Author's Notes: Just what I need. A new story. But I love Harry Potter and I love fem stories and I had to do one. So, sorry. I am still working on my other fics.

This story's avatar was made by viria13 on DeviantArt. (There is also a link to her Tumblr on her DeviantArt!) Go check her out. Beautiful artwork.

Harry Potter are not belong to me. Harry Potter are belong to JK Rowling.

This is not a songfic. The song lyrics at the beginning are only meant to explain the story's title. Sorry all the stanzas run together like that. FF is stupid.

This story is rated M for child abuse. The first chapter is very dark.

"Shadows all around you as you surface from the dark

Emerging from the gentle grip of night's unfolding arms

Darkness, darkness everywhere, do you feel all alone?

The subtle grace of gravity, the heavy weight of stone?

You don't see what you possess, a beauty calm and clear

It floods the sky and blurs the darkness like a chandelier

All the light that you possess is skewed by lakes and seas

The shattered surface, so imperfect, is all that you believe

I will bring a mirror, so silver, so exact

So precise and so pristine, a perfect pane of glass

I will set the mirror up to face the blackened sky

You will see your beauty every moment that you rise"

- "You Are the Moon" by The Hush Sound

1.

It was not the sort of place you would expect child abuse to come from.

Everyone had certain expectations, Estelle had noticed, of what an abusive family looked like. The family was usually poor, perhaps drunken, outwardly slovenly and always temperamental and violent. The abuse was always outwardly shown, usually physical, and it certainly never happened to a child who seemed privileged or who good things seemed to happen to. Estelle herself had not actually thought of her family as abusive until a teacher with knowing eyes had made her class watch a film on what child abuse consisted of in the third form. Eight-year-old Estelle had sat there, her eyes glued to the screen, listening attentively, and some of it had begun to ring oddly true for her. Ever since, she had always loved the classroom. There were other reasons she loved the classroom, too, but we'll get to those.

The teacher had never said anything, but Estelle always got the strangest feeling she had known. Teachers knew things in a way most other adults did not seem to. But the woman never said anything. Mrs Hammersmith had been her name. Perhaps she had not had enough evidence to go off of.

Estelle had never dared to enlighten anyone. She was a little afraid her uncle would kill her. She did not mean that figuratively.

But we digress. The house. It was a beautiful, spacious, two story white suburban house, with a neat little white picket fence, surrounding hedgerows, and a beautifully lined flower garden. Morning sunlight filtered through the bay window, past the curtains, and onto the living room: plush carpets, armchairs and a sofa in front of the television set, a wonderful red-brick fireplace, and in pride of place was a sleek, shining black grand piano. This was one of the only two pieces of evidence in the house - evidence that Estelle existed.

The other piece of evidence was a single, stiff family portrait on the far living room wall. Estelle stood there next to her aunt, uncle, and cousin, pale and unsmiling in a black dress. All the rest of the photos - most of them adoring, candid pictures - were of Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's massive blond son Dudley.

It was June twenty-second, a Friday, and Estelle Rose Potter was just about to wake up.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. The alarm clock that sat next to the old flip phone went off. Estelle hit her alarm and sat up. 5 AM. Most people did not get up immediately at 5 AM, but Estelle had incentive. That incentive took the form of her cousin. By now, it was just old habit to get up immediately as soon as dawn came.

Estelle brushed some spiders out of her hair sleepily and grabbed the light switch, pulling it on. A single naked bulb illuminated the tiny space: a stiff camp bed, a night stand with dresser drawers below it, and some built-in shelves full of various personal items were stuffed into the cupboard under the stairs, which was positively crawling with spiders and cobwebs, despite Estelle's best efforts to remove them. Estelle knew how to install shelving. Estelle knew how to do almost everything for herself. Her chores ranged from cooking and cleaning to flower gardening, mowing the lawn, pruning the hedges, repainting the garden supplies, cleaning the car, sewing, stitching, and doing around the house maintenance.

Basically, she did whatever nobody else wanted to do for the day.

Her cupboard was her home, the only place nobody ever went, and all of her favorite things were kept there. On the shelves were pieces of bone and wood jewelry she had made herself, old pairs of ice skates, sad old childhood toys (sewn together by hand by Estelle herself, ripped apart by her cousin Dudley, and then re-stitched with care), a few cookbooks, two books of world travel, saved chocolate truffle wrappers (from the few times in her life she'd been allowed sweets), a treasured audio tape and tape player carrying the sound of rainfall, collections of rocks, pebbles, crystals, and fossils, and a feather and flower pressing album. A violin in a case leaned in a corner. Hidden underneath her bed were collections of angry poetry and musical compositions, and drawings and paintings of surrealist cartoon caricatures. She hid them because her aunt and uncle wouldn't like them if they discovered them. They funded hobbies for her, to make themselves look good to the outside world, but it had to be on their terms. Still lifes, portrait sketches, classical music, poems about flowers. That kind of thing. Nothing imaginative or emotional. It was twisted logic, she knew, but all Dursley logic was twisted.

She dressed herself in an oyster white sweater and a knee-length skirt colored the shade of terra cotta. (Estelle was a red-headed Autumn, who looked good in leaf and swirl prints.) She pinned her hair back with a handmade bone-and-fang hair barrette. It was amazing she'd gotten the jewelry past her aunt and uncle, really, almost as amazing as the fact that she was allowed to do volunteer work at an animal shelter. But the jewelry made her look good, as did the work at an animal shelter, which additionally got her in with her Aunt Marge, supposedly, not that her Aunt Marge had ever actually liked her. (She set her bulldogs to attack Estelle whenever she came over to visit.) But that was what it was all about for the Dursleys. It was all about looking good.

Estelle did look good, without help, so she had that going for her. She was very pretty, with thick, dark red, shoulder length hair and pale skin. She had a long, straight nose and round hazel eyes. She was small and petite, though she suspected that was mainly because she wasn't fed very much - in any case, it looked good on a girl. Everyone complained about the overweight girls; no one ever complained about the skinny ones. The only thing Estelle didn't like about her own appearance was a very thin scar on her forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. She'd had it for as long as she could remember, and the first question she could ever remember asking her Aunt Petunia was how she had gotten it.

"In the car crash when your parents died," Aunt Petunia had snapped, "and don't ask questions."

Don't ask questions - the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. In any case, Estelle considered the mark disfiguring and she usually hid it with her fringe.

She brushed her teeth and washed her face in the upstairs bathroom, then went down the staircase into the kitchen and made breakfast for everyone. This was her morning chore. She had the meal finished before anyone else was even downstairs, had bolted down her breakfast and retreated back into her cupboard when she heard the first footsteps on the staircase.

She heard her Aunt Petunia's heels clack into the kitchen, heard her open the microwave, heard her sigh. "Odd little thing," she said scathingly, and she took out the plates of breakfast to put on the table.

Aunt Petunia had always thought Estelle was "odd" for avoiding Dudley's "teasing." Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia called it teasing. Usually it consisted of physical violence and humiliation. They laughed while it was happening. Like it was funny. A big joke.

Nothing Dudley did was imperfect for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. He was a perfect, smug extension of their perfect, smug selves.

Uncle Vernon and Dudley's heavier footsteps followed Aunt Petunia's into the kitchen. Estelle hid in her cupboard, listening attentively. She heard Uncle Vernon open the morning newspaper and command everyone not to disturb him while he read it, heard Aunt Petunia clink her china together, heard Dudley scarf down his food and demand more. With her gone, they were the perfect family: man in a three-piece suit, woman in perfect makeup and a house dress, and fat spoiled son.

And then, finally, came time for the dreaded walk to school. Dudley's first chance to attack her.

She grabbed her backpack and crept reluctantly into the entrance hall, her face sullen and careful. Dudley saw her and smirked, his fat face flushing, his eyes narrowing. And Estelle's face showed nothing - nothing at all. She called it her mask face.

"Have a good day at school, darling," said Aunt Petunia fondly, kissing her son on the cheek. Then she looked over and glared at Estelle, her nose wrinkling, as if her niece smelled bad.

"Go, girl," she said simply, and walked back into the kitchen.

Dudley began pushing and shoving Estelle the minute they were out the door. Her body so tense it hurt, her teeth grinding, she sped up to walk a little faster. Then she heard them start appearing beside Dudley. Dudley's gang: Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon. Slowly, one by one their footsteps joined Dudley on his walk to school, until all five of them were walking right behind her. A piercing silence filled the air.

Estelle saw a hand move and she bolted and ran, fast as she could, faster than flitting shadows.

They chased her down, thundering behind her, all the way into the classroom. Luckily, Estelle was much smaller and faster than they were, and she pushed and shoved people out of her way as she made campus and sprinted toward the safety of the classroom. If she was caught, she'd get the shit kicked out of her, and she knew it. Students moved out of her way quickly. Everyone knew Estelle Potter was a walking bully target, gaining the dubious honor of having the special attention of Dudley's Gang, and no one wanted to be too close to her. No one sat near her in class, no one picked her first in gym. And everyone certainly moved out of her way now.

She made it to the classroom, dark red hair mussed and pale cheeks flushed, out of breath, and she sat triumphantly down in her seat. Dudley stopped in the doorway, glaring resentfully at her brief triumph.

Estelle's abuse had rules. It was as regimented as everything else in the Dursleys' lives was. She was not allowed to be bothered when doing household chores (her aunt and uncle wanted good food and a clean house) or while in class or studying (her aunt and uncle demanded perfect grades - once more, to make themselves look good). So if Estelle timed it right, walking to school, lunch or recess at school, and dinner at home were really the only times she was at the mercy of Dudley's violence.

And if she was dutiful - which she usually was, also seeing chores and knowledge, academics, books, and learning as another reprieve from abuse - she only need worry about her aunt and uncle when she did something wrong. Like what, you might ask?

Let's put it this way. Strange things had always happened around Estelle. She would be running from Dudley and would suddenly find herself in unexpected places, things she disliked had the habit of mysteriously shrinking or disappearing (though this never seemed to apply to people, sadly), her hair regrew absurdly quickly every time it was cut boyishly short by Aunt Petunia, and when people made her angry, bizarre, embarrassing things tended to happen to them. One time a teacher was yelling at her and the teacher's wig had suddenly turned blue, flew off her head, and began zooming around the classroom. The thing was, no one had known the teacher's hair had been a wig. Oops.

Whenever something like this happened around Estelle - also, whenever she talked about impossibilities like dreams, imaginings, fantasies, or even cartoons - she would be locked into the cupboard under the stairs, often for days at a time and usually with little to no access to basic necessities like food, the bathroom (hence the bucket in a corner of the cupboard), or the bathtub. She had originally thought this completely unfair. How could she possibly control whether someone's wig turned blue?

But her readings for school had opened her mind up to alternative possibilities. For example, a teacher who liked her, after learning she was forbidden from reading fantasy books, let her read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in his classroom at lunchtimes. From there, she nosedived into reading other fascinating books of fancy, usually at school in secret when she was supposed to be at a hobby. She first learned of the concept of magic through books, and she began to consider the possibility that she was magic - and that these strange occurrences were her powers manifesting themselves accidentally.

Soon, she had discovered that whenever she got very upset, a tingling sensation went all up and down her body, a prickling up and down the back of her neck, and then this power would fly out in a cloud to the things around her. She learned to control this power to avoid cupboard punishments - a useful survival technique. She suppressed the magic, usually unwanted, and thus avoided being locked away in the dark again. She also learned to keep her mouth shut, so that nothing which would anger the Dursleys came out of it.

Basically, she was a survivor - tough and clever - in a horrible and abusive household. She made the best of what she had. She even became bold enough to manipulate her own magic in order to help herself in secret - to unlock her cupboard door and steal food during cupboard punishments or spells without food for example - when her aunt and uncle punished her by stuffing her into the cupboard for even off the ground imaginings, let alone actual displays of magic.

Lunchtime was the worst today. She spent most of it running around the playground away from Dudley's gang, each minute shortening and shortening the time she would have to spend in active pain, but finally two of the boys were smart enough to cut around a building so that the gang had pinned her in from both sides.

"Well, boys," she said, knowing she would pay dearly for this comment, "you're using your brains today. Is this a new trick?"

Their faces twisted and they charged. A couple of them pinned her down and a couple more (always including Dudley) wailed on her. Punching, kicking, bruising. That sort of thing. Today wasn't actually that bad. Her leg hurt and so did her stomach, but she didn't have a bloody nose or black eyes.

She was in pain and had trouble concentrating for the rest of the school day, which was a pity, because today's lessons were actually interesting. The minute the bell rang, she'd grabbed her bag and was up and out of her seat to go to her hobbies. She used these to fill time in the day and be away from the house and her family as much as possible.

Estelle's hobbies and extracurricular lessons included jewelry making (she made all her own bone and wood jewelry, and it was through these lessons that she had gained the time to search for things like rocks, pebbles, feathers, and crystals), figure skating, painting and drawing, music (piano, violin, and voice lessons), poetry, cooking, and she volunteered at a local animal shelter. She also kept books on and dreamt of travel.

Estelle was the perfect girl with the perfect clothes on the outside, with lots of pressure put on her. This was vital in understanding why no adult ever looked into her background. On the outside, her life looked perfect. Secretly, of course, by her family, she was abused. But no one suspected that. No one suspected it from a respectable family who pushed perfection in their niece.

She kept busy at lots of more feminine artistic hobbies - hobbies her uncle and aunt would approve of, that would complete their perfect little boy-and-girl family - and she did them to stay out of the house or away from Dudley's fists. Dudley was forbidden from hurting her, for example, when she was cooking, or playing the piano in the living room. These hobbies were her reprieve from the abuse of her daily life - she even made friends at them, and at her figure skating her coach brought her extra food. These artistic endeavors were allowed as long as they were "just hobbies" - and she was even punished when she didn't do well at the hobbies, or when she "wasted material." The only catch, of course, was that she could only openly interact with the kinds of art subjects her aunt and uncle considered "appropriate." Her real art, she had to hide.

Estelle's hobbies were the only times she was happy. To impulsively lose oneself in the creation of a thing was the keenest pleasure she had ever known, aside from the few times when she had tasted chocolate. She dreamed of art, of escape, of running away - secretly. Her imagination and her mind created methods of escape for her. Not that she was the highly intellectual, abstract reader. Far from it. Estelle was simply observant of what was around her, and good at creating art out of it. She was constantly vigilant, constantly noticed what was around her - other things, including books, were only valuable insofar as they could be useful to her.

In any case, tonight was the night of a figure skating show. She arrived late, panting and in pain, and she changed into her turquoise leotard and skirt with sparkling sea patterns, her tights, and her ice skates.

"You're late, Potter," said her coach Miss Harskey brusquely, a large woman with her hands on her hips as she towered over her student.

"I know, ma'am, I'm sorry."

Miss Harskey watched with a veiled expression as Estelle quickly wolfed down the dinner her coach had brought her. Then, a few minutes later, it was time for the show. Estelle's stomach lurched. Her leg still hurt.

Miss Harskey visibly resisted the urge to pat her on the shoulder - Estelle didn't like sudden touches. "You'll do fine," she said, and sent Estelle out there to perform her solo piece. Estelle got to the edge of the rink, and looked around. There was her aunt, stiff and thin-lipped and glaring and severe, in the audience.

Estelle swallowed as their eyes met. She knew, then, that this would have to be perfect.

She floated out there gracefully onto the ice, and she began well. Speeding around, doing perfect twirls and spins, her skates making thin rings of ice on the bed of smooth white. Then Estelle went for a major jump, a leap - her leg throbbed and she fell painfully to the ground, landing on her hip. There was a groan from the audience and Estelle knew, then, that she had failed.

"I'm sorry! Dudley hurt my leg at lunch today -!"

"Don't you dare lie to me about Dudley, you useless freak!" Estelle was at home, and her Aunt Petunia had just slapped her hard across the face. "Duddykins would never do something like that!"

"He does it in front of you all the time -!"

"You ungrateful little wretch!" Uncle Vernon grabbed her by the collar and shook her, his purple face right up close to hers. "Do you have any idea how much it costs keeping you around? Do you?! And you can't even do well at the hobbies we pay for?!"

Estelle stayed silent, her jaw clenched. Anything she said now would only make it worse.

Her Uncle Vernon threw her away. "Into your cupboard! And no dinner tonight!" He stormed off and Aunt Petunia, with a silent snarl, followed him.

Estelle lay there in pain for a moment, before getting up and crawling away toward her cupboard.

"There she is - the dog with the tail between her legs." Estelle looked up. Dudley had bent over the banisters, grinning, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness.

Estelle waited until she heard the footsteps that meant the Dursleys had gone to bed. Then she reached out her hand, and sent a tendril of magic into the lock, moving it aside and sneaking out tentatively. She ran silently to the kitchen and grabbed the necessary goods - buttered bread, an apple, and a plastic cup of water. Then she retreated back into her cupboard and locked herself in again.

The Dursleys had always been like this, for all the ten years she'd lived with them, for as long as she could remember. She had her theories about and had noticed the peculiarities of each of her relatives:

Uncle Vernon was obsessed with normality to the point of being OCD. He was the sort of person who wore the same suit every day and always made sure his grey tie was perfectly neat. He was most comfortable when he was in control of the situation, and he used this control to assert his masculinity as much as possible. He also prized aggressiveness and masculinity in others - particularly his son. He saw being masculine and being violent as the same basic thing. He not only abused his niece, he yelled at the people he employed at work on a daily basis and was a proponent of corporal punishment and violent displays of power. His sister Marge was the same way, which possibly indicated a childhood in which normality and corporal punishment were prized highly - or perhaps a childhood where corporal punishment was prized but normality was noticeably absent. (Estelle had never been stupid enough to ask him which it was.) He kept up with the news and politics (and forbade anyone from disturbing him while he read the newspaper) and when he couldn't make his presence known physically without getting arrested, he made his presence known verbally through formal complaints. While he never got drunk - that was too lower class for him - he did sometimes comfort drink to calm his anxiety and rage. This was when he should never be approached.

Aunt Petunia was the hardest one to figure out. She had been Estelle's mother's sister, and she seemed to direct unseen depths of rage directly at Estelle. Someone would compliment Estelle, or Estelle would do something magical, and a very certain expression would come over Aunt Petunia's face. One of jealousy and rage. In the case of the magic, Aunt Petunia would slap her, call her a freak, and lock her away; in the case of the compliment, she would grind long claw-like fingernails tightly around Estelle's shoulder and say, "Yes, that's my niece," as if the accomplishment had truly been all hers. She seemed desperate to be Estelle's better, to put Estelle into her own orderly control and manipulate everything she did.

Dudley was a product of his environment. He could get away with absolutely whatever he wanted, his temper tantrums and crying fits were always catered to, and he got everything he ever asked for. In fact, he was applauded for demanding things, even unreasonable things. It didn't matter if the things he asked for would make him sick, if not catering to his temper tantrums would be better for his mental health, if punishing him would be good for his ethical outlook on life. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon saw their son as a perfect byproduct of their perfect selves, and were more concerned with loving and catering to that byproduct than they were in raising a healthy son.

At the same time, Dudley saw his cousin being constantly abused. When he abused his cousin, whether through violence or humiliation, it was laughed off as teasing and even applauded, and Estelle's humiliation only added fuel to the enjoyment. Dudley was also encouraged by his father to see "real" men as cis, straight, traditionally masculine, and violent. (Estelle was only allowed Internet access at school, or sometimes when she was left home alone with Dudley's computer and the family went out, but she did enough reading on it to know that this was not necessarily accurate.) "Real" men, in other words, treated people like Vernon treated Estelle. Dudley saw himself both as perfect and as a "real" man. He also in some ways saw men as vastly superior to women, both because he mattered more than Estelle and because his doting mother was easier to con into things than his gruff, tough-it-out father.

They were a sick, disgusting group of people, and Estelle tried to be around them as little as possible.

Her only ray of hope was that she wouldn't have to see the Dursleys tomorrow. Tomorrow, Saturday, June twenty-third, was Dudley's eleventh birthday, and Estelle was always sent away to be babysat by an old cat lady named Mrs Figg whenever her relatives went out to do something fun - like celebrate a birthday.

Estelle's own birthdays, of course, were never celebrated. She'd gotten it from her Aunt Petunia, once, that her birthday was July thirty-first. The date was written in pencil on the cupboard ceiling above her bed - to remind herself that there had been a time when a set of parents had given birth to her, and, hopefully, had celebrated her birthday. She wouldn't know. She didn't remember them.

Countless times, she'd wished that car accident had never happened.

Everyone thought Estelle very odd, she knew, for the way she behaved. But everything she did was an extension of her determination to survive: Her hypervigilance, her fear of her family and of angering or displeasing her family, her overly compliant and extremely passive nature, her frequent absences from school, her constant hunger, the way she came to school with little food, and the way she often appeared depressed and withdrawn with little energy.

It was also obvious how much she hated her family. And that, she could not help. It was impossible to live with the Dursleys and not hate them. She'd like to see someone else try it.