Confrontations & Confessions
Wednesday waited until Harry finished with his appointment with Dr. Kinbott before she pushed past him and barged in the ‘good doctor’s’ office with her evidence in hand.
“Wednesday,” Dr. Kinbott had been behind her desk, undoubtedly making notes about Harry’s session, but she rose with a false smile when Wednesday entered her office. “I didn’t know we had an appointment today.”
“We don’t,” Wednesday informed her. She pulled the jewelry box from her backpack and slammed it on Kinbott’s desk. “I came to return this, Laurel.”
Kinbott looked down at the jewelry box while Wednesday looked at Kinbott. She didn’t bear a strong resemblance to Garret, but Wednesday hardly looked like Pugsley and they were definitely siblings.
Wednesday ran the DNA test…
Nine times.
“Wednesday, my name isn’t Laurel, and this isn’t mine,” Kinbott said slowly. She reached out and brushed her fingers across the top of the box. “This is beautiful, I think you should return it to its rightful owner.”
“I am,” Wednesday said stoutly. She shoved the jewelry box closer to Kinbott. “It’s yours. You faked your death. You returned to Jericho. You’ve found a partner. Either you’re the Hyde and Xavier is controlling you or Xavier is the Hyde and you’ve unlocked him through hypnosis. Either way, the two of you have been in this together since the beginning.”
Kinbott looked up at Wednesday, her jaw open in a decidedly unappealing way.
“Wednesday… you sound crazy,” she said in a soft and cajoling tone. “Please, why don’t you sit down and we can talk about this?”
“I do not want to talk about this, I want you to confess!” Wednesday yelled, slapping her hands on the desk. She leaned in Kinbott’s space and dared her to lie directly to her face. “Admit that you have been killing the townsfolk for some nefarious purpose!”
“There is something seriously wrong with you!” Kinbott cried, stepping backward away from Wednesday. “You need psychiatric help, Wednesday.”
Wednesday curled her lip and worked hard to refrain from shouting again.
“I’m not the one running around with a Hyde on a leash,” she hissed. “Do you have any idea how unstable they are? He could turn on you any moment and rip your throat out. Who would put your organs inside your jar collection then?”
It wasn’t as if Wednesday would care if Kinbott was hung by the rope she created, but according to lore, an untethered Hyde was impulsive, erratic, and uncontrollable. It was a risk for Kinbott to die and leave her pet Hyde untethered, but it was as much of a risk for her to continue ordering it to kill the townsfolk.
Unless of course Wednesday had it all wrong and Kinbott was the Hyde and Xavier her master.
Kinbott was keeping up her act beautifully, she looked shocked, insulted, and not a little terrified.
“I’m calling Principal Weems,” she said, her fingers trembling when she reached for the phone on her desk. “I’m changing my recommendation to your case. I believe you’re past therapeutic assistance and need full time psychiatric care.”
Taking over a ward full of some of the most mentally ill people would be an excellent adventure, but Wednesday couldn’t leave Harry behind for that long.
“If you dare try and send me away, we both know I will be back and my fury will have no bounds,” Wednesday said in a soft and dangerous tone. “I’ll expose you and Xavier both soon, Laurel.”
With that, Wednesday turned on her heel, Kinbott’s discarded coffee cup in her bag, and she stormed from the office.
She had a sheriff to speak with.
*****
Harry had spent his session with Dr. Kinbott spilling his soul - as in singular, thankfully - but he didn’t feel any better about it. Sirius was gone, probably left the hospital the instant he woke. Wednesday didn’t believe Harry about seeing his dad. Harry was blind without his glasses, and Tyler and Xavier were nowhere to be found.
All in all, Harry had better days.
Then, to make it worse, when Wednesday finally came out of Dr. Kinbott’s office, she grabbed Harry by the wrist and began dragging him toward the police station while Enid jogged along to keep up.
“Where are we going?” Harry asked, even though he already knew.
“To see Sheriff Galpin,” Wednesday said shortly. “It’s time to expose Kinbott and Xavier for what they are.”
Harry’s heart dropped in his stomach and he jerked his wrist from Wednesday’s grip. When Harry stopped walking, Wednesday did as well. She turned to him with an eyebrow lifted and her eyes blazing with something close to anger.
“What’s that mean?” Harry asked her. He had a sneaking suspicion that he already knew, but he wanted to hear it from Wednesday’s mouth.
“The monster is a Hyde, it requires a master to unlock the abilities,” Wednesday told Harry, not even bothering to keep her voice down on the very public sidewalk the three of them lingered on. “Kinbott is Laurel Gates; she faked her death and unlocked the Hyde inside of Xavier.”
“Xavier is not a monster!” Harry snapped, sick of having the same argument. He didn’t like how close to the truth Wednesday was getting and he didn’t like that her first instinct was to turn people in to the police department.
Harry promised Tyler that he’d help him get free, and that meant free from imprisonment as well as his master… which Harry kind of doubted was Dr. Kinbott. There was no way that the woman who helped Harry so much was also directing Tyler to kill people. Tyler liked Dr. Kinbott, he said that she helped him too. Even if Tyler couldn’t tell Harry who was controlling his Hyde, surely he wouldn’t praise Dr. Kinbott if it was her.
“Look at the evidence, Harry,” Wednesday scowled. “I understand you have some inexplicable attachment to Xavier, but who has been present at every attack?”
Tyler.
“Not when Sirius was attacked,” Harry pointed out. His heart was racing- he’d always been a shit liar.
“He was at the school with us,” Enid added softly.
“So he returned after the attack and rode with me to go make sure Harry wouldn’t identify him,” Wednesday said, waving off the objection. “That doesn’t definitively exclude him.”
Harry took a step away from his cousin. “It’s not Xavier.”
“There is nobody else it could be!” Wednesday said. “I’m sorry that you have terrible taste in friends, but Xavier and Kinbott are monsters, Harry. They are killing people!”
Harry kicked his dry lips and shuffled backwards another step.
“Am I a monster?” Harry asked. He cleared his throat and asked again when it seemed like Wednesday didn’t hear him. “I said AM I A MONSTER?!”
Harry killed people, more than Tyler. And when Harry discovered what Tyler was, what he could do, Harry didn’t exactly run off and turn him in, did he?
If Wednesday hated the monster, then she was going to truly despise Harry if she found out about his involvement.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You had to kill those people,” Wednesday said firmly. As if Tyler had any more of a choice than Harry had. “Xavier and Kinbott are choosing to, there’s a difference.”
“You’re wrong,” Harry told her. He shook his head and then squinted at the paved sidewalk he stood on. “You’re wrong about everything, Wednesday.”
Wednesday’s face softened and she moved closer to Harry with her hand outstretched.
“I know you like him, but he’s dangerous,” she said quietly, driving a dry laugh from Harry.
“I’m dangerous,” Harry said wryly. He held his hand up, stopping Wednesday from grabbing him, and let the deadly green light illuminate his hand. “If you’re turning them in, why not me?”
“That was self-defense,” Wednesday insisted. “You’re not like them.”
“Aren’t I?”
Harry let the light coating his hand fade away and he offered Wednesday his hand. “Try and see what I’m showing you,” he told her wearily.
He was going to lose his cousin, but he was sick of hiding everything. Either she was his true friend - like Tyler and Sirius - or she wasn’t.
Wednesday grabbed Harry’s hand and her eyes rolled back in her head and Harry knew their friendship was going to be tested then and there.
“Potter!”
Harry jumped in the cold metal chair he’d been sitting in. He was in the day room at St Brutus’, a stark grey room filled with quiet boys who were all working on homework under the watch of the guards.
When Harry turned his head, he saw the night shift guard, Guard Hamilton, staring him down. Harry shivered at the cold look in the man’s dark eyes, he’d always given Harry a bad vibe since he started a week after Harry arrived at St Brutus’.
“Sir?” Harry said questioningly. They weren’t allowed to speak during study time, but Harry assumed an exception could be made since he was being called by the guard.
A wrong assumption, apparently. Guard Hamilton stormed over to Harry and grabbed his shoulder roughly, ripping him from his seat.
“You’re wanted in the main office,” Hamilton growled. He drug Harry from his seat while the other boys snickered at his misfortune and Harry panicked over why he was being summoned. Going to the main office always meant a caning at best, time in the hole at worst.
And Harry broke out in a cold panic at being stuffed in the hole, a cold closet with a few air holes and nothing but a pot to piss in. It was worse than the cupboard and Harry had avoiding being sent there ever since he’d first spent a week there and never really felt the same afterward.
Harry was too afraid to ask any question, having learned long ago that any show of curiosity would only get him beaten there, but Hamilton took an abrupt turn in the opposite direction of the main office and Harry couldn’t stop his thoughts from wandering.
Where were they going?
The answer came soon enough when Hamilton grabbed the keys hanging from his belt and unlocked a utility closet door and shoved Harry inside of it. He followed Harry in and locked the door while Harry attempted to not fall into the shelves of cleaning supplies that lined the walls.
Harry stared at his shoes and tried to stop his knees from knocking together. He’d heard stories from the other boys, horror stories of guards who accepted, and sometimes took, favors from them in exchange for gifts of candy and cigarettes. Harry had never been interested before and he wasn’t interested then.
“We need to talk, boy,” Hamilton growled. Harry said nothing, keeping his head ducked and trying to curl his shoulders inward, making himself look small and pathetic.
Not a difficult task, sadly.
Hamilton stalked closer to Harry. He reached out and grasped Harry by the hair on the top of his head, wrenching his head upward and driving a gasp from Harry’s mouth.
“You’ve got no idea, do you, Potter?” Hamilton whispered, his voice taking on an odd tone somewhere between amusement and derision. “You don’t have any idea who you are or the power you wield?”
Harry’s lower lip wobbled, showing his fear in a purposeful move. He knew what kind of power he had, he’d been experimenting with it for years, but he’d never been caught before. Only once, when he’d ran away from his relatives after the incident with Piers, and a man with greasy black hair had appeared and escorted him back to his relatives with a firm warning to stay put.
None of which explained how Hamilton knew about it. Sure, there were the incidents with Chase and Abraham, but Harry had never been linked to those deaths.
And he never would. His green spell was foolproof.
“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Harry whimpered. “Please, my head, it hurts.”
Hamilton chuckled, low and menacing. “You don’t even know who you are,” he breathed. He raised his empty hand to Harry’s face and his index finger traced the lightning bolt scar on Harry’s forehead. “You’ve got no idea the life you were cheated of, boy.”
Harry knew what life he had been cheated from. He had been cheated of a life with his parents by a car accident. He had been cheated of a life free of imprisonment by his relatives. The only thing Harry got in return for all his suffering was power; power to finally wreck vengeance of people who targeted him for their own miserable lives.
He’d started with Piers, an accident, truly, when the boy had been throwing rocks at Harry behind the library one day. Then with Chase when the other boy tried to drown Harry in the loo. That had been a happy accident, one Harry had been eager to repeat.
Most recently it had been used on Abraham, the leader of the gang in St Brutus’, who’d been kicking the shit from Harry’s body with his boots when Harry sent the green power to his chest and cursed him dead.
In the end, it felt good to see their bodies lifeless while Harry was still alive and breathing.
Harry didn’t want to kill Hamilton, he didn’t think he’d get away with it like he had the others, but if Hamilton tried to touch Harry then he wouldn’t have a choice.
All Harry had was his power and will to survive until he could find the happy future where he would be free. The future he’d always dreamt of.
The future that Harry would do anything to make it to.
“No idea at all,” Hamilton breathed, his breath bringing a foul odor that washed over Harry’s face and left goosebumps where it touched him. “Well I’ll let you in on a secret, boy, your life is finally going to mean something for once. You’re going to die and your blood will bring back my master, once and for all. And I, I will be honored above all others as the one who did anything to bring him back.”
Harry shivered, ice going down his spine, when Hamilton pulled harder on his hair with one hand and reached for his pocket with the other. Harry couldn’t turn his head down, Hamilton’s grip was too tight, but his eyes flicked down just enough to see the knife Hamilton removed from his pocket, one that rested beside what looked like a wooden stick with a polished black handle.
“Please,” Harry begged, his throat constricting when he heard the snick of the knife opening. “Please, sir, please, let me go.”
Hamilton laughed coldly and brought the knife to Harry’s neck.
“Your mother begged before she died too,” he whispered. “But in the end, Lord Voldemort conquered her and I will conquer you.”
Harry had no time to think about that information - how could a woman beg before being hit by a car? - because the blade of the knife was against his throat and when he swallowed, it pressed harder against his neck.
Hamilton slid it across Harry’s neck, not enough to kill him, but enough to cause Harry to gasp and a thin stream of blood to pour from the wound to a glass vial.
“I’ll use your blood, bring my Master back, and be remembered for an eternity,” Hamilton breathed, his foul smelling breath causing Harry to cringe more than the injury did. He switched the knife for his piece of wood and dug it in the wound.
“Any last words from the famous Harry Potter?” Hamilton asked.
“Yeah,” Harry swallowed. ”Die.”
Harry reached out blindly and put his hand over Hamilton’s chest, his power flowing through his fingers and directly to Hamilton’s heart. The grip on Harry’s head lessened and the knife dropped away.
Harry gasped, his lungs aching as they filled with air, and he stumbled backward into a shelf, knocking over bottles of floor cleaner. Hamilton’s cold eyes became flat and dull as he fell backward, his head slamming off the door before it hit the floor with a loud crack.
The knife fell from Hamilton’s hand and Harry reached for it like a boy in a trance. When he looked down at Hamilton, the man suddenly represented everything Harry hated.
Hamilton became the Dursleys, treating Harry like rubbish and putting him down at every opportunity.
Hamilton become the kids in primary who believed Dudley and taunted Harry, making sure he was miserable in a place meant to make him happy.
Hamilton became the teachers and guards at the school, always looking the other way when the other boys ganged up on Harry.
Hamilton became imprisonment. Hamilton became loneliness. Hamilton became Harry’s anger and his isolation and his desperate fear that life will never get any better.
Harry didn’t even realize he was screaming, tears coursing down his face in endless rivers. Harry didn’t realize he’d been dragging Hamilton’s own knife through the man’s chest- over and over and over.
All Harry knew was that Hamilton needed to be destroyed so that Harry could be free.
When Harry’s screams attracted the attention of other guards and they unlocked the door, finding Harry in a locked room with a dead man, holding a bloody knife, Harry knew he’d never be free.
Not in that lifetime.
*****
Wednesday shuddered as she came to after seeing Harry deliberately and furiously destroy a grown man.
It may have been understandable self-defense in the beginning, but by the end- Harry had a gleeful light in his eyes while he screamed and cut the man over and over.
Harry stood in front of Wednesday then, his big eyes unhindered by his glasses, and they both ignored Enid while they processed what Wednesday just saw.
“If you turn them in, you should turn me in too,” Harry told her, his voice a soft whisper in stark contrast with the screams Wednesday could still hear.
Harry held his wrists out and didn’t even blink as his eyes bore into Wednesday’s.
“I’ve got Piers’ rock, a candy wrapper from Chase’s pocket, a strip of cloth from Abraham’s shirt, and Hamilton’s knife hidden in a box in my dresser,” Harry said without looking away from Wednesday.
He was testing her, she knew it, but her resolve wavered in face of Harry’s admission. He kept items from his victims, just as Kinbott and Xavier had.
Trophies.
“If you’re turning them in for something I’m telling you they didn’t do, you might as well turn me in for what I did do,” Harry said. His lips curled up at the edges, but his eyes were filled with a well of sorrow so deep that Wednesday could drown in it. “You wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite.”
Wednesday looked down at Harry’s proffered wrists and was struck by how thin they were. Harry was nearly as pale as Wednesday, but his wrist bones stuck through his skin and caused him to look so fragile.
Harry looked vulnerable and killed without compunction. He had more of a perfect mask in place than even the Hyde did. Nobody knew what darkness lurked in the shadows of Harry’s heart, nobody aside from Wednesday.
Wednesday knew.
And now she was being asked- ‘what will you do about it?’
Wednesday took a deep breath and knew there truly was no option for her. She wrapped her right hand around Harry’s left fist and pulled him to her side while she turned them around to walk in the opposite direction than she originally intended.
“Where are we going?” Harry asked her. It was more questions in a single day than Wednesday had ever heard from him, perhaps his temporary death had done him some good.
Wednesday attempted to give Harry a reassuring smile, something her father was quite adept at and Wednesday was horrible at.
“You need new glasses,” she told him. She sniffed and dropped the forced smile in favor of a more comfortable scowl. “Since your little Hyde friend has yet to return yours to you.”
Wednesday had less of a choice than the Hyde being controlled had. She would never turn Harry over, she would never betray her cousin. So Harry had a penchant for murder, so did Uncle Fester and Wednesday still loved him.
The Addams family came in all shapes, sizes, and levels of morality. The important thing was- they stuck together through the thick and thin.
Or, in this case, through the times of innocence and slaughter.