Ramblings of a Nerdy Girl (A Harry Potter Fanfiction)

Chapter 1

When I was five, my parents put a very dangerous man behind bars for good, or so they thought.  He escaped less than a week after he arrived at his prison, that's when the murders began. 

I remembered that it was raining that night, but all the windows in the house were open.  There was a flash of light, followed by a deafening boom.  I curled into a ball, arms wrapped around my favorite stuffed animal.  And then it began. 

The huge oak outside my window swung back and forth, finally crashing through the open window.  I heard a distant scream and two more loud booms, but these were different.  I ran down the hall, partly because of the tree, partly because of the screams. The following memories come in spurts, almost like photographs.  Snap, flash, my mother in her white, blood-soaked nightgown.  Snap, flash, daddy draped across the bed, motionless.  Snap, flash, blonde pigtails nestled in the shoulder of a uniformed man.

I was a nomad after that, the way I like to think of it, travelling from home to home.  I thought of each new place as a different adventure, it was my only method of survival.  That's when the strange things started happening. 

***

"Hey, you!" my foster mother called, "get your lazy butt over here!"  Reluctantly, I slowly slunk to the living room.  "I thought we made it clear, NO MORE FUNNY BUSINESS!"  She pointed at the t.v. that floated mysteriously above the couch.  As always, I had to make a choice: either maintain ignorance and gawk at the phenomenon or pretend she was imagining things.  I decided to shoot for the latter.

"What funny business?  There's nothing odd here."

"Look at my beautiful flat screen!" Again, she pointed furiously at the floating t.v.  "Don't try and tell me nothing's off!"  I gave her a strange look and gestured to where the t.v. normally sits.

"It's fine," I said.  In the moments that she looked away, the t.v. floated back to rest in it's spot on the counter.  Shrugging I took off towards my room.  I didn't know what was up with the world, this is the second foster home that things have been happening at.  Nobody else seems to know what's going on either.  The first family put up with more than this one, they had about six incidents before they really got angry.  At this house, the t.v. thing was the second.  The door knob rattled, and before I could shove my weight against it, it clicked open.

"Leave me alone, Daniel!" I backed against the wall so he wouldn't knock me over.

"Aww, poor w-ittle Orphy the Orphan," he mocked.

"I said, LEAVE ME ALONE!"  My face darkened, appearing orangish under the awful lighting.

"Just what are you going to do about it?"  He began picking up my things and throwing them around the room.  A cold sweat began to form along my hairline as I gazed at the stuffed animal that lay exposed on my bed.  I dove towards it, but he got there first.  He held it high above my head as I jumped for it. 

"Please, Daniel," I whispered, "my parents gave it to me."  But all he did was cackle and pull out a lighter from his pocket.  Holding the stuffed dog dangerously close to the flame, he studied my face.

"Daniel, Orphy!  Dinner!"  He clicked the lighter off and tossed the dog back on my bed.

"Saved by the bell this time kid, but next time you won't be so lucky."  After he left, I gripped the stuffed puppy to my chest, wrapped him in a blanket, and buried him deep under the bed.  I hurried down to dinner, the Grenwells' didn't tolerate tardiness.