Chapter Text
In another universe, I wasn’t born Hadriana Potter. That was your first sign that the timelines were a’changing.
In this timeline?
I was born 100% into this life. Crying, screaming, naked, and blind. Just like normal.
And, just like “normal,” I was a regular baby, but with all my lovely, stubborn memories from my past life just kicking around in my head with emotional baggage as carry-ons.
I could only live in so much denial on where, and who , I’d been born as for so long, unfortunately. The fact that my father called my red-haired mother “Lily-flower” could be rationalized, sure. As could the fact that said mother called said father, James, and he looked like he had perma-bedhead and wore glasses - glasses with round frames , mind you.
Maybe, just maybe I could also rationalize the fact that there was a guy who was apparently called “Sirius” who insisted I “Come to Uncle Pads!”
It was difficult but I swore it could be done!
What I could not rationalize and lie to myself about, however, was when an old man with long white hair and matching beard in ridiculous robes and half-moon spectacles came to visit. When he said things like Secret Keeper and Fidelius Charm …
Nope. After all the lives I’ve lived, I couldn’t deny what those particular phrases meant.
And boy that sucked.
I mean, I should have been safe, right? It wasn’t like Dumbledore shared what the prophecy stated, but I was a girl. Pretty sure the prophecy was geared towards a male child.
And about that prophecy, could someone explain to me why it had to be July since September was originally the seventh month before those two roman emperors got into a pissing match?
Anyways, prophecies were, at best, bullshit and at worst, self-fulfilling, so I usually tried to avoid them. I’d really wish everyone else did the same.
But no .
No, I’m just not that lucky.
Oh - and do you know what happened when my little, infant self tried to communicate and warn my parents about what was going to happen? They took my crayons away!
I was really proud of my drawings too. I mean, clearly I was limited by the bodily restrictions of my physical age, but still, they were really good and detailed drawings warning them that Pettigrew was going to sell them out and that Sirius was going to end up in Azkaban.
But Gods forbid you think that, maybe, your child was a seer or something and was trying to make you aware of what would go down.
Even years later, the whole thing still makes me physically exhausted.
I couldn’t use my powers either. I could only use the basic magic that was standard for a Potterverse infant, but my powers - the ones that were all mine? - I had to wait . I was forbidden to even access them until I met 1 of 3 conditions. The “unlocking” method was random and outside of my control, but it essentially boiled down to 3 possible ways.
- Number 1: They awaken on my birthday. I just wake up on the anniversary of my birth and bam! Hello, Powers. Welcome back.
- Number 2: I hit puberty. Which I’ve always disliked because juggling puberty with all those hormones and then adding my powers and getting reacclimated to them, finding out which ones I’m missing and… yeah. You get the idea.
- Number 3 - and this is the one that is my biggest pain in the ass! - I die. Or rather, get hit with something that should kill me. Like I drown, get a disease, my throat is sliced, I’m born allergic to something and suffer from anaphylactic shock, etc. I fall down the stairs and break my neck. Something that would kill me but instead, BAM! Powers brought me back from the void of death and I’m alive! (I have more than once enacted scenes from various horror films of Asian persuasion because of this utterly infuriating condition to regain my powers.)
Side note: It was funny as hell to terrorise your killer, though. Have them completely lose their minds with fear after they’ve brutally murdered you. There was a genuine joy I’ve found in it. I may not like this condition, but if you’ve been murdered, it was definitely nice to have a genuine goal to cause the person who killed you to suffer as much as possible. I would highly recommend it if you ever got the opportunity to get the job done.
Still. I fucking hated that particular condition.
Where was I? Oh yeah.
So, I had no way to defend the Potters, or myself, when Voldemort came calling that Halloween night. Everything happened as it did in canon; right down to the stupid fucker “violating” his promise to Snape and killing Lily.
Honestly, I wonder if he gets off on using the killing curse. Like he’s got an Avada-fetish or something. I mean, as happy as he is to use it, it might be the only way he truly gets his jollies off at this point.
I had kind of hoped that when he cast Avada on me, even with Lily’s protection magick, the third condition would have been fulfilled and I would get my powers back, but nope. That didn’t happen. The backlash and explosion hurt like fuck, but no powers.
All I gained from this event was no parents, the damned tell-tale scar, and the fucking slimy piece of soul shard that attatched itself to me. It literally felt slimy as hell, too. Like a wet slug wriggling around in my skull.
When Hagrid came to pick me up, I started bawling my eyes out. Because A) this meant I was going to have to endure whatever it was that happened in that missing chunk of time no one knew about, and B) I’d have to go to the fucking Durselys and I was pretty sure that even if I didn’t exhibit a single ounce of magical ability, somehow, some way, they were still going to treat my ass worse than a House Elf at a biggoted pureblood’s home.
He tried to calm me down, but it wasn’t going to work! His hand was as big as I was and I felt so freaking small as it was. He was trying to gently wrap me up and calm me down when Sirius showed up. At the time I was like, maybe I could convince him to forgo his stupid plan on vengeance and concentrate on taking care of me instead. You know. Since he was my godfather and was legally responsible for me.
…
Haha. Nope.
No, I was, apparently, doomed to the canon-fate. He kissed my forehead, promised me he’d be back, made sure Hagrid had the stuffed dog plushie on him, and gave Hagrid his bike to take me to Dumbledore.
I would have loved to tell you what happened next and where I was taken. But I couldn’t. Because A) I didn’t know the place that Dumledore was supposedly at, and B) he knocked my ass out multiple times during whatever it was he was doing. I was pretty sure that at least one of the things he did involved something incredibly shady because I woke up at one point feeling weak as fuck. That weakness lingered, too. Like the feeling of the wriggling slug in my brain, it would stick with me for years.
There was no warming charm on the fucking blanket, either - which, fun fact, was not the same one that I was wrapped in when I left my house - and at some point during transit, my Padfoot plushy went “missing”, so in conculsion, I had nothing from home. Well, maybe the footy pajamas I was wearing were the same but THOSE DIDN’T COUNT!
Actually, now that I reflected on it, maybe it was a good thing I never had those when I went to the Dursley’s because Dudley would have stolen them, or they would have done something to them eventually so I might be pissed that they’re gone, but at least the Dursley’s couldn’t succeed in taking that from me, too.
Gods knew they would take so much from me already once I was put in their care.
As the Gods are my witnesses, I did nothing to antagonize these… people . I never showed signs of magic; I tried to be polite and well behaved; But when a few things didn’t go their way, and their precious Dudley managed to get places he wasn’t supposed to be, they made everything my fault.
Yes, they did stick me in the cupboard under the stairs.
Yes, they did make me do chores and housework for them.
Yes, they barely fed me, and once I was physically able to bathe myself, I did so just to save myself from the painful scrubbing in ice-cold water.
And, yes, as much as I tried to fight it, I found myself unable to fight back, even when my mind was screaming to throw a fit and hurt them.
Now you remember what I said earlier about how things were different in this timeline? You know, way way up at the beginning of this chapter?
Well, we’ve covered that the first change from the “original universe” was that in this one, I was born Hadriana Potter. I was she and she was me. There was no dissonance here like in that universe.
The second major, and completely altering, event was what happened when I turned 4 and ½ when Aunt Petunia decided to let me be in charge of the super-hot fry—or chip if you’re British—oil because dear Duddykins wanted burgers and chips for lunch.
Oh-so sweet Dudley. A boy who couldn’t possibly do anything wrong after hearing how it was going to take a little longer for his second helping of chips to finish cooking, threw his plate in a tantrum and hit me. In the back of the head. Where I then lost my balance and fell to the floor, knocking the pot of hot, skin-melting oil onto my body.
But wait! There’s more! Because unlike it just causing horrific disfiguring burns that I would have had to live with until I was 6 in the main timeline, the flame from the stove caught the oil on fire. Which then set me ablaze.
This fire proceeded to get out of control very quickly, and from what I would later learn, Petunia grabbed Dudley and fled the moment she saw the flames get big.
I’ll just end this chapter with a question to you guys. Just a nice, innocent query, no real big meaning behind it…
Are any of you familiar with Silent Hill?