introduction
She looks at the carnage around her, tears streaming from her eyes mixing with the ash on her hollowed face. It’s the only indication that she feels anything at all - her eyes remain empty, lifeless - as she takes in the sight. Her world, the world as she knows it, is gone, burnt under her righteous anger, fuelled by memories of every time she screamed for help and they did nothing.
She turns the bone-white wand on herself-
—
“Avada Kedavra!”
The suffering in Harriette Potter’s life begins and ends with the same words, the same green light illuminating her face. The very first time she hears the words, rolling like syrup out of his mouth, she still knows love and warmth and goodness. With every other time, she will feel something tightening in her chest, threatening to burst, to flood the world with her suffering. They will say that green compliments her like no other colour.
Though it may not seem like this, the suffering in Harriette Potter’s life begins with Albus Dumbledore honestly, sincerely, wishing for the best. But being the leader of the world (even if the world is as small as wizarding Britain) is not easy and no man is without flaws, and when Harriette arrives in Hogwarts, only then is he brutally reminded of the not-quite-forgotten hero. It’s just that, at that point, it’s already too late.
When Albus Dumbledore is still thinking he made the right decision, he puts Harriette under Durslyes’ care. Or, more precisely, he lefts a one-year-old baby on their footstep with a letter informing about the baby’s parents’ death which - we will defend Dursleys just this one time - could throw anyone off the loop. At first, Harriette is mostly met with indifference, she’s definitely not coddled but she’s more or less clean and, a bit less than more, fed. The trouble starts on her third birthday, when Harriette makes all of Dudley’s toys fly and any sort of neutral feelings in Petunia’s and Vernon’s hearts are replaced with pure hate. For the next nine years, the Girl-Wonder of the wizarding world will know nothing but pain and dirt and hunger and loneliness so terrible, that it makes the stars weep over her fate.
Dursleys are deeply religious people but not in a way that makes them help the poor or love their neighbours as themselves. No, their zealotry makes Vernon sneer at the young mothers with hunger in their eyes, who beg for money at the street corners. It makes Petunia gossip about two teenaged boys who made the mistake of standing just a little bit too close to each other and were never seen together again. Finally, it makes them send Harriette to a an institution led by nuns with Bible verses written in their hearts, but all mixed up, all wrong.
-
They hate her since the very first day: the children, the nuns with wooden rulers carried around like weapons, the priests who regard other kids with kindness but Harriette with distrust. At the beginning, it’s not anything particular - she hasn’t proved to be a freak yet, not in school - but they feel there’s something different about her, something that they don’t understand. It’s a failing of humans that they are so quick to hate that, what is different from them. But Harriette could have managed the coldness, the stares, even the occasional kicks or pushes. It all got so, so much worse when Sister Amelia saw her heal a bird with her touch - but no, even then she could have managed because they thought her unnatural but they also found her unnerving, with her haunting green eyes and her lightning-shaped scar. It actually got worse when a visiting priest saw Harriette converse with a snake, crouched behind the chapel. He was a tall, imposing man, deep lines on his face from years of austerity and cruelty. The man looked at a girl, a child still, finding a friend in nature but what he saw was an abomination fraternising with forces of the Devil. After all wizards aren’t the only ones who see evil in snakes.
“Potter, what were you doing?”
Eyes too tired to belong to a five-year-old. Blink. Blink. Silence.
“Girl, you will answer Father Thomas in this instant!”
“Sister Margaret, calm yourself.”
“Yes, Father, I apologise.”
“Harriette, wasn’t it? Did you understand what was the snake telling you?” Blink. Blink. Silence.
“We need to take the Devil out of her.”
-
Hagrid, even if his heart was as big as he himself, was just pleased to see a polite little girl with her mother’s fiery hair and her father’s aristocratic features. He didn’t see Harriette was more of a caged animal than a girl, so terrified of doing the wrong thing that she almost didn’t breath just to avoid unnecessary attention. He didn’t notice how her hair curled around her arms almost as if alive, almost resembling blood flowing down her too-pale skin. He didn’t remember that James’s face was handsomely structured but fuller, healthier, while his daughter’s cheekbones looked too sharp for her age.
Harriette looked at the snake terrariums in Magical Menagerie and unshed tears glistened in her eyes.
-
At the age of eleven, Draco Malfoy generally didn’t see much, apart from his very very small circle of interest. He was happy to have someone who looked at him attentively as he rattled on about his parents, his broom, his robes, his friends, his his his. The girl was dressed in hand-me-down clothes, something Draco knew next to nothing about, which hang on her petite frame. She had dark circles under her eyes and when asked if she prefers to get measured without taking off all of her layers, she quickly agreed. All in all, she wasn’t the type of person Draco was used to paying a lot of attention to. In exactly a month, he will have a passing thought that maybe he should pay more attention to her.
In exactly six years, as the world burns around them, he will curse them all for not paying more attention to her.
-
For the longest time, the world was hazy around Lord Voldemort, milky white mist curling in the corners of his brain. Splitting one’s soul six times isn’t the best practice, though it will take him a bit longer to realise that. That day, the mist is still present in his head, thoughts about greatness shifting and changing. Then he sees her and for the first time in years, the mist disappears. He may be more of a monster than anything else but a tiny piece of his soul still remembers the orphanage, the bombings, the famine. He knows abuse, he knows terror and in Harriette Potter he sees all of that. Maybe there’s a version of this story in which the monster can be human, just this one time, and the golden girl would have found her sanctuary in his arms. This is not that version of the story.
Lord Voldemort sees a broken child, groomed to be a soldier and a martyr, and he smiles.
—
“Harriette Potter!”
In an instant, the attention of all of the students turns towards the first-years. They all expect someone great, someone confident, someone red-and-golden with a big smile and an even bigger ego, and God, aren’t they surprised? Because what they get is this ghost of a girl, so very thin, so very pale - the only noticeable thing about her are the eyes which glow (don’t be stupid, it’s only reflection of the light from the floating candles) and her hair, red like blood, flowing freely, moving slightly as she walks. And there’s the scar too, of course. It’s not that visible, not with the whiteness of her skin, so its only more surprising when they notice it’s like a lightning branching out, not the simple zigzag on books’ covers.
She sits down on the stool and for a second, the world stops breathing.
“What do we have- oh. Oh, my.”The Hat looks at the layers and layers of barbed wire woven tightly around the girl’s mind. “You’ll have to let me in, child.”
There’s a moment of consideration and the Hat is allowed to look behind the wire. It may be the most beautiful thing the Hat has ever seen, an explosion of colours like a cosmic nebula. It may be the saddest thing the Has has ever seen, so much pain interwind with every thread of colour, an echo of screams, of chanting in Latin, of blood and burnt flesh. It may be the most terrifying thing the Hat has ever seen because it remembers the mind of the boy who became a monster and the world would never survive the two of them. Still, there’s no other choice.
“Slytherin!”
Harriette looks at the emerald banners depicting coiled snakes and something darkens in her eyes.
-
They have expected so much from here and yet her spells only ever barely work. Her feather rises above her desk just a tiny bit, her shields are paper-thin, her needles remain wooden. Her House is quick to notice the weakness and to pick it apart. They jeer at her, making fun of her skills, of her blood, of her looks. The fact that Snape seemingly can’t stand to look at her makes them even bolder. Harriette lets them because she’s still only eleven and she still hopes that if they don’t see her as a threat, maybe, just maybe, even one person will come to love her. At the same time, she shouldn’t have been surprised that it doesn’t last long.
She’s walking through the Common Room, back to her dormitory, when Malfoy steps in her path. She knows they have planned something because all of the first years - except for Blaise, he will be important later - try to look as if they aren’t paying attention at all.
“Poor Potter, came to cry about for Mommy and Daddy?” He taunts. “Does Potty miss Mommy and Daddy?”
It’s not the best insult but Pansy laughs in the obnoxious way only she can achieve and others join. Harriette tries to sidestep Malfoy, reminding herself that he’s not worth it, they are not worth it.
“Don’t run away, Potty! Don’t you like us?” He turns around slightly to see if everyone is watching them. “Maybe you don’t want to be here, maybe you’ll prefer Gryffindorks?”
She lowers her head and finally manages to walk around him, and she thinks she will be able to leave but it’s not finished yet.
“Don’t walk away when I’m talking to you,” the boy sneers and tries to grab her wrist. His hand catches the long fingerless glove she’s always wearing and here, Malfoy makes a big mistake. He pulls, trying to get the glove from her hand and that’s something she can’t allow. They will not see what the muggles have done to her, she will not bear her secrets before the people who hater her, she will not she will not she will not-
Every crystal of the large chandelier hanging above their heads, magically amplified to provide light to all of the room, explodes, shatters of glass flying around. Everyone ducks, some of the older students managing to cast Protego in time. There’s a moment of silence when the Slytherins are too petrified to move, their attention centred on the only person left standing, her eyes glowing (don’t be stupid, it’s only reflection of the fireplace flickering) .
“You will find, Draco,” Harriette’s voice is coarse, like pieces of gravel scraping against each other, “that I fit among snakes really well.”
-
She’s left alone after that.
Behind a wall of silencing spells, she cries herself to sleep that night.