Beat the devil's tattoo

Chapter I. "Don't go breaking my heart"

Don't go breaking my heart.

On the 22nd July of 1973, the Blackbird household welcomed their second child into the world. A fact that might not have been of interest if Marla Blackbird was not the first girl ever to be born in her family.

The circumstances of the birth and the miracle that seemed to have occurred weren't shared widely and  only a few were trusted with the history of the Blackbird family.

That is how Marla grew up. Her true origin kept closely secret by the few friends that her parents trusted. It could have been a normal childhood but it was not. As much as Vivian and Philip Blackbird wanted to keep Marla's abilities a secret, they were no less prepared to make her the most powerful witch to have ever lived. Fuelled by the crazy desire of a world ruled by wizards where blood purity was law, her parents raised Marla in the tradition of her family and of the pure-blood families of England known as the sacred 27.

She did not always understand what the muggles had done to be considered so lowly by her parents and their friends but she had learned that questioning them was rewarded with pain, so she stopped.

When she was 11, she was sent to Hogwarts to learn how to use her magic.

On the train on the way to the school, she met a strange boy who had fierce red hair and a hole in his sweatshirt. He was talking about the Griffindor house and dragons and Marla found that she liked to listen to him. When she had told him her name, he had stopped talking and studied her for long minutes, then as if reaching an agreement with himself, he started talking animatedly again.

At the sorting ceremony that very evening, Marla saw her brother Thomas at the Slytherin table. He gave her a thumbs up, and she secretly prayed to be sorted in the Slytherin house to avoid the wrath of her parents.

But, when she sat on the stool, in the middle of the Great Hall and the magical hat on her head began to spill to her all her secrets, she knew it would not happen. Because no matter how much she had tried, she was not like her parents, not like her grandparents. She could not muster inside her the hatred that seemed to inhabit them.

So, when the hat screamed Griffindor and the Hall went completely silent, she took a big breath and faced her future.

That future was eclectic as she soon found out.

The very next day when she sat for breakfast at the Griffindor table, wearing proudly her red and gold tie, she was interrupted by her family owl flying toward her. The envelope, one she had never seen before, seemed to be bulging from the inside. Not making care of the whispers sent her way she opened it. The enraged voice of her mother emerged from the envelope, resonating in the entire Hall. In a matter of minutes she was reduced to sobs in front of the insults and shames thrown her way. She did not fully understand what was so wrong and Professor McGonagall had to come down to her table to stop the envelope and the whispers. Only when the ash from the envelope fell before her, did Marla realised that every eyes in the Great Hall were focused on her. McGonagall gave her sympathetic smile and the next things she knew, she was running away. Away from the prying eyes and the whispers.

She found refugee at the border of the forest, where she let herself fall against a tree and cry all her tears.

That is also where he found her. The strange boy with the red hair, and as she would soon call him in her head, her light in the shadows.

From then, her life divided itself in two. On one hand was the warmth and the openness of the Griffindor house, her friends, her professors that accepted her and of course Charlie, her best friend through it all. On the other hand was the darkness and the coldness of her family, her house and the mistreatment she endured during the time where she was not at Hogwarts.