The Last Enemy (a Harry Potter fanfiction)

Chapter 1 - Mother-Mary's Institute for Girls

~ January 6th 1993 ~

When I was one and half year old, I was dropped on the doorstep of Mother-Mary's Institute for Girls, an orphanage on Cornwall street in London. I was swaddled in a blanket that was lost to time, with pinned to me a small card. When you opened it, I was told that you could read the following:

Eleanor Wright,
Born November 12th 1979,
No living relatives

Take care of her well, please.

Nobody was ever able to retrace whoever had dropped me and most likely also written that note. Authorities didn't know who I was and, since DNA tests proved inconclusive, I'd always been alone. If life was a home store, I was the random screw of which no one knew the origin nor had any use for. I also had no place, it seemed, since I was always moving from one placement to another. Though that was not special since it wasn't uncommon for children in the system to get moved around homes a lot. I, for one, had lived in one foster home and four orphanages. This was my fifth. Or my first, depending on which way you wanted to look at it. Mother-Mary's doesn't accommodate babies and I had been moved from there the day after I was dropped as a baby. I had not been back since.

Well, until today.

If I was honest with myself, I had been quite apprehensive when I was told that I was to be moved back here. I didn't know anything about it except what everyone said and I thought that to be quite enough. Rumours went around saying that the headmistress was nicknamed "the Viper" and that once you went to "Mother-Murder" — a charming name the orphanage had been given because everybody there was so disagreeable you wanted to murder everyone — you were never going anywhere else.

It was said that Mother-Mary's was where they placed hopeless cases, ones that had no chance of ever getting adopted, either because the child was too old or because they had a temperament that was just not attractive to potential parents. I was the former. At thirteen, I was often considered to be "off the market". No one even took a look at me before turning their heads towards the newly arrived newborns. The eleven year old mark had been the final nail in the coffin. There was no getting adopted at eleven and older, I had known it. I had honestly lost any interest in it a while before I hit that mark.

It's not that I wasn't a decent person, if that's what you're asking. Simply that, people liked to adopt children that came running towards them, begging for hugs and kind words — not the ones that were scared and wished only for them to leave the room. It did not help that I also had a history in terms of- peculiar things. Random birds or cats found in my bedroom, dresses or teddies magically repaired all by themselves...sure, that all sounded quite nice to some but then it became weirder: Things disappeared, messages were etched onto bed frames or walls; and though I swore I wasn't the culprit, all of that made me a bit of a pariah in my former institutions.

"Don't go too close to her or bad things will happen to you", they used to whisper to each other.

People never liked when things lacked an explanation, I had found.

Tonight was the first night of my second stay at Mother-Murder. I laid awake, on my back, not making a sound. I could hear the breathing of all the other girls and some snoring, from time to time. Most of the orphanages I had been at until now had had a room for each two children, or maybe one for four — but not Mother-Murder. The orphanage didn't have a lot of funding since people believed you needn't spend taxes on leftovers. The building was crumbling appart and I was genuinely surprised it had not been torn down yet. So there was no money for multiple dormitories. In here, all the girls slept in the main room, occupied with several rows of more than a dozen beds. It made for a very industrial feel. And very noisy nights.