The Grey | Hermione Granger

|01| Chapter One

O N E 

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Seven years had passed since the Mitchell siblings arrived at Ms Squire's "Care Home" and whilst they might have looked back since, there was no going back. Although Saffron could not remember life before Squires, she knew that there was more to it than the life she and her siblings had grown accustomed to under Squire. Somehow every day felt exactly the same and in all of the years she spent there, it felt as though the only thing changing was the four children who lived at the home. The home was a relic of the past and Squire relished that. She relished having the children at the home to carry on the legacy of her family and to carry out whatever she wanted them to carry out, making it a lonely childhood dictated by a routine and a stench of predictability. Leaving the siblings as not only that but as best friends, for all they had was each other.

Most of the time Saffron felt that was enough as she constantly grappled with the fact that this was their home as a result of nobody else wanting them. It was a difficult pill for her to swallow. Squire reminded them of it constantly and it irritated Saffron to no end. She did not need the verbal reminders as she knew it was true. They were just orphans after all, not orphans of the war. No family wanted to adopt the children of a woman who killed herself. It was a simple fact. The siblings had no choice but to accept their predicament but that did not mean the adjustment was easy, especially for the two older girls who were used to being given constant love and affection from their parents while they were alive.

It did not take long for it to hit home that this love and affection was not coming back as Ms Squire's primary objective was to discipline the children. Saffron was used to having a routine as a child but the routine differed starkly from the one that Squire inflicted upon them. The woman easily reverted to her old ways and showed no sign of time having elapsed since her last orphans lived at the home. There was a no complaining, no crying policy enacted and Squire seemingly lived by the saying of "As long as it won't kill you, I don't want to hear about it,".

Squire wanted to snap any brattish behaviour out of the girls and attempted to whip them into what she saw as the 'proper lady'. Merely years after their arrival, she put her training to the test as every Friday night, she and her friend Josephine had tea with the girls, where they taught them proper manners and etiquette, as they gushed over typical old lady things. The odd humorous glance was of course shared between Saffron and Maya, whilst Rachel and Rowan sat in their wooden high chairs looking around the room wildly. However, despite the humour in the situation, they knew they had to take it seriously. Whatever personality they would have developed under their parents had been permanently altered.

Much of the type of people they became was groomed by Squire and after four years there, the older girls found themselves forgetting who they were and where they came from. Frequently Maya would talk frantically about everything to Saffron. The older girl was trying to remind her sister of their previous life. Their house, their parents, the playground they used to visit... Once told, Saffron tried to remember. But she could never tell if the memory was real or merely a figment of her imagination. With each passing time she thought about it, everything became fainter to the point that the images were blurred beyond recollection. She could not even feel too sad about that. Similarly to the twins, her conscious life began at Squires and an acceptance came with that.

Most of the sadness lay with her elder sister Maya, though with age she had gotten better at hiding it. The sadness was rooted in Maya's scepticism. Time and time again she ranted to Saffron about none of it making sense. One day, their mother did not wake up and all of a sudden she was gone completely. Maya had an equation of their life in her head and none of it added up in the way she expected. No matter how much she was told by Squire that nobody wanted to take them in and no one would come for them, Maya insisted to Saffron that it simply could not be true. Her early years had been surrounded by friends of their family. Surely they would at least visit? But no one came. Saffron noticed through the years that Maya slowly but surely stopped herself from voicing these thoughts. She assumed the role of their leader and in many ways was a mother figure to Rachel and Rowan. Raising their hopes unnecessarily was unwise and she stopped investing time in attempting to make sense of their past.