A Black Flower

Part I

Prologue

-o-

I didn't always remember my first life. Nor did all my memories come to me all of a sudden. I don't remember being born into this new life, like all those stories where the main character died and then suddenly was in a warm, cramped space, and then shortly after squeezed out into the frigid air while they wailed or what not. I don't remember any of that. My brain probably wasn't developed enough at that point to even really think, let alone store memories.

I would say I started remembering things when I was a few months old. Which in itself is unusual, since I shouldn't have even developed object permanence yet. I think it was something to do with being reborn that made my brain develop faster.

But I'm getting off track. By the time I was, perhaps, a year old, I remembered everything about my first life. Well, everything except how I died. The last thing I remember was going to bed the night after my calculus final. So I assume I died somehow not long after that, but I suppose it's possible I lived to be a hundred and don't actually remember everything... I'm guessing either I died in my sleep, or the experience was so horrible that I forced myself to forget.

I wonder how I did on that final. Guess I'll never know, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, is incredibly vexing.

Right. Rambling off track again. I'm bad about that, if you couldn't tell.

So, as I was saying, by the time I was a year old, my mind was able to think at the level I was when I was twenty-one. That's when I really started paying attention to my surroundings.

Instead of being reborn after my death, chronologically speaking, I seemed to have been reborn decades before I originally was. Which, I thought, was strange enough, but I couldn't pretend to understand the whys and hows of reincarnation. I always thought that when you died that was it. Poof. You're gone. I guess I was wrong.

I also noticed I was in England. At least I assumed so because every adult I saw spoke with a British accent. It wasn't Canada, but at least it was a country where I spoke the language.

My new name was Pansy, by the way. Which was the name of that bitchy, mean Slytherin girl in Harry Potter, but at least if I had to have a flower name, it was my favourite flower from my old life.

I had two sisters. One was three years older than me, and named Petunia. The other was my fraternal twin. I couldn't say which of us was born first, at that point, as my parents never mentioned it in front of me. My twin sister's name was Lily.

For all that I prided myself on my intelligence, I didn't realize the implications of that until my new mother walked in on Petunia drawing on the wall.

-x-

"Petunia Anne Evans!" my new mother screeched when she walked into Petunia's bedroom and saw my four year old sister scribbling on the walls with a bright blue crayon. Petunia turned away from the wall to face our mother and smiled.

"Look mummy!" she exclaimed in childish delight. "I drawed a sky!"

I was sitting a few feet away, watching my sister draw on the walls, waiting for this exact moment. It always amused me when other people got in trouble. It was childish of me to enjoy a toddler getting in trouble, but when your body wasn't able to do much yet, you got your entertainment where you could.

I didn't get to enjoy the scolding though, because for the first time I had heard my last name. Evans. My name was Pansy Evans. My sisters were Lily and Petunia, it was maybe the sixties or seventies, we lived in England, and our last name was Evans.

It was then that I realized I was likely in the world of Harry Potter.

-x-

I was half excited, half freaked out. I mean, I was in Harry Potter! Which was really fucking awesome. I loved Harry Potter. I read Harry Potter fanfiction all the time, I even wrote some. I watched the movies on a monthly basis, I frequently reread the books, I read up on the latest information JKR put on Pottermore.

I was a potterhead. So yeah, I was excited.

But at the same time... How is this even possible? Like, it literally should not be possible. Harry Potter is a story. Fiction.

The idea that this was a dream or hallucination was quickly dismissed. While it would make more sense in an obvious way, with the little things it didn't. The passage of time, mostly. Months could pass in a dream, sure. But if I were dreaming, I hardly think that I'd be dreaming about spending hours bored out of my mind in a playpen, mentally reviewing basic differentiation and integration, day after day. (Yes, I'm a math nerd. I don't care what others think, math is beautiful.)

So yeah. I'm thinking this isn't a dream.

And okay, so assuming it's all real... That's great, in theory. Magic and such being real I mean. But... My sister dies. The magical corner of the country is on the brink of war.

And who's to say I'm even a witch? Sure, Lily almost certainly is. But my other sister isn't, and Lily and I, we're twins, yeah, but not identical ones.

What's the point of being born into this world if I'm not even a witch? It would be such a disappointment, you know? It's like, "Oh, Harry Potter is real, and you're going to have that shoved in your face, you potterhead, but you're still a muggle. Have fun with that."

-x-

I tried to force magic out of myself for ages. I would sit and stare at objects, trying to make them move until I got a head ache. I gave up on that by the time I was two years old. Aside from that, not much had happened in the year since I realized where I was.

Being a baby with the mind of an adult did provide some unique opportunities, though. For example, I got to choose my "first word." It was quite hilarious, actually. With little else to do, I carefully selected my first word and waited for a chance to say it.

I said it when Elizabeth, or Lizzie, as she preferred to be called, who I had trouble thinking of as my mother, was feeding me apple sauce for breakfast while Richard fed Lily nearby. I threw my half empty bowl at my father, hitting him hard on the side of his head. I then repeated the word he spoke in a chipper, deceptively innocent manner.

"Fuck!" I giggled, clapping my hands together. "Fuck, fuck fuck!"

Lizzie set down the spoon she was using to feed me and glared at her husband, who laughed nervously. The ensuing argument was quite amusing. Just thinking about it kept me entertained for days.

Wisely, they later told everyone my first word was the second word I said to them, which was "no."

By the time I was two and a half, I was speaking better than five year old Petunia, which made the Evans' conclude that I must be a genius. Which was great for my ego, even if it wasn't actually true.

In regards to trying to do magic, I remembered that accidental magic usually occurred when emotions were running high. Which meant I purposely put myself in situations that I found frustrating. It didn't make much of a difference, and by the time I was four, I gave up on forcing magic out of myself. If I had it, it would manifest sooner or later. If not, well... Not much I could do about it, is there?

-o-

AN: ...I should not be writing a new fanfic when I haven't finished Riddled... But the idea wouldn't leave me alone. That said, Riddled is not abandoned. I'm still working on it, too. But I have more inspiration for this at the moment, even though I expect less interest. The writing style is also very different from Riddled. It's first person, obviously, so it's written largely the way Pansy thinks, which can get a bit... fragmented? It's less like reading a description and more like listening to someone think, if you know what I mean.

Obviously, A Black Flower is a SI fic. Pansy isn't me, exactly. She's heavily based on me and some experiences from her first life are taken from mine, but there are differences. I won't say what is different and what is the same to protect myself, but don't assume that just because it applies to Pansy it applies to me. I've been reading a lot of SI fanfiction and thought I'd try my own.

I'll say this now: Pansy Evans will not be paired with any canon characters. Nor will she have a bunch of canon characters unrequitedly(is that a word? Well, it is now) in love with her.Because while I personally don't mind SI(or OC)/canon character pairings, I feel like it's often abused for wish fulfillment purposes which turns people off to the thing in general. Plus we only know of a handful of canon characters from this era, mostly just the marauders, Lily, and Snape.

On the topic of pairings, Pansy will be paired with another OC. However, she's mentally an adult and the idea of dating kids is creepy to her. So her love interest will be older, and as such while Pansy may develop feelings for him when she's physically pretty young, he won't start to think of her that way for a long time. I figure it will be pretty obvious who he is when I introduce him. I have a weakness for age gap romances, but I'm not making the guy into a paedophile.

Another thing, this fic is less likely to be finished than Riddled. I don't know where this is going yet, really. But I do know I'm trying something different from most SI fics I see. You'll get an idea of why next chapter, I believe. Which should be posted shortly after this one.

Cheers!