From Eden - Regulus Black (Complete)

Prologue

A girl we don't know appeared on the top of the Hogwarts' Hill in a flash of blue light and she fell on the grass with a thud, breath escaping her lungs with a loud 'oof'.

The girl we see is a mess.

Dressed in jeans trousers that were torn in a long gush in the left leg and blood was staining the light-blue fabric, the edges of the trousers were scorched lightly near the stained with blood and dirt once-white songs. Her shirt had once been white too, but now was yellowish in days-old sweat, blood that she wasn't absolutely sure that didn't belong to her and dirt from the several times she had been thrown over the ruins of the school she had once called home. She had a jacket over her thin clothes and that part of the clothing was slightly cleaner, for she had put it on just a couple of days before the day she was torn apart from her reality – there was a bit of blood near the zipper and vomit on the strings of the hood. Her skin was white and had once been fair, but now was clearly hurt – cuts, bruises and scars all over her body – and her hair was a vibrant shade of red and was sticking to the dry blood of the gush on her forehead and the sweat on her hollow cheeks. The skin under her eyes was dark and her brown eyes were bright-red and puffy.

She looked ill, as if she had cried for days, not the few hours she had on the world she knew before.

That girl had many names; different people would call her different names.

Her Aunt and Uncle would call her 'girl' and, sometimes (when they were really angry) 'bitch'; her Cousin would call her 'girl' too or 'cousin' when in public, but avoided using her name and making her look remotely like a human in his eyes. Her older brother would call her 'Lia' when they were alone, they were taught to not use that name when they were four and their aunt raised her hand to them for the first time when he called her that loudly in the house, from that moment on he usually called her 'Anne' when at home. People in school would call her 'Anne', too, although one or two people insisted on called her 'An', as if the name was too long to be called whole and she really didn't like it. The people she didn't like and all the professors would call her by the name she shared with her brother: 'Potter', the only thing her parents seemed to have left her besides money and a world she only found out when she was ten and her brother was taken away from her for a whole year. She was called to join their secret and safe little world the year after.

But that world was never safe, as she had thought.

Anne Potter was never safe while being a Potter.

Such a last name seemed a thing of novels she liked to read; making her the target of a grown-man villain when she was barely old enough to feed herself without her brother reminding her to do so whenever she was focused on something. And now, because of the very same villain, she had lost everything.

The memories were still clear on Anne's mind as she laid on the grass, looking up at the dark sky and at the stars twinkling over her in mockery of her pain.

Her brother with open, unfocused green eyes and big gush on his forehead, the scar under all the blood and dirt from the place he was thrown with no care on the ground in front of the castle; he lived, waking up soon after she fell to her knees in shock, but not everyone did. Her best friend, all brunette curls and brown eyes screaming and wailing under a man as she kicked, bit and fought with all her will. Ronald, cradling the body of his little sister as he wailed, his mother's body at his feet and his older brother fighting, not glancing twice at the family slowly getting smaller. Charlie with inexpressive eyes as she tried to get Percy to wake up and finish the joke he was making before the whole wall fell over him. Her godfather Remus holding her arm and pulling her, giving her a small box and telling her to run, to find Harry and pull him with her away from that place. The purple light came straight to her and she fell face first to the ground, the small box on her hand crashing with her and the sound of breaking glass with the sharp pain on her palm. Then, the darkness.

Now, there she was.

Slowly, her neck slowly dragging itself to the right, eyes slowly leaving the sky and looking down to the bleeding hand. Glass shards were sticking out of her palm and white sand was on the grass and on her blood.

Anne looked back at the sky.

Wouldn't the gods of family have pity on her and turn off the stars?

The sky was so clear and looking so pretty that she felt like she didn't have the right to be under it as she felt nothing but darkness and hatred for destiny. Why weren't the gods of revenge smiling upon her and giving her the chance of achieving what her brother didn't? Why was she alone? So... utterly and terrifyingly alone.

Her left hand reached for the pocket of her jacket and retrieved the two pieces of wood that used to be her wand. Her stomach dropped when she saw it.

She had been in the middle of a war and her ringing ears had yet to register the utter silence that was surrounding her – but, when it did suddenly, she realized no one had attacked her and she heard no crying, no screaming and no fighting she went still for a moment as she suffocated on the weight of the realization that she was more than just alone... she was somewhere that she recognized, but refused to believe to be the place she would usually call home.

She focused as well as she could on the air above her again.

"Tempus," she mumbled, hoping that would work. Her voice sounded crooked and broken, probably because she hadn't drunk any water in a long time or maybe because she had screamed so much during the battle. Still, she blamed her voice when her wandless spell didn't work. "Tempus," she tried again, eyes watering in a begging.

Green numbers appeared on front of her eyes, glowing weakly as if warning it would disappear very soon.

03:53, 03.05.1976.

Almost four in the morning of the day after the battle that would once in the future be called the Battle of Hogwarts, the battle Voldemort finally took over of all the United Kingdom for once and for all, but this time the year was very much wrong – she was way too long behind.

She looked in her right hand again, the throbbing pain suddenly reminding her of thinking about the destroyed box and shattered glass and a thought came to her head like a slap on the face. A Time-Turner. That made sense; the small blue and fragile box, the glass in her hand and the sand around her wounds and on the glass underneath her.

The box had a Time-Turner inside and she had broken it. The numbers disappeared and so did the little courage Anne had managed to gather before walking right into the battle they lost.

Anne's eyes filled with tears as she sobbed at the stars as the stars twinkled as if trying to comfort her somehow. She let go of her wand as she cried and gave up, knowing very well her chances of going back and finding the people she loved well and happy were ever so slim – no; not slim, but... impossible. There was nothing left for her in the future.

But there was a chance in the past.

A chance to make everything alright.