Chapter Text
It’s so cold.
Such a thought was the only one residing in the seven-year-old girl’s mind as she walked the streets of Surrey that night. The only thought she was capable of.
It was Christmas Eve, and her relatives had not wanted her to taint their celebrations with her… freakishness. Originally, they had planned to simply shut her up in her cupboard, but then Aunt Marge had declared she could not bare to know that the child was in the house; torturing good people with its mere existence.
Unbidden, tears appeared in the eyes of the girl.
Why did nobody want her? Why did her parents leave her? Why did her relatives hate her?
She had watched the children in the playground run to their parents as school was let out, where they were greeted with open arms and smothering kisses.
In contrast, the only time she was touched was to be punished. Other than that, her relatives took care to not even accidentally brush against her – lest they catch whatever it was they believed she had.
Sniffing heavily, the little girl wiped at her eyes with one, too-big sleeve. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of an elegant scrawl adorning her wrists.
Regulus Black, her right wrist read. The writing was both elegant and brutal all at once, with harsh slashes and lingering curves. In contrast, the name on her left wrist – Lucius Malfoy – was grand and showy, its loops tall and the words without any imperfection.
She didn’t know who they were, these boys whose names she had known before even learning her own.
Nobody else in her class had anyone’s names on their wrists. Harri knew because she had checked during the summer, when all the children rolled their sleeves up but her. If she needed any further evidence that it wasn’t usual, she need only think back to her Aunt’s reaction to her wrists; the woman had let out a horrified screech, making the girl swear to never show anyone before giving her a slap for good measure.
But that didn’t stop Harri from thinking about the significance of the names. Not even Uncle Vernon’s belt could do that. No. She could not help but feel as if the names were, in some way, her destiny.
Maybe they would be the ones to save her from the Dursleys. She certainly hoped so.
Harri slowed as she reached two large, familiar doors.
Their local library was somewhere the dark-haired girl frequented in order to get out of the house; her secret refuge, if you will.
There, she immersed herself in the lives of others. In the worlds of Tolkein, Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis and so many others.
She especially liked reading about magic, because Harri Potter had a secret.
The little girl could do things that many others could not. She was, as the Dursleys said, a freak. With a lot of concentration, she could make things move; she could even make other people do things, if she focused especially hard.
One time, she had willed Aunt Petunia’s hand to move just a little to the left – so that she would burn her hand on the stove as she often did to Harri – and it had happened! The little girl had been overjoyed, but didn’t even tell her favourite teacher, Mrs. Fitz.
Knowing the library would be open, she pushed heavily at the doors, which eventually opened for her.
At the desk, an old librarian sat with the teenage volunteer hovering behind her. The teenager popped her gum and winked at Harri, who gave her a tentative but bright smile.
Harri then headed straight for her fantasy books.
Another thing she liked about them, was what they taught her about people. Some of the more adult ones she’d read had seductive heroines, who played men like fiddles; others had innocent heroines, whose facial expressions were vividly explained alongside the way they were often underestimated; others combatted the differences between the sexes, with women often using it to their advantage.
It may be too late for the Dursleys, but Harri was determined that – at Stonewall, where she would be going in four years; to the boys whose names resided on her wrist – she would mould herself into whatever she needed to be to survive, to be liked so that she wasn’t hurt again.
She knew it was wrong, deceptive, but she would do it anyway. Even if it mislead others, it would help her.
As Anne Rice had written in one of the books Harri had read recently: Evil is a point of view.
HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE
A giant bashing her door down was hardly how Harri had imagined her eleventh birthday ending.
She had been sleeping on the floor when it had happened, but had bought herself the time to scurry into the shadows by willing a stool to move into his path. The man had fallen with an almighty bellow.
After he had risen from the ground, he had shouted that he was here to see Harri Potter.
The invader had looked around then, as if expecting her to willingly appear to a well over seven foot, broad-chested man she didn’t know, who had a tendency to speak well above the appropriate inside volume.
Honestly.
No, it wasn’t until he had started yelling about some Hogwarts letter that she left her hiding place.
Hogwarts.
It was the very thing that had been stamped on the back of all those letters that she had received, yet never been allowed to open.
As he brandished it around, she schooled her expression into something open and innocent, bright green eyes wide with an almost wonderous smile upon her face.
The man had liked that, excitedly handing over the letter whilst he blubbered over her parents.
It turned out that they hadn’t died because of a car crash but because some insane maniac had decided to murder them and to try to murder Harri.
She figured that most orphans would feel relieved at learning that their parents didn’t willingly throw their lives away by getting drunk behind the wheel; that they were instead unwillingly taken from her. Yet Harri didn’t feel a thing. Not yet anyway.
Dead was still dead, after all.
“We’ll head to Diagon Alley tomorrow,” the giant told her cheerfully, whilst Harri scanned through her list of supplies.
She pulled her lips into a worried frown, keeping her eyes wide. “This all seems so amazing, Mr. Hagrid, but where will I get the money for all of this.”
The giant chuckled.
“Jus’ Hagrid is fine, Harri,” he told her for what must have been the third time, “and your parents – who these pigs didn’t tell you about – left you a lot of money y’know. James Potter came from a very wealthy family.”
Harri opened her eyes even wider, which Hagrid seemed to find both sweet and amusing if she had read his expression right.
Perfect.
Soon after, Hagrid had settled down to sleep, whereas Harri was unable to.
All of this seemed to good to be true. The idea that there were people out there just like her, with the same freakishness.
It made her feel both excited and irritated, because there were finally people who would understand her and because her freakishness had slowly grown to be something she liked about herself, and now she was learning she shared it with enough other people for there to be an entire school for people like her.
She supposed she would have to put that thought away for later.
Then, there was also the fact that Hagrid had described her father as being from ‘old money’.
In Britain, people who were ‘old money’ often had titles and ancestral lands. Did she have any such thing? And, if she did, what did that mean? Surely the Wizarding World worked a lot differently to the muggle one, as she knew they didn’t coincide as she’d never heard of it before.
The whole night, Harri refused to sleep, and put on the mask of an excitable child in the morning in order to get as much information out of Hagrid as she could.
On their way to Diagon, she learned that there were four Houses at Hogwarts – Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin (Hagrid didn’t seem especially fond of that house, which only made Harri more intrigued about it); that the school was run by a very famous Headmaster, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, who also had a very large political presence and whom Hagrid seemed to worship the ground he walked on; that, while accidental magic before the age of eleven was fine, children between eleven and seventeen who used magic outside of school could risk being excluded, and she learned all about the different subjects Hogwarts offered.
More interestingly, she also learned that some of Lord Voldemort’s – the man who had killed her parents – followers were still around, escaping imprisonment by claiming they had been under the imperius or through bribes.
Harri found it amusing that, even in the Magical World, governments could not escape the corruption that seemed to follow them around like a shadow.
Hagrid had also told her that most of those followers tended to come from Slytherin, but the dark-haired girl didn’t find that fact very interesting. She was very much a believer in nurture over nature. Anyone could turn ‘evil’, even non-Slytherins, in certain sets of circumstances.
But, if Hagrid’s words were at least reliable to some degree, then children often followed their parents into their houses. So, many of the Slytherins would probably hate her.
The girl smiled at the thought.
It would be fun to win them over, to see their parents’ facial expressions as their Lord’s killer won their children over to her.
How delightful it would be.
It was in that moment that Harri decided that if she had to share her freakishness with others, then she was sure as hell going to be the freakiest freak of them all. The most powerful, the most revered, the most liked, the most followed.
The magical world would be hers.
“And o’ course,” the giant continued, strolling casually up a London street as if every passer-by was not staring at him in wonder. “There’s the matt’r of soulmates.”
“Soulmates?” Harri echoed.
Hagrid nodded his head vigorously.
“Some wiz’rds and witches ‘ave writing on their wrist,” Hagrid informed her, making Harri’s mask drop for the first time since meeting him, genuine shock seeping through, “says the name o’ ‘em.”
Regulus Black, Harri thought, her heart beating faster than it had in years, since she’d sufficiently intimidated Dudley to the point he wouldn’t chase after her anymore, Lucius Malfoy.
Suddenly, her mind made its way back to what he had just said.
Wrist.
Singular.
“Do people only have one soulmate?” Harri asked, then tried to deflect the giant from getting the idea that she had two by adding. “What if they die or something?”
Hagrid shrugged. “Only the one normally. There’s been a few cases of two, but yeh ‘ave to ‘ave a strong enough magical core to bond with ‘em both then. Not many do.”
Ha! So she was more powerful than most. That made her feel better.
A bit of panic rose within the young girl, however, when the giant looked at her with curiosity before asking. “Do you ‘ave a soulmate mark?”
The best lies had a bit of truth within them.
“Yes,” Harri answered.
“Wanna tell me who they are?” Hagrid asked, making a loud noise of celebration when he finally caught sight of the sign reading ‘The Leaky Cauldron’. “I can tell Dumbledore and ‘e’ll protect ‘em for yeh.”
Or he’ll use them against me, Harri thought to herself, definitely not knowing enough about this Dumbledore fellow to trust him.
She adopted a shy smile and told Hagrid. “I-I’m not really comfortable doing that right now. I’m really sorry. I-It’s just, everything is all new and I don’t even know who they are.”
The dark-haired girl flinched as the giant placed a large, heavy hand upon her shoulder.
“It’s alrig’t Harri,” he said in a tone he must have thought was reassuring, “but make sure yeh tell Dumbledore when yeh ready. They’ll need protecting from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s followers.”
Harri nodded in faux acceptance, right as Hagrid pulled open the door to the pub they had been approaching.
Hagrid led them up to the bar, Harri observing the obscurely dressed wizards and witches around her, and declared that he needed to get into Diagon in order to get Harri Potter her supplies.
The impossible tall man had, of course, already told Harri that she was famous and why, but that still had not prepared her for the chaos the pub dissolved into at the mention of her name.
“Miss Potter, pleasure to meet you!”
“Do you recognise me, I bowed to you in a shop once!”
“Uncurl your hand, I want to shake it!”
“Miss Potter, can I hug you? Thank you so much for what you did back then! You’re the saviour of all of us.”
“Oh, what a beautiful girl you are! Can I have a picture for the Prophet, Miss Potter?”
Harri barely stopped herself from flinching as people grabbed onto her closed fist, trying to shake it, as they grabbed onto her cloak and shoved things to sign in her face.
The dark-haired girl closed her eyes, counted to three to calm herself down, and then opened them once more.
She then offered the crowd her prettiest smile, uncurling her fist so that she could shake their hands and allowed them to kiss it. She told them all what a pleasure it was to meet them, laughed at their silly jokes, and accepted a pen so that she could sign their hats, scarfs, parchment, skin and whatever else was shoved at her.
“What a sweet girl,” she heard one witch remark after she had signed some kind of book for her granddaughter. “She wears the fame so well! I hope she’ll be in Hufflepuff like my Hannah!”
Another witch rebuked that. “No way, she’ll be in Gryffindor like her parents.”
“Or maybe,” another added, a giggle in their voice. “She’ll switch it all up and be in Slytherin.”
The witches all laughed together, remarking at what brilliant gossip that outcome would make.
After signing a final cotton vest, Harri told her adoring fans. “I’m so sorry, but I must get going. I’ve got to get my school supplies. If you’re still here when I come back, though, please do come and say hello, you’ve all been lovely.”
The crowd seemed to love that, allowing the girl to make her way over to the man that was supposed to be escorting her.
Right good job he had done, leaving her to the vultures like that.
She didn’t reprimand him, simply following dutifully behind the giant to a door at the other end of the pub, giving her fans a final wave.
Well, this would certainly make establishing herself as the most powerful of the freaks all the more easier.
HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE-HIE
Her escort had wanted to accompany her about her business in Gringotts, but Harri had convinced him otherwise.
After all, the giant had already informed her that he had business of his own in Gringotts, so he might as well get it done whilst she was dealing with her own money and then they could meet up at the end.
With a slight frown, Hagrid had agreed that was a sound plan and left her to her own devices.
Unfortunately, because her escort was perpetually useless, he had forgotten to give her Vault key to her.
So, Harri had to go into Gringotts without it, ignoring the slight pang of anxiety in her chest at the idea of a possible confrontation in front of all these people at the desk.
“I’m Harri Potter,” the girl declared, trying to place a confident mask on her face, when she reached the front of the line, “and I need to access my vaults, but the man escorting me forgot to give me my vault key.”
The goblin gave her an appraising look up and down, before declaring. “Five sickles for an inheritance test. You can pay after you get an inheritance test, and if you get nothing you must pay the charge within a month. Go down the corridor to your left and then through the seventh door on your right.”
“Thank you,” the Potter girl said politely, before following the directions given to her.
What would this inheritance test include? Would it come with some kind of assessment that would decide whether or not she was worthy to access her family’s funds?
She was probably overthinking it. Hopefully it worked just like a muggle bank with the addition of… goblins.
Pushing the seventh door on the right open, Harri came face to face with a classroom layout, each desk holding a piece of parchment with a knife perched upon it. Behind a desk at the front was a goblin, who did not so much as look up from his parchment before he declared. “Sit at one of the desks. Cut your palm and then place it in the middle of the parchment. If you have brought someone else’s blood with you or attempt to cheat this test in any other way, the parchment will turn to flames and you will find yourself without your hand. Understand?”
“Yes,” Harri said, making her way to a desk in the middle of the room.
Unlike others her age, the dark-haired girl was unbothered by most pain. She was used to it. So, she slit her palm successfully with barely more than a wince, and then placed it in the centre of the parchment.
“Leave it there for five seconds,” the goblin continued, now looking at her with narrowed eyes, “and then lift.”
Harri did so, watching with barely concealed awe as the blood stain in the centre of the parchment shot outwards, becoming ink that filled up the entire page of parchment.
Once the ink had stopped moving around, she began to read:
Name: Harriet Liliana Iolanthe Potter.
Date of Birth: 31/07/1980 (11).
Mother: Lily Juniper Evans (deceased).
Father: James Hadrian Potter (deceased).
Maternal Grandmother: Rosemarie Juniper Evans nee Baxter (deceased).
Maternal Grandfather: Thomas Malcolm Evans (deceased).
Paternal Grandmother: Euphemia Medea Potter nee Yaxley (deceased).
Paternal Grandfather: Fleamont Henry Potter (deceased).
Godparents: Sirius Orion Black (imprisoned), Alice Nimue Adriana Longbottom nee Greengrass (incapacitated) and Dorcas Valeria Meadowes (deceased).
Magical Guardian: Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
BY BLOOD Heir to:
Potter (eligible for Lordship/Ladyship upon majority – 2 seats on the Wizengamot).
Peverell (merges with Potter when Lordship/Ladyship claimed – provides a further 3 seats on the Wizengamot).
BY MAGIC Heir to:
Meadowes (no Lordship or Ladyship title, but provides 1 seat on the Wizengamot).
Black (secondary heir through Godfather bond; should all primary heirs die out, title will revert to Harriet Liliana Iolanthe Potter).
Vaults:
Potter Descendant Vault (current access).
Potter Heir Vault (access upon accepting position as Heir).
Potter Lord Vault (access upon reaching majority and accepting Lordship).
Yaxley Descendant Vault (current access).
Black Heir Vault (access if Harriet Liliana Iolanthe Potter becomes the primary Heir).
Black Lord Vault (access if Harriet Liliana Iolanthe Potter becomes the primary Heir).
Meadowes Main Vault (access upon majority; has current access to bottomless pouch which will give a 2 galleon weekly allowance).
Peverell Heirloom Vault (current access; may not sell anything from the vault until majority, and what can be sold is limited).
Peverell Heir Vault (access upon accepting position as Potter Heir).
Peverell Lord Vault (access upon reaching majority and accepting position as Potter Lord).
Alexander Family Vault (access upon majority).
Bennett Family Vault (no. 3) (access upon majority).
Dresden Family Vault (access upon majority).
Hodson Family Vault (access upon majority).
Jones Family Vault (no. 14) (access upon majority).
Mereton Family Vault (access upon majority).
Shepherd Family Vault (access upon majority).
Woodson Family Vault (access upon majority).
White Family Vault (no. 2) (access upon majority).
Harri allowed her eyes to open wide. That was a lot of vaults.
Hagrid had said that many family lines had died out during the war, but she doubted that she had been related to this many. So they must have left them to her. Why? Simply because she was a baby who got lucky?
Either way, if that theory of hers was correct, she was not about to turn down access to their money.
So, with a grin, Harri cast her eyes up from the parchment and told the goblin: “excuse me mister, but I believe I’ll be needing quite a few keys.”