Harriet Lily Potter was an orphan. She knew this since she was little, so little that the cupboard under the stairs had seemed too big and too dark at night. She knew she didn’t belong at the Dursleys like she knew that she was a freak. She had always looked different from them, her eyes too green, hair too curly, cheekbones too sharp. Everything about her was just different and she never understood why.
When she had to write a family tree for school, it wasn’t complete. It had her aunt’s family (her aunt’s and never hers) and the only outsider was James Potter, her father who was apparently the ‘no good drunk’ that was freaky just like her. Her father’s side was missing and a part of her was missing with it.
Harry wouldn’t tell you she felt ‘empty’ growing up, she would insist that she was just tired (of living and of people, she thought) all the time. But everyone knew she was different even if they couldn’t put their finger on it,-
(and frankly, their pathetic feeble minds couldn’t even if they tried.)
-not just magical like how Petunia knew Lily was, but different. More than just a ‘freak’. It went beyond them how different she was, because how would this tiny girl be so.. otherworldly? How could her green eyes pin you down mercilessly and just see through you as if you were nothing to her? How could she make you feel so unimportant and small? So they pushed down their feelings of fearawebewildermentwonderdread and listened to the lies her too-obsessed-with-normalcy aunt told them about her.
“She’s a little troublemaker, always making Dudley cry and stealing all the time. We took her in out of the goodness of our hearts.”
People fear what they do not know and the people who judged her were no different. None of them were special.
Little Harry just didn’t understand it, didn’t understand how she unnerved people while making them just pay attention to her simultaneously. All she saw was people crowding around her and no one to help her. She never noticed how light her footsteps were, how she could sneak up on anyone like, say, a ghost. But she did notice other things. Like how she felt it when the spider in her cupboard died. Connected to it, felt it in her bones. The way the soul left the spider. The moments before it passed away she didn’t even know that spiders had souls. But she pushed it away and as she got older she just continued to push her connection to death away. She feared the connection. The way she just knew things about dead people, the way they whispered in her head, them telling her to join them.
It was almost beautiful in a way. Tempting her to just leave the mortal realm and go beyond but she was too little and too naive to understand. (Maybe if she denied it a little more, listened to her uncle’s ramblings about her being a freak it would stick.
Ignorance is bliss they say and she was just so, so good at being who other people wanted her to be.)
She was a little less naive when joining the magical world. Learning about her parent’s sacrifices and how people worshipped her. As if she was a god to them and not just a little girl who knew too much about death and cared too little about living.
So she listened to them when she would rather do anything else. At 11, she isn’t aware that the way she blends in is more out of survival. But there’s a reason why the hat wanted her in Slytherin and it wasn’t only because of the Horcrux in her head.
(The Horcrux was nothing in comparison to her and her potential. Dumbledore was worried about the wrong things.)
Year after year it was the same thing over and over again. (Who is she? What is she even waiting for?) Fighting evil (or just Voldemort), protecting the students, and listening to Dumbledore. Learning about the people, the culture. (They've all been so disappointing to her so far but what did she expect?) The Girl-Who-Lived was a role she immersed herself in and it all felt like a really bad play.
“Will you tell me why Voldemort is after me, professor?”
“Can you please help me get away from the Dursleys, professor?”
“How did my mother protect me, professor?”
Now, the answer to the last one was particularly interesting, “Your mother’s love protected you from Voldemort, Harriet. He never understood love. The power your muggle-born mother had.”
If the magic she used was just love, how is it possible that she, the girl who knows death like no other, can feel the imprint of a dead woman? The fury for her enemies and pure protection that Lily Evans Potter had for Harriet was indescribable. Her mother was a woman with talent unmatched, the power she had was unprecedented and nobody ever acknowledged it.
Sure, Professor Dumbledore knew that Lily loved Harry, what mother wouldn’t? Professor Snape chased after her ghosts and the wizarding world cried about her beautiful red hair and green eyes. But they did not *see* Lily Evans Potter. They saw her beauty and thought that everything talented was all James Potter’s. They saw Harry’s quidditch skills and thought of James Potter the troublemaker, never truly remembering who her mother was before she became a Potter (as if marrying James was her biggest accomplishment, as if getting herself tied to a Pureblood was the best she could do).
She swore that people will remember her for more than her pretty face and Girl-Who-Lived title. They will bow down to Harriet Lily Potter, one way or another.
Of course, she never made her thoughts about needing to be more transparent. She didn’t become who she was by sheer dumb luck (She survived Quirrelmort at age 11, defeated a Basilisk at age 12, multiple murder attempts at age 13, and now she was in this bloody tournament. If this wasn’t an impressive resume then she didn’t know what was). This was probably exactly what Tom Riddle the ambitious orphan aspired to be before he gave himself the name Voldemort.
Ambitious, orphans, half-bloods, and desperate. If she were someone who believed in Divinity then she’d say that their fates were tied. (Will she become greater than him? Who is she before Voldemort, before Lily and James Potter? When will she be seen as Harry?)
So when Harry with her identity crisis, ambition, and exhausted mind decided to go research for a clue during the Second Task, she found a curious book that taught her everything there was to know.
Well, for now.
It starts with a book, isn’t that how it always goes?
It was a little brown book, worn and tattered. It had no words or numbers around it. It was clearly old and the person who must’ve owned it died ages ago since the magic around it was ancient and the book was dirty.
She opened the book and read.
And read.
And kept reading.
The book talked about Necromancy, which was the Dark Art of raising the dead. But also so much more. It was about understanding the dead and the practice of communicating with them. Doing rituals, using blood, having the willpower, having a clear relationship with Death. Eating humans, killing people, and having a clear mind. The things she had to do were so dark and deep no one can deny that this is one of the Darkest Arts to exist. But for a supposed 'Savior of The Light' reading about this made her feel like she belonged, as though she was waiting to be introduced to Necromancy her whole life. There was a reason that the Room of Requirement allowed her this book, that was evident. Was this what she needed?
Something in her settled. Like she made a life-changing decision. Like she was whole.
Was this what she was waiting for? The feeling of being whole? Like she could do anything she wanted and enjoy life?
No. This wasn’t it, but it was close. This was the beginning.
The beginning for her but what might’ve been the end for everyone else.
Harry could put her mind into anything she wanted to, she was always independent. She had to be considering the shitshow that was her life.
So she decided to learn. To dedicate herself to the Dark Arts, 'foolish wand waving' as Snape put it, would not cut it here.
She finished the second task, thank Merlin for Neville, successfully, and shut everyone out when she was done. There wasn't a single person reliable enough to help her with this. (She hadn't trusted anyone in a while anyway. Not enough. No one was ever enough for her.)
You cannot practice magic about dead people without understanding them. You have to be involved with death in all ways possible.
.
She killed her first human. Vernon Dursley. She didn't mean it at first, it was just an accident. After the third tournament and what went down, she pushed it all away from her mind. She couldn't deal with everything after Cedric (boring, pretty, kind Cedric who was just a boy and in the way of Voldemort) and well, her uncle was just there you see. When she was grieving and isolated and nobody checked up on her or cared.
So one could say she was mad. Mad with grief, mad with Dumbledore, mad with Voldemort. She hated being tired.
She was in her cupboard again for some reason she couldn't give a rat's arse about when Uncle Vernon told her to go make food.
Harry blinked, “No.”
“What do you mean no, girl? I demand you to make me food.”
Harry stared at this buffon. She saw Voldemort rise back from the dead, this fat muggle was nothing to her.
“I said. No.”
He disagreed and so did she and when a powerful mini necromancer wants a muggle man dead.. the witch will win.
The voices in her head (which only got more loud as time passed by) told her to follow her gut. Her gut told her to use her magic on him. So she pulled and pulled and then Vernon was on the floor and now she’s staging an accident and why is this so easy? she just killed a man who was in her wayisntthisjustlikevoldemort?nononohesjustamuggleitsfINE
Harry thinks she’s great at compartmentalizing. The voices in her head are vaguely proud and smug in equal parts.
Petunia avoids her now, she finally knows better.
Somehow she ends up at Sirius’ old house. She’s a bit distant with him and definitely mad at her friends but she pretends like everything is okay.
They think it’s because her uncle died. She thinks her uncle being murdered, and by her at that, isn’t even the most traumatizing part.
After the Lunch Incident (which is what she calls that.. event now) she started hearing voices again. They are loud and whispering but she listens to them and their advice.
‘Go to the drawing room and open that portrait with your special magic.. Yes yesyes’
She finds more books. Her only legacy is in the voices in her head and the books in her hands.
Harry wishes she was a normal girl with parents who would teach her normal magic sometimes. But as she opens another book and learns more about Necromancy she finds that she doesn’t mind. Not when the voices are happy and content, not when she feels at home with the books that smell like rotten flesh and feel like them too.
The change that brought her down this spiral of madness was intoxicating and felt right. Like it was meant to happen to her. She thinks this is simultaneously the most pretentious thought she’s ever had and thinks being superficial has always suited someone like her anyway.
-
There's many things to a legacy, it's the passing down of tradition. It ties you down to a family and what our family makes of itself.
The Potters were many things but they were also a descendant of the Peverell. The Peverells were renowned for the mystery of the Deathly Hallows.
They were also renowned for their frightening ability in Necromancy.
People thought they could understand it through Voldemort and his inferi army but they didn't. These were just pretty words in a book but no one knew what necromancy even was. The art itself cuts into your soul and resides there while taking bits away. The addiction you get, the way you can’t seem to stop. Those who perform the dark arts had to pay the price, necromancy was feared for a reason.
But Harry knows they don’t understand Death as she does. Voldemort with his extraordinary magical prowess couldn’t compete with her when it comes to this. He feared Death. He feared it so much he split his soul into multiple pieces. He couldn’t accept Death. But she was different, she was always different ever since she was the small tiny orphan with nothing to her name and worth even less. She embraced Death. Accepted it and understood it. She knew with every part of her soul that Death was the End. It was dark, it was hollow, it was empty, it was limitless. It would tear you apart and put you back up because it could. It will cause chaos and destruction just for the sake of it. But even after everything, it would conclude as one thing.
Everything starts with Life but nothing or no one could escape Death.
It’s all good though, they may never understand what it feels like to be as beautiful in destroying as her but they’ll see. She’ll make everyone See her.