Belladonna Carina Potter

Part 6

As she sat across from her mother and father, seeing them for the first time in ten years,

Belladonna seethed internally. She was furious and using every single inch of her self restraint to stop herself from just setting the pair on fire, fuck The Plan. But, somehow, she managed to keep a polite, interested mask on her face even as she plotted murder in increasingly violent ways.

Not just because of their abandonment of her, no, she had months to prepare herself for that. But because they were late.

On the morning on the 31st of July, Belladonna was ready. She had packed away all of her more questionable belongings the night before (all those slightly illegal books that a little muggleborn shouldn't have), placed Mimi on her heated stone in the flat's living room (where she stayed most of the time anyway when she wasn't around Belladonna's shoulders), removed the runes from around her room (not wanting to give away any advantage this early in the game).

Making sure to present herself as normal and average as possible, she had even packed away most of her plants into her flat. The only things that would be visible to the Potters when they came would be her muggle clothes in her wardrobe, her tidy, if not slightly bare, room and her obviously completely normal school trunk, with one compartment which held the bare minimum of everything.

They would hopefully think her completely normal, even boring.

Then she had started to go about her day's business as usual, helping Sarah with the meals, working on her lessons (although these were more relaxed now it was summer and she had done most of her exams), all the while waiting for something to happen.

But nothing had happened.

Because the Potters hadn't come.

That evening she had written to the goblins, telling them that they were going to take the muggleborn route because the Potters hadn't shown up and gone to sleep pondering the implications of her having to stay in the orphanage when she'd been so sure she would get out, even if she was just going to the Potters' house.

*****

But then, on the 1st of august, just as she was finishing with her breakfast, the matron told her that a couple had come to see her. And so she was sat in the armchair opposite them, friendly smile pasted on her face, thoughts of violent deaths running through her mind, thanking Merlin that she hadn't unpacked her things yet.

Lily, a petite auburn-haired woman, had green eyes which weren't quite as sharp or bright as Belladonna's. James curls were very similar to his daughter's if not messier and his eyes were hazel. Both of them looked like they would quite literally rather be anywhere else.

They had done the general introductions:

"We're your parents"

"Oh I thought you were dead"

"You're a witch, magic is real"

"Yes I know, they told me in November on my birthday"

Maybe not in quite those words but the same general message was conveyed.

But then, despite the fact that she wanted them to like who she was pretending to be atleast somewhat, Belladonna couldn't hold herself back from asking:

"So if you're my parents, and you're alive, and you have magic too, why do I live in the orphanage?"

So now James and Lily Potter were avoiding her gaze as they told her that she was meant to go to Lily's sister, Petunia (a spiteful bitch of a muggle, obviously the ideal guardian), and they'd gone to get her yesterday morning but Tuney had tricked them and took their money every month even though Belladonna had never even stayed a day in her house. And they would've come and got her yesterday but it was Charlie's birthday, you see, and they were having his party and taking him to Diagon Alley and everything so they couldn't.