As far as she was concerned, there was nothing special about Cassidy Winters. She's simply a girl who drinks far too much coffee than she would like to admit and reads books to escape her life as an unwanted orphan. Then, when she appears in a world...
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TW: Mention of blood, malnutrition, self-harm, and torture.
Cassidy's POV:
When I lived in the orphanage, the adults insisted that we try to live a normal childhood. Every weekend, they made us do something new whether it was making friendship bracelets or watching a movie together with all the kids.
One weekend, the activity was learning how to ride a bike.
I was avoiding the volunteers who had brought us out to the park, hoping they wouldn't catch me trying to slip away to read on a distant wooden bench. But I was less skilled in the art of sneaking around at that age and unfortunately got caught.
The lady who stopped me from leaving looked at me and smiled kindly. Thinking back on it now, I am glad that she convinced me to get on a bike.
When I first began pedaling, the bike nearly fell over but she was always there to help me out, holding the bike until I could pedal on my own.
It took only five seconds of moving for me to crash and scrape my arm.
It took three seconds for her to be by my side again- I don't remember her name she had only volunteered there a few times- but as she kneeled down next to me to see the damage, she said, "Are you okay?"
I wasn't. I wanted my mom and my dad to be the ones helping me. I wanted them to be the ones kneeling beside me and asking if I was okay. But that wasn't the case.
She seemed to know that too. She eventually convinced me to get back on the bike. All it took was for her to say, "No matter how many times you fall, all that matters is that you get back up again."
Oddly enough, it was the one thing I had been repeating to myself since I'd been captured.
I didn't even realize I would have remembered that because to be honest, my years at the orphanage don't even seem real to me.
In fact, lately, it was hard to tell what was reality and what was fiction.
I had lost track of the days since my capture, only remembering that after Adonis knocked me out, I woke up tied to a wall in a dark room.
It didn't take long for me to figure out that I was in Malfoy Manor. It also didn't take long to realize that my wrists were kept in enchanted metal chains that stopped me from being able to burn them.
In the first few weeks, they questioned me continuously about Harry and my abilities to do "wandless magic." It was usually one of the many death eaters, sometimes even Lucius himself.
