The Girl Who Lost Faith
Up until she was eleven, Hallie spent her days craving for a quirk. Any quirk. Even a weak one like her aunt’s, or an ugly-looking one, like the one her cousin had mocked from one of his victims.
But Hallie was quirkless, something that her aunt Petunia, her uncle Vernon and her cousin Dudley always told her made her less than them. It was why they felt they were justified in locking her under the stairs and making her do the lion share of the chores and forbidding her from having better grades than Dudley.
Not everyone seemed to think that quirklessness made her less than human. Not the way her family did. But they did act like she was somehow impaired. Honestly, Hallie wasn’t even sure which version she liked some days.
For all that her family acted like she was lower than Aunt Marge’s dogs, they never felt like she was less capable than they were. In fact, they went as far as having to forbid her from having better grades than Dudley, so they had to have acknowledged she was better at it than him in the first place. It was backhanded and painful and it left her aching somewhere deep inside her chest, but it was acknowledgement none the less.
On the other hand, the teachers she had to deal with spoke to her in babying tones as if she was incapable of understanding normal speech and treated her like she was disabled, as if she was incapable of even the simplest tasks. They were nice and even sometimes affectionate, though that was rare, and Hallie had so little softness in her life and so little of non-painful touches that she couldn’t help but soak it all up like a desert during the first rainfall of the year. But they also kept her tethered to a stereotype of incompetence that left her feeling adrift and cold, even with all the niceness around her.
When strange things started happening around her, she’d hoped she had a quirk after all. She’d been so happy when it first happened that she rushed to tell her uncle, hoping to finally become more than a quirkless to her family.
She was shut down. Harshly.
Apparently, as soon as they had gotten her, aunt Petunia had quickly scheduled her an appointment with a quirk specialist and he pointed out the presence of a double joint in the pinky toes that only the quirkless have. Clearly someone else had to be behind the quirk usage she’d seen. It was just a coincidence that she’d happened to be there at the time.
And if there ever was a time she insisted that there was no possible way someone else had intervened because simple logic demanded so, ‘harsh’ would be putting it lightly. Uncle Vernon would go from barely tolerant of her to downright raging mad.
Therefore, Hallie was quirkless, very far below her aunt’s weak quirk of slightly extending her neck that made it so that she could spy on the neighbors easily and her uncle’s quirk of turning different skin colors according to his emotions, which served as a very useful mood ring, and even further bellow her cousin’s quirk of extending his arms to better punch people.
She wasn’t ok with that until she turned eleven.
Eleven, right on her birthday, was when her world changed for the better. Suddenly being quirkless was amazing because all wizards and witches were quirkless and magic could do so much more than a single quirk. Suddenly all the suffering she’d been put through had paid off.
Turns out the twenty percent rate of quirkless mostly remained so low, and kept lowering, because most of them disappeared into magic society, or so Hermione had read somewhere. Apparently, there were very few truly quirkless and magicless people and the few that existed usually ended up either directly fathering or mothering a wizard or witch, or they would be the grandparents of one.
Aunt Petunia had always talked so badly of Hallie’s quirkless parents, but they weren’t none of those things she’d always claimed. Hallie wasn’t lucky to be stuck with her aunt and uncle, as she’d so often claimed to the orphan girl. It would have been luck if her parents were still alive and she living with them.
For years, after that day, she blessed that fact that she was quirkless because it let her have magic and she loved magic very much.
Her feelings about magic started slowly changing after the tri-wizard tournament. It wasn’t that there weren’t bad things before. There were, but all the good things outweighed the bad so much that she felt that it was worth enduring them. After all, she now had friends and adults who cared whereas with the Dursleys she didn’t. And she didn’t have to dumb herself down anymore.
But Voldemort used the tournament to return and, with Hallie being the only reliable eyewitness of the event, the minister of Magic decided to discredit her instead of acting upon her testimony or even investigate it, if they were so suspicious of her reliability.
The years that followed she had been tortured by a teacher that was a ministry stooge, become half mad because of the secrecy and having no one explain anything to her while Voldemort could meander inside her mind, lose Sirius, be weighed down by a prophecy of life and death for two years, having to deal with Dumbledore trickling her the information that she needed to know and leaving her unprepared, deal with Hermione’s and Ron’s hormones while being paranoid (and right) about Malfoy, seeing Snape kill Dumbledore in front of her own eyes while the whole school was attacked, having to go on the run after her seventeenth birthday, infiltrate the Ministry of Magic while it was being run by Death Eaters while also aiding Muggleborns escape, slowly starving for months while dealing with Ron’s short temper and Hermione’s doubts, planning and doing a bank heist, and finally the last battle.
Magic had lost a lot of its shine by then, but she was still a proud witch. She still was hoping for a good life as soon as Voldemort was gone.
But then she’d gotten a quirk and used it to end Voldemort. She hadn’t even known she’d gotten one. She didn’t even mean to use it, let alone so publicly. She hadn’t known she had it so that she would know how not to use it!
And then she found out it wasn’t even her only one, though she’d lost the other as soon as Voldemort died.
Turns out that magic users aren’t exactly completely quirkless.
Special magical talents that sometimes run in the family, like Teddy’s and Tonk’s Metamorphmagus magic, or even her former Parseltongue from Slytherin’s line, were actually quirks.
It had started before the officially recorded dawn of quirks. A wizard or witch would come across a child that had seemingly magical gifts and, despite only being able to do one single thing, taking it to mean there was magical potential in them, they were blood adopted into the family to strengthen the genes. And while the child didn’t get magic, the quirk and the magic mixed together so much that the ability became ingrained in the bloodline and that child’s descendants would have both of those things.
Such was the case with the Blacks and Metamorphmagi, back when they weren’t so hung up on blood purity. It was also the reason why Tonks was the first to emerge in several decades, with something that was said to be a Black trait, yet both her and her son were scorned by the blood purist side.
The magical side of the blood had been too strong and inbred until Andromeda married a muggleborn and brought newer blood to the lineage, which triggered the magical quirk to reappear.
Parseltongue was another quirk. This one was far more stubborn in face of the inbreeding, or maybe just too intertwined with the magic, considering that Hallie had gotten it with Voldemort’s magic and part of his soul, but until it had reached Tom Riddle Jr. it had become far weaker than it used to be. The Gaunts, while still capable of talking to snakes, lost the ability of controlling them. Then Voldie came along and had the centuries old basilisk under his control in a snap when he was still a teenager.
Hallie suspected that she failed to retain that part of the ability as well, with, at most, a slight persuasion capability, because she only had a tiny part of Voldemort’s soul. She further suspected that as he made more horcruxes, his ability to control snakes dwindled.
His relationship with Nagini always felt more like a partnership than full control, and even then, she’d gotten a part of his soul stuck in her as well.
Inner Eyes were also a very ancient quirk that was taken to be magic. It’s one of the reasons why it’s inheritable. Most ‘seers’ were purely magical (there was a reason why divination was a class they could take after all), but the truly astounding ones, capable of prophecies and having a clear sight of the future, all descended from the same one, a man with a prophecy quirk that was adopted into a magic family. As much as Hallie would have liked to claim that Trelawney had nothing to do with that, it wasn’t actually the truth. While the quirk in her was weak when compared to the other known seers, she still had it. She just sucked at teaching quirkless divination because she was too busy emulating Cassandra Trelawney, who was fully quirked and had no need for the other stuff.
There were other quirks, but Hallie didn’t care enough to try and research them, though Hermione likely had, considering how she was going on about mind quirks versus mind magics at some point (Hallie would eventually find out what she was talking about, but not at that moment).
But there was one kind of quirk that was the rarest kind. It was so rare that even in the muggle world, which was teeming with quirks, she’d never heard of it.
Transmissible quirks.
Which is the kind of quirk she’d inherited through the Deathly Hollows.
And it was powerful.
At first things were fine.
Hermione was searching for more information on magical quirks while Hallie was too busy dealing with the goblins and a quirk she knew next to nothing about, including its trigger and Ron was dealing with having to go back to school for the final year and studying without either of their help. Granted, both girls were also busy studying, but they didn’t have as much trouble with it as he did.
No one had even thought there would be consequences to her getting a quirk until Hermione noticed the newspaper having news regarding a new law that was passed.
The Wizengamut had gathered to pass up a new law before the new minister was chosen and banned the wizards that took part in the war on Voldemort’s side. A law that was supposed to protect and conserve magical quirks and keep them from disappearing again.
It was all well and good until marriage was brought up as one of the conditions. It was supposed to be a marriage that was well thought out according to genetics and merely suggested to the quirked person, but the trio was quick to conclude that the most likely thing to happen would be that rich blood purists would pay to the closest corrupt official to be the only options presented to the quirked person. Supposedly other people could also propose to the quirked person and they could accept it, but they would be monitored by some government officials so it was likely that they would somehow try to ruin those pairings in favor of who had the money.
It was obviously a ploy to trap Hallie in specific, since the quirk she’d had shoved at her was very overpowered, but it would also affect the other quirked people.
Hallie hadn’t taken in the full consequences of the new law, too busy wrestling her things from the bloodthirsty goblins, until she saw Trelawney having to put up with marriage interviews. Hermione wasn’t surprised, though it still shocked her some that they were chasing after the clearly unwilling woman (who wasn’t exactly young anymore) when they didn’t really need to, since Hallie was clearly the target. This meant that the purebloods were trying to set a precedence of success on their side.
(There was also a notable lack of influential pureblood suggestions to Trelawney’s dating pool. There were even a few muggleborn men, one of which was the one she’d ultimately chose because he was the least annoying of the bunch and also sort of pushed into being there as well.)
They were playing the long game.
With a new understanding of the situation, they all set out to find a way to get Hallie her independence back before it was stolen away.
While she was technically of legal age, she had too many factors working against her wellbeing aside from the quirk.
For one, she was the heiress to at least two noble families and, even if she weren’t, the only other Blacks she could appoint as heirs would be Draco, which was a big no even if he was doing better now, or Teddy, who was a baby and also quirked like her. Technically Narcisa had married into the Malfoys and wasn’t eligible due to the agreement in place and only her offspring with Malfoy would be able to inherit, not that she would have been an option Hallie would consider in the first place, and Andromeda was disowned so she didn’t count either because there was no revoking a direct and official disownment, only the offspring of the disowned could be brought back into the fold.
An because Teddy was a baby (he had yet to have his second birthday by the time they realized this) he could not take his place as head of the family until many years later, so she was still stuck with the position in order to keep him safe.
This made it so that her getting married as soon as possible became a priority in the eyes of many. Kingsley tried to have those impositions on Hallie revoked, but there was only so much he could do when some people were riling up the populace about how single she was and how much power she wielded and how sad it would be if she died without heirs (Teddy was, after all, publicly omitted for his own safety). Kingsley could keep her from being forced into an arranged marriage.
He couldn’t keep her from being barred from taking the Auror exam, though.
For a while she didn’t know what to do. She had just lost any chance of getting her dream job. Ron did his best by bringing her his study material so she could learn it where she wasn’t seen because he knew how much the ability to defend herself mattered to her (Professor McGonagal had no issues with letting her use the room of requirement after it was de-cursed from the fiendfire and the enchantments fixed a bit). It was the hardest he’d ever studied anything.
The selflessness of the action and his new-found battle-born maturity earned him even more of Hermione’s affection. He’d finally grown up and she was happy for him. Hallie only wished he wasn’t so obvious about the perks of being a mature version of himself when he walked up to her with the smile of someone who had just gotten very ‘lucky’ after visiting Hermione.
(At least now that he’d matured enough, she didn’t need to fear them breaking up so badly that her friendship with both suffered from it, though she doubted they would at this point.)
Hallie ended up studying curse breaking for fun with Bill to help clean the Black property and even first aid (and a few extras) with the school nurse, Madam Pomphrey, since things got too hectic in the hospital when she tried there instead. Muggle first aid too, because she was very bored when she was done with the other things.
At some point Billy started recommending her to people under a nom de plume, which helped her make some money while she was busy dealing with the goblins since they wouldn’t give her access to her funds until the dispute was settled. It was good money but not sustainable since most people preferred someone with a real name they would recognize rather than go for someone under the name of Karma (not the best name, but she had unofficially renamed the quirk as this and she might as well get something out of it, even if it’s just a name to shield her anonymity).
She ended up winning against the goblins, but had to take all her things from the bank as consequence. Technically she could keep them there, but she would have to pay a toll for each time she needed to withdraw anything. And with her unable to get her dream job, or any other that required her name, for that matter, having an unreliable and sporadic curse-breaking job and waiting for others to solve this mess, because she couldn’t, she would need to keep every Knut she could get (most of the things in the family vaults were artifacts and she’d rather not get rid of those for money just yet).
But the added free time didn’t help her boredom and helplessness and everyone that cared about her was getting concerned with her mental state.
She kept refusing to go to the marriage interviews. She didn’t need to go there to see who was trying to get her. It was clear to see by the increasing articles on the newspaper about her rejected suitors.
As suspected, all from rich pureblood families, unlike Trelawney’s, a lot of them suspected but not proven Voldemort supporters (And this time the trials were far fairer and less concerned about money, so these ‘survivors’ had to have been very careful with their actions so as not to leave behind any evidence. Too bad House Elves still can’t take the stand to give their testimonies, though.).
And, considering the media presence, clearly, they were all trying to trap her into accepting any one of them by writing an article, if she were to show up, detailing all about how thrilled she was, even if the photos all showed how much of a lie that was (her image trying to escape the photo with Lockhart never drew a concerned eye before, though it should have been obvious, so she wasn’t expecting this to be any different). The backlash that would inevitably happen when she refuted those claims would, of course, fall on her (like always) and eventually she would have so many negative articles about her fickleness that she would be forced to marry one of them.
She wasn’t stupid. After being lambasted by the press for so long, she knew exactly how it would all play out. It only gave her more reasons not to bother showing up.
At least, while she still got bad press out of it, this way they didn’t have much to bite on to bring her down.
And she did try dating. She honestly did. She’d always wanted a family. A good one. But she was the girl-who-lived and the wizarding-world-savior and that made finding someone genuine harder than regular dating did, and she didn’t even have regular dating under her belt. (At least not without her date somehow ending up dead after a single month of giving it a try despite the obstacles of having a deadly tournament over their heads and the newspapers claiming she was trying to throw off her opponent with her feminine wiles. And lets never mention that moment of weakness when she tried a hand at a relationship with a girl. Worst decision ever and it didn’t count.)
It was why she’d first tried dating Neville, when the whole marriage thing started, before concluding they definitely saw each other more as family than romantic interests. At least she could have counted on him to not worship her title or wanting to use her fame if things had worked out.
She’d tried with a few other DA members, but it was never the right match. Honestly, even if they were less worship-y or greedy than the regular masses, she wouldn’t have chosen to date any of them if not for the fact that her being single was the only reason she couldn’t get a job. She was just that desperate and hoping against all odds that she might have misjudged the sort of people they were and there was someone who actually fitted with her.
Still, this was no way to live and it all finally came to a head when Hermione came rushing into Grimmauld Place, horror and worry imprinted firmly on her face, barely making sure to accommodate her stride for her growing rounded belly where her first future child rested.
(She wasn’t a Granger anymore. It had taken more time than Hallie expected for her and Ron to go from dating to married, and she suspected that most of it was due to them both being too busy trying to set Hallie free, but their wedding was wonderful. Hallie could have done without the magical paparazzi invading it trying to find her out. They were all swiftly kicked out by Ginny’s bat boogies spell, but even if they hadn’t, Hallie had enough privacy spells caked on her, which she’d learned from Ron’s training, that they wouldn’t have seen her.)
Hermione was by now a fully-fledged member of the ministry. She alternated her looks by what she wanted to do that day. If she wanted to be noticed, she donned her makeup and finest robes that made it impossible to ignore her and made her look beautiful, like a glowing gem, even with her pregnancy making itself known recently. She used the attention to make connections and pass new innovative legislations that were bound to make the news, along with her enchanting looks.
Today wasn’t one of those days. Today she’d donned murky brown robes and understated makeup that would blend her into the background and changed her face ever so slightly, along with her light steps, light even with her growing weight, resulted from a whole year of treading lightly and going unnoticed under the pain of death. She did this so that she could listen to secret conversations and plots that could hurt them in the future. She looked so vastly different that no one would ever mistake her for the third member of the golden trio, especially after she’d spent the last five years cultivating her attention-grabbing persona for the public. She mentioned she was inspired by the Sherlock Holmes novels when he went undercover.
And this? This spelled for trouble.
“Are you alright, Hermione? Sit down before you faint! Let me grab you something to drink.” Hallie said, keeping her demeanor calm, despite wanting to do anything but that in her just awakened worry.
“No time!” Hermione gasped, though she did sit down. “I sneaked into this meeting of the Wizengamut. They are going to put a cap on the number of interviews that can be refused and force someone that goes over that number to marry.”
Hallie froze.
They might have kicked out Voldemort’s old palls from there, sure, but there were plenty of pureblood members that would be salivating over the chance to force her under one of them for her quirk and inheritance. Being ‘Light’ families didn’t magically absolve them from greediness. They might be a minority now but, with enough time and the right ears, they could convince the others of why their new law addressed a ‘valid concern’ and get it passed.
And, if they were already presenting it in the Wizengamut (which still existed despite Hermione’s attempts at setting it up to be dissolved), it meant they were close to having enough support at the very least, if not completely.
That explained why Hermione was in such a rush. They didn’t have enough time to prepare for it. The mere fact that them gearing up to propose such a law had gone unnoticed for so long, especially by Hermione, meant that they were being extra cautious, so it was likely that they already had enough people supporting it that, by the time the meeting ended, Hallie would be on the verge of being married off to whomever they decided.
What little faith she had remaining on the wizarding world, already so strained by everything that had happened so far and kept piling on over her, shattered completely.
“I need to leave.” She concluded sadly and still in too much of a shock to begin grieving over it just yet.
“You need to leave.” Hermione confirmed. “I was hoping I could have solved this before things got this bad. I was hoping I would have enough time to free you from all of this. I was hoping I could prevent you from having to leave.” Hermione stated, her face in a grimace of frustration mixed with helplessness before she snapped out of it and looked at her with a determination equal to that of a badly offended hippogriff in mauling its offender. “No use crying over spilled milk. I have a contingency plan for this exact scenario.”
And so, Hermione quickly explained everything. How she’d gathered everything needed for Hallie to be able to leave Magical Britain with the help of Kingsley and, surprisingly enough, Luna, who had as many abroad connections as Hermione did, but more of a down-low, discreet sort of thing, based on mutual kindness, than Hermione’s mostly political ones.
There were several ways to go about getting some protection against the Wizengamut members and the law they imposed, but it was up to Hallie to choose which option they would take, though Hermione had been on point in guessing which one she would take. Anyone who truly knew her would have known.
There were a total of five folders, each with a brief summary of what they entailed.
The first one, and likely the one Hermione would have wanted her to take if it were her choice but intrinsically knew she wouldn’t, was the one about moving to another country and join the Magical community there with enough clout that Magical Britain couldn’t force her back unless she wanted to.
The second one would be doing the same, but skipping the magical community part and simply going to another country that had banned British wizardfolk in fear of Voldemort’s followers wanting to either escape there or take them over completely.
The third involved her staying in muggle Britain and keeping as hidden as possible and for as long as possible until she met someone she wanted to marry.
The fourth was getting a license from the Hero Commission and moving abroad again, but it would enable her to keep moving from country to country whenever needed.
Hallie almost missed the final folder. It was small and thin and hidden beneath all the others. It didn’t bother with a ton of legal documents or strategic plans in careful precise handwriting. It was a single sheet of parchment folded only once to fit inside the folder that contained it with just a title and a list of names that she would recognize from her DA days with just a few changes. It was titled Taking Over Magical Britain.
It warmed her heart to realize that, for that folder to exist in the first place, and with so many names, Hermione really was serious about this being an option.
Granted, neither of them wanted that option, clearly. But that she’d actually put it there meant she would do it if Hallie asked. Which would only ever happen if things ever got bad to the point of Hallie becoming suicidal or insane from how bad they were.
All options had a downside to them.
Number 1 meant going from being under a magical government to another and hope for the best while also doing something she hated, which was using her fame for clout just to get protection. As a firm (firmer now than ever) introvert, that wasn’t very appealing.
Number 2 meant that, while she could get a pass for being the one to defeat Voldemort, it would also mean she would be completely isolated from all her friends, since she doubted they would extend the courtesy to anyone else, even the other two members of the golden trio.
Number 3 meant being in the same situation as during her supposed seventh year when she’d been on the run, always looking over her shoulder in case someone found her, which also wasn’t very conductive to dating as far as she was concerned.
Number 4 meant she would have to tackle the Hero commission instead, which was yet another government organ that could very well be corrupted as well, manage to somehow stay independent from them just in case they were, while also under their protection enough that they would be very ticked off if the magicals were to try and take her back. It would also mean having to move a lot, especially if there were missions for her.
Number 5 wasn’t even an option since it would just make her the next ‘dark lord’ as far as those rich pounces were concerned.
Her choice was pretty simple in the end.
While Hallie read all the documentation and plans for her chosen option, Hermione started packing everything inside the house away in a special suitcase she’d purchased around three years ago, without Hallie’s knowledge, for precisely this reason. It would have gone easier if Kreacher was still alive to help her, but he’d died last year of old age.
It was a surprise when Andromeda showed up and began helping her friend pack things up while Teddy ran around trying to chase the flying furniture in some made up game, but Hallie didn’t let herself be distracted for long and finished signing the last few papers needed.
That was when Andromeda shoved one last document her way. Hallie only needed to read a few lines to realize what it was.
“Andy, are you sure?” She asked, trembling minutely at the immeasurable weight that a single curl of parchment could carry.
“You know it would be a matter of time before they went after Teddy as well. Already am I getting questions tossed my way about my openness in matching him with someone. At least with you I know he’ll always have a choice and he’ll be safe from the people here.” She told her calmly.
“But what about you?”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m going to miss him so much when you both leave, it’ll be like an open wound freely bleeding that won’t close. I know you won’t be able to return here, not without a husband. And with you on the run, it’ll be harder than ever for you to find someone who deserves you out there. Especially since we both know there are people who aren’t afraid to use less than legal means to try and get you, especially once you’ll be out of this country and they could just lie if they managed to drag you back and would likely get away with it. But I’ve been mentally preparing ever since I saw how things were changing for the magically quirked. I’ll have the others to keep me company. I’ll be fine.” Andromeda stated, grief marring her face and making her age more evident than ever. “I’m more concerned about both of you. I’ll be lonely out there with just a child to keep you company, and you’ve become so isolated after the war… And Teddy will be constantly moving about and having to make and lose friendships along the way. And there’s going to be a lot of pushback here to prevent Hermione from changing the laws back or repelling them altogether so it’ll be close to decades before it’s safe for you to return. I worry about you both, but I hope things will be ok with you two.”
Hallie hugged her tightly and signed Teddy’s guardianship into her name with simple decisive strokes.
Hermione gathered all the documents and handed them out to the owl Andromeda had brought with her for direct delivery to Kingsley, who would make sure everything reached its destiny before the meeting ended.
“Now what?” Hallie asked, feeling more adrift than ever.
“I rented an apartment in an area no wizard or witch would ever be in, near London. There’s a bus there that takes you directly to the airport and another that passes by the gym I told you about and also the Hero Public Safety Commission London Headquarters and there’s a daycare two streets down whose staff won’t blink an eye at Teddy. We’ll try to visit when we can.” she explained, handing her the suitcase and dropping Teddy in her arms.
Hallie fidgeted a bit as she tried to comfortably hold Teddy with one arm while keeping the suitcase in the other.
“Learn martial arts as fast as you can. We need you to get out of the country as fast as possible and we’ll need the Commission’s help for that. I don’t trust them completely, they remind me too much of Fudge before the Triwizard tournament, too eager to please the ones with power, but you’ll need a license to use your quirk in case something that magic and quirkless fighting can’t solve happens which, considering it’s you, is very likely.” With a determined jab, Hermione turned the suitcase into a temporary portkey. “Keep safe and use disguises whenever you can.”
“I will.”
Before anything else could be said, the portkey activated, dropping her in a minimalistically furnished apartment.
Hallie sighed as Teddy began crying. He’d never used a portkey before and she couldn’t begrudge him for it.
She mentally reviewed her next few actions as she bounced him on her hip.
She could technically leave the country right away. It was two of the options Hermione had presented and she knew her friend would have preferred one of them in particular, if just for the fact that she would be away from Magical Britain and protected. But Hallie wasn’t that optimistic. She knew they would still follow her and no Magic community outside would hide her from her pursuers. Not for long anyway. And without any sort of proof of graduation, she wouldn’t be able to get a job in the muggle world. Not when she stopped attending any school they knew of at eleven years old.
Hermione, however, was painfully aware that Hallie wasn’t one to not try to help others whenever she could. Even if she stayed in the muggle world, it wouldn’t be long before she was charged with vigilantism for intervening to save people. So, instead, one of the options, the one she was taking, would have her learn quirkless fighting to the best of her abilities.
She wouldn’t be able to casually use magic in the muggle world, and her quirk was a bit too specific and overpowered for casual use too, so quirkless fighting was the way to go. She would then apply directly for a license. It was a far more complicated process, without having a high school speaking for her, but nothing Hallie wasn’t used to.
The problem would be in getting independence from the Commission. Hallie wasn’t about to be saddled with any of their bullshit. After the control the magical government had had over her, she wasn’t about to trade it for another one, nor could she afford to be stationed in one area only when she was being chased. She would try for an agreement to be reachable for big jobs (her quirk was too powerful for them not to try to reach an agreement at the very least and she didn’t want to have a fixed base of operations, meaning no hero Agency for her either and no paperwork to have a specific government pay her for her actions), but mostly do her own hero-ing wherever she happened to be stationed at the time. Hopefully something far away from the limelight too, since the objective was to hide her from the magicals, even if they didn’t deal with technology much.
Anything else could be decided later, after she settled from the sudden shattering of her life and thought a bit about it.
Becoming a hero was never an option she’d considered while growing up. She’d been too stepped on to even consider defending herself against her ‘family’, let alone trying to save everyone. And with magic, she’d never even considered going back into the muggle side of things, so it hadn’t been an option then either.
A hero…
When she was a kid she’d always seen them as more people who wouldn’t help her. Not when her relatives had turned everyone else against her and ruined whatever reputation she had. Much like she hadn’t had any faith in orphanages and the foster care system, the police and the school teachers, she had no faith in the heroes either. After all, why would they believe her when no one else saw through the Dursleys? And with so many people believing her aunt and uncle, the heroes would have never needed to talk to them directly to believe their story.
She didn’t hate them, though.
She’d never hated any of them despite everything, not even the Dursleys. She only blamed her them for the lion share of her pain and, even then, she only disliked them, not hated.
But could she become a hero herself after all of this?
Better yet, did she want to?
Because she would have to become one regardless, but it would be so much easier if she wanted it as well.
To be honest she wasn’t sure.
When she’d decided to become an auror it was a mix of pride in her father’s job, sticking it to Umbridge and the fact that Hallie had enough investigative skills to pull it off. A bit silly, but saving people hadn’t factored much in the decision because it was just something she so naturally did that it wasn’t even a point of contention.
The sun rises in the east. The moon controls the tides. Hallie saves people.
But she couldn’t be an Auror. Not anymore. Not even if she had picked the option of joining another magical community. She wouldn’t be allowed to.
Heroes saved people, she knew. But of the few glimpses she had of Dudley watching the rescues and the villain fighting, it just didn’t seem her sort of saving.
She didn’t like going up front to face the ‘villains’ unless she absolutely had to. Most of her school years were spent investigating stuff and trying to go unnoticed and that simply wasn’t something the heroes she saw doing. Not to mention most of them acted like celebrities and that just put her off from the whole thing.
But she had no choice. At least no other choice she could bear, since all others still barred her from anything even slightly resembling Auror work. And this way she could still save people.
So, hero it was.
She would not hesitate anymore!
(A full year later and she was applying to the next exams and, just a few weeks later than that, she went to get her son to celebrate the brand new license she’d tucked away in the pouch Hagrid had given her. Another full year of probation working in England and she was off to her first foreign country.)