My mother told me then when I was born she had so much hatred not only for herself, but for me.
When a baby is born, it's like a clean piece of paper. Whenever someone says something hurtful, it's a scribble. A hurtful action becomes a tare. A hurtful scene becomes a wrinkle.
Before I even started school my piece of paper was scribbled on, burnt to crisp and torn.
Baby's are born with such innocence. It's a mother's love that they need. They need to be loved to learn to love. I never got that. I never had that.
My mother was stern, and strict. Nose up, eyes down. Do this, say that. Be him or be her. I could never be myself, and I learnt to live with it. I learnt to create a whole other me than the person I always truly had hidden. I learnt to stay hidden. Which no child should have to do because of their own mother.
The first time she held me she cried. Nearly every mother does that out of happiness. My mother did it out of anger. It was my fault I was born. She was angry at me. Angry because I grew inside of her and beside her. Angry because I didn't live up to the person she wanted to be.
She named me Regina. Regina Arcturus Black.
She birthed me with the wrong body, the wrong me. I was born a female. I had a female sex, skin, fingers, eyes, hair. And she called me Regina.
I grew up with my long strands of wavy hair, like my brother. My eyes green like my mothers. And my face shape, luckily, like my fathers.
My whole childhood I was forced to be a girl. Because that's how my mother said I was born.
I hate having to wear dresses to family dinners. Having my hair in hair ties, and neatly laid back. I hated blushing my cheeks and lips. And giggling like a little girl. I hated that I had to marry a man because of the fact I was born.
I knew I was never feminine enough for my mother, "You must wear jewellery, child."
"But mother, it itches my neck, and I don't like it." I said, trying to make an excuse not to wear family air looms.
"Nonsense." She always snapped.
My mother always snapped at the smallest things. As a pure-blood family of Slytherins, my brother being sorted into Gryffindor was not a pretty sight for anyone living amongst our walls.
"GRYFFINDOR? SIRIUS ORION BLACK, DONT YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?" She shrieked at him.
He would curl up his legs to his chest, his hands pulling his hair, his eyes full of guilt and sorrow for something he couldn't control.
Whenever the pain was conflicted towards him I never knew what to do nor what to say. So I just stood there. It was a daily routine of my childhood.
I would wake up, eat, read, shout, read, eat, sleep. Every single day until it was my time to go to Hogwarts.
I was happy to get my letter, not only because I wanted to learn more. But because I needed an escape. From my own mother. The person who gave me life.
She took me to Diagonalley, and she bought all my school things. She secretly manifested I would get into Slytherin and take on the families blood line. But I manifested the opposite as soon as I saw a familiar face.
The familiar face has to wait though. We're still talking about childhood.
That day she smiled. For herself, not for me. She was finally getting what she wanted. What she needed. She hoped her daughter wouldn't be the disappointment her son had turned out to be.
And for some time she was right. But then others she was completely wrong.
