Dana: This is another story that needs a rewrite. Really badly.
Nadia: We don't own Harry Potter.
Chapter 1
Being dead was really weird. I mean really weird, and to me, death was nothingness. No light, no noise, no warmth, no people, nothing. Weird and very scary. When you're alive, you're used to there being noise, light, warmth and people. Not being surrounded by darkness, silence, cold and loneliness. When people talk about being dead or coming back from the dead, thy tend to describe a tunnel of warm light. But no, this wasn't the case for me, there was no tunnel of warm light, just empty darkness.
I can't help but wonder whether or not I was in limbo or purgatory. Or heck, Hell's green room. Or even worse, if I wasn't completely dead. I'm not entirely sure what was worse, being in Hell or still being alive when everyone thinks I'm dead. The day I died was scary, long day at school and ready to get home when the subway tracks between Castle Frank and Broadview stations give way and the subway goes careening down towards the ground and the lower Don Valley River. Everyone was screaming, praying and crying, I was one of the screaming ones. I don't really remember whether or not I drowned or was crushed but I definitely remember part of the subway on my chest. I knew I wasn't getting rescued and after that thought passed, I think I passed out afterwards because I closed my eyes only for a minute and when I opened them again, I was here, in this utter darkness. I'd do anything for a sign of where I was.
And here I am now, dead as a door nail. Being here was strange and odd ideas sometimes came into my head. I often wondered if I was in between the tangible world and the upside down from Stranger Things. Is this where El was when she found the monster in the upside down? To tell the truth, I didn't want to think about it. It was scary enough as it is. Or maybe that quiz I took to see which level of Hell I would end up in was right. I am in Limbo. But then again, I'm not seeing Charon anywhere so I doubt it.
It was hard to grasp a concept of time that I spent in this blackness just flitting about through the void. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed due to the fact that there was no way of telling. I could have been here for days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries without even knowing it. The blackness eats away at you, I could slowly feel my sanity slowly chipping away throughout my time spent here. The only way I managed to stay sane was by constantly reciting my name and the names of the people I knew and places I've been too. But soon, that began to loose it's effectiveness. It was about then when I was thrust back into a far more unforgiving world than that I was used too.
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
When people tell you that being reborn is joyful and happy, don't listen to them. They're lying through their teeth. Let me tell you, it hurt's like a bitch. The light is so bright and considering that you've been in total darkness for who knows how long, the bright light burns the eyes. I screamed like a real banshee when I was reborn, the light, the sounds and the smells were so overwhelming it hurt. But I felt better, I was alive. Sane on the other hand well... we'll get to that later.
The first thing I really remember after all the light was a man's voice saying:
"Damn, I lost my bet with Pads. It's our daughter who came out first and not our son."
"James, shut the fuck up." A woman's voice said
"What should we name her?" The man, James asked
"Melanie. I've always liked the name Melanie." The woman said
"Then Melanie it is Lily. Melanie Euphemia Potter." James said
It took me a minute to really register the name Potter. The moment it did, there was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and I couldn't help but think: Oh crap. What in the name of the nine rings of Hell am I supposed to do now? I had a feeling things were going to get ugly really quickly. The birth of the prophecy child has a twin sister and an older sister to boot. The two birth certificates proclaiming the births of Melanie Euphemia Potter and Harry James Potter show that I was the first born at 11:54 PM and Harry born at 11:59PM on July 31st. If you look at the timing, we were both born "as the seventh month dies".
Prophecies are funny things, most are self fulfilling while others could be considered fluid. Had Voldemort realized that the prophecy spoken by Sybil Trelawney was self fulfilling, I highly doubt he would have gone after the Potters. But then again, he should have realized the prophecy was crap because Trelawney finds them at the bottom of a bottle. Honestly, I doubt he was thinking when he went after the Potters. But hey, I doubt he has many brain cells.
But anyway, back to the prophecy. Dumbledore knew that there were only supposed to be two potential prophecy children to be born and not three. The prophecy didn't change right away, that won't come until later. Thing is, it's the choices that are made that can truly shape a prophecy. Some people can choose to ignore prophecy, follow it, change it or follow and change it without even knowing that they are changing the face of destiny. Not that I ever believed in destiny anyways.
Life with the Potters was odd, it was nothing like my original family but in a way, it was similar. People came and went, friends visited as did family. I had few people I liked; Sirius, Remus and Lily we're my favourite people. I also liked Frank and Alice Longbottom when they visited. As for James, Peter and Dumbledore... well I can't exactly say I liked them much. I hated Peter but I hated Dumbledore most. The old goat really made me nervous and I reacted like I always did when I was nervous. Avoid the person and make a fuss when cornered. That usually brought Lily into the room to pick me up and take me away.
Honestly, I hated being a baby, having to rely on other people to do every thing for me. I couldn't even eat or clean myself anymore. It was somewhat humiliating. I couldn't talk either, and I think I hated that the most about being a baby. Not being able to communicate was hard because all that came out of my mouth was babbles and "baby talk". I hated it about as much as I seemed to hate Dumbledore and Peter but in my mind the word "traitor" in the dictionary had a picture of Peter Pettigrew beside it and "master manipulator" in the dictionary had a picture of Dumbledore beside it. They were trouble and considering that I knew Peter would betray us and Dumbledore wasn't the most trustworthy of individuals, I was wary of them both.
When we went into hiding, I tried so hard to warn James and Lily about Peter. That he was the one who would betray us but nope, I was barely even a year old and I still couldn't talk in complete sentences. Having an eighteen year old's mind and conscious in the body of an eighteen month old baby was really annoying. The cottage where we lived was small but somewhat cozy, this would be the only time I wasn't able to complain about sharing my room because I couldn't talk.
The night Voldemort attacked was scary, I honestly don't like thinking about it. Just hearing the door unlock on it's own made me feel like I was in that scene in horror movies when you think you're safe and then the serial killer is in your closet. I blanked out when Voldemort came in, the nest thing I really remember was being in my crib next to Harry. I watched as Lily locked to door to the nursery. I knew her efforts would be in vain, he was going to kill her anyway.
I could only watch in horror as Voldemort came in and struck Lily Potter down with only two words. Harry and I were screaming, terrified, I had never witnessed a death before. That was about when Voldemort turned to me and Harry. I closed my eyes waiting for death again but nothing happened. Voldermort's only focus was on Harry, I figured it was because Harry was born in the last minute of July while I had been born five minutes previous.
The backlash that happened once Voldemort cast his spell on Harry was enormous, half of the roof was blow clean off, the windows exploded outwards, the foundations of the cottage shook and the walls cracked. I was screaming in terror, as the only person who wasn't dead, unconscious or well, imploded would be the best word to explain what happened to Voldemort. I am now the only person who saw what happened to Voldemort, it was really anticlimactic.
When the curse rebounded off of Harry, it hit Voldemort in the chest, lifting him off the ground into the air. He glowed a sickly green for about a couple of seconds before folding in on himself, imploded and vanished with a "pop" noise. Like I said, anticlimactic.
I'm not really sure how long I sat in that crib, by then I had exhausted my tears. I wanted Remus, I wanted Sirius, I wanted Lily but most of all, I wanted to return to my old life. I was mostly asleep when Hagrid and Sirius came, I don't remember their conversation at all. By the time I fell asleep, I was already on Sirius' old motorcycle, flying over London. When I woke up the next day, I had already entered a new level of Hell, the Dursleys.
The next nine years I spent at the Dursleys really made me wish that this life was only a dream I am having because I am in a coma. I knew that if I was the survive this Hell hole, I would need to become a cunning serpent, I stole food, hoarded away any form of money I could find around the house or on the ground, learned to defend myself in my spare time, studied hard, learned how to forge a report card to keep the Dursleys from finding out I was doing better in school than their precious Diddykins and so on and so forth. I learned to keep my mouth shut, to do what I was told, to keep my emotions under wraps or suffer the consequences. But I was also planning something to put the Dursleys away for good. I was going to get them all put away for three things, for Vernon it would be my murder but for Petunia, it would be credit card fraud. I was also planning on getting Marge put away for animal abuse. And that would leave Dudley in an orphanage.
Putting Marge Dursley away for animal abuse was easy. She often drowned puppies that were considered "unusable" and "not for sale". I caught her doing this when I was seven and was horrified. I was able to rescue them without getting caught but I nearly drowned in the process. Fortunately, Colonel Fubster was able to get me out. Turns out the man had been rescuing the pups who were being drowned and got them to good homes. We began to make plans to put her away. Our plans came into play when I was nine and visiting Marge because the Dursleys took off for Spain without me and Ripper nearly ripped my leg off. I managed to get him off my leg with a burst of accidental magic sending him sailing through the air. I waved from Colonel Fubster's porch as she was being dragged away by the constables. From what I hear, she won't be leaving a jail cell any time soon. Or breeding dogs, my own testimony and that of Colonel Fubster were enough to get her to loose her breeding licence permanently.
The Dursleys never did find out that I was responsible for Marge's imprisonment, which was what I wanted. Considering I was underage, my name and image weren't in the news paper and considering the Dursleys didn't get BBC News while they were in Spain, they didn't find out until they got back. They were pissed of course but they couldn't do anything about it, thankfully. There was peace in the Dursley household for about a week before I decided to get rid of Petunia.
Setting up Petunia took time, I really needed to plan it out to avoid getting caught myself. I started planning this when I was eight, Petunia had demanded that I cook the breakfast and when I didn't do it fast enough for her liking, she slapped my head, pulled me away from the stove and began cooking herself. She then proceeded to throw a frying pan at my head and had Vernon throw me in the cupboard without food again. I was getting tired of her, she needed to go away. Unfortunately, the execution took me until I was nine for my plan to come to completion.
Credit card fraud would be easiest for me to get her hauled off. I would send in an application under a pseudonym asking for a credit card. I made sure to change the name on the application every time but not the address, I wanted the constables to find her of course. When ever the credit cards arrived, I would swipe them and stick them in my cupboard and considering I was the one who got the mail, it was incredibly easy. The cards were put to good use, clothes, food and survival supplies were my main purchases and considering banks didn't send texts to notify a person about account activity yet, it was really easy. I watched with a smug smile on my face as the constables dragged Petunia from the house for credit card fraud. I did feel a little guilty for what I did but in the end, my survival was more important.
Setting up Vernon for my murder was going to be hard. This would take all my knowledge of crime scenes and forensics. I knew that the prosecution would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Vernon was guilty of killing me. They would need proof that Vernon hated me and was planning on killing me. That part was easy, I was able to forge Vernon's handwriting well enough to fill a notebook with rants about his hatred of me and my parents. The next thing I needed to do was get my hands on a body that shared my DNA and my looks. That was where my magic came into play. I had been practising with wandless magic since I was about six. And by the time I was ten and decided to fake my death, I was pretty adept at it.
The night I faked my death, I was able to create a decent body double that looked exactly like me. I wasn't sure if it shared my DNA but, I was confident that it worked. I would hate for my plan to fall through because I didn't do my job correctly. Anyway, once the body was positioned where I wanted it to be, I slipped upstairs and into Vernon's room, levitating a large butcher knife behind me. The knife would be the murder weapon but I needed Vernon's finger prints on it. A wandless imperious on the man allowed me to get Vernon to grab the knife and stab "me". That also allowed blood spatter to go everywhere. I then dropped the imperious and made him pass out on the floor. Crime scene, check.
I grabbed my stuff and slipped out the back door. I knew that Vernon always kept the back door unlocked so it made it easy to escape the house. I slung the duffle bag containing my stuff over my shoulder and jumped into the bushes. I wanted to watch as Vernon was dragged out of the house by the constables. I pulled out a disposable cellphone from my pocket and called 999. It was interesting watching Vernon try and deny he killed me but the evidence spoke of itself. The body, the journals, the blood spatter, the knife and the blood covered Vernon. Not even Dumbledore or Mrs. Figg could deny that my "uncle" had killed me. I also felt a bit guilty for what I did but considering the way he and Petunia and Marge and Dudley treated me over the years and the fact I knew they would get away with abusing me outweighed my guilt.
Once the constables, the medical examiner and the ambulance pulled away from the house and the neighbours had gone back inside their houses, I rose up from the bushes and looked around. I slipped the cellphone into my pocket and walked away, my duffle bag slung over my shoulder. If anyone had been awake at three in the morning, they would have seen a nine year old girl dressed entirely in black walking down the street. I hummed Styx's Renegade as I walked and didn't bother looking back.
Done. This is the first in a series of rewrites I am doing for several of my stories. I hope everyone enjoyed the new and improved version of What Have I Done to Deserve This. So please, read, like and maybe drop a review. I'll see you all next time.