Incomplete
Evangeline was strange.
There was no way to deny it, but there were plenty of ways to affirm it.
It wasn't as if she didn't know. She wasn't unaware of the looks other children gave her, or the half-formed whispers as she passed through the orphanage hallways, her gait stealthy, her head always tilted somewhere no one else was looking. Though her face didn't display the kind of madness other children in the orphanage feared, there was still that kind of strangeness that made adults uncomfortable, that made them tense for no particular reason. It was as if her presence altered the atmosphere, as if something hovered around her… something that shouldn't be there.
They knew it. She knew it. She felt it in her flesh, in her bones, in that deepest place in her chest that ached when she took a deep breath, where the thoughts she shouldn't say out loud dwelled, because if she did, they became real.
And if something became real, it could be taken away.
In the beginning, perhaps, she had been normal. Perhaps. She didn't remember enough of her childhood to say it with absolute clarity.
Perhaps when she hadn't yet heard him.
When her mind wasn't a field of dark echoes. When she didn't feel the weight of a shadow caressing her from within, its voice soft as wet velvet. She didn't remember that time before clearly. She tried sometimes, like a secret exercise she did while staring at the ceiling before sleeping, or when she hid in the closet that still felt safer than her bed. She tried hard to find clean memories, memories without cracks, without crooked words or harsh laughter. But it was like searching for light in a moonless forest: she could only stumble upon more darkness.
Perhaps it had been normal when she hadn't yet bled.
When her skin had no memory of Vernon's fingers gripping her neck tightly enough to leave a mark. When her mouth hadn't yet broken from biting her from the inside. When Dudley hadn't laughed that crude laugh as he pushed her, and she'd fallen to the ground with more dignity than strength, wondering if the ground could somehow swallow her whole.
And that was when he appeared.
Marvolo.
Not as a vision. Not as an imaginary friend. Not with a face or a shape she could draw. It was… a river. Not of water, but of shadow. A thick, undulating, endless shadow, like a dream that coils and uncoils inside her chest. Dark, yes, but with red glows inside, like embers still burning beneath the ash. He had no eyes, but he saw her. He had no mouth, but he spoke. And his voice… his voice was the closest thing to feeling loved that Evangeline had ever known.
“Your pain is not your fault,” he'd said to her, his whispers so faint she sometimes thought he was the wind. “And you're not broken. You're incomplete.”
She didn't answer him at first. She was scared. As any five year old who had received her first hard blow — it came from Vernon, for staring too long at a cockroach on the wall instead of doing what she was told. She cried silently that night, not because it hurt, but because no one was going to be able to capture her away from their claws.
And then she heard him.
Marvolo slipped into her mind like an old memory. It felt familiar from the first word. As if he'd always been there, waiting. As if it wasn't the first time they'd spoken.
Maybe she was normal before Marvolo. Maybe when she hadn't yet felt him in her dreams. When she didn't hear his voice infiltrating in slow hisses, caressing the deepest corners of her head. But for as long as she could clearly remember, he'd been there. Her invisible companion. Her darkest shadow. Her most intimate secret.
And she had clung to him like a shipwrecked sailor clings to a rotten piece of wood in the middle of the ocean: not because he was safe, but because he was all there was. Because his words were sharp, yes, but constant. Because he spoke to her when no one else would. Because when darkness completely enveloped her, Marvolo was the only one who answered.
The sensation had been bittersweet: a cold comfort in the midst of torment, an icy caress that made her tremble with both fear and longing. That voice had filled the space she'd found herself in, stifling the tears she dared not let out. In that instant, she knew that, somehow, he had claimed her. He had become part of her existence, an inseparable, if intangible, presence that whispered promises of protection and power.
“I will always watch over you, child,” Marvolo had said in one of those dreams, and the girl had remembered it ever since, like a mantra, a secret prayer that kept her going in moments of despair. Yet she also remembered the being's rage when, in a fit of recklessness, she had compared him to a parasite. That word, so hurtful and laden with contempt, had left a wound in Marvolo's ethereal heart. He had refused to speak to her for weeks, plunging Evangeline into a deafening silence. It was in that time of silent reproaches and unshed tears that the girl learned the value of words and understood that the power of magic also lay in the delicacy of language.
She never called him that again, and she strove to remember that, although their bond was special, it was tinged with an ambivalence that could be broken by the slightest offense. From then on, Marvolo was just Marvolo. Never an it, never a thing. He was hers. And she was his. In some corner of Evangeline's soul, that connection wasn't foreign. It didn't make her feel less human. If anything, it made her feel... more.
He had no real form. In her dreams, he was a dark river that slid down the walls, across the ceilings, across her skin. Sometimes he shone with red glints, like veins of living blood within an eternal shadow. He had no face, but his voice was always close, surrounding her like the breath of someone whispering directly into her ear. It wasn't warm. It wasn't kind. But it was his, and that was enough for her.
The echo of those memories was now intertwined with the feeling of leaving the orphanage behind. That place, with its icy walls and rigid discipline, had been both a refuge and a prison.
It had been a humid, dense afternoon, as if the sky itself was angry.
Vernon had driven the way he usually did when he didn't want anyone to talk: with his fingers clenched on the wheel and his face red, dripping with sweat and contempt. Dudley hadn't come, which was her first sign, because no one ever left him alone; his unbearable crying made him an annoying child to abandon. Dudley never left her alone. If he hadn't followed her that day, if he hadn't hit her on the way to the car or stuffed dirt in the pockets of her dress, it was because something worse was coming. Petunia was sitting next to the driver, staring straight ahead with her chin raised as if she feared the sky would fall on her if she dared to look at the girl in the back seat.
No one had told her where they were going.
Evangeline didn't ask. Questions were dangerous.
The orphanage appeared like a speck of stone in the middle of a grey hill. The windows were high and narrow, like punishment holes, and the walls were covered in dead vines. Vernon got out without looking at her, opened the car door, and shoved her arm so roughly that her shoulder creaked. Petunia walked in front, like an indifferent guide who only wanted to complete her mission.
“This is for your own good,” she whispered. But not to Evangeline, but to the air. As if she needed to convince herself. "Perhaps here they can... correct you."
Evangeline didn't cry. Not when they pushed her. Not when the car left. Not when the nun on duty asked if she was hungry. Only when she was alone in her new room—with the white walls and locked windows—did she allow herself to feel something.
Not sadness.
Anger.
A quiet anger, like the surface of a poisoned lake.
“They don't understand,” Marvolo told her, his voice like thirst in his throat. "But you... you and I will make them understand."
And now, half a year later, there she was. Her tenth birthday had been just two days.
Evangeline knelt on the floor of her austere room, dimly lit by the light filtering through the fogged-up window. Her small hands, wrapped in bandages that hid the self-inflicted wounds caused by her constant habit of biting her nails raw, nursed an old, worn leather suitcase. Each creak of the hinges echoed in the silence, like a lament of time trapped within the object.
Meticulously, she began packing away her few belongings. Among them was a silver compass with a slightly bent needle, a scratched-glass magnifying glass, and several faded prints she had borrowed from other children at the orphanage. Each object had a story, a memory associated with it, even though none of them had originally belonged to her. For Evangeline, owning them was a way to claim something of her own in a world that had denied her almost everything.
All those things, those small troves of spoils, had been mentally labelled as hers, not by right but by survival. Because if something was hers, no one else could take it from her. No one else would dare.
And that, of course, was because of Marvolo. It was he who taught her the most precious of charms: fear. Not spoken in words or written in books, but learned through silences. Through slight acts of repulsion and resistance that occurred when someone touched her things: a bug in the sheets, a bent spoon, a flickering lamp.
Marvolo didn't need a wand to work magic, and because of that, neither did Evangeline. She had learned that a steady gaze could weigh more than a blow, that the whisper of something unseen was more effective than a scream. And if anyone dared to touch her objects—her heirlooms—the entire orphanage knew it.
Silence was her best weapon, and with it she wove invisible threats that even the nuns learned to respect.
At the bottom of the suitcase, carefully wrapped in threadbare cloth handkerchiefs, lay her most prized treasures: a collection of dead insects. Butterflies with vibrant wings, beetles with iridescent shells, and dragonflies with slender bodies, all preserved with a surprisingly precise technique for a girl her age. She had learned to dissect them by secretly observing the orphanage managers as they prepared samples for science classes, and she perfected her method through trial and error, driven by an innate fascination with these creatures.
One of her favourite treasures was a cicada with its wings spread, as if captured just before its wings began to flap. She had found them in the cracks of the back garden, on windowsills, under stairs, or, on more than one occasion, already dead on the floor of the orphanage, brought by some force Evangeline dared not question.
As she delicately placed a blue butterfly between the pages of a book to protect its fragile wings, a shadow fell across the doorway. Severus Snape, his imposing figure wrapped in black robes, watched her silently. His gaze fell on the collection of insects, and a spark of interest crossed his dark eyes.
When he appeared, the river of shadows shifted. It didn't retreat, it didn't tremble, but it did become denser, more suspicious. Something recognised Severus Snape. Something in her magical essence—because yes, Snape was completely magical—collided with Marvolo's like opposite poles in an invisible storm.
“He's not an enemy, but he could be an ally,” he murmured with icy calm in the back of his mind. “He's a spectre from the past. One who remembers more than he cares to admit.”
She didn't reply. She didn't need to.
“I see you have a rather... unique collection,” he remarked quietly, breaking the silence that had fallen in the room.
Evangeline looked up, her green eyes meeting his. For a moment, her usual distrust of adults softened, replaced by a hint of pride.
“Yes,” she replied softly but firmly. “I like insects. They're... interesting.”
Snape approached slowly, stopping at a respectful distance. He crouched down to her eye level and pointed to one of the carefully arranged butterflies.
“This is a Morpho Menelaus, if I’m not mistaken. Its wings reflect light peculiarly, creating that distinctive metallic blue.”
Evangeline nodded, surprised by the man’s knowledge.
“I found it in a book at the library,” she explained, her voice gaining enthusiasm. “I thought it was beautiful, so I tried to get one for my collection.”
Snape looked at the rest of the specimens, noting the diversity and the care with which they had been preserved. “You’ve done an impressive job,” he praised with little emotion, as everything he said. It still caused Evangeline’s cheeks to tinge with a faint blush.
The girl continued packing away her belongings, carefully arranging the few items of clothing, books, and art supplies she had accumulated during her time at the orphanage. Each object was treated with an almost ritualistic reverence, as if by packing them away she was closing a chapter of her life.
“And why are you keeping them?” he asked in a low voice.
Evangeline shrugged. Her dark hair slipped over her neck like a veil.
“Because no one else would.”
The answer cut through him with a coldness he hadn't expected. A simple phrase, but imbued with a truth that felt unbearably familiar. The same truth he had felt when he had hidden his own books under the floorboards of his bedroom as a child, the ones no one should see, the ones no one could steal.
Folding a frayed scarf, Evangeline stopped and, without looking up, asked quietly: “Why have you come for me, Mr Snape?”
The man took a moment before answering, choosing his words carefully. “Because you have a gift, Evangeline. One that needs to be cultivated and understood. I am here to help you on that path.”
The girl nodded slowly, as if weighing the truth of his words. Although doubts lingered, a part of her longed to believe that perhaps this man represented an opportunity to escape the shadows that had darkened her brief life.
With the suitcase finally closed and secured, Evangeline stood, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress with trembling hands. Snape rose as well, offering her a slight nod.
"It is time to go," he announced.
Evangeline tried to take the suitcase by its handle, but Snape moved forward without making a sound, as if he had noticed how shaky her palms were. Instead, she followed him out of the room that had been both her home and her prison. As they crossed the threshold, a cool breeze caressed her face, washing away the last ties that kept her anchored to that place.
She knew the professor was watching her. She knew he was analysing her every move, every silence, every glance. Snape was careful. Meticulous. There was something about the way he spoke that irritated her and pleased her at the same time. It was as if every word were a spell he measured on a scale.
Still, she didn't trust him. Not completely.
The first time she appeared from one place to appear in another, Evangeline felt as if her soul hadn't quite followed her.
She had closed her eyes when Snape asked her, in a low but firm tone, to squeeze his hand and think blankly, about nothing. The tug wasn't physical. Not exactly. It was as if all the parts of her body were trying to go in different directions and then, without warning, compressed toward a point in the universe she didn't recognise. She didn't know if she screamed or if she fainted. She only knew that, suddenly, she was there.
The sensation was as if all the parts of her body had been forcibly separated, thrown into the void, and then reassembled in a barely correct order. The world unfolded, churned, her stomach struggled to stay put, and for an instant, she felt as if her heart had been expelled from her body, leaping into her stomach. But she didn't complain. She simply gritted her teeth—with a strength that would have made anyone with softer gums bleed—and swallowed her bile like poison, with dignity.
When she appeared next to Snape, her feet barely held her up. Heartbeat after heartbeat, the ground seemed to wobble as if made of water, and her legs were thin branches in the wind. The buzzing in her head was sharp, piercing, and for a second she feared she would vomit right there, in the middle of the cold cobblestones.
But then, she felt something. Not a hand, not a word. Just a look. Severus Snape was watching her, not gently, not pity, but with that specific way of noticing something and deciding it was his responsibility to make sure it didn't get worse.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. Neither did she. He just watched her, and when their eyes met—she pale and dizzy, he impassive as ever—there was an unspoken agreement. Are you all right? his gaze asked. I'm not going to complain, hers said.
And so, they advanced along a damp stone path bordered by a dense, cold darkness, so different from the oppressive walls of the orphanage that for a moment, Evangeline thought she was still dreaming. Not because of its beauty, but because of its absurdity.
A monumental structure rose before them, bathed in the faint light of a split moon, filtered through heavy clouds. The towers touched the sky. There were bridges in the air, windows like glowing eyes, and doors that creaked with an impossible antiquity. The castle breathed magic. Not as she knew it, in whispers or nightmares. It was a living magic, creeping up the stones, speaking through the wind, seeping into every crack in the place. Evangeline felt her skin electrify.
The main hall was so high that her neck ached as she tried to look up at the ceiling. Beams, hanging lamps, banners fluttering in a breeze that couldn't be explained inside a building. Everything had a solemn yet playful air, as if the walls might laugh at any moment. It wasn't just magic. It was antiquity, power, memory.
Evangeline felt her eyes widen further than usual. She forced herself to close them a little. To feign boredom. But she couldn't help turning her head toward a moving portrait. A woman in a cap from the last century curtsied to her, and she lowered her head slightly in response. In the reflection of a suit of armour, she saw her pale, thin face, her eyes open in a kind of mute wonder. The scar on her forehead, hidden by her hair, seemed to throb with a pulse of its own. She said nothing.
And Marvolo... remained silent.
Too silent.
It wasn't his habit. A dangerous stillness. As if he had shrunk down to look better. Through her.
As they climbed a staircase that creaked with musical notes, and the corridor curved in a direction that didn't conform to common architecture, Evangeline knew they had left what she understood as normal behind. And somehow, that didn't scare her.
The door they stopped in front of didn't seem to fit into the corridor. It was more ornate, with carvings in the stone and a knocker shaped like a phoenix. Snape didn't knock. The door opened by itself, as if it had been waiting for them.
Sitting behind a desk made of wood so polished it looked like dark liquid, wearing deep blue robes decorated with tiny stars, an old—but not withered—man looked up. His beard, as long as a string of bells, fell to his abdomen. His hair, the same shade of yellowish-white, straight and fine, crossed his chest like a mystical curtain.
“Welcome, Evangeline,” he said, his voice warm, as if his throat held a burning fireplace. “I am Albus Dumbledore.”
And that was when Marvolo roared.
The inside of her head turned red. Not from images, but from pure rage. It was as if a drop of poison had dissolved in her blood, and now her whole body was burning. She didn't see Marvolo—he rarely had a form—but she felt him.
Like fire. Like a boiling river. As if something that offended him deeply had scratched the darkness in him soul. The burning began in the scar behind her forehead and descended like a poisonous root down the back of her neck. Her face twisted for a moment, but she hid it by lowering her gaze.
“Marvolo,” Evangeline thought, her mental voice pained and restrained. “Please stop. Not now.”
Dumbledore gestured to two chairs opposite him. Snape nodded, and Evangeline, after an imperceptible hesitation, sat down carefully.
Inside, walls rose. Not hers, but Marvolo's. Like defences trying to separate her from the old man. She recognised them. They weren't warm. They were cold, cruel. Marble walls without windows or doors, a protective enclosure. Her mind shut with a dull rumble, and a chill ran down her spine. For a moment, the emptiness unsettled her, and she shifted in her chair without noticing.
“Are you comfortable?” the man asked.
Evangeline nodded. It was a lie, but she knew when to lie.
“I’m glad to have you here,” he continued. “I’ve looked forward to meeting you for a long time.”
She didn’t reply immediately. Then she murmured, “Thank you, sir.”
Dumbledore studied her with pale blue eyes. They weren’t cold, but they were old. As if everything in them knew more than it should.
“Can I ask you something, Evangeline?” he said after a pause. “What do you remember about your family?”
Her lips, cracked and still chapped, closed firmly. The pain came not from outside, but from within. She remembered—against her will—the exact moment she had tried to call Petunia “mum”, as Dudley did. It was the first time her mouth tasted like soap, her throat burned with the chemical sting of humiliation, and she understood that words could be crimes.
“I have no family,” she said finally. Her voice didn’t tremble. It was a fact. Like saying the sky was high.
Dumbledore tilted his head, his beard moving like long grass in the breeze.
“You had uncles. A cousin. How did you get along with him?”
Evangeline lo miró. Luego miró sus brazos, desnudos, llenos de moretones. Miró sus dedos vendados, sus labios secos, y pensó que quizá la pregunta era una prueba.
“They didn’t love me. They never wanted me.”
There was no anger in her words. No explicit pain. Only a naked acceptance, as obvious as the blows, like the memories of a violent childhood.
The headmaster was silent for a moment. Then he changed the subject with practiced gentleness.
“And at the orphanage... did you feel more cared for?”
Evangeline thought of the spiders. Of the things she had done to protect her own. Of the cold whispers. Of the things Marvolo taught her. “I wasn't hit. Not that bad.”
Snape shifted slightly beside her, but said nothing.
Dumbledore offered her a smile that was meant to be tender. She didn't return it. She had learned that smiles were weapons on the wrong lips.
“Evangeline, this school—Hogwarts—is a place for special people. Like you.”
The silence that followed Dumbledore's words was as thick as black ink, like paper that absorbs every drop from a broken quill, leaving behind a blur no one can quite read. Evangeline held it, that silence, like someone hanging from the edge of a cliff with only their fingers, not out of desperation but out of determination.
Inside, Marvolo seemed to be moving, but not as before: he wasn't hissing, he wasn't roaring, he wasn't pushing. He was curling up. He was watching. Attentive. As if he, too, wanted to hear the story to come.
She raised her face, blinking once, deliberately. Her eyes, large and round, blinked with an intensity that always made the adults shift in their chairs or pretend to look away. Seer's eyes, one of the more superstitious novices, had once said, until she stopped saying it after finding the back of her gown covered in small black beetles.
“Mr Snape has already explained everything to me. Or at least... everything I need to know.”
Her voice was calm, clear, slightly broken by that particular accent that forms when one has learned to remain silent more than to speak. She looked at Severus as she spoke his name, searching for the shadow in his gaze. And found it, as always. She didn't know if it was annoyance, discomfort, or simply him being himself, but that deep-set gaze seemed to flicker for a moment when he saw himself being observed so closely. A small, almost imperceptible satisfaction touched the corner of her lips.
Making adults feel a little out of place was, in its way, revenge. A game. A way of existing without asking permission.
Dumbledore laced his fingers on his desk, as if he knew that this moment needed not just words, but gestures that would envelop, soften, make the blow less stinging. But Evangeline had already known the edge of the world, and she knew that important things rarely came wrapped in velvet.
“Professor Snape is, without a doubt, a man of knowledge and prudence,” said Dumbledore, with a hint of a smile that fell short of mockery or solemnity. “But there are things that perhaps... you should hear from me. Not from authority, but from history.”
Evangeline didn't reply. She didn't say no, and that, to her, was the closest thing to a yes that Dumbledore was going to get.
“Your parents,” the old man began, in that tone that seemed to issue from an old room where the clocks no longer tick but the echoes linger, “were wizards. James and Lily Potter. Both of outstanding talent and courage. Gryffindors of pure heart. They fought to protect this world, the wizarding world.”
Snape tensed.
It was minimal, but enough for Evangeline to notice it out of the corner of her eye. She didn't turn her head. She didn't ask. But she felt it. A tightened string. A retained air. Marvolo felt it too, though he didn't judge or comment on it. Not yet.
“They were murdered by a very powerful Dark Wizard. His name was Lord Voldemort.”
The air changed.
Snape clenched his jaw. Dumbledore noticed, but didn't correct him. Evangeline didn't move. But her scar burned. A sharp, deep heat, unlike the burning of bruises or soap in the mouth. It was internal. Intimate. Not of the body, but of the essence.
“Also known as... You-Know-Who,” Dumbledore added gently, as if editing a play for a fearful audience. “A wizard who believed in the purity of blood, in the domination of the wizarding world, in fear as a weapon.”
She listened. Not as someone who wants to understand, but as someone waiting for something to fall into place. As if all the puzzle pieces were floating around in her head and this story was only coming to fit some of them into place. Not all. But some. Marvolo seemed... awake. Silent. But not subdued. Never.
They didn't die in a car crash.
She had grown up with that version: drunks. Irresponsible. A punishment of fate; mother a whore and father a foolish man who believed himself better than anyone. She had repeated it even when no one asked her to, like a mantra that explained her uncomplicated orphanhood. Like a wound learning to heal itself.
“The night Voldemort attacked them, you were with them. Safe, they thought. But he... came for you.”
The air grew thicker. More restrained.
“He tried to kill you.”
The scar throbbed again. Like a bell. Like an echo. It didn't burn. It pounded. A pulse that crashed against her skull as if someone were knocking on the door of her head from the inside.
“But he couldn't. Your mother's sacrifice, standing between him and you, protected you. Saved you. And somehow... something in you, or in that act, destroyed him. No one knows how, exactly. We only know that since that night... Voldemort disappeared.”
Evangeline didn't answer. Didn't ask. Didn't cry. Didn't move.
Her thoughts were thousands of them. Dense. Red. Dark. Hissing. Marvolo churned inside her, not with fury this time, but with a chilling recognition. As if he saw himself reflected on something he hadn't expected. As if looking into the mirror of the past, he found his shadow standing beside the crib where she cried—or perhaps not. Perhaps she never cried, even then.
The scar burned. But it was a familiar burning. From another time. From another being.
Evangeline raised a hand to her forehead. She didn't touch it. She just held it in the air, like someone considering the possibility of opening a door and finding a monster on the other side that looks too much like themselves.
“You are the only survivor of a Killing Curse,” Dumbledore said. “And that’s why you have that scar.”
The word only didn't resonate like a privilege. It resonated like a prison cell.
The silence returned. But now it was different. Not the one from the beginning. This silence had a name. It had a form. It was a new void where a lie had once been.
Evangeline lowered her hand. Slowly. And then, in her lowest voice, she whispered, “Why me?”
The question wasn't dramatic. It wasn't a plea. It was simple. Mathematical. The kind of question one asks when a puzzle has a piece that doesn't quite fit.
Dumbledore didn't answer right away.
“I don't know,” he replied finally. “No one knows. But I believe you have an important role to play. Not because you should. But because... you are alive. And that, in itself, is magic.”
Evangeline looked at him. Then she looked at Snape. And then, without turning her head, she let her attention return inward. To that river of shadows that was Marvolo. To that red heat that curled in her thoughts.
The scar didn't stop throbbing. But neither did she. Not a bit.
Because even though she didn't fully know it yet, there was something in this story, in that name—Voldemort—that didn't just touch her. It made her whole. As if she'd been floating in a river all along, and now someone had named her after that river.
And that name was Marvolo.
But that... it wasn't time to say it yet.
She remained silent, head held high, eyes wide open. Because even in the midst of a story that spoke of death and magic, of sacrificial mothers and cursed murderers, Evangeline wasn't a lost child.
She was an awake child.