Eyes fluttered open.
A groan slipped through my lips and I stood up, black ratty blankets twisting around my small five year old frame. They tangled around my heavy limbs as I pulled them off, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings.
The floorboards creaked under my small pale feet as I queasily rose, my vision swimming and my legs stumbling. I took a hold of the dark wooden wall besides me, steadying myself and walking to the door.
The knob was stingingly cold with a shambled and broken appearance, yet the knob held. No matter how I pulled and turned the door stayed shut. An incredible sense of frustration and unease rose within me, followed along with a twinge of fear.
I had no idea where I was. Before I had woken up in this new shambled place I had been in Knockturn Alley, sleeping in its nooks and crannies, stealing short pocket change and looking through dumpsters. I had lived a meager...well, a life that provided just enough to cover my bones with skin. I didn't remember causing anyone trouble in the slightest, though trouble and grievances had never been a reason to harm someone in Knockturn Alley.
Though even before that I had been someone else entirely.
I had been a twenty year old university student at the University of Cambridge, studying both entrepreneurship and microbiology. Both complicated and exhaustive fields in their own right. On one particularly tiring day I had been walking back towards my apartment from the lecture hall, quite late at night. I had crossed the road without care, unaware of the car that sped towards me. I had noticed it too late as pain blossomed in my entire being and I got flung forward like a rag doll at an incredible speed.
I had thought that this was the end of it. A pathetic and tragic way to the end of my life. I had awoken though in an entirely different body. One of a child. I had found myself held in the hands of a short and rather ugly looking man. He had scampered forward like a rat after a moments of hesitation and left me, now with full confidence, in front of a building that I was sure was an orphanage.
Not an ordinary orphanage however. A magical orphanage. From the conversations I had heard as a swaddling toddler I had been reborn into the world of Harry Potter. Back in the past, a couple months before the defeat of the second Dark Lord. This orphanage was one dedicated to magical children, like my self. Something that once filled me with excitement until I learned of the utter disdain that the caretakers gave us.
Maybe they disdained children in general or maybe it was because of the apparent poor quality of their life and the orphanage themselves, but they loathed us with their very being.
Soon enough after the election of Minister Fudge the orphanage discreetly came to a close. The children were thrust into the world with no way or plan. Some made way to the muggle world and some to Knockturn Alley, much like myself.
And from there we tried what we could to keep a small amount of food in our stomachs, though that worked less often then one would hope.
And now here we were.
BANG!
I stumbled forward at the sudden forceful opening the door. A man wearing tattered black robes swayed into the room. His chin and jaw was covered in short stubble and his hands were long and bony. Teeth yellowed and lips parched and cracked dry. His eyes were dark and maddened. They darted around furiously from corner to corner of the room, until they locked onto me.
He made a grab for my arm, though I pulled back he proved to be quicker then my malnourished body. His grip was like a vice, strong yet unyielding despite the apparent lack of flesh on his bones. I could feel the illusionary bruises forming from his grip. I let out a small yelp as he dragged me out of the door and through the house. Allowing me to get a better look at the place. The entire house was covered in black was clearly ragged. Wooden posts covered the windows. A couple candles were scattered about the place, but the smell of herbs was what dominated the place. Different herbs of shapes and sizes I'd never seen before lined the walls, hung up by ropes. Colored potions too were numerous among the half straight shelves and the black bubbling rows of cauldrons made up most of the tables though they shared that space was the random amount of papers that had been thrown around the place, filled with charts, illustrations and calculations.
The man sat in front of a cauldron, pushing me into the chair beside it. I glanced warily at the man as I looked around for an escape route. The windows were inaccessible and the door to the actual outside had yet to be seen.
It wasn't long before the man pushed in front of me a dark murky green potion. I pulled back as he forcefully grabbed my jaw, tilting my head up and forcing my mouth open to pour the drink down my throat. I choked and my mouth burned. The heat spreading down into my body and to my limbs. I heaved forward, hands placed over my aching chest.
Drip.
I felt blood come down my nose and onto my tattered blue shirt. One drop led to another until it was coming out of my ears and eyes, blood spurting forward from my mouth.
I fell forward, off the stool. Hands grasping onto the floor. My body shook and spasmed. Eyes catching sight of the mans fervor. His eyes bloodshot and jotting things down in a hurry as he looked at what was going on with me.
Damn bastard!
Was I only an experiment to him? An instrument for his madness? His apparent obsession. I gritted my teeth, unrelenting to let this man get what he wanted. I wasn't going to give him some sick sort of pleasure at my own apparent suffering. Letting out a shaky breath, my limbs stopped their trembling. Blood slowly stopped pouring out of me.
Some how the man looked even more unhinged from before. His body shaking from excitement.
"What is your name boy?"
A gruff voice came out, filling my ears. My body still trembled slightly from the previous agony, yet I still raised my head, looking up at him in a way I hoped was rather defiantly.
"Orion," I spat out. His eyes gleamed again and he smiled a wicked smile that bared all his yellow teeth.
"You have just become on of the most important things here ever." I hated the way he said it. The way that he called me thing. Like the only thing I was an object to be used then thrown away.
I was soon shoved back into that small cramped room in which I had awoken.
The lock clicked shut.