"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart." - Haruki Murakami

Harriet opened her eyes to darkness. Sometimes she woke up suddenly like that, from a deep sleep into instant though confused wakefulness, having no idea who she was, or where, or anything. She knew that, and distantly remembered that it was a side-effect from too many memory charms. She knew that, even as disorientation pressed onto her like a weight, a large heavy cat climbed on her chest while she slept, releasing its claws slightly as a warning against her actually daring to move while it was comfortable. She knew, more through muscle memory than actual, that if she lay still and let disorientation-cat get up on its own, if she lay very still and tried to be very calm, the world would come back into focus. Her eyes would decide to focus in the darkness, and who she was and where she was would come back.

BANG. BANG. BANG BANG BANG BANG.

It was too late for memories; Harriet scrambled for her wand (how had it not been in her hand? It was always in her hand) and found nothing but walls and a floor and

OH GOD I'M GOING TO DIE IT'S A SPIDER WEB WAIT

a light fixture? She pulled the cord. There was a click, and then bright light blinded her. She closed her eyes, willing them to work, and counted to five very slowly. Everything was blurry, but she could see she was in a small space of some kind. Maybe a closet. She'd been in one as a child; maybe she had hidden in one (from who?) but then why was there a cot to lay on? And where on Merlin's Isle were her glasses, she could have sworn she'd spelled them to her head, but maybe something had happened she'd forgotten, things were like that. Harriet closed her eyes another moment, sitting perfectly still, trying to remember. Memories were delicate, skittish things. You couldn't force them to show. They were like cats, really. There was no herding, no rushing memories. You had to accept them on their own terms, or you got nothing at all.

BANG BANG BANG. "WAKE UP, YOU LAZY GIRL," shrilled a woman, voice dimmed only slightly by the (door?) separating them.

Nothing.

A squeak, and then the closet door opened outward. "If I have to tell you to get up one more time-" the shrill voice from earlier said, accompanied by a woman's head. Harriet looked at her, to put a face to the shrill, but couldn't make out more than a blob.

"I'm having problems seeing," Harriet said by way of explanation.

There was a pause, where she presumably glared. "Vain, just like your mother. Should have expected it. Be grateful we got you glasses at all, girl, and get out here before the bacon burns," she huffed, slamming the door behind her.

Harriet groped around a bit more- seemed there were shelves above her bed- and found a pair of glasses, which she shoved on her face with just a little more force than perhaps she needed.

The closet came into focus, and with it, some of Harriet's memory. She was back, both in time and space.

They say you can never return home. She'd never had a home- not properly- but perhaps living with the Dursley's was the closest thing to it. After all, they also said home was where they had to let you in. The saying never specified treatment past the door.

The house smelled exactly the same, and yet it wasn't as Harriet had remembered. She'd forgotten, until facing it, the undercurrents; the smell of obesity that wafted from Vernon and Dudley, the sour-mop smell that remained no matter how hard Harriet rinsed the mop out before putting it away. And, too, being downstairs in the closet in the morning, before the smell of bacon and eggs filled the house, Harriet could smell rain, and roses through the open kitchen window a few feet away. It wasn't as bad as she remembered it being.

Perhaps that was the way nightmares always were, once faced. Mrs. Weasley collapsed when faced with the boggart of her dead children; when faced with the real thing, she had only gotten stronger. Harriet didn't feel stronger, exactly. She just felt numb. Despite being tortured, hunted, having her friends and later children killed, and every refuge she'd ever used destroyed, her nightmares had usually been of simply returning to number 4 Privet Drive. They weren't nightmares where she screamed and thrashed in her sleep. Instead, they were nightmares of monotony- hours spent cleaning, sorting, doing whatever day-long project Petunia had come up with whenever Harriet looked like she wasn't quite busy enough.

It wasn't going to be like that this time, Harriet reassured herself. Even if she might want to, might want to try to please Petunia and somehow earn her affection, Harriet wasn't capable of taking her instructions. Harriet had known since kindergarten that Petunia didn't care for her; while she was glad to be alive, and to remain alive had returned under the woman's roof, Harriet simply couldn't do manual labor. Her mind-

Well. It had shattered, and been put together, and shattered, and put together so many times Harriet wasn't sure what the original had even looked like. It was no use asking other people, either; they all had a different opinion of her, and she'd long since burned all her diaries. When she had a relapse remembering- the bad things- she'd learned that remembering never led to good places. She wasn't sure by now who had done more memory charms on her- her own side or the enemy- and she'd had to try to recover memories afterward, and now there was no telling what had happened and what was simply a bad dream. Fifth year was entirely gone, and trying to get any sort of timeline from the people involved was a nightmare. Nobody could agree, in the end, what year things had happen, much less the order.

And so Harriet would have to act on instinct. It would have to be her, in the end; it always ended up being her, no matter how much she tried to foist things on other people. She was the Chosen One, though chosen for what was kind of hard to figure these days. She was the one that couldn't die, it seemed, no matter how she was maimed or wounded, able to fight if not always to remember her own name.

Harriet got out of the closet, not bothering to change her clothes (she was only allowed clean clothes once a week, and it seemed that she'd already used up her quota, judging from the smell of the other clothes in there) or put on shoes (there was no way in hell she was putting on Dudley's old trainers) and went into the kitchen. The eggs and bacon were mostly where she remembered- she'd forgotten that the fridge had been organized differently before it got replaced with a lockable version. The pan heated as slowly as she remembered. Harriet downed six slices of bacon and two eggs before Petunia came back down the stairs.

"What- did you eat the bacon? I don't have the money to be-"

Harriet raised an eyebrow. Petunia was much less scary than in her memories. She was just a muggle, after all. A smirk found its way to Harriet's face.

"Find it funny, do you girl?" Vernon asked, having walked in after Petunia. "I imagine spending the rest of the morning in your closest will change your mind! In!"

Harriet looked at the large man. He didn't scare her, really; he was just a muggle, after all. But for all that he was still four times Harriet's size, and she remembered now how he'd had no compunctions against dragging her by the hair. Without a wand, she'd end up in the closet one way or another.

Several hours later, Harriet poked at a spot on the wall in the closet. She had quite forgotten how easily they'd shoved her back in there when she caused problems, before she'd gotten a wand and they knew other people had an interest in her well-being. Even if she wanted to ask for help (and she didn't really, she'd never shared the extent of what happened with anyone, and had no desire to start now) she had no idea how, without a wand. Accidental magic wasn't the sort of thing that could be harnessed to send a message- it was, after all, accidental. Petunia wouldn't unlock the closet door till she went to bed, and any attempt to unlock it on her own (if she got caught) might lead to more secure locks.

There. Uncle Vernon had started snoring. Petunia might not be asleep, of course, but she couldn't hear anything over Vernon. Harriet looped a piece of string through the edge of the door, caught the top of the catch, and opened the door. She'd learnt to keep the hinges greased after a close call earlier this summer, so it opened silently. The ground floor didn't squeak like the top floor or the stairs.

Harriet checked the calendar, barely visible in the street lamp light. A few days before Dudley's birthday. Sunday morning, technically, though there were hours to go before daylight. There was a church down the way with a rummage bin that was open Sunday- Petunia had gotten her glasses there, when Harriet had pointed out that they were free. She'd never been allowed to look at things herself- Harriet was generally not allowed to touch anything when she was out with Petunia. But if memory served- which it so rarely did, these days- they had clothes, as well, and books. She didn't remember what else, but her closet could only fit so many things. Hopefully some sort of a bag; it would be nice to have enough books and clean clothes to last until next Sunday. Harriet wasn't entirely sure she'd be allowed out of her closet before then, once she got caught.

Harriet nicked a soda from the fridge, shrugged on an old sweater from Petunia that she wore when directing Harriet through garden chores, put the spare key in her pocket, and picked up a pair of Petunia's sandles. She knew that she was dirty, though dirt didn't show on children as badly as adults, with wild unbrushed sable-black hair with bangs that never quite covered her scar, no matter how thickly Petunia cut them, visibly broken glasses, and clothes that had never been meant to be worn by a small girl. There was, however, no law stating that children had to look nice. She'd just have to hope nobody who knew Petunia recognized her while she was out and tried to return her before she'd finished her errands. Children really were powerless.

Harriet walked down to the edge of the block and she was hidden from view by the neighbor's fence before daring to put on the sandals. They were a little big for her, even when she adjusted them as small as they would go, and there was no way to walk in them quietly.

Stupid Petunia and her freakishly huge feet. Stupid night being quiet. Stupid not having a wand.

A/N: Chapter one up! More to come, though I need to fiddle a bit. Feel free to send me a note fixing any Americanisms that don't belong. Unbeta'd! (sorry)

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