would name you that, it'll only cause you problems… I'm sure you'll be able to handle it though, won't you little Morgana?" The woman smiled down at her, before shifting slightly. "Now, let's get you fed, shall we?"
A bottle was pressed to her lips, and before long she found herself drifting off back to sleep in the woman's arms.
~FoL~
The first few years of Morgana's time in the orphanage were rather boring overall. She slowly regained her ability to move around and to see clearly (and in color, thankfully). She also learned how to speak and walk at what was probably a suspiciously accelerated pace if any of the orphanage's workers or children cared enough to really notice. She was fairly certain she was somewhere in Great Britain based on the accents of the people within the orphanage. Her 'mother's accent had had an edge of that flavor to it, but she remembered it having something else to it in what little she heard her mother speak before she'd been abandoned. Maybe Italian? It probably didn't matter much at this point.
Today she was lazily pretending to read a picture pook which she'd noted seemed positively ancient to her. Across the room from her one of the orphanage's workers, a young blonde woman named Ms. Pierce, sighed and laid down the newspaper she had been reading before standing and leaving the room.
"Finally," she let out quietly as she stood up and walked over on her little toddler legs to take a look at the newspaper, ignoring the other orphans as she did so. "Let's see…"
"Oh," she blinked, before frowning heavily. On the newspaper was what she assumed was today's date, or at least a recent one considering the condition of the paper. It read 'March 17, 1932'. "That is…" She stepped away from the newspaper to return to her place across the room pretending to read a picture book.
In reality, she was just staring at the book as thoughts flew through her head. If she was in 1932, and she was three, then World War Two would occur while she was still young. Even if she wasn't, of course, she was luckily reborn into a body that matched her gender. Either way, she wouldn't be directly participating in the war as either a child or a woman in the early 20th century.
Unfortunately, there were some serious problems with gender-based discrimination from what she knew in the time she had found herself in, so she'd have to see how that went. Hopefully it woul-
Her train of thought was interrupted as she was abruptly pushed off of the small chair she'd been sitting in. She winced and started tearing up as she looked up to see who had pushed her, her child body was much more sensitive than she was used to. An older orphan was looking down at her, a boy she was fairly sure was named Johnny White.
Johnny picked up her chair. "Oops!" He sneered as he turned to walk away with the chair she'd been sitting in. Morgana sent a hate-filled glare after him. I hope you fucking trip. Her anger flared, and surprisingly Johnny did actually trip, falling over the chair and no doubt bruising himself rather badly.
Huh. That was odd. She shrugged, turning her attention back to thinking and pretending to read. It was probably nothing after all.
~FoL~
Johnny tripping was not, it turned out, nothing. Over the next few years, she continued to notice odd things occurring when her emotions ran hot, something that happened often in the orphanage with a child's body and other children regularly picking on her. She'd always known that orphanages were horrible places, but she hadn't realized just how terrible children could be, not really anyways.
She'd come up with a few options to explain these occurrences.
1. She'd just been born with special powers. In this case, she would likely be alone in this, but it would also make it much easier to abuse these powers once she'd gained control of them.
2. She was imagining things. She was fairly certain this one was wrong, but it was possible she was simply bored enough that she was losing it a bit.
3. She was born into a world where some people had powers like these, and she was one of them. In this case, with some of the things she'd accidentally done (Like the time she'd accidentally turned Ms. Pierce's hair brown cause she thought she'd be more pretty that way... It still hadn't turned back), she thought the most likely option was the wizarding world of Harry Potter.
The third option was the most dangerous, for a variety of reasons. Especially in the case of the most likely option she'd thought of. Obviously she would have to keep an eye out for things like Grindelwald and Voldemort, but more urgently she would have to deal with Dumbledore.
If she was right about where she sat in the timeline, she would be somewhere between 1 and 5 years younger than Tom Riddle was. With this in mind, Dumbledore would likely be the one to introduce her to the Wizarding World, in which case she would be meeting an incredibly skilled Legilimens in only five years. If she were a good person with nothing but pure plans for the future, she might not need to worry, but… I can't let that man have access to my mind if he exists.
If he existed, then she needed to be experienced enough to keep him out of her mind by the time he arrived at St. Elimine's, as she'd learned her orphanage was called when she was made to begin attending the sunday services at the local protestant church.
"Time for bed!" Ms. Pierce was standing at the door, and the other children had already begun leaving the room. Morgana stood up, following everyone else up the stairs. No time like the present, I suppose. "Hey Johnny!" She called out, and the 'older', larger child turned to face her while the other children were walking into their rooms. "What do you want, runt?"
LEGILIMENS! She screamed in her mind, willing her consciousness forward in an attempt to penetrate the boy's mind. Immediately, she began seeing his memories, at a pace that was far too fast for her to really follow. The boy's tenth birthday, celebrated loudly with the other punks he hung out with. Johnny laughing about the latest bit of bullying he got up to with his little friends, having stolen a toy from one of the younger boys. Five year old Johnny, being bullied by older orphans in the same way as he would later bully other children. Johnny looking down at her when she had been three, and sneering before pushing her off of it simply because he had wanted it for himself. She pushed past the memory with an angry flex of will, and the memories began to slow down, feeling oddly disconnected. She pulled away from the boy's mind with a shake of her head.
Johnny was frozen in place for a second before his knees gave out and he fell down the stairs like a puppet who'd had their strings cut. His limp body shoved her into the wall as he fell and he continued falling past her even as she, too late, reached out to try and grab his wrist. With an odd sense of finality, his body reached the bottom of the stairs and his head slammed into the floor.
Morgana silently stared at Johnny's still body. She… hadn't meant for this. He was clearly dead, and no child, even a bully like him, deserved that. "Morgana? Are you coming to-" She looked up the staircase, seeing Ms. Pierce through suddenly blurry eyes. The woman had her hands over her mouth as she stared past Morgana at the boy a floor below her. The dead boy.
"You'll be a demon, like him… I should just kill you…"
Maybe her mother had been right to abandon her. Her vision blurred further as tears of self-hatred ran down her cheeks.