#also involved a fuckton of research foster system in spain during that time period was actually really religious and bad who knew?

[picavirgo]

PROMPT OO7.  C R  E   S    C     E      N       D       O 

a/n: for the sake of ease, italics are used to mark speech in spanish rather than english. 

TW : slurs, discrimination, violence, injury

i. feral // ii. daughter // iii. freak // iv. beginning // v. outsider // vi. understanding // vii. family

i. feral. ( fe·ralˈferəl,ˈfirəl/adjective ). (especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.

Didn’t want. Didn’t want wasn’t a new concept to Mafalda. Moving wasn’t a new concept, going somewhere new wasn’t a fresh concept. But it still hurt. She was eight and the countryside flew past her as she stared out of the bus window. Everything she owned was in the backpack next to her-- ten shirts, three skirts, three pairs of pants, and ten pairs socks that she’d started filching from each home she was in so she didn’t run out. Ten pairs of socks in a year. Maybe at some point, the number would make her feel proud, or glad, or something. But right now, she was just disappointed. She was hurt. She wanted to go to a place she didn’t even have a picture of in her head, a place that didn’t exist. 

She wanted to go home. 

Feral was a new word for her, though. That was why she was here, that was why she’d had to go. She was too feral, she didn’t get along with the other children. She scared them. It wasn’t with anything that she could control, it wasn’t because she was loud or disrespectful or mean. She was just different. She looked different, she could do things that no one else could do. It was like magic, she thought, like something that could do amazing things. Like make leaves float when there was no wind, like make beetles on her windowsill spin. Like finish her chores early because she could get the broom to move without her touching it. 

But apparently, she was cursed, or possessed, or something. She was feral. She didn’t know what it meant. 

There was a woman across the aisle from her, elderly and kind looking. Mafalda moved to the edge of her seat and cleared her throat. 

“Excuse me?”

The woman looked up at her, and she smiled. “Yes?”

“Do you know what feral means?” she asked, before she held up the book she hadn’t been reading except for when her social worker tried to talk to her. “It’s in my book and I don’t know what it means.”

The woman nodded. “It’s... well, it means wild,” she told her. “Like a feral dog, it can’t be in a house because it can’t be controlled, or domesticated. It’s been wild too long. Travels around, lives without rules. Does that make sense?”

Mafalda sat back slowly in her seat. Her lips pursed slightly, and she nodded her head even as her gaze dropped. “Yes, thank you.” She moved back over to the window and leaned her head against it, pulling her legs up to her chest. She wanted to cry. But the sound that came out of her mouth wasn’t a little choked huff, wasn’t a sob. It was a laugh. 

At least this time, they hadn’t called her a freak. 

ii. daughter ( daugh·terˈdôdər,ˈdädər/noun ). a girl or woman in relation to her parents.

Her hands kept fidgeting in her lap. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t possibly be real. She couldn’t possibly be this lucky. She couldn’t possibly get this, she couldn’t possibly have this. She’d been escorted here, to this room, with the pale walls with the yellow wallpaper peeling slowly and long since faded from its original gaudy pattern. Her leg bounced and her hands fidgeted.

She was ten. And this was the first time she’d ever get to go home. 

Caroline and Albert didn’t look anything like her. Donald had fading ginger hair, was tall and broad shouldered. Caroline was short, and fat, with blonde hair and a long nose that kept her large glasses from plummeting right off her face. She wore a little Star of David around her neck that kept reflecting light off of its smooth surface. She had a kind smile on her face as she looked at Mafalda. She glanced at Albert, then back to Mafalda again. 

They both spoke in English, and Mafalda had no idea what they were saying. She looked back and forth between the two of them, and tried to smile, tried to follow the conversation, but she had no idea. At some point, Caroline put her hand out for Mafalda to take, and she did, rising from her seat and grabbing her backpack. Albert walked on her other side, and after a moment cautiously glancing at his hand swinging beside him as he walked, she reached out and took it. He looked down at their hands, then at her.

He smiled, and Mafalda felt like she was home already. 

iii. freak ( frēk/noun ). a person, animal, or plant with an unusual physical abnormality.

Mafalda thought she was going to cry.

The room was silent for a long time after Albus Dumbledore left. No one moved, no one spoke, no one so much as blinked. Or at least it felt that way to Mafalda, sitting on the sofa, waiting for the explosion even as she hoped it wouldn’t come. She was too young for this. She was too attached to this family to leave it. They would keep her. It was an adjustment, but they’d done the paperwork, they’d agreed to be her parents. They’d taken her from her home, from her country, from the only place she’d ever known to a country where she didn’t speak the language, where she didn’t know the culture or the way to act. But she’d learned, for them, for this life, for the chance of making this a home.

She finally grew tired of the waiting and cleared her throat. “I...”

“Don’t.” Caroline’s voice was soft and pained. Warning, as she looked to her husband before lowering her gaze to the floor. Was she so horrible to look at? Was it truly so terrifying to look her in the eye, or to look at her at all? “If you talk, it makes this real.”

“This is real.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.” Mafalda looked between the two of them. “I’ll show you, here.” She put out her hands, and after a moment, Albert’s watch started to tug at his wrist. He looked down at it, and it drifted off of his wrist to float in the air above him. He finally looked at her. He was always the more understanding one, the calmer one. The one that had taught her to write, to read. The one that had told her to have faith and to know that she was loved here, that this was her home. That she was safe here. And now he was staring at her like she was some kind of freak. 

You are a freak, she reminded herself as they continued to look at her. Her throat was dry. She shook her head. “I-I’m sorry for lying to you, I just didn’t think you’d want me if you knew. No one ever wanted me, you were the first people that--”

“You played us.” Albert’s words made her start, and Mafalda looked at him. His gaze was cold for the first time in her life when he looked at her. Mafalda wanted to run. “You knew this, and you never said anything.”

“What was I supposed to say?”

“The truth, Mafalda, like we always taught you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry--”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

She stopped trying to apologize. She just stared. “I’m your daughter,” she said quietly. “I’m still your daughter, you don’t have to-- please. I’m sorry, I won’t lie anymore, I’ll be good and I’ll stop and I won’t have to go to the school, I’ll control it and we can go back to things just how they were--”

“Things can’t go back to the way they were!” Mafalda flinched. She’d never been yelled at in this house. She was so small now, though, she was cowering as they both looked at her like some sort of criminal. Something not entirely human. Albert was standing now, and he towered above her. “You lied to us! You have this whole-- whole--” He shook his head, unable to find the words. “You’re not the girl we adopted. You’re not.”

“I am!” Mafalda was crying as she shook her head frantically, taking a step towards them. “I am, I’m--”

They stepped back. Caroline looked scared. Albert’s arm had already moved to push her back. Mafalda stopped. No one moved. The silence threatened to suffocate her, and she couldn’t move. 

“Go upstairs and pack your things,” Albert finally said. She wanted to breathe, but she couldn’t. “You’re going home.”

Her lower lip trembled. “I am home,” she whispered. Albert shook his head.

“Go pack your bags.”

iv. beginning ( be·gin·ningbəˈɡiniNG/noun ). the point in time or space at which something starts.

Mafalda still couldn’t believe that this was real. She couldn’t believe that she was actually going. She’d thought that chance, that opportunity, to go to Hogwarts had been discarded along with her surname Dyer, that once she was back in Spain, that was it. She was stuck. But Evelyn Hopkirk had swept into the group home like a robed Valkyrie, and within half an hour, Mafalda was back in England after the terrifying experience of apparating. 

She was still recovering from that, really. 

Evelyn had sent Mafalda’s luggage back to her house with some sort of magic-- though Mafalda would continue to think they were lost forever until she saw them again-- and taken her to Diagon Alley. It was easy to get overwhelmed. Especially when she came face-to-face with five eager looking kids outside the bookshop. 

“Is this Mafalda?” one of them asked eagerly, eyes on her. He was tall, taller than any man Mafalda had ever seen. Or maybe she just felt especially small here, she didn’t know. He was fair-skinned and fair-haired like Evelyn, and supporting a little girl on his shoulders. 

“Yes, this is Mafalda,” Evelyn said, keeping her hand on Mafalda’s shoulder. Mafalda wanted to hide. Though she had no idea how to even get anywhere to hide here. It was too much. There was too much. She couldn’t do this. She was ready to tell Evelyn to send her back. Evelyn shook her shoulder gently, and she looked at her again. Evelyn smiled at her. “Mafalda, these are the rest of my kids. This is Sam, and Jenny--” She pointed to the man that had spoken and the girl on his shoulders. “--my two bio kids, and then Raj, Marina, and Phichit are all adopted. Phichit is gonna’ be at Hogwarts with you, so you’ll have someone you know with you on the train.”

Phichit smiled at her. Mafalda couldn’t make herself smile back. She shrunk against Evelyn’s leg. She could disappear if she tried hard enough. 

“Are all of you going to school?” she asked, and Marina-- tall, olive-skinned, beautiful Marina, with her dark hair brushed flawlessly over her shoulder--chuckled and shook her head. 

“No, Sam, Raj, and I are all too old,” she told Mafalda sweetly. “Raj and Sam both went to Hogwarts, but I’m a squib--” Mafalda’s brows furrowed, and Marina elaborated quickly. “--My parents had magic, but I don’t, so I’m going to muggle-- non-magical-- school now. We just wanted to meet you.”

Mafalda was stunned. She looked at all of them slowly. “Really?”

Raj huffed with amusement and nodded his head towards the bookshop. “Come on, we’ll get your supplies and then we’re gonna’ get takeaway,” he told her. “Then you can get settled in; Marina’s gonna’ share her room with you so you don’t have to sleep on the sofa, which has a huge crater in it from someone’s large butt.” Sam glared. Jenny laughed. Raj grinned at both of them. 

Phichit was still looking at Mafalda. “Do you like pizza?” he asked her. 

Mafalda finally smiled. “Love it.”

Evelyn chuckled and took Mafalda’s hand, leading her through the door of Flourish and Blott’s. “Well then we better buy your books so we can all eat.”

v. out·sid·er ( outˈsīdər/noun ). a person who does not belong to a particular group.

“Give it back!”

Where were the matrons? Where was anyone that would help her? Where were the adults, the ones that were supposed to stop this? She could see one of them leaning against the wall, smoking her cigarette while she looked out at the yard. She was right there, and Mafalda was screaming, and she didn’t even look at her. The boys laughed and kept tossing her copy of A History of Magic back and forth over her head. Pages fluttered down around her, crumpled and torn from the bindings as they continued to throw it to each other. How dare they. 

The tallest boy laughed at her and caught the book. He had fat hands. Hands that hurt when they struck. He would never come near her again. She would make him hurt. She wanted him to hurt. Her hands clenched into fists. “Come and get it!” He tossed the book over her head, to his laughing friend, with pot-marked skin and teeth that were too large for his head. She hated him. She hated all of them. 

Pot mark caught the book and held it by the front cover. “What is this?” he taunted. “Your book of spells?” If only he knew. She would show him. 

“No, it’s in English, you moron,” she yelled at him, and took a step towards him that was a threat to her and a joke to him. “Now give it back!”

“What’s the matter, demon?” one of the other boys demanded as he caught the book. He had a short nose that made him look like a pig. “Good enough to go to a fancy English school, but not good enough to get a real family?”

“Stop it!”

“I bet she doesn’t even go to English school, I bet that’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie!”

“I bet they’re keeping you locked up somewhere, right?”

“No!”

                              “You’re a freak.”       “Why are you still here?”    

     “fuerza negra.”            "No one is ever going to adopt you.”           “You’re a demon!”

                    “I hope they send you away.”

                                         “They will. No one wants her here.”

            "Everyone knows you’re a freak.”                       “They should send you back.”

“Stop it!”

                                    “Freak!”

“Stop!”

Pig face tossed the book over her head, and her copy of A History of Magic skidded across the ground, scattering pages all over the grass. Mafalda turned back to face the boys, to make them pay, but they were already sprinting across the yard back towards the house. She turned back to her book and walked over to it, picking up the pages from the ground. She could feel the tears in her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry. She wasn’t going to cry. She sat down on the ground and started trying to put the pages back in order. There was nothing else to do.

vi. understanding ( un·der·stand·ingˌəndərˈstandiNG/adjective ). sympathetically aware of other people's feelings; tolerant and forgiving.

It was her first Christmas since the Dyers that she hadn’t spent at Hogwarts. 

The Hopkirks had all piled in front of the small television set to watch some movie, Mafalda wasn’t really paying attention to which one. There were people around her, and none of them thought she was any different from them. She was just Mafalda, or Falda, as they’d started calling her, and she was as close to one of them as she could get. Other kids had come and gone from the house, as Evelyn took in more kids and as some just passed through on their way to a better or more permanent home. Mafalda was just one facet of the Hopkirk group, part of the family for two days of the year before she had to go back to school or reality, but it was two days that she looked forward to for the rest of the year. Everyone was always home when she came through, and it was the best feeling in the world to be greeted by the full force of Evelyn’s family, waiting for her at the train station--this year with signs-- and making sure, along with Evelyn, that she was getting enough to eat and that she was happy at school and that she had everything that she could possibly wish for in those two days she had with them. 

But this year was special. She looked at the rest of the family jammed on the sofa, at Phichit asleep on her shoulder, at Marina combing her fingers through Jenny’s hair as the younger girl slept, at Sam and Raj trying to keep their popcorn throwing war out of Evelyn’s notice. At Will and Freddie, the two newest boys in the Hopkirk bundle, wiggling their toes while they examined their feet, freshly adorned with festive holiday socks. 

This was what home was supposed to feel like. And it didn’t matter that they didn’t actually celebrate Christmas, or that only two of them in the room actually had the same parents, or that Evelyn had given out her name to all of the kids to use and take in as their own. And Mafalda knew without a doubt that it would break her heart to get on the train at the end of the holiday. 

“Oh my god, Falda, are you crying at Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?”

Mafalda looked up, and Sam was looking at her. She hastily brushed her eyes and shook her head. “No. You hit me in the eye with your dumb popcorn war.”

“I did not.” Sam got up from the floor and looked at her. His holiday jumper looked ridiculous, and for such a large man, she was still trying to figure out how he’d ended up with an oversized jumper. “You know what happens when people cry at Christmas movies?”

“Do not say Hopkirk family pile.”

“Hopkirk family pile!”

It was like he’d blown a dog whistle at an animal shelter. The group looked over at Mafalda as one, and laughing and grinning, they all converged on her, squishing her against the couch cushions. Mafalda was laughing, even as she protested as well. “You’re crushing me, you weirdos, get off!”

Jenny laughed. “You’re crying at a cartoon, why are we weirdos?”

“Only a weirdo would ask that question.”

Mafalda laughed, and eventually just gave up trying to shove all of them off of her and just giggled breathlessly from the bottom of the pile. This was home. It was ridiculous and silly and slightly sweaty, but this was home. 

vii. family ( fam·i·lyˈfam(ə)lē/noun ). a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.

Mafalda wasn’t entirely certain what was happening. 

The Hopkirks didn’t always celebrate Christmas. Mafalda never celebrated Christmas. But of the group of them, Christmas had never been a common bonding factor between all of them. Sometimes they did, when there were new kids in the house, but this year, there weren’t any, and Mafalda was just perplexed when she walked into the house and everything was fantastically decorated with every sort of streamer and balloon and decoration that the family could find. She’d asked, and been greeted with Jenny’s wide smile, and her spin about the sitting room. It’s a day to celebrate! she told her, and that was it on questions. 

But Christmas Eve rolled around, and Evelyn told all of them to sit while she cleared up the table after dinner. No one was allowed to leave, or get up, or even help her with clearing away the dishes. So Mafalda sat, sitting on her hands, trying to keep herself from fidgeting. 

She had a bad feeling that she couldn’t totally get rid of. 

Not because any of them had done anything all that strange, but everyone seemed to be in on a joke that she wasn’t, and it made her nervous. Mafalda had found that surprise were never something she’d been good with, and this felt like waiting for a surprise. This could be the last Christmas she had here, or they could send her back to Hogwarts for the rest of the holiday. They’d made it through Hanukkah, so they were ready to ship her back now. She would take the socks that Evelyn had gotten her for Hanukkah and she would pack her bags and never step foot in the house again, one more pair of her dozens stashed away in the backpack she’d believed that she didn’t have to have with her at all times anymore, just in case they sent her away. Right now, her hands itched for it. 

Evelyn finally came back to the table, and placed an envelope of some indiscernible color in front of Mafalda. She stared at it. 

“It’s not a Howler, love, don’t look so scared,” Evelyn said as she sat back down at the head of the table, and touched her hand to Mafalda’s arm. “Open it.”

Mafalda looked around at the rest of the family. They were all smiling, in on the joke. She was leaving. She could tell it, she could sense it, they were going to send her away. She looked back at the envelope and steeled herself for the worst case scenario. She slid her finger under the seal and pulled the papers inside out. 

The words Adoption Certificate Application and her name neatly printed beneath Evelyn’s stared back at her. 

This wasn’t real. This couldn’t possibly be real. She looked up at Evelyn and waited for her to tell her it was a joke. But Evelyn just smiled at her and reached out to hold her hand. 

“You are so loved in this family,” she told her, even as Mafalda trembled in her seat. “You’ve been kind, and considerate, and you are so protective that you are one of us without even trying. We’ve all talked about it, and we all agreed on this. And if you’d let us, we would love to make you part of our family.” Her head tilted to the side a little bit, looked at Mafalda’s stunned and tearful face, and rubbed her hand against Mafalda’s shoulder. “You can think about it if--”

“No.” The word sent a shudder around the table, and Mafalda shook her head quickly, a small laugh escaping her lips. “No, no no no,  I mean I don’t need time to think about it. I would-- I would love to be part of this family. Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.”

There was a whoop that went up, and before she could so much as take another breath, the Hopkirk siblings-- her siblings-- were swarming around her and tugging her up to catch her in a giant hug. All of them were laughing, all of them were smiling, and holding onto her so tightly that she wasn’t sure if it was that or the papers still on the table that were making her breathless. Evelyn pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Welcome to the family, love.”

Another whoop went up, and Mafalda heard Sam shout, “Freddie, unleash the banner!” and suddenly the decorations made sense. It wasn’t for Christmas. It wasn’t for Christmas at all. There was a bit of a shuffle, and Mafalda looked up when the bottom of the banner hanging over the door was undone. It was obviously hand-drawn, and one of the ugliest things she had ever seen, with colored in bubble letters with stars surrounding all the letters. But it was the most beautiful thing to her, and she started laughing even as she burst into tears looking at the drawn words, 

                           WELCOME TO THE FAMILY, MAFALDA HOPKIRK !

Family. Mafalda Hopkirk. She was one of them, she was part of the family, she was here. For the first time in her life, Mafalda was part of a family that didn’t expect anything of her, that didn’t try and make her fit into their unit, thats love was only conditional. A family where her coming home was an excitement and an event that the whole family was always in on. A family that had made this hers, that had made it her theirs. For the first time in her life, this was the end of the road. 

She was Mafalda Hopkirk, and this was her family. 

She was Mafalda Hopkirk, and this was her home.