Memories Of Shattered Innocence
Harrie was at the statue within seconds. She didn’t know exactly how she did it, but ever since she started recognizing places as a child, she could do it. All she had to do was imagine she was there.
It wasn’t apparating exactly; Tommy had told her about it. Wizards and witches of age could apparate, but it involved some sort of complicated magic, and Harrie was never taught magic. She just had it.
Harrie looked around; he wasn’t there yet. She looked at the muggles. They looked just like the ones on the telly. Children playing on the playground with their parents watching them. Young couples walking around, talking, laughing, and being in love; some even had some kind of food in their hands which Harrie recognized as ice cream. It was her first time being outside where people could see her. They weren't allowed to go outside of their house. So Harrie had created an invisibility robe for herself, one which enabled her to be outside sometimes. She had gotten the idea from a story Tommy used to read to her. The death brothers or something, she couldn’t remember. Though the one in the story was a cloak, but Harrie had figured a robe was more practical.
When they were younger, after ……., their father had brought her and Tommy to Maratea, which they later found out was a city in Italy, and left them there. But not before creating a magical wall around the house they were residing in, one that they wouldn’t be able to pass through. But he had underestimated Harrie’s powers.
She could easily go anywhere she wanted, and she got into a lot of trouble the one time that her father had found out about it.
She remembered it clearly, she was eight years old. Harrie had come home exhausted, after playing campana (hopscotch) with muggle kids from the neighborhood all day, to find her father sitting angrily on the couch, expecting her. Tommy, who was eleven at the time, was lying on the ground in front of him, holding his knees with his arms. His eyes were closed, and traces of pain were clear on his face. There was a pile of puke right next to him. Harrie had seen this view many times before. Her father used to use it on……
Tommy was tortured with the Cruciatus. Harrie was angry, really, really angry. In the past, she didn’t know what exactly was happening; she couldn’t completely grasp the concept of torture. She was simply too young. But now, now she knew.
Harrie was looking at her father with hatred, clenching her small fists so hard her fingernails made marks on her skin. The same nails eight-year-old Harrie was painting earlier that day with markers; traces of neon yellow still visible on her fingers despite Tommy’s best efforts to remove them.
Tom Riddle stood up from the couch, keeping his dark brown eyes trained on his daughter. His body towered over her. “I thought I had made myself clear when I ordered you to stay within the threshold,” he said calmly. Cleaning up the vomit with a silent charm. He gave a disgusted look to his eleven-year-old son before turning back to Harrie. “I was the one that was out, why did you hurt him?” asked Harrie, trying very hard not to cry. “He is,” he paused, walked towards Tommy, and kicked him with his foot. Tommy’s body moved, and he let out a grumble of pain. He still hadn’t composed himself enough to sit down. So now he was lying on his back, all four limbs spread out. “Expendable.” her father continued. What? Harrie thought. Expendable? He is your fucking son!
She wanted to make him feel it, to make him suffer. Her father had never used the curse on her before, and Tommy would never tell her how it felt. So she couldn’t exactly recreate the curse. But Harrie was a very creative girl. She had noticed that muscles were twitching under the curse. She had also seen a movie very recently in which one of the characters had tetanus. So naturally, Harrie had read up on it.
A big grin had appeared on Harrie’s small face, showing the gap in place of the tooth she had lost a few days ago. She focused her eyes on her father’s and imagined him under the Cruciatus. Imagined every single one of his muscles firing neuro-somethings constantly without relaxing and causing unimaginable pain.
Within seconds, Tom Riddle was on the ground next to his son, crying out in pain. His back was arched outwards just as Harrie had seen in the pictures in the books she had read on infections. Harrie kept this up for a couple of minutes and wanted to continue; his screams were like a melody to her ears, or at least, that was how she remembered it. But at that moment, Tommy managed to sit up and instantly threw up again, causing Harrie to turn her focus on him.
As Harrie ran towards her big brother, their father’s screams stopped. Harrie sat next to Tommy, holding his hand, looking at him with love and compassion. “Are yo….” Harrie doesn’t remember what happened next. As she was attending to her brother, their father had entered her mind, causing the lapse in her memory.
When she was conscious again, her father was gone, and she found Tommy in his room on his bed. The door was half open, so she walked in and sat on Tommy’s bed. Tommy was facing the wall, so he didn’t see her come in, but as he felt her weight on his bed, his body tensed. He quickly got himself into a sitting position, as far away from Harrie as possible, holding his knees in his arms. He had been crying, Harrie noticed.
“Get out,” he said as firmly as he could manage, but his voice was trembling nevertheless. Harrie furrowed her brows. “Tommy, what happened?” she asked, holding out a hand. “I said get the fuck out,” Tommy snapped. Harrie was shocked. She held back a tear and said, “Tommy, I don’t remember what happened, did he…” but Tommy cut her off, screaming “Get out, get out, get out!” Harrie stood up quickly, hurt visible in her eyes. She turned around and ran out of her older brother’s room.
She ran into her own room and into her closet, closing the doors.
There in the dark, Harrie held herself in a similar position to that of her big brother’s, knees in her arms, and she started crying. But not before creating a silencing bubble around herself.
She calmed down after what felt like hours. Harrie stood up and exited her closet. It was dark out. She went to Tommy’s room just to find out that he had locked his door. Harrie could easily just apparate inside Tommy’s room but Tommy had told her before that just because she can do things, doesn’t mean that she had to do them. He had told her that when someone had locked their door it meant that they didn’t want to be disturbed and that she had to respect that. Later when she discovered that she could read people’s minds, he had told her that people are entitled to the privacy of their own thoughts and she should never pry in anyone’s mind. Tommy had even told her to keep this discovery hidden from their father.
Harrie went to the freezer and took out a chocolate ice cream. She closed her eyes and apparated to the roof. It was where she would always go when Tommy was mad at her for something she had done. She sat down and opened the lid of the ice cream. She took out a spoonful and shoved it all in her mouth, stretching her cheeks.
She closed her eyes and thought about the last thing she could remember of that night. When she opened her eyes, the past was screening before her.
She saw her father arching and screaming. Saw herself standing there laughing. Saw Tommy sitting down and throwing up. Saw herself running towards her brother. And then… Harrie saw herself standing up, holding her hand over Tommy. He began screaming; it was the worst thing that Harrie had ever heard. She closed her eyes; she wanted to stop watching, but she had to know what had happened. Harrie forced herself to open her eyes. Past Harrie in front of her, the one on the screen floating in the air, was still torturing past Tommy. Harrie looked around and saw her father, rather his unconscious body, on the ground right where she had been torturing him.
That night in 1968 was one of the worst nights Harrie had experienced. It was also a very enlightening night. That is the night that Harrie knew her father could enter her mind and control her actions. It was the night that Harrie figured out she could create new magic and that she only had to learn details about the magic she wanted to create. It was the night that Harrie came up with the idea of cloning herself, which she was still working on, so she could go out. It was the night she first committed a crime. It was the night that her brother was first afraid of her.
“You Harrie?” a voice brought her back to the present.