HARRY POTTER WLoF REWRITE PART 1 CHAP 7

The group of teens should have felt odd, following a grown man to a house. But they didn't. Right now for the boys, questions were filling their heads faster than they could process them. For the girls however, they simply had simple questions that had been sitting in the darkest corners of their minds, yearning to be free but because Moria always dropped the subject, had never been answered.

Slowly and silently they entered the house. Mitchell looked up from the dishes he had been cleaning and looked at them with confusion. At the sight of his older brother however the confusion changed to crystal clarity.

They knew.

"How?" he merely asked. Martin looked at Mitchell with a type of morbid amusement.

"How do you think? The hero blood in her activated and she nearly drowned and died of exposure." Martin replied almost making it sound like a joke. Mitchell sighed, cursing softly.

"We really need to enlighten her that one of these days she's going to die if she keeps doing this." Mitchell grumbled out. Martin laughed pulling out a cup to get some water

"So…those scars?" Alice finally managed to ask, snapping the pair out of their conversations. Mitchell and Martin glanced at each other as though silently goading the other to start. Finally Mitchell sighed and glanced at the group of teens, wiping his hands dry with a tea towel.

"Before you even suspect…no…none of the ones that had been introduced to you all were the ones that harmed her like that. Neither were her parents. They loved her more than life itself." Mitchell said.

"Yeah….more than anything." Martin echoed softly, almost as though he was in pain.

"Then who did?" Lily finally asked. Mitchell and Martin looked at each other again.

"Before we explain how she got her scars, we need to tell you her past…at least most of her past." Mitchell explained and stood up before going to a closet and reaching in it to retrieve a small box. He returned to the table, placing it down and then opening the box. They peered over it and saw it was filled with old photos of the Prescott family. Searching for several minutes he finally pulled out an older photo.

On the photo was a couple standing next to each other. A wedding photo. The woman was wearing a simple white gown; no jewels covered the dress, her blonde hair halfway up and her blue eyes glittering in happiness. A man stood next to her, his long brown hair tied in a short ponytail, wearing a dark tuxedo. His arms were wrapped around her waist and his brown eyes were staring at the photographer with unimaginable happiness.

"This is Mable and Maarten, Moria's parents. Maarten was my younger brother." Martin said. "The youngest out of all our siblings and he was a wild child." Mitchell chuckled at that description.

"Wild? Completely uncontrollable is more like it." Mitchell corrected. "He was more of a trickster, and would do anything for a laugh. But staying here was never in his plans. Wanted to leave our home and make a life in London…our parents weren't too happy about that. But they let him do what he wanted." Martin continued.

"He wanted to be a musician. It was difficult, really difficult. He had to do other jobs to get an income. But he loved it. Singing I mean. And there he met her." Mitchell said tapping the woman in photograph. "He met Mable Ellesmere. She sang songs in different languages. And was good at it too." Mitchell said smiling at the memory of listening to Mable sing.

"Maarten was entranced by her beauty and her voice. She could make a crowd swoon and follow her music. The same went for Mable. Maarten…had this connection with the crowd. His music really got to the people who would come to the concerts. And like that Mable and Maarten clicked. It didn't take them long for him to drag her back here and introduce her to us." Martin said and couldn't help but chuckle when Maarten had come up for Christmas with a blonde haired woman walking behind him.

"They dated for several years before finally tying the knot. About 8 months later…Moria was born after 12 hours of labor, several broken fingers, a concussion, and a crack in the hospital wall from a tray." Mitchell said. He smiled thoughtfully. "It took just one second and she already had Maarten wrapped around her finger. Guess that goes with all dads and their children. But even with their daughter, they didn't stop their singing career. They just brought her along." He finished and fished out another picture and then showed it to the group. The all blinked in shock.

Moria was only a toddler in this picture but she had a smile on her face that was bigger than they had ever seen on her. Her chubby arms were wrapped around Maarten and Mable's necks as Maarten held his daughter up.

"She was three in this picture…see the difference right?" Mitchell asked. The group just nodded.

"Back then…the Moria you all know didn't exist. That Moria didn't begin its' existence until she was five…till that day…that horrid day."

"We're not sure what happened. Neither is Moria. The last thing she remembers is Maarten turning around to protect her from the car wreck. She blacked out after that. When she came to…she was at the bottom of the cliff. Among car debris. Now that I think about it…her magic probably manifested right then to protect her. But it couldn't protect her from everything." Martin said looking at the picture…probably the last picture of Moria ever happy.
"Maarten died instantly, snapped his neck after he was thrown from the vehicle and into a tree. He didn't feel any pain. But Mable…Mable wasn't as fortunate. She stayed in her seat, but the hull of the vehicle landed on her stomach down to her feet. She was pinned and she was mortally wounded." Martin said not looking at the group but he could hear startled gasps coming from Lily and Alice. "Those scars on Moria's palms are testament to that."

"When we got word of the accident…we all rushed to the hospital to find out about survivors. Moria was the only one." Mitchell said glancing at Martin. The accident had been another knife plunged into his heart as a year earlier; Martin's own family had been killed in a similar accident. Mitchell glanced back at the group. He sighed as though he was tired.

"Unfortunately, that isn't where she got her scars from. Except for her hands…she was relatively untouched." Martin said, rubbing a hand across his face. "We figure that her magic protected her and manifested itself to heal her."

"I…It isn't?" Lily finally managed to voice.

"After the funeral…we debated on who would take care of Moria. She was a young girl…reeling from the death of her parents. And most of us just weren't ready to deal with that yet. So we decided on my brother…my youngest brother and Maarten's twin…Malcolm." Martin said, the words feeling like venom to him. If they had stepped up Moria wouldn't have become like this. They would have had the same Moria that had been there for five years.

"Malcolm was…different. He was always a bit of a loner, but out of all us…he seemed to have been handling the deaths the best, so we thought that he would have been the perfect choice. However what we didn't know was that Malcolm wasn't right in the head. We didn't know for our entire lives or for the three years that Moria lived with him."

"Know what?"

"Malcolm...there is something wrong with him. Malcolm…decided that no emotions were better than having any. Those scars were…punishments…for her showing emotions. Anger, sadness, fear, happiness, any emotion that he considered useless…he taught her that if she showed those emotions he would hurt her. Badly." Martin said softly. He looked up and glanced at the group.

All of their faces were pale. Alice and Lily looked like they couldn't decide whether to scream or puke. The boys seemed to be trying to think of anything. Mitchell winced.

"It-!"

"You know if you're going to tell a story of my life, why don't you let ME tell them?" A voice interjected. They all turned to see Moria standing there, resting the side of her body on the door jam, her arms crossed staring at her uncles angrily.

"M-Moria…is…is that true?!" Lily finally managed to stammer out. Mori closed her eyes, smirked and let out a bitter laugh.

"I could say no, that it isn't, but that would be lying wouldn't it?" Moria responded, her face cool, almost in a bitter tone. "Yes. I lived with a man that made me sleep in a cupboard, and who would beat me to make sure my emotions wouldn't come out. Some days he would use a kitchen knife, others if he was drunk or angry enough he would beat me with his belt till I bled." Moria said shrugging at the shocked faces. "I got used to it."

"That doesn't make it right!" Sirius finally spat out. Moria stared at him, her eyes sharp with anger and pain.

"Because of that man, I wasted three years living in a world controlled by fear and oppression. I KNOW that it wasn't right." She snapped, moving away from the doorjamb. "Don't make assumptions of what I do or don't know!!" She hissed out harshly, before turning around, marching out the door and slamming it shut.

---

She was angry. Now beyond angry.

Humiliated.

She sighed, shaking her head as tears formed in her eyes. No she would not cry. She wouldn't. But no matter what she did, she couldn't shake the sight of her friends…most likely her former friends…faces as they sat listening to her past. The horrified looks.

She continued hiking through the woods before finding a place that she always would go to have moments of solitude. Grunting she climbed up a tree, sliding onto the branch and staring out into the forest, her emotions swirling around. Why…why couldn't she have told them? Why? Because she was weak, and she was-

"-et go, Jack!" a voice interrupted her thoughts. Blinking she looked down and saw a young girl arguing with another man. Several other men had surrounded her.

That was never a good thing.

"Jack please! Let's go back to the group!" the girl pleaded.

"No way Dolly! I've had it with your hard-to-get attitude. Tell me right now, or my boys will teach you a lesson!"

"You're scaring me Jack!" the girl pleaded and was about to scream as the men got closer to her.

"Alright that's enough." Moria finally growled out, jumping down and landing on one of the men. "If you haven't heard, tourists aren't allowed here. Go back." She ordered. The men scoffed at her and one walked up to her intending to shove her away. Bad move on his part. Before he knew had been slammed in the chin by a closed fist and he was out.

"I will tell you again. Go. Back. I'm not in the mood to deal with bastards like you." She hissed out. The others looked at her and released the sobbing girl who did as Moria ordered. She ran back the way she came from. The boys however didn't move.

"What are you gluttons for punishment? I said-!" she began to growl out before an arm wrapped around her neck and hoisted her off of her feet. She cursed herself in not making sure that the other wasn't actually out.

"Well now…we're going to have a nice…chat…with you. You should have minded your own business." The boy most likely known as Jake said and with a snap, him and his two cronies, one holding the now struggling Moria, they walked deeper into the forest.