Prologue
James Potter was used to weird. You didn't grow up in the Potter household without becoming acclimated to weird. Fleamont Potter was a genius, an inventor, a revolutionary really and everything he did at the very least bordered on odd. As a young man he had invented a hair product that had given the family a fortune and made sure that he never had to work again. Instead he devoted his time to whatever far fetched idea he could come up with. He went through phases where he would become obsessed with something and even if he tried to contain it to his upstairs workshop, pieces of metal, wires, chemical concoctions, and even half finished products would slowly spread across the house like some kind of infestation.
A prime example of this was the flying broom project Fleamont had created around Halloween when James was ten. He would walk downstairs in the morning to find his father hovering a few feet off the ground in the living room. Or when James was a little bit older, Fleamont had decided that chopping vegetables was a waste of time and for his wife's birthday, created a set of knives that chopped of their own volition. That had been a fairly dangerous time in the Potter house.
But nothing, not the beakers of various chemicals, the flying brooms, the knives, any of it, could even compare in weirdness to what James was looking at now. It was small, buglike, with eight legs and even two beady eyes. At first glance, he had thought it was a real spider perched jauntaly on top of his toothbrush but just as he was about to crush it, a small red light had blinked on its back.
"Dad, hey dad!" James called down the hallway. "I think something escaped from your workshop!" Fleamont didn't answer and, after listening for a minute, James turned back to the little critter.
After seventeen years, James had just about had enough of this type of bs. Sure he loved his parents and thought what his dad did was cool, but it would be nice to be able to go even a few hours without encountering something out of the ordinary. In fact, that's what James was most looking forward to in college, getting to escape the weirdness of living in the Potter home and being normal for once.
And there was nothing normal about a little robot spider just chilling in the bathroom.
"Okay little guy, I kind of need that so if you'd just..." James reached out to take the toothbrush. He was wary enough. Just because his dad would never hurt anyone on purpose, that didn't mean his inventions weren't dangerous. In fact, more often than not, they were.
The spider's light blinked again as James reached towards the toothbrush. Carefully, he plucked the spider off the toothbrush and held it up to examine it. He had to admit, it was cool. Really cool. It was extremely lifelike and didn't seem to appreciate being snatched from its place on the toothbrush. Between his two fingers, it flailed it's legs like an angry chihuahua about to be out into a bathtub.
James put the spider carefully into his palm and it scurried over his skin, light blinking, from his palm to the back of his hand and then up under the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
"Shit no come back." James shook his sleeve and spider crawled back out, light blinking angrily. It crawled up and over his hand, back into his palm, and then stopped on his wrist, right where you might take your pulse. It seemed to look up at James, head tilting up and then back down, before biting into him.
And robo spider didn't just take a little nibble, no, robo spider really dug into James's vein.
"Ow." James winced in pain. He tried to pull the spider off but it seemed to be latched down, almost like a pitbull. "Hey let go!" He kept pulling on it but the spider took it's sweet time before letting go. "Okay time for you to go."
Pinching it carefully between two fingers, James started down the hallway towards his dad's workshop. Euphemia Potter had banished Fleamont and his inventions to the attic years ago, not that it had really worked. James stopped below the ladder going up into the ceiling. Above him, he could hear the sounds of drilling and maybe even the sound of a blow torch.
"Dad!" James yelled, trying to get above the sounds of the drill. "Dad."
Fleamont didn't seem to be able to hear him and James started up the ladder clumsily with one hand. The spider struggled against his grip and, breaking free, jumped from his fingers onto the side rail of the ladder. It crawled up the rest of the ladder and disappeared up into the attic.
James paused before deciding to go back down the ladder. The spider seemed to have returned itself to where it belonged and James wanted to get to bed. Fleamont didn't need to know about the spider if it was back in his workshop and James didn't want anything more to do with it after it attacked him. In fact, maybe it was better if he never thought about it again.