Silvia and the Rising Moon [EDITING]

Applegrass Politics

Evelyn Petrovich was a dark haired Ukrainian woman, who's limited wealth had come from her serf ancestors. She believed that they finest wealth one can obtain was the spiritual wealth that came from loving God.
It was the day that she left her atheist, Soviet family for the British Isles and joined the Anglican Church that she met her to-be husband, Victor Applegrass. A short, rotund man with thinning hair and round glasses, Victor was compared to by friends as Winston Churchill. He was young and wealthy when they met. His love and faith toward God is what attracted her to him. She was twenty years old when they married in 1940. He spent the first five years of their marriage in France, where he often wrote letters of how God had saved him from being taken away from her by German sharpshooters.
She prayed each night for him to come home for Christmas. Each year, before he left for the war once more, Evelyn was pregnant. She had given birth to two children before he returned on VE Day, with a third baby already on the way.
The fourth pregnancy had been a disastrous failure. God had punished Evelyn for looking lustfully at one of her neighbors. However, the fifth pregnancy, in 1949, brought twins to their home. It was believed that God had forgiven her for her sins, and returned the fourth baby safely to her womb.
She had had four more children by 1960. Her tenth and final baby she named Lydia Ivanna Applegrass. Lydia had been the only child not named after a parent or grandparent of Evelyn or Victor. Her middle name, Ivanna, hailed from Evelyn's aunt, a Soviet woman who left for French aristocracy.
This fact had set her apart from her nine brothers and sisters. Growing up, she was different from them. She made objects move with her mind, flowers grow from her hand, and pesky older siblings unable to speak with the wave of her hand.
"It's Beelzebub," Evelyn declared. "Our youngest has been possessed."
It was Robert, their oldest son, now twenty-five who had suggested to send five-year-old Lydia to a convent to be cleared of her sins.
She had spent six months there. Fear and darkness surrounded her. She knew that she needed to push those feelings aside. Abandoning and suppressing who she was would make her a real danger. So what if she could do things that her family couldn't? She had been blessed by God to be this way.
That's what she had determined during her time there. She wasn't a curse. She was a blessing.
This is what she told her mother the second she walked into the house.
She hid her powers. The family thought that the devil that had once danced inside of her soul had released itself was free, however, they still feared her.
Satan himself had once infiltrated her soul. Who knows when he would do it again.
There was one boy like her, a boy living two streets away, on the poorer side of town: Severus Snape. He was kind to her, but weary. Most likely, he was afraid of her family. Eleven Anglican muggles against two young wizards would be a dangerous situation. For that reason, Severus avoided her. He liked Lily Evans, however. She often saw the two out in the woods or sitting in meadows together showing off their powers. She envied them, how free they were. At times, Lily would catch Lydia hiding, spying on them. She was eight when she had first truly met Lily.
"Wait, Sev. Stop it, look." She pointed cautiously to Lydia, peeking out from behind a tree. "That's an Applegrass girl. They're all friends with Petunia. We can't show her our magic."
"That's Lydia," Severus explained. "She's like us."
She walked toward them, a lily growing in her hand. "I'm sorry I was spying," she explained. "It's just... I didn't think many people like me existed." She placed the flower in Lily's lap.
"It's beautiful, Lydia," Lily exclaimed, delicately touching the flower.
"What am I?" Lydia asked. "What are we?"
"You and I..." Lily began, "we're witches. So is Sev's mum."
Eileen Snape. She was the one Lydia's parents hated the most.
"Am I evil?" Lydia asked softly.
"No." This time it was Severus who replied. "It's the muggles who are evil. The jealous ones, like your family and my dad and Lily's sisters, they're the ones who are truly evil. There are good muggles out there, like Lily's parents, but even they're rare."
Lydia watched the greasy, bitter boy pull a weed from the ground with his mind.
"The ones who call you a freak and try to change who you are, those are the worst types. There's no changing a gift. There's no changing DNA."
Lydia's first letter from Hogwarts was shredded and burned. The second one was mailed to Eileen Snape, who made a great effort to get Lydia out of her home and into school.
First, Eileen used her magic to extract all of the pocket change out of the Applegrass home.
It was surprising to see how much pocket change was hidden in that five bedroom house.
After pocketing the money, Eileen appeared at the Applegrass door, holding her wand out to the unlucky victim who wished to open it.
Thirteen year old Vladislav opened the door. Upon seeing Eileen, holding her wand inches away from his nose, Vladislav screamed for his parents, fell to his knees, and began to pray for God.
"Get up!" Eileen demanded. "Have Lydia packed and ready to go in five minutes."
Lydia bounded down the stairs before Eileen had even finished her sentence. She had secretly packed upon receiving the first letter and had been waiting for the moment that someone would come for her. "I'm ready," she cried. "Get me the hell out of here."
Vladislav gasped. "Lydia! Never say that word in this house!" A few other siblings appeared in confusion, as well as Evelyn and Victor.
"Lydia," Evelyn declared to her eleven-year-old daughter, standing in the doorway with Eileen Snape. "If you leave this house with this- this foul, ungodly creature, you are no longer part of this family."
With no hesitation, Lydia picked up her trunk and grabbed the door handle. As a final touch she yelled, "God damn you all!" Before slamming the door and leaving with Eileen Snape.

In an act of guilt, Lydia Applegrass returned home for holiday break. She apologized told her parents that her heart belonged to God, and prayed all through Christmas. It was all a lie, but it was all she could do to mend her heavy heart.
They did not approve of her returning, nor did they approve of her going back to school either. However, she did so once more with the help of Eileen Snape.
She watched as a new set of first years were nervously sorted. Calypso's sister, Pandora, was sorted into Ravenclaw. Lydia envied the Bombardiers. They were rich, pureblooded, and proud of who they were. She watched Sirius Black boo for another student being sorted into Slytherin. She wondered often if someone like him could even have trouble, being that he was a pureblood.
What she didn't know was that there were troubles on both sides of the tracks. Sirius wasn't that much different from herself. No house with a wizard living in it was free of disaster.
Then, Ezinma Kenra, Thaddeus's mum, became the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. This year would be an interesting year, she just knew it.