Chapter Text
1998
Jane Newman's life was perfectly ordinary. Her snug flat, located on the second floor of a charming building in the French capital, was equipped with a dated kitchenette, a narrow room that could, fortunately, fit a queen-sized bed, and a single tiny bathroom.
Jane's childhood bedroom was far bigger than her current flat. It was only natural that Jane was used to being able to go wherever she wanted. And given the fact her childhood bedroom had been swapped with an overpriced attic, it was no surprise that her days were spent best wandering the city's streets instead. The only downside was Jane's rather dodgy neighbourhood.
It was the kind of place where one learned to clutch a purse a little tighter and avoid the wrong alleyways after dark. She loathed the feeling of being forced home early, locked inside that flat like a bird in a cage. Winter, in particular, felt bleak. Winter season used to be filled with love and comfort as she was surrounded by the warmth of a warm cup or a family member's hug. Those familiar things were fading into distant, cold, and painful memory.
But when spring finally started to take root in the city as the sun began peaking behind the clouds, Jane had grown to not mind the lack of space as much. She found that the relatively large windows, which let generous amounts of sunlight bathe the wooden floors—and the wallpaper with decorative finishes on the ceilings made up for the horrible lonely months.
Slowly, a routine took shape. She woke with the first hint of dawn, savouring two shots of rich espresso alongside a divine chocolate pastry she always picked up the day before from the bakery across the street. The baker’s daughter, with her easy pearly smile and pointy nose, was the only local who spoke proper English. To Jane, she was the one sliver of normalcy she could find in her new home.
She found learning French exceptionally hard. It alienated her, cutting her off from conversations she longed to be part of. So, each morning after breakfast, she let the radio hum the news in French, followed by a few songs humming in the background as she got dressed for the day. She brushed her frizzy hair, and applied a light amount of makeup. Then, she set off for another long shift at the small flower shop around the corner.
Here there were no flashing signs to be found, nor a desperate street performer pouring their heart out for a few coins. She often took the metro to the other side of the city—the part that belonged to the polished, the wealthy, the ones who were indifferent to paying for an overpriced meal or an expensive polyester jumper. There, she knew she could speak English all she liked. It was also in a dimly lit pub on that side of town where she met a handful of people one lucky night—most of them Americans from families that could afford to send their children to an international private school.
It wasn’t long before Jane found herself adapting, shedding old habits and picking up new ones with ease. By her third month in Paris, she had overhauled most of her wardrobe. She couldn’t yet afford a designer handbag or tailored trousers just yet, but she made do with saving the money she earned arranging bouquets at events for clients Margot, the baker's daughter, connected her to.
Her new friends, effortlessly elegant, had made their opinions known early on.
Their noses turned up slightly, their gazes assessing as they asked, “What kind of place lets people dress like that?”
Jane had simply shrugged off her hometown near London as dull and unremarkable, a place where fashion and self-expression were afterthoughts, reserved for those with the luxury to care.
Drunk on red wine, she confessed that her future there had already crumbled. She hadn’t bothered finishing her last years of secondary school, so there was nothing waiting for her back home except a dead-end existence. And even if she had finished, she never could have surrendered herself to the corporate grind.
No, her days were better spent chasing fleeting thoughts, allowing her mind wander into its deepest, most absurd corners without fearing the consequences.
In her eyes, Paris was a place that welcomed those who chose the untrodden path. A city where dreams weren’t immediately dismissed as childish. Where the seasons were gentler, kinder. Here, spring brought the trees back to life; summer stretched on just long enough; autumn painted the streets in warm hues; and even winter, despite everything, felt softer than it ever had in England.
Yet she always wonderedn why did they keep her around. She knew she was out of her depth, so why did they like her?
The truth was, her name wasn’t even Jane Newman.
Her father, also a florist—not an accountant—had been the first to call her Flower before anyone else had. And her life had once been simple. Eleven years old, a student at Hogwarts, her world unfurling like a storybook. Until sixteen, when everything changed.
Her blood had marked her as a target.
The life she had built, the friends she had loved, it all had to be abandoned. Left behind like a severed limb. A new name. A fabricated history. A story to tell the strangers she met in bars while everything back home burned.
In the mornings, before leaving the flat, she would pause by the mirror hanging beside the door. She never smiled. Never cried. She only stared, searching her reflection for something familiar.
Then the emotions would come crashing in, a flood she could never quite brace for.
It gutted her that she barely recognised herself anymore.
It gutted her that she had to wander a city full of indifferent strangers, trying to pass as one of them with her butchered French and her borrowed life.
But what gutted her most was that she had been away from Fred for months now.
Sometimes, in the quiet moments before sleep took her, she wondered if any of it had been real. Had Fred been real? Or had he been nothing more than a figment of a life that had never truly belonged to her?
She let herself imagine, just for a moment, what things might have been like if Voldemort had never returned. If she had finished school. If she had stayed. If she had never become Jane Newman.
But she had. And she knew, deep down, that if she had to bury Flower to survive, she would do it a thousand times over.