Chapter Text
Agnes' first accidental magic was not at all spectacular or memorable.
When Agnes was (physically) a seven-year-old, she was inconceivably, not a fussy child.
To say the least, she was very well behaved, and was the little lady of the house. However, the level of maturity she showed unnerved the adults around her a number of times.
It's not that she deliberately tries to hide that she isn't the average normal child, it seemed a herculean effort to maintain an infantile behavior around everyone. The reason for this... unprecedented behavior is not because she is a budding psychopath, sociopath or some rising genius. It was in fact (you might have already guessed it), because she had memories of a previous life, and this made her life absolutely weird. The only consolation she had was that Agnes didn't remember much of her snot-nosed earlier years, it might have something to do with her baby-toddler mental faculties unable to comprehend the complexities of a past life.
Sheesh.
Not that Agnes wanted to recount how she conquered her bowel movements or struggled with diction. Nor trying to plod on her own chubby limbs, which in turn had resulted in plenty of diaper accidents and bruises. That wasn't fun.
In any case, Agnes had survived seven years at the very least and please don't mind her patting herself in the back for that one. She had to congratulate herself on this if no one else would understand. And if that doesn't sound complicated already, she doesn't know what else will.
(Well, she goes to stand corrected if only because fate seems to decide that her life should be crazier than it already is.)
So, here she was, of sound health and at peace with her current crazy life. To have screeching, snot faced, whiny cousins hoisted onto her. While the parents went about their business. Rubbish.
You see, there are nannies and servants around, but with no immediate urgency they decided to let the rug rats and tots hang about together. It was also easy to see that most of the nannies were utterly exhausted by the never-ending energy of the gremlin toddlers.
So they hung back with rattlers, nappies and bottles in bags with nips at hand.
Which meant Agnes was in the epicentre of the whole utter frenzy.
Wiped out from all of it after half an hour, Agnes climbed a high sofa to have a private space of her own.
On usual parties, she would usually hang around older teens and they would tolerate her existence because she was quiet and cute. Mostly, she guessed, it was because her father is Zecharias Burs, oil company extraordinaire of British Oils.
But it helped that she was cute.
However, today since her parents were hosting for the members of parliament, the pre-teens and teenagers were decidedly absent.
She asked her mum, Julianna Burs if she could be in the drawing room during the session, she could then play out her boredom on the piano. Which in retrospect, was idiotic to suggest. Because while the drawing room may not be very near the billiard, the plinks could sometimes reverberate through the halls.
So, her mum quickly shot her attempts down when she suggested, "Some ambience, perhaps, mummy?", and ushered her into the makeshift nursery, amused but in a hurry to return to her guests. Kissing the top of her head she told her to "be good" and left her and the nannies to the tender mercies of screaming toddlers.
So, as she settled down on the sofa the kids couldn't climb and watched them crawl, toddle and harrumph at the nannies about the absence of their mothers.
Agnes in her agony, wished with all her heart that the earplugs she kept on the dresser for these unforeseen circumstances would appear. So she could block out their screams.
And plop, there it was, in her lap.
She dazedly wondered if a guardian angel heard her prayers and helped her. Not knowing that this unremarkable happenstance was because of a particular reason. One that many would say, doesn't exist. Would call you barmy, if you insist.
But Agnes didn't think much of it until she was ten.