a pool of crimson at his feet
There’s something wrong about Quirrell but she can’t pinpoint what exactly. It’s in the jerkiness of his movements, in the way he sometimes touches the turban, and in the fact that no one, except for Harriette, seems to notice. The students mock his stutter, how frightened he is of everything; they look at him and see a harmless fool, Harriette looks and her senses scream danger.
So, really, she’s not surprised when she wakes up one night by the end of the semester and she’s not in her bed but laying on a cold stone floor in a room she doesn’t recognise. She’s also not surprised when the first thing she sees is Quirrell looking at her intensely.
“You’re an odd child, you know?” He says as if it’s not an unusual situation they’re in. “And powerful, too.”
She watches him from her position on the floor and wonders whether her life will ever be normal.
“Stand up,” he orders and warily, she gets on her feet. “Look into the mirror and tell me what do you see.”
She realises she knows the mirror — it’s the same one in which she saw a beautiful woman with hair like fire and eyes almost like hers though they shone with warmth and people only ever said that Harriette’s gaze was haunting, unnatural; in which she saw a tall man who had her lips, her nose, her high cheekbones though his face was healthy, fuller and Harriette was always too thin, gaunt like a feral animal; the same one which Dumbledore took away from her.
She looks into the Mirror of Erised and she sees everything she ever wanted, her mother and her father, who she knows loved her unconditionally, with the purest love there exists. She knows it because the Muggles gave her rope marks burnt around her wrists and ankles, gave her sparkles of electricity that still sometimes go up and down her spine, but they also unlocked some part of her mind that she didn’t know existed, that contained traces of laughter and colourful sparks and kisses to the top of her head.
“What do you see, child?” Quirrell asks and she doesn’t lie but apparently it doesn’t satisfy the man.
“Let me talk to her,” a new voice appears, raspy and terrible but great at the same time.
Quirrell reaches to the cloth covering his head and unravels it, deep crimson pooling around his feet like blood. He turns around and Harriette thinks she will be sick because there’s a face on the back of his head, a face straight out of a horror, with red red eyes and slits instead of a nose, skin white and paper-thin.
Harriette is scared but she has lived through horror more times than she can count and after some time, it doesn’t freeze your blood anymore.
“I only see my family, I swear,” she repeats because she doesn’t know what else to say.
And Lord Voldemort could snark and threaten and torture but he sees Harriette Potter, he’s been her, a lifetime ago, and he knows how much she would give for foolish foolish love.
“You see, child, I’m in need of an artefact. Help me get it and I’ll protect you forever,” he coos. She doesn’t need to know what kind of protection he means.
“You tried to kill me once. You killed my parents.” She says, knowing with certainty that this is Voldemort.
“That was a long time ago and I have changed. I have realised the mistakes of my past actions,” he lies and charms and tries to bend her to his will.
Now, you know how this story ends, you know Harriette is the only one who remains standing, anger flowing through her body, hatred mixed with her blood. But it also ends with tears streaming down her face because in this story, Harriette Potter is not Dark, she’s not cruel, she doesn’t take pleasure from the tragedy that follows her steps.
In some universes, Harriette Potter is tempted by the promises of greatness, power, and glory. In some, she thinks of red hair and freckles, of bronze eyes and bushy hair, and says no, you will never have me. But that’s neither here not there and in this universe, it all comes down to something you cannot forget.
Harriette Potter would do anything for even a scrap of love. The creature standing in front of her can’t give her that.
-
Harriette thinks that if someone else killed (not killed but we won’t go into the technicalities) Voldemort, they would get flowers and smiles and ruby red stones filling the hourglass (that someone else would surely be in Gryffindor). However she’s the one who did it and suddenly it’s more Potter burned Quirrell with her touch and She carries his screams in her hands and Do you see the scars on her fingers? She doesn’t mind the scars — what’s a few more to an ever-growing collection?
So Harriette not-kills Voldemort but the world turns it around and makes her the freak. It’s just another brick in the foundation of what is prophesied to come.
-
The summer in colours: red blood coating her wrists, white candles flickering under the breaths of a hundred prayers, gleaming gold of the cross hanging on the priest’s neck.