secrets and shadows
This is a story, one about a Harry Potter, though not one that might be seen as the Harry Potter. This is not a story about eyes of emerald and windswept hair of jet, nor eyes of hazel and static hair, nor hair of warm fire and eyes of ocean blue.
This is a story of a boy with arsenic in his eyes and shifting shadows on his head, a girl with lightning-strewn strands and eyes with hints of cyanide, and yet another boy with icy eyes and fire’s pain intermixed with its warmth. And, perhaps yet one more, a boy with marrow of moss and mycelium, fungal growth spread through his flesh as threads through a tapestry.
}-(O)-{
Harry Potter has known since he could know that something was missing from him. He could feel it in the looseness of his bones, the gaps between his flesh, the hollows in his heart. He has known since he could know that he did not fit in his body as he should, that something terribly wrong had happened before he could know.
He has also known since he could that his Aunt and his Uncle were liars and family, but not liars and kin. He has known that they fear him for the unknown that enwreathes his being and the slightly too-sharp teeth that glint in his mouth. He knows they think him broken, that they neglect and manhandle him for their fear.
And then he meets a man with bones too small for his skin and flesh too tight to hold what Harry knows he is missing. He meets a thing, skin without bones, a part of a concept made manifest. He meets a boy with hair of silver and threads of hate and fortune spread through his flesh, writhing and twisting, biting and whispering.
He meets a man with flesh that should be bone and bones that should be flesh, who has a hole instead of a heart and nails instead of claws.
He knows he will grow to like this world of hidden cracks and crawling shadows.
}-(O)-{
Hermione Granger has known since she could that her parents may have loved her, but they did not like her. They cared for her to the degree required but no more than was necessary for physical health. She has known since she could that they thought her a blemish on their life. The buck-toothed, friendless child of socialite dentists.
She has known since she could that their praise was conditional, their presence in her life metered by achievements. So she reads, and learns, and studies, doing what she can to try and earn the liking that should be present with the loving.
But she has also known, deep down, since she could that she would not succeed. Not with the way her books came to her, the way her hair sparked with emotion, the slight edge to her smile. She has known since she could that her parents feared her. So she has known since she could that authority was not to be trusted but wielded, used, and fashioned into a weapon.
And then, she meets a woman who is a cat, a woman who has a shadow two steps behind her every action. She enters a building that rushes toward her, that senses her, that tests her, a building that whispers of order and gold, caves and secrets. She meets a man who has secrets singing from his eyes and shadows watching from his hands.
She knows she has found a world she can be from in a possible then, but she also knows she has found a world she may not wish to enter in the current now.
}-(O)-{
Ron Weasley has known since he could that his parents loved him. That they liked him, even. But he has known since he could that they did not prioritize him as they did his brothers nor his sister. He has known since he could that they thought him normal, unremarkable, plain. A Head Boy, a Quidditch Captain, perfect grades, genius pranksters, the first daughter in three generations. And Ron.
The polyglot, the dragon handler, the bureaucrat, the inventors, the charmer. And Ron. He knew he was good at chess and that his flesh was threaded through with the green teeth and tongues of his home. For a home is its hearth, and a hearth is very rarely just a hearth. And he knew his flesh was also threaded through with golden eyes swiveling and spasming with his need to know, to learn where the gold binding him came from.
And then he visits a street of shadow and cobbles, one where people avoid the shadows, keeping from looking too deep at the spells binding the secrets and spikes. He enters a building of blood and biting blade, one that smells of the sweet fruiting of the corpse, if one hasn’t blinded themselves to the scent. He has known since he could that there are far worse things than those that go bump in the night. He sees it in the sightless eyes of the bankers, hears it in the whisperings of the stone, the secrets spilling forth from those with no threads of their hearth binding themselves together.
He wonders if he will find others who have eyes that are whole, seeing instead of weeping blood from the claw marks made to blind themselves.
}-(O)-{
Neville Longbottom has known since he could that his hearth and home hated him. That it was crazed, murderous, deadly. That its fungal spread, its corpse-strong stench would sooner find him dead than useless. He has known since he could that the monster, the strength and weakness, that found its home in their hearth and hearts would sooner drive him to the insanity of his family if useful, or the catatonia of his parents if he was found wanting.
He has known that he, earth-child, growth-bringer, and life-seeker, was not made for the rotting corpse of a thing that was his family. And when he entered an alleyway that had threads of mycelium and rot spread through to its core, he knew he was not made for this place. When he set foot in a building with veins of blood seen only to those that could taste the rot on the air, he knew he was not made for this place.
Perhaps, he thought, he might find or make a place he was made for.
}-(O)-{
When a boy with eyes of arsenic, a girl with storm-filled hair, a boy bound up by green and gold, and a boy marked by rot and bound in mossy growths set foot on a beast that had a hide of metal hiding its beating heart, they are all four uncertain. When a grave-born and grave-touched child finds the carriage with the darkest shadows, the deepest secrets, he rests, by a fraction, into his first and closest friend. When a boy with iceberg eyes and a hearth-made hunger gnawing in his flesh stumbles upon a shadow-bound boy with holes where there should be threads, he sits.
And when a girl with an eagle's talons where an eye’s shine should be finds them, with a boy who has moss and mycelium where marrow should grow in tow, they sit with them. All four, broken down in one way or another, all four unblinded to the secrets in the shadows, the rot in the stones, the things that hide in the night.
All of them knowing of the shadows they carry within and the eyes they can, or do, hide.