A/N: The orphanage chapters are almost at an end, only one chapter to go! This one isn't quite as long as the last chapter, but it's still longer than either of the first two.

Flower of Life

"Riddle, Tom." Professor Dumbledore spoke from beside the ancient hat, eyeing him with that same judgemental look he remembered from the orphanage. Who was that man, a man who saw no issue with making an orphan think all of his worldly possessions had been set alight, to judge him? Tom gave the man a hateful glare as he walked up to the stool the hat was sitting on, before placing the ancient piece of headwear on his own head.

"Well, you are an interesting one, aren't you? Certainly no lack of intellect in you, I'm sure you could give anyone in Rowena's house a run for their money in academics." Tom froze as the hat seemingly… read his mind? "Yes, I am. It is the method through which I am able to sort students into their houses. Don't worry, however. I am unable to reveal your secrets, and I would not even if I could in your case. Now as I was saying, you certainly don't lack intellect, but that's far from your most defining trait. I think we both agree on that. No, with ambitions like yours there is no other place for you than SLYTHERIN!"

The hat's last word to him was accepted with a polite applause from the house of cunning as Tom set the hat back on its stool and headed over to Slytherin's table.

~FoL~

Morgana had a bloody tenth Halloween. The day had started entirely normally, with the usual yearly halloween decorations that had started being put up in the year following Mr. Everett's death. Morgana knew that Ms. Pierce was the woman behind the idea, she had seen as much on one of the few times she was able to look into the woman's mind. The orphanage caretaker had, following the deaths of Johnny White and William Everett, taken it upon herself to start putting decorations up on holidays to help cheer up the orphans who she assumed would be haunted by the two deaths or at the very least the death of one of their own.

She was right to a certain extent. Johnny's friends for example had certainly been distraught over his death, but the majority of the orphans had bigger problems to worry about and hadn't been close to the boy in the first place. They were too busy dealing with things like being harrassed in the street for being orphans on their way to school to worry about just one of their number disappearing from their lives, for example. The orphanage's uniform was rather distinct, unfortunately.

But yes, the day had started rather normally with the usual decorations and everything. The orphanage was a generally more cheery place on holidays, though it still had the customary air of hostility to it behind the veneer of the holiday decorations. She had gone to school as per usual for a monday, suffered through the boredom she had long since grown accustomed to, and headed home whilst ignoring the casual cruelty the citizens of London showed her and the other orphans with their jeers. At least the walk was made more enjoyable by the decorations that had been put out in front of some of the houses and other buildings.

It was nearly an hour after she had gotten back to the drafty building she lived in and retreated to the privacy of her room that things took a turn for the worse, and several of her plans for the future were ruined in an instant. She'd felt sort of off all day and hadn't been sure why, but when she felt a throbbing pain in her abdomen a look of horror crossed her face. 'No…' She reached a hand under her skirt, and when she pulled it back, 'Yep, that's blood. Fuck.' Her head fell onto her pillow with a thump, her eyes turning to their favored view of the ceiling as she ignored the terrible mess she now knew she was making of her clothes and her sheets. She would deal with it later.

This was a problem, but not one she could really do anything about. Now, there were of course the obvious problems that came with periods: Bleeding, cramps, possibly some mood swings if she couldn't deal with that using occlumency, but there were also more insidious problems that would come along with this. The main one was really quite simple, she was only 4'11" at the moment, a little taller than a good amount of her yearmates, but she now knew that she would be done growing within a year or two. She would break 5' for sure at least, but she had hoped she would grow to be tall in this life. It would make it much harder to be an imposing and intimidating witch if everyone around her towered above her. She sighed grumpily, and then winced as the pain in her abdomen spiked. "Fuck, fine, I'll go get help. Stupid body doing stupid girl things. Couldn't have waited a couple years til I could get some sort of magic solution?" She glared down at her abdomen witheringly, before getting to her feet with a wince and leaving the room to seek help.

~FoL~

Six months after she had originally begun resorting her mind for the second time and rendering any memory of her previous life as well as every other dubious memory she had invisible, she was finally done. She had expected it to take longer, actually, but the task had become more and more easy to accomplish as she worked through it.

With her work on her mind complete, she felt a clarity of mind and an ease of thought that she wouldn't have imagined possible. It was like she had broken a dam on the river that was her mind and now it was flowing freely and easily. Her memory wasn't quite as perfect as she remembered some sources would have you believe of occlumency practitioners, but it was still far beyond anything she'd ever had in the past. Even her short term memory had improved dramatically, she hadn't had the sorts of issues she'd once had with forgetting what she'd been doing since the early stages of occlumency, and she was reveling in the increased efficiency that came along with that.

As it turned out however, pushing the concept of irrelevance into large amounts of her memories was not an action that went without any consequences. She honestly shouldn't have been surprised by the downside of her solution to an invasion of her mind, the downside of it really just made sense.

Every memory that she pushed such a concept into became unimportant to her, and any direct emotional connection she felt from them became dull at most. She could still feel strongly about those memories, but it felt more like the sort of feelings you might feel about something happening to someone you were close to rather than to yourself.

This wasn't an entirely terrible problem to have as she didn't really need the emotions that had been attached to those memories anymore, but it had caused a very large change in her.

Originally, she remembered that she had felt like a woman that had been unwillingly trapped within a child's body. Now, however, she really felt more like a ten year old that had been unwillingly given the knowledge of a twenty-five year old woman. With this in mind, she had chosen to keep all the memories of this life whole for now. She would hide them later when she needed to, it was more important to retain the lessons she'd learned from those memories for the time being. It wouldn't do to make another massive mistake out of haste.

For a few weeks the lack of connection she felt to her old self had caused a certain disconnect between her and her goals, as her goals had been created for the reasons of the woman she had been rather than the girl she was now. She had adapted her goals to suit her own motivations now, however, and she would see them accomplished.

To that end, there was little point in spending all of her free time working on occlumency now that she'd finished her original goal. It would be better to focus on other pursuits. She smiled as she lifted her hand and flexed her magic, calling various objects around the room to hover around her.

She'd always loved the idea of telepathy, it would be good to master it before she went to school.

~FoL~

There was an odd atmosphere in the orphanage, mostly from the orphanage workers watching over the children. The other orphans seemed mostly oblivious and as out of the loop as she was, but a couple of them shared the worried look the workers had. Morgana's eyes locked with one of the caretakers and she casually invaded the young woman's mind. A newspaper with the headline 'Hitler Invades Poland'. A shared conversation with her mother about the likelihood of Great Britain joining the war: High, as it turned out. Worried looks on the faces of others as she walked to her job at the orphanage. Morgana left the caretaker's mind. 'Ah, well that explains it. It is about that time in history.' The memories of WW2 history lessons she'd been gifted by her previous life agreed with this time frame at least.

This was on one hand a good thing, as it meant that events were going around how she expected them to. On the other, well, it was World War Two. It would go on to be the most deadly conflict in modern history, possibly in all of human history. She couldn't remember which, honestly, but either one was bad to say nothing of the countless innocents that would needlessly die in horrific ways during the conflict.

There was little she could do about it of course, she was a ten year old and one of the world's most dangerous magic users was backing the Nazis from what she knew. No, she would simply have to wait and hope the situation resolved itself as she remembered it happening in the original Morgana's memories of history.

Involving herself would be the equivalent of suicide, and she had no intentions of dying.

~FoL~

A dozen books floated in circles around her, repeatedly increasing and decreasing in speed in accordance with her will. Her first goal with telekinesis was to increase the amount of objects she could levitate at a time, and she had reached a grand total of twenty nine after several months of practice. It was an odd number to stop at, sure, but it included every individual small object that existed within her room. These objects ranged from the books she was currently experimenting with to random toys she'd collected over the years to her pillow and pillowcase.

Now she was working on another aspect of telekinesis, that aspect being speed. If she could move an object at a rapid pace, or more importantly quickly accelerate an object from stationary to rapid movement, she would be able to use the ability as a weapon in the future. Wizards and witches were oddly uncreative people from what she remembered of the books about Harry Potter, and an ability like this would likely be enough to trip up and get the better of many magic users if that was at all accurate.

Being powerful and dangerous would be important in this life, both because it would allow her to accomplish her goals one day and because there was a war happening that wizarding Britain would be dragged into. She would not allow herself to be a casualty in some random attack by Grindelwald's followers in the coming years, and so she had become even more motivated to improve her magical abilities.

It had been less noticeable when she was just focussing in legilimency and occlumency, but she had noticed that her magic seemed to be growing stronger the more she used it. It was most noticeable when she first went back to experimenting with telekinesis after several months of work on exclusively mind magic. She had gone from being able to levitate a few objects around herself to being able to levitate nearly a dozen with no practice of telekinesis in between.

She wondered whether that would continue throughout her life or if it would stop or slow down at a certain point. If that was the case, did starting earlier give her an advantage? If it did then why didn't purebloods do it or seem to do it? Maybe it was another complacency thing, the wizarding world seemed full of complacency and laziness.

She suddenly squinted as a beam of light shined into her eye from the grimy old window in her room. With a glance she saw it was the morning sun. She'd stayed up all night playing with her magic again.

With a wave of her hand her books returned to their place and she collapsed into bed to salvage the few remaining hours she had to sleep.

~FoL~

The rhythmic beat of drums and march of the german soldiers through defeated Warsaw was a sight to see. Gellert Grindelwald smiled from his place beside his muggle counterpart. It was good to be home even if it was in deplorable, if useful, company. The beginnings of his campaign were looking fruitful, Poland had fallen with ease on both the muggle and wizard fronts, even more so with the later. The people of wizarding Poland weren't particularly interested in resisting a new order led by one of the most popular and charismatic members of their own society, and the country had welcomed him with mostly open arms.

It was a shame to see the damage Hitler's armies had done to the muggle parts of his homeland, but the parts he cared about were virtually unscathed in the wizarding sections of Warsaw. He would ensure that they stayed that way, both for their sake and his own.

Gellert's gaze shifted to Adolf Hitler. The man was a monster, one suited perfectly for the situation Germany had been in when he had come to power. He was a monster that was useful to Gellert Grindelwald, however, and Grindelwald was under no illusions that he was seen any differently to how he saw the man beside him by those outside of his own web of influence.

Yes, the victory march was quite something. It was enough to raise even his morale somewhat, even when it was performed by a bunch of muggles. His eyes caught sight of something odd in the crowd of soldiers, was that Cassiopia marching with the muggles? The woman among the muggle soldiers grinned up at him cockily. He blinked, and she was gone, replaced with just another muggle. Perhaps another vision, then? Not one that made much sense to him, he already knew Cassiopia was a part of his forces after all, but certainly not so insignificant a part of it as a muggle soldier was. He shrugged it off, perhaps he would be able to make sense of it at a later date.

For now, he had a victory march to enjoy.