children's books
Harriet couldn't remember the last time she had something to eat, but she did know how much it hurts to have an empty stomach when it has been long without something.
Mrs. Malfoy —who name was Narcissa— placed a plate of food in front of her, talking with Mrs. Zabini —who name was Dorothea— about something that she can not understand totally.
She looked in between them, but her mind was not there.
Magic was real. After all the pain, the hurtful thoughts about being a freak, the punishments for something that she couldn't control. After all, there is an explanation and not just her being a freak. After every single beating that she had received, there is something else, and it doesn't feel bad.
Was she going to be beat in here? Mrs. Malfoy had been so sweet with her, and Mrs. Zabini's smile was the nicest she had seen. Mr. Regulus —who Harriet didn't know the last name— didn't talk a lot, but the silence was comfortable. Mr. Snape was probably her favourite of all of them, but Harriet could guess that a hit from him would hurt as much as her uncle Vernon's hits.
She could resist a few hits, maybe even from the belt. All of it while they didn't ask her to take the clothes out. She could try to beg, perhaps they didn't do it more fiercely if she did.
Did they hate that Harriet asked questions? She surely had to stop asking. It was too much already!
Mrs. Malfoy looked at her, and then at her plate, and then at her again.
“Do you not like it, sweetling?”
“You have not told me to eat, ma'am.”
The women looked at each other and then back at Harriet. She shifted in her seat, not liking the intense gazes they shared.
“Did I say something wrong? I'm sorry. It won't happen again.”
“It is not that you said something wrong, Ms. Potter,” Mrs. Regulus talks behind her, approaching the table. “They are mothers. You are a child. Eat.”
He can obviously notice how Harriet is used to orders, because he doesn't even look at her out of the corner of his eye when he sits down, he just observes the women in front of him with his eyebrows barely raised. The child had already started eating, slowly when they look, fast enough for a piece or two of bread to disappear when they don't.
No one spoke again until she finished eating. Mrs. Zabini interrupts the silence. “Tell me, Harriet. What do you like to do for fun?”
She blinks several times, looking at the beautiful woman in confusion. “For fun?”
“Well, yes. For an example, my son, Blaise, likes poetry.”
“I like gardening,” she said. “I'm good at it, I think.”
“Gardening seems nice,” Mrs. Malfoy smiled. “Do you like to read?”
“I have not read many books,” Harriet admitted, “but I like to, yes.”
“Reading and gardening: aren't you a perfect little lady?” Mrs. Zabini smiled at her.
Where was Mr. Snape? Harriet let her eyes wander for a minute, searching for him.
“Severus is talking to Dumbledore,” said Mr. Regulus, noticing her curious look. Harriet blushed as she was caught. “Dumbledore is the headmaster of Hogwarts, your future school of Magic.”
“Do you want dessert?” Mrs. Malfoy said. Without waiting for a response, Mrs. Zabini snapped her fingers, causing an elf to appear with a plate.
“What is that, ma'am?”
“It's tiramisu, dearest,” Mrs. Zabini answered. “Try it. If you don't like it, it's alright. It is made of sponge fingers soaked in coffee, mascarpone cheese, and dusted with cocoa powder.”
The house-elf left the plate in front of her, retiring the other. Harriet looked at the plate, and then looked at Mr. Regulus, who seemed to be the only one who understand her. He nodded under the look of the two women, so she proceeded.
Harriet had never tried something so good in her life —maybe because she never tried dessert before—; the dessert, although fresh and cold, practically melted in her mouth. The soft biscuits named sponge fingers had a slight bitter taste to it, but the sweet and creamy taste of the cheese, and the touch of the cocoa powder, made it the best combination.
“Do you like it, Ms. Potter?”
“It's wonderful, Mrs. Zabini. Thank you.”
And with that, Harriet's first genuine and big smile was born.
“Severus, my boy. Did you find Harriet?”
Snape looked at the old man right in the eyes, not letting his barriers down. He didn't answer for a few seconds, remembering every single thing he saw —no, he felt.
“I did,” he answered, getting slowly closer.
“I imagine that it was something small, since Figg didn't say anything else.”
“You knew, didn't you?”
“About what, Severus?”
“They hate her,” he said, almost furious as he remembered the bloody blanket. “They kept her in a cupboard, treated her like a slave. I thought, all this time, that Potter was living her best life, being the most spoiled child ever, and turns out that she is abused. Abused, Dumbledore!”
“Severus—”
“The girl is not going back. It is not a question, it's an order.”
Dumbledore kept silence for a while, not able to take his gaze off of Severus. When he spoke, he did what Severus had thought of.
“The blood wards—”
“The blood wards do not work if the child doesn't consider the people in it her family. Neither does if the family hates the child.”
“… I can try to call Remus.”
“A werewolf,” hissed Severus. “They would never give him her custody.”
“Then who else?”
“Me.” Albus Dumbledore's eyebrows almost reached the beginning of his forehead, but Severus did not end there. “The child has taken a sort of… attachment towards me. Probably because I have taken her out of the house.”
“I thought you hated her father.”
“The girl is not her father. I will make sure of that.”
It took Dumbledore almost an hour and a half more to accept that Snape would take care of her, but he accepted when Severus finally lowered his mental barriers, showing only the cupboard where the girl slept.
“Spinner's End isn't the prettiest place for a child, I know,” he murmured, staring at him. “But neither was Privet Drive.”
Dorothea watched across the window, feeling her heart rate go crazy. Her bile went up and down, so she put a hand in her mouth.
“What's the matter, Thea?” Narcissa asked her.
Although they had begun their friendship as a kind of alliances between pureblood houses, Dorothea had quickly realized that no person understood her like Narcissa, and that she could not trust another person just like that. So you could say that Narcissa was the only real friend she had in the magical world.
Everyone rumoured about the death of her seven husbands; they called her the black widow. It was ironic, since they also said it because of her skin tone, but she had so much fun being one that she didn't care. It was true: yes, Dorothea had mercilessly murdered, either by poisoning them or making them disappear, all the husbands she had ever had.
However, no one cared why she murdered them. Her first husband had drowned in the river while on holiday in Venice. She had poisoned her second husband, the father of her son: they had had a heated argument, and Dorothea had never been known to let herself be tamed. She had murdered her third and her fourth husband in the same way: a simple, familiar knife to the throat on a dark, cold night. Her fifth husband was very jealous, she hated jealousy, so she had him drowned by what would be her sixth husband. He died from poison too, and it was because he treated Blaise badly, and no one treated Dorothea's son badly. Her last husband had recently died, burned alive in Greece.
“I kept something from the sheet.”
“The sheet?” Narcissa asked, frowning. “Harriet's exam?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Oh, how much she wanted to kill people. How much she wanted to kill the girl's relatives. After all, Dorothea was a killer. It wouldn't be her first time.
“Well, what is it, woman?” Narcissa sat at her side, hurrying her.
“The child has been… assaulted.”
“Of course, she has been abused by her family. You didn't keep that from the sheet.”
“No, no. Cissy. She has been assaulted— sexually assaulted.”
The two women stared at each other for a few seconds. Narcissa let out a sigh, hiding her face in her hands.
Dorothea had never wanted to kill someone this way, but now she did. What was stopping her, she asked herself.
“When?”
“Since she was six.”
“Penetration?”
Dorothea nodded. “I didn't say it because Snape was angry enough, and the girl was quite scared too.”
“I'm going to talk to Lucius,” said Narcissa unemotional, but her angry red face gave her true feelings. “Harriet doesn't leave this house without being under Severus' care.”
And then, Narcissa left, leaving Dorothea and her kill wish alone.
Regulus didn't care enough to hide when his cousin stormed out of the room: it was not like she saw him. His face remained serene, but he could feel the pressure he had applied on his teeth.
Miss Potter was a child. A silent, scared child, but a child indeed. She looked like a younger version of the child James he knew one day —probably because she was younger than James was when Regulus met him—, but she had something —not her eyes— in her face that screamed Lily. The girl was a copy of her parents, and though Regulus had never got along with them, he could feel some pity for the child and the parents at the same time.
What would they think of all of this? Their little daughter with death eaters that still treated her better than her own family.
James may be rolling on his grave, but Lily must be full of rage, he thought. Her own sister.
He himself didn't get along with his older brother, but he could never imagine hurting his family, even if it was Sirius' spawn.
Harriet was something like Sirius's child, wasn't she? She was his god-daughter after all, even if he was a traitor.
Regulus let out a smile; of course he knew that Sirius wasn't the traitor, but what could Regulus say? All the wizards thought that he was dead.
He could live with that. He could not live knowing that a rapist, his brother's goddaughter' rapist, was living his best life. So, Regulus could take care of Harriet along Severus for a while, be the best uncle to the girl, educate her of the Wizarding World —so no one could take advantage of her—, he could even be her cat, and after she was living the best life being spoiled rotten by the people around her, he could get away with killing the Durlseys.
Oh, how intelligent he was.
He marched towards the library again, rethinking the idea over and over without stopping. It was obvious that Severus would have custody of the Potter hatchling, but Regulus could very well help.
Before entering, he observed the girl sitting in front of the fireplace. She had a book in her hands, one of those children's books that Narcissa had read to Draco years ago. It was about a dragon and a princess making friends with each other. Regulus couldn't help but observe her with some curiosity.
She had dark, curly and somewhat long hair; a good magical meaning for witches who kept her magic inside their manes. She was quite short, not to mention weight, but that could be fixed with many potions. From what Regulus remembered of James and Lily, neither of them had been short.
She must have felt his gaze, since she turned, looking at him shyly.
“Hello, Mr. Regulus.”
“Hello, Miss Potter,” he smiled at her, sitting down on the couch. He grabbed the book he had left on the table next to him. “What are you reading?”
“The fable of the fire and the crown, sir.”
“Do you like children's books, Miss Potter?”
“I enjoy all kinds of reading, sir.”
Regulus looked into the girl's intense green eyes, but she did not flinch, returning the gaze with much more innocence. She had a soft voice, full of a childlike innocence that he had long-lost. Regulus didn't get along with most children because of their irritating voices, always shouting and complaining.
He stood up from his seat, preferring to ignore the girl's flinch. He ran his fingers through Dorothea's bookcase, but clicked his tongue when he found nothing of interest. He turned to the girl again.
“Dorothea has nothing but new romance books. How I hate that she renews the library every month.”
He sat back down on the couch, and with a simple movement of his hand, a book had appeared in his lap. He motioned to Harriet, who approached slowly, curious but afraid.
Regulus looked at the book once more, running his fingers gently over the cover. It had been given to him by Pandora when he was sixteen, and he had kept it hidden the entire time because his parents hated Muggle literature.
“The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” he recited. “A great friend gave it to me a while ago. I lend it to you. You will learn good literature with me, Miss Potter.”
She took it once he handed it. Harriet's eyes looked at the book with shine on them.
“Thank you, sir.”
And with that, the most genuine and brightest smile Regulus had ever seen on Harriet emerged again.