Bound By Blood.

Ch.15~ Game on.

"You need to let things go, Brooks. Especially when you're wrong. 

We don't have forever, stop acting like we do." 

Recovered Translated Correspondents From Death Eater Mattheo Riddle, to Order Memeber Alexandra Brooks, 2005. 

Hogwarts, 1997

Alexandra.

I don't remember much from my childhood, expect how lonely I was. 

I grew up without my mother, I owe all I am to my father. 

I have no idea if she's even alive. 

All I know is that, while most parents praise Merlin they had a healthy child, my mother cursed his name that I was a girl. 

My father always told me stories about how he met my mother, painting a picture of a radiant woman with laughter that could light up the darkest nights. 

I learned about her from his soft voice, yet it was a voice filled with sorrow, a sound more familiar to me than the echoes of laughter he described.

She was a brilliant wizard, but the whispers of the safe house my father brought us too spoke of her darkness, a shadow that hovered over her brilliance. 

"Your mother wanted a son," he had once said, with an intensity that made me hold my breath. "She wanted to continue her legacy, to pass on her magic, and when you were born..." He trailed off, as if the words themselves were too heavy to carry.

I often wondered how much of me was shaped by her absence. 

Did she look at me in the cradle and see only disappointment? 

Did her heart remain hardened, or did she regret the decision that had driven us away? 

My father never spoke of her after that first conversation...it was a forbidden subject, a wound too raw to touch.

All I knew was that he loved me, he wanted me, boy or girl. 

So he took me, and as far I as I know, she, herself, never once came looking for me. 

He brought us to an Order protected safe house, where I spent my childhood. 

Alone. 

As far as I could tell, it was a better life than I would've had, had he stayed with my mother. 

Charlie Brooks, was his name. 

So, I grew up in the shadow of her absence, learning everything from him. He was both father and mother, filling the gaps the best he could. 

He taught me magic under the dim glow of candlelight, his hands guiding mine as I learned to summon fire and call forth the winds. 

It was in those moments, the warmth of his presence wrapping around me like a shield, that I felt less lonely, less the burden of what might have been.

Even in the brightest of moments, I could feel her presence lingering in the back of my mind. 

I didn't even know my real name. 

My father named me Alexandra when I was born, that I know is true. But our surname was changed for protection after he took me. 

As I grew older, I grew determined. To prove to a mother I never knew, that girls are just as capable. I embraced the power within me, trying to prove that girls could wield magic just as fiercely as boys.