Rebecca Remembers All

Rebecca hated children, and the fact that she was a child herself simply was not relevant, thank you very much. 

They shouldn’t have been worthy of her disdain, but feeling like an outcast among one’s peers was the fate of a child prodigy. She refused to be lonely , because it wasn’t her fault that scintillating conversation among her peers was in short supply. Hatred towards her classmates and the world in general was much more comfortable, she discovered.

A small ember had lit inside her when she received the letter inviting her to Howarts, clutched in the talons of a proud tawny owl. She’d believed, for a few weeks, that perhaps the children around her were simply mundane reflections of the special society she truly belonged in. Perhaps perfect memory wasn’t a hell made only for Rebecca, and there would be others like her.

That idea had gone out the window during her first and only foray into Diagon Alley.

Oh, it was pretty enough, and for a while it inspired awe in her just as much as the other muggle children that were following after Professor McGonagall like ducklings. Inanimate objects made animated, flowing robes that looked like something out of a historical drama on the telly, a smooth wooden stick made of walnut and phoenix feather that somehow felt like it was a part of her she’d always been missing, and so much more.

The disappointments started when she found out that wizards and witches required a broom to fly, and they didn’t stop there.

Wizarding children rubbed their noses on their sleeves as much as muggle children. Their juvenile brains understood the concept of personal space and tact no better than any of the hellions she’d grown up around. Worst of all, a mere glance told her not one of these people was like her, not even the older children or the adults. 

She walked away that day with a beautiful calico cat she named Rick, an assortment of magical devices she was assured would see her through a school year of learning how to do magic, and a heavy heart. 

Malaise surrounded her for weeks—finishing all her textbooks before the end of the first day in a fit of desperate pique certainly didn’t help matters. She was bored and the loneliness and knowledge that she really was a freak even among the people she hoped would be her kind was creeping in, setting talons into her brain and raking them down to the stem until she felt like everything inside her head had been run through a blender.

Her parents never said anything, but she’d memorised books on body language and psychology and she could see the signs for what they were. 

That widening of the eyes when she displayed knowledge she shouldn’t, the little flinch when she entered a room, the hitch of their breath when she so much as went to talk to them. It didn’t take a genius to see it, but even noticing that much should’ve been beyond the capabilities of a child her age, and it only made her feel worse. 

She hated it. Hated them , all of them, for being so painfully ordinary and making her feel like she was alone in the world.

It wasn’t her fault she could remember everything in perfect clarity. She didn’t ask to be able to lift a car with one hand, nor had she ever desired to be invincible to damage or fly around with no obvious means of propulsion. It wasn’t that she wanted to be normal, god no— Merlin, no, she supposed—it was that she wanted everyone else not to be .

Everything changed when she entered that compartment on the Hogwarts Express.

The day had started off a dull one. Dull parents who couldn’t leave fast enough when they dropped her off, a dull train station with uninspiring architecture, and a dull train that didn’t look any more impressive than a muggle one—what was the point of even using a train if it was just going to be an ugly steam locomotive, anyway?

She’d arrived early, so there were few enough people on the platform that she felt comfortable floating a centimetre or so off the ground, lifted up her bags all by herself, and ventured forth into the Hogwarts Express with Rick draped over her shoulders like a scarf.

A quick scout of the train’s layout was the work of only a few minutes with her flight, and soon she found her way to what she calculated would be the nice carriage that wouldn’t be bothered by snot-nosed brats too much. When she opened the door, it was more of a disappointment than a surprise to find someone else already there. For half a second she contemplated leaving to find another compartment, but discarded the notion in a quarter. 

The girl had been reading a book, but she looked up when Rebecca slid the door open. Rebecca froze, and it took her a moment to win back the breath that a single look at this girl had stolen from her lungs.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful. Girls their age could rarely be described as pretty unless they were Rebecca— cute was the more applicable descriptor, and even that didn’t feel right, not really. Still, something in her appearance plucked a string in Rebecca’s heart, playing a song she was sure she hadn’t heart before yet was still painfully familiar. 

Straight black hair was common the world over. Brown wasn’t an unusual eye colour, and their shape wasn’t unique. The silhouette of her face and the tone of her skin were only special if you’d somehow never seen someone from the Mediterranean—the Tuscan region of Italy, at a guess—before. The fedora was a few decades out of fashion but hardly unheard of.

And yet, altogether they formed a picture that prodded something at the back of her head, stirring a memory loose like dirt in clear water. However, the dirt settled, the memory slipped away, and nothing remained but a faint sense that she should recognise the person before her.

Deja vu.

Rebecca didn’t forget things. Ever. Not once in her life from the time her adolescent brain had developed the ability to form memories. Every moment of every day—seven years, eight months, and nineteen days of her life—recorded in crystal clarity and there to be recalled at the speed of thought.

So why did she feel like she'd met this girl when she knew for certain she hadn't?

“Do you mind if I sit here?” Rebecca asked. Only a second had passed, and she still felt like a blithering plebe.

“Go ahead,” the girl replied.

Rebecca stowed her trunk away in the overhead compartment, then took a seat across from the strangely familiar stranger. Rick hopped off her shoulders and relocated to her lap, where he curled up in a ball and promptly fell back asleep.

Fortuna eyed him oddly, and Rebecca found she couldn’t begin to guess why. The girl had no noticeable tells.

How interesting.

“Rebecca Costa-Brown,” she offered.

“Fortuna Floris,” the girl replied in kind.

Again, faint recognition. Like that name had been written in her mind in pencil then badly erased.

Fortuna shifted minutely, drawing Rebecca’s attention. Her clothes fit her well and they were worn neatly, clearly ironed and washed. That the girl was here as early as Rebecca implied she had no one to see her off, and from there it was fair to assume the care for her clothes was her own. A level of self-composure that was rare among their age group, and it extended to the rest of her. There was no snot under her nose or dirt on her face. Her hair was well-groomed but not styled in any particular way. Her nails were immaculate and her teeth pearly white and clean.

Neat and tidy , Rebecca thought. It was a low bar, but that put her above most of her peers. That ember of hope that had been snuffed out in Diagon Alley was kindling once more.

“You’re a muggle?” Rebecca asked when Fortuna offered no conversation. The fashionable attire of witches and wizards tended to… stand out.

“I am. And you?”

“Same. Born in California, but my family moved to London when I was five for my dad’s work at a bank. Never even considered the possibility that magic might be real.”

Fortuna nodded, unperturbed by Rebecca’s vocabulary. “You’ve got a faint accent.”

“I’m impressed you noticed.”

“People our age are usually unobservant.”

Rebecca blinked. “And you’re not, apparently.”

“I’m not, no.”

Neat, tidy, and observant. Smart. Interesting . All good virtues on their own, but the sum of them together gave her an answer she’d always wanted, and almost didn’t dare to dream she might have found.

Is she like me?

Rebecca was enraptured in a way she'd never felt before.

Unfortunately, some stuck up little toad of a boy entered the compartment and sat down with nothing more than an introduction, and she resolved to find a way to mess with her memories so she could forget his name. The nerve!

More followed him. A girl this time, with an annoying accent, a crude tongue, and an obsession with fitness, if her muscled arms were anything to go by. Rebecca could’ve snapped her like a twig.

Last was some ditzy bint who drew Fortuna’s attention and Rebecca’s ire in equal measure by slamming the door like some kind of barbarian. Then--then!--the two other girls started roughhousing like preschoolers! Fortuna subtly got them to settle down, but her indignance remained. This was why she hated her own age group.

The train pulled away as the compartment descended into the kind of idle, childish chatter that seemed designed to drive Rebecca up the wall.

Fortuna engaged her in conversation a few times before she could lose her temper, but soon even that wasn’t enough and she had to leave before she did anything she wouldn’t regret.

She’d been foiled before she’d even been able to begin her investigations, but the school year was long, and the mystery that was Fortuna Floris was going nowhere.

For the first time in a long time, Rebecca found herself growing excited. If someone had told her when she woke up that morning she’d be looking forward to life at Hogwarts, she wouldn’t have believed them.

~~~