Chapter 2
Amara has always been a talkative girl.
Not that many knew, many preferred to ignore the pale and strange girl. They were easily unnerved by her. Maybe it was the way her eyes were so vibrant and sharp that made you question whether she really was a child or not. Or perhaps the scar that everyone seemed to be freaked out by. Amara couldn't understand what made others so scared about it, it wasn't short nor was it smooth, it came from her hairline and crossed her eye a bit. With her bangs she could hide it so well it was like it was never there.
But did others matter when she had her gifts?
Her gifts.
Magic, languages, her memory. All you had to do was choose which gift you wanted to talk about.
Speaking was what made her who she was. The moment she spoke, it was like something had clicked through her. As if suddenly she could do anything and everything with just the power of her words alone. Little Amara Hayden of three years old felt herself smile with the idea that clawed their way forcefully into her mind.
‘Prodigy’ was what they said once they learned of her gift. Of how languages and their knowledge came quickly to her. How when she sought to know more about a language, she could. Of how she quickly learned that if you had something others didn’t, you’d either get robbed or be powerful.
In the option of how to live, Amara Hayden Potter-Black chose to be powerful.
Amara was never the type of girl to be messed with. Specially not when she had most adults in her life eating at the palm of her hand like dogs who have just received the best treat of the world. Her words were like gospel to the ones she had within reach and her actions spoke louder to the ones she did not.
How when she put her mind into it, she could do anything .
She looked at the boy who made her life a hell in school and made him dream about eating spiders who slowly ate his insides to get out.
Dudley, after that, had lost a surprising amount of fat but the list of good things did not end there. He had become aware. He, unlike the adults who were easily swayed by her soft spoken words and shy smiles, had the correct assumption that she had been the one to ‘make him sick’. He had become warier around her.
Rightfully so, after all, Amara had just turned five and she found out she wanted nothing more than to terrorise others who underestimate her.
Amara Potter always spoke slowly, carefully. Savouring and delighting herself in the way the sounds and syllables came out of her mouth gracefully. With the way every adult melted as she smiled one of her shy smiles, one where she closed her green unnerving eyes and let her face become something more innocent, less predatory.
Her stomach turned in excitement as she got one of the teachers to teach her how to defend herself after sharing her doubts, concerns and fears with him. How when she achieved something everyone thought impossible for her age, she felt her chest loosen some of its tension, as if slowly she was climbing to the top.
What with the way her body vibrated with happiness and satisfaction the more she got better at something.
‘Hard worker’, was what they called her, after she expressed her wishes of getting better at something, of wanting a better life. Her wants of being more than she came from. How she smiled gently at the librarian and asked her for help, doing a quick friendship with her, she now could reach textbooks in an advanced level. How when she put word after word in a dialog she felt more power than she had in her whole life.
As if she was the player who controlled everything in the game, and they were just pawns. She felt a familiar rush of power pass through her, the sound of waves crashing into her ears and felt the earth vibrate with it, with her magic .
Her sweet and deadly gift. Magic
She spoke to the snakes in the garden and felt her body jolt with power as the snake responded. The way the hisses and words tasted like power and blood.
The way the ‘s’ sounded and made you feel as if the water was running down a river. As if a story was being told just by how you pronounce the ‘s’ or the ‘R’.
The words sounded familiar in a way she thought nothing else could.
A sense of warmth flooding her veins and warming their way to her heart. She wanted to feel like that more. Needed to feel like that more.
And so, came her nowadays favourite hobby, she planned and manipulated.
All it took was some sweet confessions made to the priest and soon she was not in Privet Drive anymore but in Wiras Orphanage. An all girls orphanage. Nasty girls, but girls nonetheless.
Amara was made fun of for a lot of things during her time there, for being ‘strange’, for being a teacher's pet, for each time the adults spoke of her as if she was an angel.
The girls in Wiras’ Orphanage were like dogs who needed to learn new tricks. Amara just had to help her new friends hadn’t she?
They needed to learn more things if they wanted to be more than ashes in the future.
Amara smiled thinking of Samantha Ryle, who was left there for the summer but would soon be going back to her family after some problems with her parents divorce were better answered, and continued to scrap the floor with a shovel.
Later, she grabbed the shovel and concentrated on her magic, she felt it slowly scratch and twist and consume the shovel as if in an embrace and watched as it shrinked into less than a pencil.
Smiling, she pocketed the little shovel.
Amara watched and observed, the more she watched the more her mind became more devious and malicious. The Girl had a best friend. Tracey Davis, a younger girl who adored calling Amara a freak. Samantha appeared to like hanging out with Tracey, both of them inseparable for anything. Tracey, though, grew up christian and was against divorce. Not that she knew that Samantha’s parents were divorcing, or else she would have wanted to get away from Samantha for sure.
An obvious weakness to be explored.
Amara waited patiently for the great chance. When it came, she did not hesitate. A few words spoken, fuel to the rumours and soon Tracey and Samantha were both crying in separate rooms at the end of the week. Her parents divorce was having even more problems as, apparently, her father did not want to pay such big quantity of money for the pension. Looks like she would be spending more time in the Orphanage than she had originally thought.
Amara smiled. And made the next move for Tracey, since it looked like she wouldn’t.
“Tracey..” Amara started hesitantly looking at the ground, because most people felt more comforted when she wasn’t looking at them directly, and saw as the little girl's eyes looked at her with hesitation yet an all consuming hope. Amara smiled inwardly. ”I brought you some food since you didn’t come down for dinner.”
Tracey looked at her then at the food, Tracey’s favourites, and mumbled a thank you before eating, to which Amara had to refrain from scowling.
“I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry you lost Samantha’s friendship.” She said somewhat sad and watched with trepidation as the other one’s eyes swelled with tears.
Amara swallowed down any negative emotion that might impact on this and placed a hand on Tracey’s shoulder, slowly guiding her face towards her shoulder and patting her back comfortingly. It was best to already appear affectionate so that when she wanted to be petty and show Samantha how much of a friend she was with Tracey, all she had to do was hug the girl and pull her towards a seat next to her and phase two would be done.
Tracey cried for so long Amara got bored and instead tried to tell Tracey jokes, to which got the girl a lot of smiles and startled laughs, which worked more in her honest opinion. Amara wrote a mental note at this particular reaction;
“You know..maybe you’re not that bad Amara Hayden.” Tracey smiled towards her and she smiled back. Not the shy one but also not one she usually used. It was perhaps the most honest you’d have from her if you weren’t a friend.
“I aim to entertain, don't I?” She replied cheekly and observed as a chuckle erupted from Tracey’s mouth.
After that Tracey had taken to following Amara everyday, relying on her, trusting her, confessing her fears and most embarrassing truths, and Amara, ever the good friend, told her what she wanted to hear. Samantha had taken to making new friends, though she seemed to not click as instantly as she did with Tracey. Amara had the most pleasure in talking with Tracey in front of Samantha and hugging her as if they had been great friends.
It wasn’t long before others from the Orphanage heard that the freak was now friends with her ex-best friend and other girls were starting to think that perhaps, since the two had so much in common, it was best to not converse with her. And soon Samantha was a pariah in the Orphanage and Amara had just gotten a new friend.
Unfortunately less than two months later, once Tracey was finally able to stand alone without breaking in trust issues, she decided that she didn’t like Amara that much after all. ’It was just desperation’ was what she told the others. Not long after that she was welcomed back under the pretence of being lulled by Amara’s devil song.
Not that Amara got punished or anything, she would never get punished anymore if she could help it, to which she could, so. No, thanks.
Phase three started then and Samantha goes missing.
Samantha’s parents and Tracey are the first the authorities suspect, and with a little nudge from Amara an inspection is made and Tracey forever has a mark in her curriculum stating that she had been the one to beat Samantha with a shovel. She will be barred from entering Colleges, schools and the like forever.
Such a shame isn’t it?
At night, after punishing Samantha, Amara feels more content than she has in weeks. Her whole body stopped screaming at her to do something that eased the itch beneath her skin. The thing inside her had finally settled and she felt like she could finally breath in the fresh nights air without feeling like one loud sound might make her explode and kill someone.
She turns around in her bed and faces the window next to her bed, that gives her a view of the ground outside the Orphanage. Looking at the bloodied scene that contrastantes rather nicely with the green of the garden, she smiles. A wolfish smile full of teeth with the promise of violence.
Sometimes, at late nights, Amara feels as if she wasn’t exactly human.
As if in the way her already bright eyes seemed to become even more bright and unnerving, or the way her blue lips curled in badly hidden amusement everytime something funny happened, or perhaps it was the way words came out of her lips that it seemed like you had no choice but to listen to her, others saw something wrong.
Something that made them look at her more closely and debate whether or not she was real.
Something that made them question their own sanity and debate whether she was a Freak or a God.
And so, Amara Hayden Potter-Black grew up. The more Amara watched and survived, the more her mind became more devious and malicious. More bloodlusted.
And once her Hogwarts letter came, she knew exactly what she wanted.
Power has always been there after all, all you had to have was the ambition to seek it.