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Deep Roots	By : FemmeBono Category: HP Canon Characters paired with Original Characters > Het - Male/Female Views: 3186 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: No I'm not making money off JK Rowling's work, this is pure (free) fanfic and I own nothing to do wif Harry Potter stuffs.

Chapter List
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Deep Roots
Cht. 1, Taking flight

Atlanta, Georgia

mid April, 1971

It was quite some time before anyone noticed the swaddled infant laying on
a chair in the busy waiting room of Grady Memorial Hospital. No one at all had
seen the bleeding man stagger in with her, utter a brief sob as he laid her down
gently, only to stagger back out through the ambulance entrance.

"How old you think she is, Doc Broward?" asked Lesliann
Caruthers, head nurse in the ER, as she fingered the closest thing they had to
ID, a tiny silver bracelet with the name "Alyssa" etched into it.

"Oh...say, looks of her, she's about 16 months-old," said the
man, still dressed for the golf course despite having been called in hours
earlier for an emergency child birth. "You better handle her, Lessie, and
give Child Services a call. I'm on m' way to OR for that last battery case come through just now. Ole Doc Powell ought'n to be around here somewhere. She still
needs to be examined for anythin' might be internal."

"Will do, boss," nodded the nurse, tutting away at the still
frightened baby, and she began checking the ER for the other doctor. Within
hours, tiny baby Alyssa Doe, as she was named by the social worker, was given a
clean bill of health and quietly entered the system for the Clayton County
division of Child Services.

***

Augusta, Georgia

early August, 1995

For months, Alyssa Newland had been doubting her skills as a reporter.
Research was perhaps the most important of all, and one she had considered
sharply honed, yet when it came to her own life, she was starting to think her
observational and information gathering aptitude was now abject failure. She
scanned morosely through the micro-fiche for what felt like the thousandth time,
yawning widely as the slide came to rest on the obituary section of the Atlanta
Times-Journal. She had begun the search for her birth family since the
nagging feeling of needing answers and a sense of belonging once again reared
itself. Time and again she had scoured the papers from around April '71 looking
for some trace of an unfit mother who had to give her up or parents who had
died, leaving behind their beloved child. Strangely, despite checking police
blotters and obituaries, she had found nothing. No one knew who had left her in
the waiting room, and no one had answered the Atlanta Times story about
an abandoned baby. Not so much as an anonymous tip to the police hotline listed
at the end of the feature.

Thinking of the worn article she kept tucked in her purse, Alyssa stiffened
her shoulders and scanned over the rest of the page. And cursed loudly enough to
elicit a scandalized "shh!" from the old biddy of a librarian. There,
at the top of the page was an article on a search for a missing child. As she
read on she could see why it didn't rate the front page. Some British nationals
had been searching for a couple of weeks by that point trying to discover the
whereabouts of a baby girl whose parents had been killed in a car accident in
Atlanta. Intrigued, Alyssa kept reading, humming low in her throat as her
interest was piqued even further. Archie and Grace Evans, it was believed, had
brought their child on a business trip with them, a sixteen month-old named Alyssa
Rose. The investigation was called off, however, when her car seat was found in the woods
on a subsequent search quite a way from where the wreck had occurred. Given the evidence of the wreck, the coroner had gone ahead and declared her dead even without the presence of a body. Her hands now clammy,
a sob caught in her throat, Alyssa printed the page and tried to steady herself
enough to dial her boss.

"Augusta Chronicle. How may I direct you?"

"Mr. Reems' office, please," she said a little shakily as she
glanced at her watch. Seconds ticked by.

"This is Reems."

"Louis?"

"Yeah, Alyssa."

"That feature series we talked about a while back? On the difficulties
of tracing back biological roots and reuniting with birth families... I found my
lead."

"On your family? Atta girl! So where are you off to on the company
dime?"

She steeled herself and took a breath. "Looks like England, sir."

Minutes later, after assuring Reems of her seriousness and resolve, with an
equal measure of cajoling and brainstorming for multiple stories to spin off
from the trip, Alyssa called the woman she had considered a mother ever since
her freshman year of high school.

"Mom?" she said, tremulously. "I think I found them."

She heard the voice catch at the other end before Hettie Newland spoke.
"Do you want me to go with you?"

Alyssa chewed her lip for a moment before she spoke. "I, um...I think I
need to do this on my own."

"Ever the independent one," her mother replied. Yet Alyssa knew the
tone, the wry humor and easy understanding. "You'll at least have some
closure, there. It's high time. So where you off to?"

"The UK, of all places."

"Hmph!" Hettie chuckled at last. "Well that would explain the
anglophilia. That's somethin' honey."

"Yeah."

"Well, baby girl. Get on over there and see what's what. I'll be here
when you get back."

"I love you, Mom."

"Love you, honey."

By the next morning she was stowing her carry-on and thanking all that was
holy that she had a small frame and could easily fit into the cramped
economy-class seat. She sat back, her Discman at the ready with a handful of cds
of British bands to set her mood for the trip, and reflected on the winding
trail that had led her life to this point. Orphaned, as she had always assumed,
a true product of the system who spent years in and out of foster homes. Some
bad, some worse. A nearly straight-A student who worked her way through college
in three years' time. And, more recently, a divorc�e.

Divorced after only two years of marriage. After coming face to face with the
truth of her husband's betrayal. After rounding a corner at the local hospital
and finding him wrapped around one of his nurses. At first, naturally, she had
been enraged with Jamie, and at Dorsey, the petite perky R.N., once she understood the pitying stares she had been getting from his colleagues for so long.
In fact, there had been quite a scene in the obstetrics ward that day. Yet in
the six months that followed, Alyssa had worked straight through her mad stage and hoped she was
approaching acceptance at last. She still remembered the day she told her mother
that she had found out Dorsey was pregnant. "It's my own fault," she
remembered saying, then shook her head as she watched her mother's eyes well up
with pity. "No, I mean it really is my fault, Mom. When I found out he was
cheating, I went home and took one of my sewing needles to his condoms. I poked a
hole in every one of those little suckers. Used the tiniest needle too, so the
hole was small enough you couldn't see. "

"Alyssa!" her mother said on a shocked gasp. "Why this is
scandalous, honey!"

"Well, I figured she wanted herself a doctor and he was so damned
determined to prove his virility, I thought I'd help 'em both out--and maybe they'd learn
a lesson in the process."

"Why, hadn't you thought--what about the baby?"

"I imagine it'll be a real good lookin' asshole eventually. Genetics kinda dictate that."

At the thought, Alyssa smiled smugly to herself, leaning her head against the
miniscule window as she watched the plane taxi down the runway. In a mere eight
hours, she may finally reunite with the last remaining birth relative she had, a
sister. Petunia Dursley, n�e Evans. And maybe the pieces of the puzzle would
fall together, maybe her dreams would make sense.
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Deep Roots