Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The cupboard under the stairs smelled of dust, old socks and the lemon cleaner Aunt Petunia used on everything else. Harry lay on his side on the thin mattress, knees drawn up, cheek pressed to the splintering wall. Every breath tugged at a sore spot along his ribs. When Dudley had shoved him earlier, the edge of the kitchen counter had caught him just right. It still ached, a dull, steady throb that agreed with everything the Dursleys ever said about him. "Freak!" Dudley had laughed as Harry hit the floor. "You're not allowed to have things."

He had something anyway. Harry shifted, the movement making the cupboard walls creak. His fingers found the book tucked under his pillow. It was heavier than it looked, bound in dark leather that didn't quite feel like leather, warm even though the cupboard was cold. There was no title, no author's name, only faint curling patterns on the cover like dried vines.

He had found it in the school skip that afternoon while taking rubbish out for the caretaker. It had been lying on top of a torn bin bag, too clean and too whole to belong there. He had snatched it up, shoved it inside his oversized shirt and kept his head down all the way home.

The lock on the cupboard clicked now, making him jerk. Uncle Vernon's shadow blocked the line of light under the door. "What are you doing in there, boy?" the booming voice demanded. "No sitting about. You don't get free time."

"Just… reading," Harry said before he could stop himself. "Reading?" The word was practically spat. There was the familiar, angry rattle of the doorknob. "You don't have anything to read. If I see so much as a leaflet in there, you'll be sorry. Up at five tomorrow. Garden."

"Yes, Uncle Vernon." His footsteps pounded away. The silence that followed felt thinner than usual, as if the air were listening. Harry eased the book out and opened it. The pages weren't like normal ones. Thick, smooth, almost slippery under his fingers. Lines of dark red ink crawled over them in neat rows. The letters weren't English, or anything he'd seen at school. They twisted if he tried to look too hard, slipping away like they wanted to stay secret.

Still, on some pages, a word sat alone at the top, bigger than the rest, underlined in a stroke so dark it might have been dried blood. Maybe they were chapter titles. Maybe they were names. He moved his lips soundlessly, trying to copy one. The syllables rasped against his tongue and refused to come out. "Stupid," he muttered. "It's just a book."

But the cupboard was close and hot and it was something that was his, and if he could make sense of this, maybe it would mean he wasn't as hopeless as everyone thought. His gaze snagged on a word that seemed almost ordinary. The letters curved gently, easier to follow. R-o-s-e-l-i-n, and then a cluster of sharp marks he couldn't untangle. He decided not to try. "Roselin," Harry whispered, because no one could hear him in here. "Rose-lin." The air changed.

The smell of dust and socks was pushed aside by something thick and sweet, like a florist's shop after closing. Beneath it, faint but unmistakable, came the metallic tang of the time he'd cut his hand on the garden shears and sucked at his knuckles until Aunt Petunia slapped them away. The book grew warm against his palms. The ink shimmered once, like a heartbeat. Then the space over his mattress split.

It wasn't loud. There was no bang, no flash, just a thin red line appearing in midair, glowing like a coal in the dark. It stretched downward without touching anything, widening into an oval hole that showed not the underside of the stairs, but somewhere else entirely. Light spilled through, soft and golden and wrong for a cupboard in Little Whinging. It carried with it the echo of jaunty music from very far away, the crackle and hiss of an old radio. Petals drifted down, brushing his face and blanket. Some were pale pink. Some were the colour of dried blood. Harry pressed back against the wall, the book digging into his spine.

A slim, gloved hand slipped through first, feeling its way along the opening. The glove was white, or had been once. A dark stain ringed the wrist, soaked into the fabric like something long ago spilled and never quite washed out. The hand held a parasol with a rose-patterned canopy. The rest of her followed as neatly as if she were stepping through a doorway in a proper house. She shouldn't have fit, but she did. Hat with a brim piled in silk flowers, curls arranged just so, dress the soft green of the cheapest mints Aunt Petunia bought at Christmas and never shared. Lace at her throat, pearl buttons in a perfect row. She smelled of soap and old perfume and something iron underneath.

Her smile appeared first, bright and wide and careful as cut glass. Then her eyes found Harry. "Oh, my," she said, in a voice that made him think of velvet curtains and radio jingles he'd never heard but somehow recognised. The music on the other side dulled, as if it, too, were paying attention. "Now this is a surprise." Harry's throat tried to close. "I—I'm sorry," he croaked. "I didn't mean— I just said a word. I can put it back, I swear—"

"Hush, hush," she murmured, waving one gloved finger. The gesture somehow pressed the panic back down inside him. "No need to apologise. You called, little lamb. I'm the one being terribly rude, dropping in unannounced." Her gaze flicked over him, quick and sharp. It snagged on the bruise darkening his cheekbone, the way he kept one arm clamped over his ribs. "Who hurt you?" she asked. The question was soft, but the air around it seemed to sharpen. "No one," Harry said instantly. Lying came as easily as breathing. "I fell. I'm clumsy. It was my fault."

She clicked her tongue. The light from the hole behind her trembled. "Such dreadful manners, blaming yourself for other people's fun. And such unimaginative insults, too," she added as a distant, muffled voice floated through the door. "Mum!" Dudley whined from the hallway outside. "The freak's talking to himself again!"

The woman's eyes narrowed slightly. "Do they often call you that?" she asked, as if inquiring whether he preferred jam or marmalade. Harry curled his toes in his too-big socks. "All the time," he admitted. Saying it out loud made his face feel hot. "It's… just what I am."

"Hmm." Her smile lost some of its shine, gaining weight instead. "I see." For a second, the opening behind her widened, and Harry caught a sliver of the place she'd come from: a street lit by neon signs that flickered in impossible colours, a tall building with lights in every window, silhouetted figures dancing or fighting or both. Laughter spilled through, bright and jagged. Then it was gone again.

All that remained was the close dark of the cupboard and this impossible woman folding herself into it as if it were a perfectly reasonable parlour. "You may call me Rosie," she said. "It's shorter, and I'm fond of it. You…" She paused, tasting the air. "You are Harry, aren't you?" His fingers tightened on the book. "How do you know my name?"

"Oh, I make it my business to know interesting things." Her eyes crinkled. "And you, my dear boy, are… very interesting indeed." Somewhere beyond the cupboard, Uncle Vernon shouted for quiet; the television blared the evening news. The house rumbled with other people's lives that had no room for him. Rosie tilted her head, studying the door as if she could see straight through it, straight through the people on the other side.

"I don't much like the look of your accommodations," she said. "Or your company." She leaned closer, parasol tapping lightly against the low ceiling. Up this near, he could see that the red on her lips was too deep, that a faint ring of brown marred the edge of one perfect white glove.

"How would you feel," Rosie asked, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur, "about letting someone else take care of you for a change?" Her smile sharpened. "I do adore a good adoption, Harry. Especially of something as rare as you."

Harry swallowed. He wasn't sure if the warmth curling in his chest was hope or something far more dangerous. "What do you mean?" he whispered. Rosie's eyes gleamed, catching every scrap of light the cupboard had. "It means," she said, "that I am thinking very seriously about making you mine."

Chapter Text

For a long, wobbly second, Harry thought maybe he’d misheard her. “Yours,” he repeated, his tongue thick in his mouth. “Like… like Aunt Petunia’s cupboard? Or Dudley’s toys? Or…” He swallowed. “Or like a dog?”

Rosie’s laugh was soft, the sort you’d hear between songs on an old radio. “Oh, no, sweetheart. Not like their things.” She tipped the parasol closed with a click and leaned so that her hat nearly brushed the underside of the stairs. In the cramped dark, her smile looked both very kind and very sharp.

“Though I am charmed you asked,” she added. “Most people never do. They just say yes and cry about the details later.” Harry tightened his hold on the book. The Dursleys’ house had taught him that nothing was free. If she was offering… something, there had to be a price.

“What would I have to do?” he asked. His voice came out higher than he wanted, but it didn’t shake. “If I was yours.” Rosie’s eyes glittered. “Now that,” she murmured, “is a very grown-up question from a very small boy.” He flinched, thinking she might be angry, but she just swung the parasol by its hook on one gloved finger, thinking.

“Well,” she said eventually, “I don’t… take you, Harry. Not like they do. I don’t lock you up and pretend you aren’t there.” Her gaze flicked to the narrow cupboard walls, then back to him. “If you were mine, it would mean I am responsible for you. I visit when you call. I protect what is mine. I make sure no one else lays claim without going through me first. Nasty neighbors, nasty monsters, the sort of things that sniff around rare little sparks like you.”

He blinked. “Like a… guard dog?” Her mouth twitched. “More like a very devoted, very well-armed aunt.” Harry tried to picture Aunt Petunia with a parasol and flowers in her hat. The picture fell apart almost immediately. “And what do you get?” he pressed. “People don’t… look after me. Not just because.”

Rosie looked pleased, as though he’d answered a question correctly. “I get you,” she said simply. “Your time. Your attention. A say in certain little choices when the road forks. I get to watch something interesting grow.” The soft, flowery smell around her thickened, sweeter and stranger. “And perhaps, someday, if you wish, a proper arrangement. A contract. Those come with all sorts of… perks.”

He didn’t know what a contract really was, only that Uncle Vernon shouted about them when the post brought big brown envelopes. It sounded like paperwork and shouting. It didn’t sound like fun. Harry licked dry lips. “Do I… go with you? If I say yes?” He glanced past her at the thin oval of golden light still hanging in the air, just behind her back. The music had faded to a faint hum. Somewhere in there, people were laughing in a way that didn’t sound very nice at all.

“Not yet,” Rosie said. “Not for a very long time, if I have my way. You’re still breathing, lamb. That complicates things.” She lifted one shoulder. “My world is built for the broken and the finished. You…” Her eyes softened. “You are neither.”

“So I stay here.” It felt like a stone in his stomach. “For now,” she agreed. “But with better company.” A floorboard creaked out in the hall. Harry held his breath. Rosie merely tipped her head, listening, then dismissed the sound with a little sigh. “As for what you’d give up,” she went on. “You would promise me something that is already half-promised elsewhere, so I can tug it free when the time comes. A sliver. A splinter.”

“I don’t have anything,” Harry blurted. “They say I’m useless. There isn’t anything to promise.”

“Oh, Harry.” She reached out and, after a moment’s hesitation, he let her brush the back of her gloved fingers along his unbruised cheek. The glove was cool and a little damp, as if she’d just finished washing something off and hadn’t quite got it all.

“You have more than you know,” Rosie said quietly. “You have power they were too stupid to smother. You have your name. You have a future, however tattered.” Her gaze slid up to his fringe. “And you have that.” He stiffened as her hand moved to his hair. Instinct made him squirm away; Aunt Petunia always yanked his head back when she grabbed him there. “Easy, easy,” Rosie crooned. “May I look?”

He hesitated, then nodded. She pushed his fringe aside with careful fingers. The air in the cupboard seemed to drop a degree. A thin line of pain sparked in his forehead, the old, familiar ache that sometimes flared when Uncle Vernon shouted too close or when he dreamed of green light.

Rosie’s smile faded altogether. Up close, the scar was an ugly thing: a jagged bolt, white and angry against his skin. Her pupils narrowed, then widened, black swallowing up the pretty pastel of her eyes. “Well now,” she breathed. “Who’s been writing on you without asking?”

“It’s just a scar,” Harry muttered. He tried not to wince as the ache sharpened. “From… from the car crash. The one that killed my mum and dad.” He recited the story as he always had, flat and practiced.

Rosie’s lips pursed. “Is that what they told you.” It wasn’t really a question. Her gloved fingers hovered a hair’s breadth above the mark, not quite touching. The sweet scent around her curdled, shaded with copper. Harry felt something in the air tilt, like the whole cupboard had leaned ever so slightly toward her.

For an instant, her world flickered behind her eyes: not the neat parlour smile she wore, but the thing underneath. He heard a murmur, a thousand whispers layered over each other. One voice scraped across his thoughts, high and cold and furious. Mine. Harry jerked. Pain knifed from the scar down through his skull and out his fingertips. The book in his hands thumped to the mattress, its pages rustling in agitation.

Rosie’s head snapped as if scenting something only she could smell. The gloved hand above his scar trembled once, a fractional, hungry twitch. “Oh, darling,” she said, and now her voice held an edge of delighted cruelty that made his skin prickle. “You’ve been carrying a passenger.”

“A… what?” Harry whispered. His eyes were watering from the sudden hurt. "Someone took a bite out of a very wicked man,” Rosie murmured, mostly to herself, “and spat the gristle into a baby.” She laughed, low and amused. “How… thrifty.”

She could feel it, coiled behind that lightning bolt: a shard of soul, black and vicious, clinging like a burr. It hummed an octave lower than everything else, threads stretching away into the dark, toward places and powers that were not hers. Not yet. Harry shifted, bringing her back. “Is it bad?” he asked. “Like… like being a freak?”

Rosie let go of his hair and the pain ebbed, leaving only an echo. She folded her hands around the parasol handle, manner smoothing itself back into something gentle. "It’s not your fault,” she said. “That’s what it is.” She considered him for a beat. “And it is valuable, Harry.” He blinked. “Valuable?”

“Think of it as… a coin stuck in your forehead,” Rosie said, lips quirking. “Ugly, uncomfortable, not something you asked for. But coin all the same. I can take that, in time. Pluck it out like a thorn and keep it. It belongs in my sort of place more than in yours.” Her eyes flicked, just briefly, back to the invisible threads only she could see. “And if I hold enough of this fellow, well… it becomes so much easier to invite the rest of him down for tea.” He didn’t understand most of that. But the idea of the thorn being gone lodged in his mind. “Would it hurt?” he asked.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” she said. “But we won’t be doing that tonight. Or tomorrow. You’re small yet. Things might… tear.” She shrugged one shoulder, unconcerned. “Consider it a… down payment. You carry it for now. I put a little tag on it that says ‘Rosie’s.’ In return, I watch over you. I don’t ask for your soul, or your blood, or your heartbeat. All I ask…” She leaned in again, eyes very, very bright.

“…is that when you speak my name, you mean it. You invite me. And you don’t invite anyone else from my side without talking to me first. No listening to strange voices in your dreams, hm?” He thought of the cold voice that had just hissed mine and shivered. “I don’t want anyone else,” he blurted, surprising himself.

Something soft and fierce flashed across her face. “Good boy.” From the living room came the braying sound of Uncle Vernon laughing at the television. Dudley shouted for more crisps. The ordinary, hateful noise of the house pushed at the cupboard door.

“Rules, then,” Rosie said briskly, as if they were planning a game. “One: you only say my name when you want me here. Quietly. No shouting it at breakfast, tempting as that may be.” Harry imagined Uncle Vernon’s face if a hole opened over his cornflakes and almost smiled.

“Two: I stay where you put me. Cupboard, bedroom, mirror, wherever you like. I don’t go parading through the kitchen unless you ask me to. We don’t want to frighten the horses.” Her eyes went sly. “Yet.” He nodded. “Three?”

“Three: I don’t… overly rearrange your relatives.” She wrinkled her nose. “No accidents with knives and no disappearing them into closets.” He stared at her. “You can do that?”

“My dear, I can do far worse.” She patted his knee. “For now, we limit ourselves to… inconveniences. Spoiled meals. Stubbed toes. Perhaps a rash in an embarrassing place if they’re particularly ugly to you.” Harry’s mouth twitched again, this time into something dangerously close to a grin.

“And four,” Rosie finished, voice softening. “You tell me when it hurts. Here.” Her gloved hand hovered over his ribs, where the bruise throbbed. “Here.” She tapped his forehead lightly, careful of the scar. “Or here.” She touched the center of his chest. “You tell me, and I will see what I can do.” He didn’t know how to answer that. No one had ever asked him to say when it hurt. Hurt was something that happened and then was his fault. “Why?” he asked instead.

“Because I like you,” Rosie said, as if it were that simple. “Because you are mine, a little, already. Because I enjoy watching wicked people learn new manners.” Her smile went sweet and terrible. “And because your pain shines. It feeds all sorts of things, not all of them friendly. Better it comes through hands that care for you, hm?” Harry’s fingers curled in the blanket. Caring hands. It was a strange idea. “Okay,” he whispered. “Rules. I can do that.”

The book on the mattress rustled again, a page turning of its own accord. On the exposed leaf, the curling letters he'd failed to read earlier shimmered, settling into something almost legible for a moment. Rosie glanced down. “Ah. So that’s how I ended up in a rubbish heap. Naughty thing.” She flicked the page with a fingertip. “This book is a little door, Harry. To me. To my side of things. You keep it hidden, you hear? No nosy aunts cleaning it away.”

“I’ll hide it,” he said at once. He had practice. Broken toys, half-eaten biscuits, kindnesses all had to be hidden in this house.

“Good.” She straightened, the top of her hat brushing the underside of the stair. “I’ll be back when you call. Not every time,” she added. “Sometimes I’ll be… busy. But I’ll listen. And I’ll nudge, here and there.” As if in demonstration, the cupboard light bulb, which had been dead for weeks, flickered and glowed softly to life. Dust motes danced in the sudden glow. Harry stared up at it in astonishment. “Little things,” Rosie said. “We’ll start with little things.”

Outside, Aunt Petunia’s shrill voice cut through the house. “Boy! Quiet down in there! Some of us are trying to watch telly!” Harry hadn’t made a sound. His throat closed on the automatic apology anyway. Rosie’s eyes went flat and cold for a heartbeat. Then, with a prim little smile, she snapped open her parasol. “You might notice,” she murmured, “that the next time she bakes a cake, it collapses in the middle.”

The idea warmed him from the inside. “Sleep now, lamb,” Rosie said. The sweet, heavy scent of her pressed in. “And remember. When you are alone and it hurts and you can’t breathe… you say my name. Not the one in your scar. Mine.”

“Rosie,” he whispered, testing it. It tasted like sugar on his tongue. Her smile returned, wide and pleased. “That’s the ticket.” She stepped backward into the thin oval of light. For a second, it widened again, and Harry saw the hint of a high-ceilinged room lit in red and gold, shelves stacked with jars of sweets that surely weren’t all sweets, shadows moving where no one stood.

Then the opening snapped shut, like a mouth closing around a secret. The cupboard was just a cupboard again: dust and socks and the faint glow of a miraculously working bulb. Harry lay down carefully, ribs still aching, head still buzzing where she’d touched his scar. The book was warm under his hand. He did not feel better, exactly. But for the first time he could remember, the dark above him did not feel empty.

It felt… occupied. “Rosie,” he whispered once more into the dark, making sure he could say it. His ribs hurt, his head hurt, his heart hurt—but under all that, something else stirred. Something like hope, and something like fear, and something bright and dangerous, growing quietly between them.

Chapter Text

The cupboard light had given up again. Harry lay on his back, staring into the black above him, listening to Uncle Vernon’s snores rumble through the floorboards. The house was full of other people’s sleep. His thoughts bounced from the ache in his ribs to the long list of things he was meant to do tomorrow and finally, as they always did, to the book under his thin pillow. He slid a hand up, fingers closing around the cracked leather. It was warm, like it had been under the sun, though the cupboard was always cold. He didn’t say her name aloud. Not yet. He just thought it very hard, the way you clench a muscle. Rosie.

The air thickened, went sweet. Something like distant music rose from nowhere, scratchy and old. A soft click sounded as if a parasol had just been snapped shut. "Now, that," Rosie murmured out of the dark, "is cheating just a little."

The light flickered back to life, weak but working. Rosie sat cross-legged at the foot of his mattress as if she’d always been there, skirt spread in a neat puddle of pastels. Dust had settled on her hat and parasol since last time, but her gloves were freshly stained at the fingertips, as though she’d been handling something wet.

Harry pushed himself up, wincing. "I didn’t say your name."

"Mm. But you meant it." She tapped the side of her head. "Thin walls, between places like yours and places like mine. Thinner still when someone like you starts knocking without hands." He toyed with a loose thread on his blanket. "Where is your place?" Her smile sharpened. "Curious tonight, are we?"

He hesitated, then nodded. The question had been chewing at him for weeks. Where did she go when she stepped backward into light and left him with his bruises and the bulb? "Very well," Rosie said. "A peep show, then. Strictly curtains-and-keyholes. No wandering off." She leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "You stay here, lamb. Your heartbeat doesn’t do well past certain borders."

Before he could answer, she reached out and laid two cool fingers lightly against his temples. The cupboard walls sighed, the air folding in on itself like a tent being taken down. For a second Harry felt as if he were falling sideways. Then the world opened.

The cupboard was still around him, wood and dust and old socks—but it had gone thin, like tracing paper laid over something brighter. Through it, another room bled in: high-ceilinged and glowing, all red velvet and soft gold lamps. Shelves climbed the walls, stacked with jars of sweets in every color he’d ever seen and some he hadn’t, the contents shifting and twitching as if they were alive.

A counter ran along one side, glass gleaming. Behind it, a row of cakes towered, iced in pink and white, studded with things that might have been cherries and might not have been. Shadowy figures drifted among tiny round tables. Some looked almost human at first glance: a man in an old-fashioned suit with too many teeth when he smiled, a woman with a fox’s tail curling from under her flapper dress. Others were wrong from the start—too many joints in an arm, eyes that turned the wrong way, a body that stayed still while its shadow twitched.

Rosie sat on a high stool in that other room, flowered hat at a jaunty angle, parasol hooked over her arm. Through the thin veil between worlds, Harry watched a narrow, horned creature sidle up to her counter, hat in its hands. "Miss Roselin," it rasped, voice like sand on a plate. "Heard tell the south quarter’s yours now."

Rosie’s reflection-self smiled, slow and satisfied. "An overlord must keep expanding her horizons. Otherwise the neighbors get ideas." Overlord. The word dropped into Harry like a stone into water. The creature laughed nervously, showing a mouth full of needles. "Wouldn’t dare, ma’am."

Rosie snapped a paper bag open, and the sweets in one jar slithered into it on their own, leaving faint red streaks on the glass. She handed the bag over; the creature took it with shaking hands and slunk away. Harry swallowed. "What’s an… overlord?" he whispered.

The cupboard rushed back into focus enough that he could see Rosie in front of him as well as through the veil. Her eyes, in both places, slid to him. "You heard that, did you?" she said lightly. "Eavesdropping already."

"I’m sorry," he said at once. "Don’t be." She sounded amused. "An overlord, my sweet, is simply someone who has clawed and bartered and smiled their way to the top of a very unpleasant heap. I own that little street." She tilted her head in the direction of the shop beyond. "The buildings. The businesses. Most of the people."

"Own?" Harry repeated, thinking of Uncle Vernon’s keys and deeds and how he liked to say my car, my house, my boy. "In a much more binding sense," Rosie said. Her voice had gone soft, dangerous. "They came to my city broken and wicked. They signed papers, shook hands, made deals. Now they are mine. I keep them, and I keep them in line."

He watched a hunched figure scrub the floor between the tables, grey water splashing their bare arms. Every time they missed a spot, the stain crawled back toward them, hissing. "Is that…" Harry wet his lips. "Is that where people go when they die?"

"Some of them," Rosie answered. "They call it Hell in your books. Nasty word for what is, in many neighborhoods, a perfectly industrious place." Hell. He knew the word from hissed threats and Sunday mutterings Aunt Petunia let slip about "burning for it" when Dudley did something particularly awful. He had always pictured fire and pitchforks. This was worse, because it looked… organized. "Will I go there?" The question escaped before he could stop it. His fingers dug into his blanket. "To your… street?" Rosie’s gloved hand hovered over the lightning-bolt scar. The air cooled. "Someone else has already tried to stick their little flag in you," she said quietly. "A shade of a very rude man with more ambition than sense. That’s what this is, Harry. A claim." She smiled without humor. "I dislike competing paperwork."

"Paperwork?" he echoed blankly. "Contracts. Deals. Adoption papers, if you like." Her eyes gleamed. "If I have my way, when your heart finally stops beating—" she squeezed his nose lightly, as if to soften the words, "—you will tumble into my parlor, not whatever tattered bit of him is hanging off that scar."

His chest went tight. The idea of his heart stopping made his hands go cold. But the thought of dropping straight into the warm, lamp lit room instead of another cupboard full of spiders did something odd in his throat. "That won’t be for a long time," Rosie added, gentler. "I prefer my projects to ripen at their own pace. You are… young yet. A seedling." One corner of her mouth twitched. "Of course, if something were to… accelerate matters, we might have to discuss moving arrangements sooner."

Images flashed through his mind: Vernon’s fist, Petunia’s broom, the road outside with its fast, uncaring cars. Dying wasn’t a someday idea for Harry; it had always felt like something that might happen on any bad afternoon. "Would it hurt?" he whispered. "The dying? Often," Rosie said frankly. "The arrival? Not if I can help it." Her hand finally settled, light, over his scar. "I would take what’s lodged here, tuck it safely into my jars, and you… you would be mine properly."

Her voice wrapped around that word. Mine. It sounded nothing like Uncle Vernon’s. It sounded like blankets and locked doors and cake that never fell in the middle. "Do you want that?" he asked, surprised at his own whisper. Rosie’s smile went slow and fond and terrible. "Oh, Harry. I always want what’s interesting." The sweetshop beyond flickered, then faded. The cupboard reasserted itself, small and stale and real.

"Enough sightseeing for one night," Rosie said briskly, removing her hand. "We don’t want you dreaming of my neighbors just yet. They’re not as good with children." Years did not pass so much as smear.

By the time Harry turned seven, Aunt Petunia had stopped saying he was "sallow" and started hissing that he "looked ill" whenever he caught his reflection. The mirror in the upstairs bathroom was cracked through one corner. Once, scrubbing the sink while Dudley sulked about being made to bathe, Harry glanced up and froze.

His skin had always been pale under the grime, but now it was… even. All the sunburned pink had leeched away, leaving him milk-white, the faint shadows under his eyes standing out like bruises. That night, with the house gone quiet, he whispered, "Rosie," into his pillow. She appeared above him upside-down, hanging from the cupboard ceiling like a bat, skirt defying gravity. "Yes, my battenberg?"

"Do I… look different to you?" he asked. She let herself drop, landing lightly beside him. Cool fingers cupped his chin, tilting his face toward the dim bulb. Her eyes narrowed. "Mmm," she said. "Fewer freckles. Less… sun."

"Aunt Petunia says I look sick."

"You look," Rosie said thoughtfully, "like you’ve been spending time with the wrong sort of sugar." She smiled, oddly pleased. "My sort, in other words." He frowned. "Is that bad?"

"Bad for whom?" She patted his cheek. "Mortals sometimes… echo what they’re tied to. Your magic is clever. It’s sniffed me out and decided it likes the cut of my dress. It’s dressing you to match." He thought of the other world’s sharp-toothed patrons and swallowed. But Rosie’s thumb traced his jaw so gently that the worry ebbed, just a little. It was around then that the word lodged in his chest. Mum. He never said it. Not then. He only thought it, once, very softly, when she hummed something low and waltzing to drown out Vernon’s shouts above. At eight, the word slipped.

It was July. Vernon had locked Harry out "by accident" while taking Dudley to the cinema. The boy sat on the back step with his knees hugged to his chest, watching the sky bruise purple. His stomach gnawed at itself. The watering can, abandoned by the flowerbed, held a smear of water that had not yet soaked into the dry earth. Rosie’s reflection breathed in it, right-side up though the world was upside down. "You’re late," he told her, voice hoarse. "You didn’t call," she chided. "Rules, remember."

"I thought about you," he muttered. "Thinking is not the same as asking, lamb." Her eyes softened. "Are they not feeding you again?"

"They went out," Harry said. "They took Dudley. Left me." He tried to sound like he didn’t care, and only managed tired. "I’m hungry."

"Tch." Her mouth pursed. "Stay there." The back door clicked. For a heartbeat he thought they had come home, but the house remained dark and still. Then, impossibly, the latch turned itself. The door swung inward just enough to reveal the cool dim of the kitchen. A plate waited on the table. It hadn’t been there earlier. Thick slices of bread, butter shining, a neat pyramid of ham. Harry stared. "Did you—"

"Consider it an advance on your future wages," Rosie said primly from the watering can. "A good mother makes sure her child eats." The word stopped him halfway to the door. It echoed in his chest, bumping into the one that had been sitting there for months.

Without thinking, he whispered, "Thanks, Mum." Silence. Even the evening birds seemed to cut off. Rosie’s eyes went very round. He froze. Blood roared in his ears. "I— I didn’t mean— I mean I did, but—"

"Say it again," she said, very softly. He swallowed, throat tight. "Mum." Something old and hungry and bright flared behind her gaze. For a heartbeat Harry had the dizzy sense of doors slamming shut somewhere far away, locks sliding into place. Then she smiled, and it was the gentlest expression he had ever seen on her. "Oh, Harry," she breathed. "Do you know what you’re doing, calling a demon that?"

"You said—a mother feeds you," he blurted. "And looks after you. And—and comes when you need her. Miss Hall said at school. We had to draw them. Dudley drew Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. I… drew you." His face burned. "You’re the only one who does those things." For once, Rosie seemed at a loss. Her gloved hand rose to her mouth, then dropped.

"Mortals," she said eventually, voice thick with something he couldn’t name, "should be more careful where they plant those words. They grow roots." A little laugh escaped her. "But then, you never do what you’re told, do you?" He hunched his shoulders. "If you don’t like it, I can stop."

"No," she said at once. "No, I don’t dislike it." Her voice went low, possessive. "Quite the opposite. It makes certain… arrangements easier, when the time comes."

"Adoption papers?" he guessed. "Something like that," Rosie murmured. "Eat your sandwich, Harry. Before the spell wears off and Petunia notices she’s down half a ham." By nine, the food had started to taste wrong anyway.

Harry sat at the Dursleys’ table, chewing carefully. The sausages on his plate were gray and greasy, the peas over-boiled, but that wasn’t new. What was new was the way every bite felt like ash in his mouth, bland and distant, as if he were eating someone else’s memories of dinner.

Across from him, Vernon carved into his own heap of meat, knife flashing. A bead of juice slid down the blade, thick and red. Harry’s eyes tracked it. His tongue pressed against his teeth. They felt… different lately. Sharper, at the edges.

He could hear Vernon’s pulse in his ears, a thudding undercurrent beneath the scrape of cutlery. Petunia’s too, high and fast, Dudley’s slower, muffled by fat. The sounds made his stomach twist with a hunger that had nothing to do with empty plates. "Stop staring, boy," Vernon grunted, not looking up.

Harry jerked his gaze down, horrified at himself. The rest of the meal, he kept his eyes firmly on his own hands, counting the small white crescents of his nails. That night, he did not have to say Rosie’s name. She was already there when he opened his eyes, perched neatly on the upturned crate that served as his bedside table. "You felt it, then," she said.

"Felt what?" His voice shook. "The… adjustment." She tipped his chin up, pried his mouth open with a thumb and forefinger like a mother checking for loose teeth. "Hmm."

"What?" he mumbled around her glove. "You’re getting pointy," Rosie said, pleased and troubled all at once. "A little set of parlor tricks, growing in." He pulled back, running his own tongue along his teeth. The canines had a definite edge now, a cat’s little hooks.

"I watched them," he whispered. "At dinner." Shame burned in his cheeks. "Like a cat watching birds. I didn’t want to but I… couldn’t stop." Rosie’s gloved hand came to rest over his heart. "You are not them," she said. "You are not that man in your scar, either. Your magic is clever, and greedy, and it has decided it wants to walk in two worlds at once. It’s knitting you a bridge-body to manage it."

"Am I turning into a demon?" The word scraped out, small and terrified. "No," Rosie said. Then, after a beat, "Not exactly." Her smile was thin. "You’re turning into my boy. There’s a difference."

"Is it because I called you—" He broke off, unable to say it now. Her thumb stroked his sternum through the thin fabric of his shirt. "It doesn’t hurt," she said, almost to herself, "that you did. Names are doors, Harry. You opened one. Now some of me is walking around inside you, and some of you is… decorating my parlor."

He pictured a tiny version of himself sitting at one of those round tables, feet not touching the floor, and almost laughed. "You’re scared," Rosie observed quietly. He nodded, because lying to her had never worked. "Good," she said. "Fear keeps you from getting stupid. Listen to it. If you ever feel like biting anyone in this house, you tell me first."

"I would never—" he began, horrified. "Never say never, sweetheart." Her eyes glittered. "But I will help you aim that appetite. There are far worse things to feed it than sausages and uncles." He swallowed. "Like what?"

"Oh," Rosie said lightly, leaning back as the bulb flickered and steadied, "one day we’ll take a walk down my street together, and I’ll show you." His heart gave a strange, frightened lurch at the thought. A walk in Hell, with his demon mother. Part of him wanted to run as far as he could from the idea. Part of him was already taking her hand.

Chapter Text

Harry turned ten on a day no one mentioned. Aunt Petunia banged pots, Dudley whined about presents, Uncle Vernon grumbled about the price of petrol. No one said the word birthday. No one slid him a card or even remembered to make him scrub the “Cupboard” scrawl off his door. He marked the day himself in quieter ways.

In the bathroom, with the door locked and Dudley pounding from the hall, he stared into the cracked mirror. For a heartbeat, the boy looking back wasn’t quite him. His eyes were too dark, the green gone near-black around pupils that were a shade too narrow. Shadows curled at the corners of his mouth as if something behind his skin were smiling wider than he was. The faintest suggestion of points pressed under his messy hair, as if something hornlike wanted out.

He grabbed the sink. "No," he whispered. "No, no." The mirror blinked. The horns smoothed away. His pupils rounded into ordinary circles; the odd extra smile sank back into his bones. By the time Dudley burst in, huffing, Harry’s reflection was just the usual scrawny, pale boy. "You’re gormless," Dudley declared, shouldering him aside. "Staring at yourself like that. As if there’s anything to look at."

Harry slipped past him, heart rabbit-fast. That night, in the cupboard, he didn’t even need to say Rosie’s name. The book under his pillow warmed; the air sweetened. Rosie unfolded herself from the dark like she’d been tucked in his shadow. Lace gloves, rose-patterned skirt, parasol tapping lightly against the slanted ceiling. "You’re sulking," she observed. "It’s unbecoming."

"I’m… wrong," Harry blurted. "I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t— I looked like you. A bit. And then it went away when Dudley came in and—"

"Mm." Rosie tilted her head, studying him as if he were a cake that had risen oddly. "Glamour, then. Clever boy."

"Glamour?"

"A little coat of paint your magic slaps on when someone dreary is watching," she said. "You’re growing into what you are. Your power doesn’t want to frighten the cattle. So it makes you look… ordinary." His chest squeezed. "So I am…" He couldn’t finish. Her expression softened, dangerous and fond. "You are mine," she said. "The rest is detail." He didn’t argue. He couldn’t. The word settled in him like a stone in still water, ripples going out and out.

The zoo trip came near the end of that year, a flimsy apology to Dudley for a bad report. "And he is not staying with Mrs. Figg again," Petunia snapped, wrinkling her nose. "Her house smells of cabbage."

"We’ll take the boy," Vernon decided, like he was offering to carry an umbrella. "You’ll sit quietly, freak, or so help me—" Harry sat in the back of the car between Dudley and Piers, pressed small as he could make himself. Rosie hummed in the window glass, a faint silhouette in the reflections of passing houses.

"Field trip," she trilled. "How civilized. Mind the cages, lamb. They’re not all as sturdy as they look." The reptile house was cool and damp, smelling of stone and something old. Dudley ricocheted from tank to tank, Piers at his heels. Harry drifted behind, the way he always did, part of the scenery unless someone wanted a target.

He stopped in front of a long glass enclosure. A huge snake lay coiled inside, dark and gleaming. Its sign said it was from Brazil. It might as well have said Planet Mars. "Must be boring," Harry murmured, fogging the glass a little with his breath. "All those people pressing their grubby faces and you can’t go anywhere."bThe snake’s eyelids slid open. It regarded him with a slow, sideways glance.

The world tilted. Not so boring, a voice hissed, not in his ears but under his skin. Sometimes we get… visitors. Harry jerked back. The snake’s mouth hadn’t moved, but the words coiled clear as speech. "Did you… did you say that?" he whispered.

The snake flicked its tongue. You hear me, it noted. How curious, little half-thing. "Half—?" Harry began. A hand slammed into his back. "Move, freak," Dudley snarled, shoving him aside. "I want to see—" Harry hit the concrete hard. His palms scraped raw; his ribs, still tender from an earlier "lesson" at home, flared with pain. Piers laughed. Dudley leaned his whole weight against the rail, nose nearly to the glass.

Something in Harry snapped. Heat rushed up under his skin, bright and sharp and crimson-sweet, like the air in Rosie’s parlor when someone made a particularly foolish bargain. The hum of lights overhead deepened into a growl. A bitter, burned-sugar smell hit the back of his throat. Mine, something in him snarled. Mine, not yours. The glass between Dudley and the snake shivered.

Condensation gathered on its surface, then ran in thin streams that didn’t obey gravity, crawling upwards in spidery lines that almost spelled words Harry nearly understood. A fine crack spiderwebbed from Dudley’s hand, racing across the pane. Light bent, white flickering red for a heartbeat. "Harry," Rosie's voice whispered from somewhere—in the glinting glass, in his pulse. "Breathe. Decide, then act."

Dudley thumped the glass again, oblivious. "It’s asleep," he complained. Harry’s lips moved without his permission. "Wake up," he told the snake. He wasn’t sure if he said it in English. The pane melted. There was no bang, no shower of shards. One second there was glass; the next it was gone, the barrier running like hot sugar, pooling on the floor in a steaming, rippling sheet. Cold air rushed into the enclosure.

The snake uncoiled, slow and sinuous, head lifting until it was level with Dudley’s open-mouthed stare. Better, it hissed, tasting the air near Harry. *We owe you, little bridge. Behind its eyes, for an instant, Harry saw something like the red-lantern glow of Rosie’s street. A door in the dark, just barely ajar. Dudley screamed.

He stumbled back and slipped—straight into the half-melted glass, landing with a wet squelch in the empty enclosure. Piers howled with laughter. A woman shrieked. People began to shout, pointing. The snake slid past Harry, close enough that its scales whispered against the toe of his too-big trainer.

Brazil, it hissed, almost amused. Then deeper. Smell you there, perhaps, one day. It vanished into the crowd, people scattering out of its way. Chaos bloomed. An attendant burst in; Vernon roared, dragging a dripping Dudley out by the collar. Everyone spoke at once. Harry stood in the middle of it, shaking, the air around him still faintly warped, like heat above a grill.

"What did you do?" Vernon bellowed later, purple with fury, when they were finally back in the car. Dudley, wrapped in a zoo gift-shop towel, whimpered theatrically. "What freakish nonsense was that?"

"I didn’t—" Harry tried. He really wasn’t sure. "No dinner," Vernon spat. "No meals for a week. Lock." His eyes bulged. "I’ll beat it out of you if you pull something like that again. Do you hear me?" Harry heard. He heard, too, the way Vernon’s pulse skittered at his throat, fast and scared.

The cupboard door slammed. The lock clicked. Silence, except for their heavy feet stomping away and the faint, panicked mutters about smashed exhibits. Harry curled on his mattress. The sweetness in the air came first, then the soft tap of a parasol on wood. "Well," Rosie said, voice low with wicked delight. "That was dramatic." He flinched. "I didn’t mean— I just wanted him to stop pushing me. I didn’t want Dudley to—"

"Drown in his own reflection?" Rosie suggested. "Shame. But he didn’t. Everyone lived. The snake got a little fresh air. Where’s the tragedy?"

"They said I was a freak," Harry whispered. "I made the glass… go. And I heard it. The snake. It called me—" He swallowed. "Half-thing. Bridge." Rosie settled beside him, skirts rustling, the cramped space bending around her as if the cupboard widened to fit her shape. "Children always believe the loudest voice," she said. "Today that was a purple man who smells of meat and fear. Listen better. There were other voices in that room."

"The snake?"

"The snake. Your magic. Mine." She tapped his chest with two fingers. "That wasn’t some accident you should be ashamed of. That was you wanting something, and the world obeying. Glass is cheap. Your will is not." He pressed his nails into his palms until the little crescents hurt. "But it looked wrong. The glass. The way it melted."

"Wrong to them." Rosie sniffed. "Mundane little creatures, terrified when their safe boxes break. To me, it looked like promise." Her smile curved, sharp brief. "You slipped, lamb. Your glamour cracked with the pane. But only for a breath."

"My… glamour?"

"You think anyone saw what I saw? The little horns, the lovely shadow of your true smile?" Her eyes gleamed in the dim. "No. Your other magic snapped its paintbrush out. Smoothed you over. A neat trick, for one so young."

"Other magic," he repeated. Her fingers ghosted over his scar. It prickled, then cooled. "The piece of that rude would-be tyrant in your head. The blood that made you. All the old, human spells tangled up in you. They don’t like to be noticed. So when my influence peeks through—" she wagged her fingers like something popping out of a cake, "—they tug a curtain closed. Glamour."

"So I’m… two kinds of…" He fumbled. "You are more," Rosie said. "More than them. More than most of mine, even. The word 'freak' is what small people use when they see something bigger than they can understand." Her gloved thumb brushed a tear off his cheek before he realized he was crying. "Next time your magic reaches out, don’t let shame drive it. Aim it. Choose. We can work on that."

"You’ll teach me?" Her expression turned, for a moment, almost fierce. "Of course. What sort of mother lets everyone else dictate what her child can be?" The word slid out of him without thought. "Mum." Her hand tightened over his heart. Somewhere very far away, in a parlor that smelled of sugar and blood, lamps brightened.

"That’s my boy," she said. The next year blurred. Harry learned the edges of himself the way other children learned football rules. He discovered he could make his fingernails blunt and bitten-looking when teachers peered over his work, even though in the mirror they were neat points. He learned how to hide the faint, dark marbling that sometimes crept along the veins at his wrists, like ink just under the skin. When he laughed—rarely, and mostly at something Rosie said—his teeth felt a fraction too long, but Aunt Petunia only saw the same hated smile.

Once, in a rain puddle by the curb, he caught his reflection with eyes the color of old wine, ringed in red. A passing neighbor glanced down at the same puddle and frowned. "You look peaky, Harry," she said. "Petunia working you too hard?" In the water, his reflection smirked with Rosie’s curl to its mouth. He was getting better, Rosie said, at stacking his masks.

"Glamour on the outside, will at the center," she told him one foggy afternoon, her image shivering in the microwave door as Petunia clattered around the kitchen. "You don't have to be what they see. You decide."

The first letter arrived on a damp morning in late July, just before his eleventh birthday. Harry was scrubbing the hallway tiles when it slid through the letterbox with a soft, heavy sound. Not like the usual bills and adverts. It thunked onto the mat with quiet importance."Dudley, get the post!" Vernon bellowed from the sitting room.

Dudley lumbered over, swooping down. Harry saw the envelope a half-second before his cousin’s hand closed over it. Thick parchment. His name, in emerald ink, in a looping, careful script.

Mr. H. Potter,

The Cupboard under the Stairs.

The address hit him like a bucket of cold water. Someone knew. Someone saw him.

"What’s that?" he blurted. "None of your business," Aunt Petunia said sharply, snatching it from Dudley’s sausage fingers. Her eyes flicked over the front, then widened. Color drained from her face. "Vernon." Uncle Vernon heaved himself up, took the envelope, and read. The purple blot in his cheeks darkened; his mustache quivered.

He ripped the letter open. Harry strained to see, but Vernon turned away, blocking the contents with his bulk. "It’s them," Petunia hissed. "After all these years—"

"We'll have none of that nonsense," Vernon growled. The parchment crackled in his fists. "He won’t be going anywhere. I’ll burn the lot."

"But it was addressed to me," Harry protested. Hope and a strange flutter of recognition warred in his stomach. The heavy paper, the wax seal—none of it felt like junk mail. Vernon rounded on him. "You heard me. Not. A. Word. About this. You hear?" He stuffed the shredded letter into his pocket and stomped to the kitchen, where Harry heard the whoof of the gas hob and the crumple of parchment meeting flame.

That night, Harry lay rigid in his cupboard, the ghost of green ink still burned behind his eyes. "Rosie," he whispered. She came at once, unfolding out of the imprint of his hand on the wall, parasol first. "You’re rattled," she said. "Has someone been unkind? Shall I give them boils? A persistent itch?"

"A letter came," he said. "For me. Real thick paper. Green ink. They put the address as…" He swallowed. "The cupboard under the stairs. They knew. Uncle Vernon burned it. They said 'them'. Like they knew who it was from." Something sharp and cold lit Rosie’s eyes. "Show me," she murmured. He shut his eyes and pictured the envelope. The way his name had looked—like someone had cared enough to write it properly. The wax seal he’d only glimpsed, a crest pressed deep.

Cool fingers brushed his temples. In the air between them, the image of the letter formed, insubstantial, lines of green light etching themselves into being. Rosie leaned close. Her smile thinned. "Oh," she said softly. "Them." She tapped the floating, ghostly crest with a lace fingertip. "Wizards, Harry. The kind who think their little spells put them above the rest of your kind. Above mine, too, if you can believe the cheek." His heart dropped and lifted all at once. "Like… the man in my scar?"

"The same… species," she said delicately. "Though not all quite as entertainingly awful. It seems the other world that laid claim to you has finally remembered its paperwork."

"So they want me?" The idea was dizzying. Him. Wanted. For something not awful. Rosie’s smile cooled. "Of course they do. You’re powerful, and untrained, and painfully interesting. Little lights in the dark always draw moths." She tilted his chin up, making him meet her gaze. "The question is, lamb, what you want. Whom you let write their name over yours."

He thought of Vernon's hands, ripping the letter. Of Petunia's pinched fury. Of the snake sliding into the crowd, free for the first time in years. He thought of Rosie’s parlor beyond the thin walls of his world, jars of strange sweets and stranger souls glittering on shelves. "Can I…" His voice shook. "Can I see what they wanted to tell me?"

"Not from ashes," Rosie said. "But there will be more. People like that don’t take 'no' easily." Her eyes glittered. "They’re rude. They think they have a right." Her thumb stroked the mark on his forehead, gentle and possessive. "When the next comes, you show me first. We’ll read it together, and decide what to do with their… invitation."

"You won’t be angry if I want to know?" he asked, very small. For a moment, something unreadable crossed her face. Then she sighed, theatrical and fond. "Curiosity is one of the few sins I encourage," she said. "Just remember, Harry: whatever they offer, whatever pretty words they use… you are not theirs. Not unless you choose it." Her smile sharpened. "And I am very hard to give up." He believed her.

Outside, the house slept, unaware that two very different worlds had begun, at last, to tug in earnest at the boy under the stairs.