A New Dawn

2

*Author's Note: Any Italicized words are part of a flashback. 

*Though some bits of dialogue have been taken directly from Hogwarts Legacy, events may not be in exact timeline order as seen in the game. Some events and phrases have been shifted around to better suit the goal of the chapter. 

        "You're just like your mother. No, worse somehow," My father tells me as he paces the floor. 

         I feel my hand go to my heart, checking to see if I still have one. Finding a grasp on my new dress, a pale yellow fabric covered in flowers. Father had given it to me earlier that morning for my sixth birthday. It couldn't be real. My father, a man whom I have always idolized. He was speaking to me as if he had woken from a dream only to find me, a nightmare. Existing only to capture his sleep and never return with it. 

       "Father, you don't...I mean," I begin to choke up. "Father, mum couldn't have left for good. She's...She'll come around. It's my birthday, after all. She always makes our favorite flavored cake, confetti!" 

     "Well, she's not here is she? I should've known better. Maybe my parents will take me back...they warned me of this, yes. They raised me better than to fraternize with the likes of dirty blood. Such filth, and yet...I thought I had found a rare exception in Liz. Elizabeth. Here, read this for yourself. I taught you to read didn't I? Go on, read the damned thing!" He slams a piece of parchment onto our kitchen table. 

    I read, 

 "To Greg. 

         I've had enough. I can't put up with your parents much longer. I can't be tortured into being a witch. You'd think with all the superiority in intelligence you pure-blooded freaks claim to have, you'd know that isn't how magic works. I've had enough cruicos to make up for that of filthy muggles everywhere. That's all I really am, isn't it? Nine years ago when I met you, I thought I'd met all things good and well in the world. You always held my hand through it all, until you brought it down upon me. I am not a witch and I never will be. I leave Angelina in your care, I couldn't bear the thought of taking her with me. We both know she's a witch, just like your parents hoped for. I regret to think of what you will make of her once I've left but I never wanted to be a mother anyway, did I? Just another piece of your parents' puzzle I didn't mean to contribute to. We were never right for one another, that much was clear after the last visit to your family manor. I will never be without the scars your world now taints me with. I wish it had killed me most days. The deep red seeping into my brain and onto the floor, calling out to you as you stood there, a dance of a smirk playing on your lips. I hope you're able to relish in the hollow sweetness of your own destruction. I leave you with two things: 

       1) People cannot be fixed if they were never broken. 

      2)I left the confetti cake in the fridge.

With much empathy for young Angelina, 

Liz."

         I look to my father and see the fire behind his eyes. One of rage, a look I had never seen directed at me before. 

      "Any part of Elizabeth must be destroyed at once, that much should be evident, I'd think. Mother and father won't appreciate my killing a child, especially their grandchild, so I will make you a compromise. You are to be kept from magic as long as I'm concerned, and I will be for a very long time. You don't deserve to learn of the wizarding world any longer, you're hardly a half-blood and when has that ever counted for anything? Merlin knows why I didn't figure it out sooner. Do not address me as 'father' as I am no longer such. I will provide that you stay alive, take what you can get. I'm throwing out the cake, you can forget about your birthday." He practically spat the last bit as he turns his nose up at me.