Chapter Text
Piper Williams is born in London, on a rainy day in early November in a hospital that’s not on any map. It’s an old, tall, narrow building she spends her childhood in, where the pipes should leak, but don’t, and there should be far less space than there is and the stairway should be cold and drafty but it’s always warm instead. She’s born with a funny itch somewhere behind her heart to a quiet mother and a loud, laughing father and maybe it’s for the best that she doesn’t remember those early years of life. That it has the same fuzzy, dark quality that a dreamless sleep has. She’s born in London and she’s four in her absolute earliest memory of life or maybe she’s three. She doesn’t really know, early childhood memories are funny like that. That first memory has a dreamlike quality to it that only gets worse as they years pass and new memories are made that take precedence over it, but it’s still important. For her and her family and everything that will come later in her life.
She’s chasing bubbles through her house on wobbly legs and giggling wildly as they change colors before popping when she touched them. Then she’s giggling louder because of the pretty musical noises they make when they pop. She’s giggling and joyful and the itchy feeling behind her heart feels warmer than usual as her father laughs with her from his seat in the sitting room where he’s using his wand to make the bubbles for her. His laughter makes her laugh even more and she doesn’t remember, looking back years later, much of what he said to her then. But she does remember the warmth in his voice and how when little gold sparks started appearing in the air around her, appearing in time with her laughter, how he’d picked her up and swung her around in excited. How he’d called her mum into the room, yelling excitedly and promised her extra biscuits if she could do that again.
She remembers her mum’s bright, happy brown eyes shining with pride when the sparks keep happening. She remembers being kissed on the forehead by her mother and she remembers how safe she’d felt in her father’s arms. How the sheer amount of joy she’d felt had made that warmth in her chest feel like a living breathing thing instead of an itch no amount of scratching could relieve.
When she’s older, and things are much darker than this moment in time, that’s the feeling she holds onto. That’s the memory she uses to remind herself that there’s good things left in the world and in her life. When she’s older and this memory faded, she’ll cling to it far harder than she ever imagined. At the moment though, she’s just a child, with big blue eyes and dark brown hair held back by a big red bow, in her father’s arms and giggling in response to her parent’s happiness.
She’s a happy child. There’s nothing particularly terrible about her childhood. It’s average in all honesty. She’s not beaten or abused. No parents die too young. There’s no great tragedy or trauma that defines her childhood, something that, looking back, makes her feel profoundly lucky. She’s no child in need of saving or fixing. She’s just a little girl that makes pretty gold sparks when she’s happy and makes vases explode on the occasions that she’s upset. Something that her parents never bat an eyelash at, just wave a wand lazily at the broken vase— always the same one and for the life of them, they can never figure out what she has against it, it’s just a plain blue vase— and it puts itself back together like it never happened.
Piper Williams grows up loved and doted on and entirely unaware that if she’d been born a little earlier, she’d have different memories of her parents, where they were thin from stress and fear and her father wouldn’t sleep for days at a time because of nightmares and her mother was scared to go outside, especially at night. Piper Williams grows up loved and sheltered from the bad memories that plague her parents. She knows— in that distant, uncaring way of children— that there were bad people who did bad things and her parents feared and hated them and even fought them, but beyond that, she doesn’t know much. Two half-blood parents means she’s sheltered from the games of Purebloods and the plight of muggleborns— terms she knows in the way she knows what a dog is or a cat, because she learned them before her first clear memory formed, heard them even if she didn’t understand them then. She’s a sheltered child, but a happy one.
Even when she’s sent to primary school, where there’s no other children who make sparks and she’s quickly labeled a strange child by her teachers and a freak by her peers. She doesn’t really mind, her parents make sure she knows it’s because she’s different than them and different is good, but she mustn’t let the other children see the things she can do. It’s not allowed. Never allowed. Piper doesn’t really understand that, too young and innocent, but she knows to obey when her mum’s voice is so stern, so serious. When her father’s eyes are sharp and his mouth thin. She knows to listen. Even if it means she can’t show her few friends the practice wand her parents gave her to have her learn basic wand movements. It doesn’t do much beyond spark green when she does the motions right and says the incantation— a word she’s terrible at pronouncing as a child— correctly, but she loves it and wishes she was allowed to show it off.
She spends her free time as she grows up in Diagon Alley while her father works in the Ministry and her mother works in Flourish and Botts. Chasing stray cats and and darting in and out of stores until she finally tires herself out enough to sit in the children’s section of Flourish and Botts and read the books there until her mum’s shift is over and they go to meet her father after he’s done in the ministry for the day. She has no idea what it is he does there, but mum tells her it’s a secret and that it’s important so she knows it has to be something amazing. She’s just not allowed to know what, much to her astounding displeasure.
Piper Williams is born on a rainy early November day to a half-blood wizard names Noah Williams with a knack for charms and his quiet, clever half-blood wife, Isla Thompson-Williams at St. Mungo’s hospital. She’s a witch and perfectly aware of it because it’s just a fact of life in her childhood. Piper Williams has no tragic backstory and no true hardships growing up and it’s a blessing for her that takes her a long time to understand isn’t a blessing everyone receives. There’s not a whole lot truly memorable about her in the minds of her teachers and the students around her aside from the fact she’s a strange little girl with a red bow in her hair. And when, at eleven years old, she disappears from the muggle schools forever, no one really notices except a few muggle children that were something like friends to the strange little girl. Piper Williams doesn’t mind that. Too busy with magic and the excitement of finally getting to purposefully use said magic to give it a second thought.