A/N: Hello! So, I've recently decided to get some writing practice in. I'm taking a writing course on Coursera and am looking towards getting published, but first I really need to polish up my writing and become better acquainted with deadlines. This will be my experiment story. I would love to receive constructive criticism on it; however, if you simply don't like the topics then it's strictly Don't Like, Don't Read.

I'll only put this warnings up once so PLEASE READ. This story may contain the following themes: DRUGS (use, abuse, distribution), SEX (sexual themes, underage, rape, molestation, heterosexuality, homosexuality), ALCOHOL (abuse, underage), SUICIDE (depression, suicide), MURDER (blood, gore, torture, dark themes), STRONG LANGUAGE (excessive cursing). RATED M for MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY.

This story has no character bashing. Each and every character is complex and I leave it up to you, the reader, to decide where the character falls on the spectrum of Bad vs. Good.

This story is ROMANCE, HURT/COMFORT, ADVENTURE. EXTREME AU.

There will be slashing for Harriet in the future, though I'm not sure with whom.

Thank you, enjoy, and PLEASE REVIEW.

CHAPTER ONE

Because Sometimes, Life Just Sucks.

She walked the old, dirty road alone. Again. Living in the heart of England, it was hard to find a road to even be by yourself to walk alone, but she had managed. Between two almost-never used streets was one very small, ugly, dirty alley-way that she told herself was her road. No one else's. Just her's.

She walked it by herself for two reasons. One, no one had any business walking with her anywhere at two o'clock at night, especially to her "house," and if she ever found anyone even attempting to follow her to her "house" she would kick their arse and not lose a single wink of sleep over it. Two, she was simply alone.

Harriet Lillian Potter hadn't had anyone positive in her life since she was seven years old. At the age of one, her parents had died. Some drunk car crash or another-she honestly was too young to understand when her aunt had explained it to her and Harriet hadn't the chance to ask for clarifications.

She didn't remember very much of living with the Dursleys. She remembered a cupboard that would have been constantly shrouded in darkness if not for the lamp her aunt had given her. The cupboard wasn't too bad, she always told herself. It was cramped and dusty, but it wasn't unwelcoming. Her aunt, distant but the closest woman she had to a mother, gave her warm blankets and fluffy pillows. She remembered the clothes she wore. They also weren't that bad. Not old, but not new. One of Dudley's friend's older sister had given them to her as hand-me-downs. She remembered Dudley well. He had a mean streak to the boys around him, but he was always protective of her. "Mum says to make sure no one hits ya. 'Cuz ya a girl and all! 'Cuz ya my cousin!" He wasn't overly nice to her. He didn't invite her to play games with him on the playground, nor did he share his room with her on the second floor. But, he did stop his stupid little gang from beating her up when they attempted their first game of "Harriet Hunting" when she was five. So, he wasn't that bad in her book. She also remembered Uncle Vernon and the way he hated her existence. The way he would lash out at her verbally when in front of her aunt and physically when her aunt was gone with Dudley somewhere. Occasionally he left bruises, and only once had he broken a bone, but they had all healed and, magnificently, looked like an accident.

At the age of seven, Harriet's second most clear memory, only falling behind a bright green light that was so clear in all her nightmares she was sure it was a memory, was staring at the dead face of her aunt that had committed suicide in her tiny cupboard.

It was also the moment she realized that she didn't want to have a mother ever, ever again.

The memory smears in her mind the way her aunt's blood had smeared against her hands when she tried to wake her up, unaware of the bullet hole in her head, completely oblivious to the brain splatter against the wall, and not even seeing the gun that laid in her aunt's hand. Looking back at it now, she wondered if she had just refused to see it. There was no way she could have missed it. She must have just been a child, blocking out the things she just wasn't ready to accept.

But, she was no longer a child. Her four years in the orphanage, which she had reasonably deemed as The Hell Years-where she was completely sure she pissed off God and she must have been receiving some wicked form of cruel punishment because no way should anyone ever have to live through such cruel, wicked pain ever in their lives-had made sure she wasn't a child anymore. She wasn't sure what she hated remembering the most: The green light, her aunt's suicide, or The Hell Years.

All were bloody shit and kept her awake at night.

She had escaped Hell at the age of eleven, when, do to circumstances she swore she would never think about again, she decided she was definitely adult enough to live on her own. The first few months had been scary, but eventually Harriet had found the street-rat in her and adapted well. She didn't have an overabundance of food and only had one rucksack of personal belongings, but she didn't freeze at night and wasn't sleeping in the rubbish, so it wasn't that bad. She had learned how to fight from Dudley and put it to active use during The Hell Years, which later bled into her street life. She had fought against, befriended, drank with, smoked out, defended, and deceived people of all age, race, and gender. She's gone from playing the part of Innocent Virgin Harriet to Sexy Casanova Harry-the male equivalent she had to concoct to save her trouble on the street. Women were weak, she had decided one day when she was young staring down at bruised body of a street whore that she passed by. All they did was go around getting killed or killing themselves. She wasn't really down for either of those options.

Harriet praised her street smarts, which was why she was highly annoyed when she heard the crack of a shard of glass being stepped on. It was a noise she had trained her ears to recognize. Living in the city, it was one of the biggest giveaways to good-for-nothings.

She reacted quickly, pulling out her pocket knife. But, she wasn't expecting a low-blow move. She wasn't expecting Jesus of course, but she definitely wasn't expecting to bring a knife to a gun fight.

She was looking down the barrel of a magnum.

"Oh, shit," she mumbled. Her body tensed. Of course she had seen a gun. She's even held and used guns for her own safety when situations had arisen, but she always refused to keep a gun on her person. She hated them, in all honesty. She had tried once to carry a gun on her, but the weight hanging from her waist reminded her of her aunt. It hadn't lasted more than two days before she sold it.

"Well," a scruffy man, perhaps mid-thirties, brought her back to reality. "Wha' do we got 'ere? How ya, beaut'?" Even from the fifteen feet of distance between them, Harriet could smell the liquor on the man. "How 'bout showin' me a good old time, ya?" Harriet scrunched her brows together, confused as to why he would-Oh, damnit. She realized only then that she was Harriet and not Harry at the moment, having opted to wear only her undershirt because of the heat and taking off the black beanie which she used to hide her long, tangled black locks. What great fucking luck.

"Listen here, bastard," she hissed out. "I'm not doing anything, and either you're gonna shoot me right now or go the fuck away." She wasn't playing these mind games. She had only been overpowered once in her life, during The Hell Years, and she swore she would rather die than go through that near-rape experience ever again in her life. She'd take a bullet from this man before she'd let him do anything to her. He was grossly, snaggletoothed, and an obvious drug-user. He was below her.

His glazed over eyes widened at her declaration. "You bitch," he dragged out. "You crazy, fuckin' bitch."

She had expected more out of him. She had expected him to come closer, to lunge at her, to at least do something to make some kind of contact and give her the chance to disarm him. She'd learned this on the street-nobody is out there to simply kill you. They want more, and they want it while you're breathing, so if she could get them to get close enough than she could simply disarm them which, she had to admit, she had gotten pretty damn good at.

She wasn't expecting him to simply pull the trigger.

Maybe this man was crazy? He was drunk after all. But, drunk didn't mean murderous. Unless he was already a murderer? He had the gun-oh wait, she had a gun once too and she's never murdered. Either way, she hadn't once thought he'd actually use it. Most don't. But, this man hadn't even thought about it. He pulled the trigger like it was his only job in life, like he had rehearsed it over and over in his head to make sure he got it just right.

She heard it before she felt it. She felt her chest go numb and couldn't for the life of her figure out why. Why didn't it suddenly go numb? Was it heart burn? Was she having a heart attack? She was just walking to her house when and-she looked down-Oh. Oh, God. She blinked once. Twice. Tried to gasp but couldn't. I've been shot. Only after the visual confirmation did the pain, which came in waves, hit her. It was followed by nausea and she tried desperately to keep the panic at bay. She looked up, only just remembering that the bullet certainly didn't come out of thin air and that the man was still there-Oh, fuck, he's gone. Where the bloody hell had he gone? She couldn't decide if it was a good or bad thing that he was gone, but at the time she didn't bloody well care. She put her hand over her chest and wondered, if not briefly, how the bullet missed her heart. She was almost positive it should have hit her heart.

She rode through the waves of pain as she walked to her house, all her energy leaving her. She felt tired. More tired than she's ever felt and considering her constant nightmares, she's felt pretty tired before. She knew she couldn't sleep now. She didn't know where the man was.

No one knew where she was-

-The ground moved up towards her, slamming against her body-

-If she slept now no one would-

-Reality skewed. She vaguely noticed the alley-cat hiding under the rubbish bins-

-find her she would just-

-Oh, fuck, I'm tired-

-rot here-

-Do you have dreams or nightmares when you die?

The Wizarding World didn't have time for the weak.

Now, don't get it wrong. They knew when it was time to take a tea break and enjoy life around you but that better be the best damn tea and an amazing life you've built around you because that's just the way it was in Wizarding Britain. After Lord Voldemort had won the war, ratification had taken place. Rules changed and beliefs followed.

It was never that hard, Voldemort told himself. He was a politician, a wizard, a warrior, and a survivor. He was the smartest, greatest man he knew. He had attacked the strongest families first, both literally and politically. Most he had converted. Those he couldn't, he simply killed. Of course, all the Slytherin families followed happily. They were going to rule. He had only a few mudblood Ravenclaws try to fight him. Hufflepuff was split in half-one half blindly following Albus, the other half blindly following himself. While Hufflepuffs weren't the strongest of his followers, they were definitely the most loyal-right behind Slytherins, of course. The Gryffindors were the biggest hurdle. But, he had expected that much. Most families, like the Longbottoms, simply refused. They perished. However, he was able to sway a few major families, like the Weasleys. This was probably due to the fact that their overbearing Molly Weasley knew that it meant loyalty or death. Of course she would protect her children.

He had most of Wizarding Britain figured out and was running it rather smoothly at this point, even branching out his reach to France and considering Germany. One step at a time, he told himself. He wasn't about to waste everything from being too hasty. He despised haste and, as if on cue, his study doors slammed open and one Peter Pettigrew came stumbling in after.

"My Lord, my Lord," he said, bowing deeply. Voldemort curled his lip in distaste.

"Spit it out Pettigrew or get out, either way, you have two seconds." He rolled his wand in his hand for emphasis and smiled at the visible flinch from his most tedious follower.

"My Lord," Pettigrew began, taking a deep breath, and continued, "the Muggle-Born Retrieval Trace just activated."

Voldemort narrowed his eyes in anger and the slow revealing.

"They found Harriet Lillian Potter."

The first name Voldemort didn't bother to recognize. He didn't care to know this child informally; however, the last name rang a bell. The Potters. Pure-blood name. Gryffindor. And oh, did he have so few pure-blooded Gryffindors fighting for his cause. But, that didn't explain why Pettigrew thought it gave him the right to barge into his Lord's study so rudely. He vaguely wondered the age of this Potter, considering the parents had died so long ago. Most muggle-borns were taken out of their homes around the age of three. The oldest had been five.

"What, pray tell, does that have to do with me, the Ruler of Wizarding Britain?"

Pettigrew froze. What did it have to do with his Lord? When the news spread, which it certainly did, it was like everyone was frozen in time. This girl who everyone thought was dead, wasn't not only dead, but managed to escape the Muggle-Born-Retrieval Trace for years. She would at least be a teenager. It was a sad day to all wizards when they found the Potters murdered-it was a strong bloodline.

"M-m-my L-Lord I-"

"Crucio."

She woke up hungry. And tired. And alive. But, mostly hungry and tired.

She wasn't sure how she had done it, honestly. No one survives a bullet wound like that. But, when she had woken up in her home-a small abandoned warehouse-breathing and alive it made her wonder first, how the fuck she got there and two, who the fuck got her there.

And just how the bloody hell does a bullet wound heal over night!?

She tried to rap her head around it as she nibbled into her stale bread. She wasn't sure what to think of whoever saved her. Sadly, it meant she would have to find a new house. She couldn't risk someone knowing where she lived. That could only bring trouble. She also didn't like the idea of anyone touching her in general, but also in such a private spot. Sure, at times she had played the flirt to get something she needed, but never did she go all the way. She's never kissed a person or let anyone touch her for anything.

She was almost done with her bread when she nearly received whiplash from turning her head too fast.

"Pack your things."

She was seeing things. She was hearing things. That's it. She's hearing things and turned her head too fast and now she's seeing things from whiplash. Is that even what whiplash does?

Just to the side of her, but a respectable twenty or so feet away, was a man with greasy black hair, a long, pointy nose, eyes so black she couldn't even make out the irises, dressed in all black and a trench coat.

She couldn't help but let a giggle escape.

"Oh, my god," she said between giggles. "Oh, god, you're probably gonna like, kill me or something, huh? How the fuck did you get here?" The all-black man narrowed his eyes-though at her lunatic giggles or cursing she didn't know-and repeated himself.

"Pack your things. We're leaving now." Harriet's face hardened at the use of we.

"I don't know who the fuck-"

"Watch. Your. Tongue." He hissed through clenched jaws and Harriet snapped her mouth shut. He reminded her of the old, grumpy men near the retirement home. The ones that spouted about wars and how teenagers nowadays didn't have respect and blah, blah, blah. As much as she hated being around old, grumpy people, she didn't have it in her to be a bitch to them.

Something about this man just screamed Don't Fuck With Me.

She almost liked it. Almost.

"Once again," she started slowly, "I still don't know you. I won't go with you anywhere."

"You don't need to know me," he drawled out equally slowly, as though each word was dipped in poison. "But, we all know you. Harriet," they made eye contact. "Lillian," he hissed. "Potter," he finished it slowly, clearly, and cruelly. He had said it with such conviction that Harriet would have sworn she was some murderer who had just gotten caught. And while she's seen a lot of dead people, she was positive she was no murderer.

She didn't know what to think. She was sure she was just verbally challenged. In the streets, you only spoke like that to someone if you were out for blood. Was this man out for blood? She clenched her fists and, with eyes still wide and a voice still laced with the shock from the sudden appearance of the man, said the first thing that she always said to people who were out to end her life.

"Fuck. You."

She refused to move slow again, so this time when his right arm came up, she bolted. She was proud of herself. She didn't even falter when the man pulled out a stick instead of a gun.

She did, however, falter when her body simply stopped moving.

And then everything went black. Again.

Her head felt like an old, rickety, wooden door that someone was banging their fist against urgently. The thumping was a rhythm she could have danced to, if she didn't feel absolutely sick. She realized only now that she must have fallen asleep to be waking up, and that somewhere between the bile that was rising to her throat and the steady migraine, she was suppose to open her eyes. So she did, slowly.

She opened a sliver of her eyes and promptly shut them. The light, so bright it should only be seen at the end of the tunnel-So am I dying?-almost made the bile win the fight.

She took a deep breath and tried once more. Slowly she opened her eyes and with only a pause to allow herself to become adjusted to the harsh light, she finally got her first look around a room.

It seemed like a demented doctor's office. Eyes floated in jars. There was gross looking back substances in viles on a dark, tall wooden shelf on one side of the room. On the other side of the room was an identical shelf, but this one was full of books. Harriet loved books, but each of these books looked old and dusty and she would fear that if she touched them they would simply break apart under her touch. There were no windows, which only made the brick walls feel more confining.

She realized she was on a lab table. The kind you sit on when the doctor turns to his nurses and say, "She won't make it. Call the time," she thought to herself. She didn't have any intentions of letting anyone do anything to her, and with one last thought about how no one was going to call her time, she hopped off the table, content with the fact that her dark jeans that were comfortably loose on her, her plain, black undershirt, and the black bandanna wound tightly around her right wrist, were all perfectly in tack. Even her black boots were still double-knotted.

At least no one touched me.

She hadn't made it further than five steps towards the only mahogany door in the room before it slammed open on its own accord.

"Did you enjoy your nap, Potter?"

Oh, what the hell! Who the hell was this? This man in the damn black! What stirred him to talk to her in such a tone-a simple fourteen year old girl that he had kidnapped off the street! A million questions ran through her mind. Who are you? Where am I? How do you know my name? She had never been kidnapped and from what she'd seen on the telly, these were the questions every blond-haired bimbo asked her captive right before they were murdered.

"Why do you wear all black?" she blurted out. Okay, so maybe she didn't want to ask the typical kidnapped-questions, but she supposed she should have came up with something better than this stranger's clothing style.

At least the look on his face was funny.

There was a long pause before the man in front of her sighed. "Why," he asked himself, "have I been cursed with another dimwitted student?"

Harriet was caught between being insulted at being called dimwitted and being puzzled at being called a student. She hadn't gone to school since she was eleven, not that she was missing out on much of an education. She had stolen many books in her time on the streets and loved learning, but she'd be damned if she was ever going to sit behind a desk again, just to be ignored by teachers and bullied by classmates.

"I haven't the fuzziest idea." She tried to keep her voice light and avoid sounding confusing. Make conversation, plan your escape, survive. These were her guidelines to life.

"Who says I'm a poor student?" She smiled innocent. Make conversation.

"Your questions are lacking in questioning." She allowed his eyes to pierce hers, not wanting him to realize just how much attention she was paying to the jarred door. Plan your escape.

"Is that your form of an insult? My questions aren't question-y enough?" She narrowed her eyes and her smile became a sneer. She fingered the pocket knife that she kept in her back pocket. "Well, fuck you too, you great, big bat." Without a second thought she lunged towards him, knife out and fully intending to connect it to his gut.

Survive.

Before she realized what was happening, the man had taken out his stick again and shouted something. Her body froze and panic truly ran through her. She couldn't fight it this time. Her body was frozen for goodness sake, of course she was going to be terrified. A light came out of a stick and froze her body.

"Brat." He hissed out. "Listen here, because I will only explain this once." He took increasingly closer steps towards her. "This," he waved towards her, "is magic. You are a witch. We're taking you to the Wizarding World. You will never see your muggle friends or take part in the muggle world ever again. You will learn magic at Hogwarts. You will excel because no ward of mine will be anything less than perfect. With that note, you will also behave. Cease that silly little uneducated muggle-cursing, it has no place in this society. You will adapt, or you will die trying."

Her heart was running a mild a minute. Everything he said seemed to go from one ear and out the other. She couldn't comprehend what he was saying. Magic? Muggles? Ward? She certainly wasn't going back to school-no, no she couldn't-she couldn't change she-oh, God her city she's leaving her-ward? What the fuck is a-what does he mean-she could feel the panic grip her ten fold and feel the attack, one she hadn't had in years, begin to form as her breathing began to pick up.

He released her from his spell and allowed her to come crashing down on the floor.

She could only ask one question, each word being broken up by a sharp intake of breath. "Who-the-fuck-are-you?"

He sneered.

"Severus Snape."

A/N: Well, there you have it. My first chapter. I hoped you like it. I'm American, but I'm trying hard to use British English. I'm really busy (studying for a German test that's coming up in a few days) and I'm a full-time babysitter, so it's hard to find the time to write, but I'll try to update by every Sunday. Please let me know what you thought of the chapter! Was it too fast? Too slow? Not enough dialogue? Not enough description? I love advice!