Author's Note: Written for QLFC (Season 4, Round 13). Position: Keeper for the Falmouth Falcons
Word Count: 2,995
Write about what might have happened if Snape hadn't told Voldemort about the prophecy.
She's sitting on top of the Ferris wheel, looking out over Neverland, when she hears the lower-hanging cars screech. Looking down, her long, red hair is blown in front of her face, and she angrily collects it behind her head. Below her, Slightly is climbing up to meet her, and on his way, he pushes all the cars to make them shriek. She can see an ecstatic smile on his face as the night is filled with the sound of the attraction's unholy choir.
"Dibs!" he greets her when he reaches her vantage point. The night is pushing the evening into oblivion, but a streak of dying, yellow horizon still colours the sky in blue gradients.
"Hey, Slightly."
Slightly is the only one who got to choose his own name. None of the Lost Boys really remember anything from before they came to Neverland. Slightly, Dibs, and the twins arrived together at the amusement park. The first thing Peter said to them was that Slightly had something on his nose, and when Slightly proclaimed that it was because he was 'slightly soiled', Peter thought that was his name. From then on, Slightly was named Slightly.
Peter can name people because he is their leader. His hair is dark and untidy, and he wears big, round glasses that have been repaired half-heartedly more than once. Dibs often looks at his forehead─smooth and dirty─and feels like something is missing. Perhaps a sign that he is in charge. Something rad, like a skull.
She once asked Peter why that's his name. His only response was that his parents had named him after their best friend─as if people were supposed to know who his parents' best friend was.
(Dibs is so called because she used to call dibs on everything until Peter told them that they were a band of brothers, and as brothers they share.)
Both Dibs and Slightly have bright, red hair and freckles, and Dibs often wonders if he was her brother before they came to Neverland.
Slightly is Peter's best friend.
"Someone is coming! Come on!" Slightly says, panting, when he reaches the top.
On their run towards the treehouses, they pass the merry-go-round. The painted horses, teeth bared in desperate grins, creak and move in the strong autumn wind. The wind picks up a few crusty leaves, which fly past Dibs' ears as she and Slightly race.
When they arrive, the other Lost Boys are circling around something. Dibs, as the smallest, crawls through one of the twins' legs and look up. In front of her stands a girl─a real life girl: all fuzzy hair and big brown eyes.
She's wearing a baby blue dress. Dibs thinks her front teeth are too big.
"Boys!" Peter shouts, scaring a murder of crows into flight. He jumps up on a wooden crate, and only now does Dibs realise that he wasn't part of the circle before. "This," he holds out his hand towards the girl, "is Wendy!"
The other Lost Boys have taken a step backwards, and when Dibs notices, she takes a step backwards too, scowling at the others; they could have told her. As she falls into their flawed line, Peter approaches and slings a casual arm around Wendy's shoulder. "She's going to be living with us from now on!"
All of them make a high-pitched, continuous, "U!" while clapping their hands over their mouths repeatedly. It is their initiation call, and they've done it for every Lost Boy, no questions asked. Wendy looks at them all with an open mouth, but no words leave it.
Here Dibs thought that being speechless was an urban legend and not an actual disease, but Wendy apparently has it.
Dibs takes a step back.
Now that they've shown her she is welcome, Dibs and the other Lost Boys run whoo'ing back to camp: an old obstacle course with a clutter of treehouses at the top of the trees. They once tried using the village as housing─a collection of pastel-coloured houses with plastic furniture on an overgrown cobble road─but it felt like living in oversized dollhouses, and the Lost Boys are wild things.
Wild things don't live inside.
Wendy is slow to run and slow to climb, but Peter brings her on his broom. Dibs scrunches up her face; she would never let a girl sit on her broom. Besides, it is a matter of pride to always go through the difficult trials of reaching the treehouses, even if they can fly.
On the ground, in between the trees, there is a big bonfire. That night, they have a celebration, building the fire as high as possible and roasting old marshmallows they've found scattered around the park. There are all kinds of yummy food like crisps, boiled sweets in all colours, and old, stale candyfloss. Sometimes they have to go outside to scavenge and hunt for things too, but they don't like to; all of the Lost Boys have come to Neverland for a reason, and none of them like the idea of leaving.
Dibs, feeling the candyfloss melt on her tongue, passes it on to Wendy. The other girl looks at the treat with a weird grimace on her face and hands it to First Twin.
The twins don't really have names because Peter doesn't know what the twins are, and since no one is allowed to know more than Peter, they are just called First Twin and Second Twin. Dibs isn't really sure that Peter himself knows which is which.
Sometimes, the twin he calls First Twin will claim he is Second Twin, and Dibs isn't really sure they know which is which either.
Tally has already gone to bed. Tally is the member of the gang with the blackest of luck. He's a little squat, and he always goes to bed before the fun starts. That's why his name is Tally: he always says Tally-ho when he leaves, and when he does, everyone knows that things are about to kick off.
Peter says it's because Tally brought a toad, and that toads are a sort of black magic called Hoodoo that brings bad luck.
It's perhaps just as well then that the toad disappeared on one of Tally's first nights.
"Let's climb The Tower!" one of the twins suggests.
"Or the Flying Car!" the other one chimes in.
They can continue like that forever.
The Tower is the biggest roller coaster in the park. Dibs sometimes ascends the stairs outside the rails and sits with her legs dangling on either side of the rotten wood that is supposed to wall in the steps. Peter has told her that if she wants to do dangerous things, it's her funeral, but Dibs thinks it's more dangerous to ride the rusty roller coaster, so that's what she tells him.
Sometimes he calls her a girl for not riding the attractions with them, which means she's a coward.
Dibs wonders if he'll do the same to Wendy.
To Dibs' great surprise and dismay, Wendy does want to ride the roller coaster.
.ooo.
There is a part of the park where none of the Lost Boys go. It's the pirate ship. It's not because it's scary─the Lost Boys aren't scaredy-cats and have been inside the Shrieking Shack many times─but because there are bad men in there.
The leader of the bad men sometimes stalks through the park. He doesn't need to because there is another entrance to the pirate ship from outside, but sometimes he does anyway. When he does, all the boys hide; Lost Boys have disappeared before.
When a Lost Boy goes missing, Peter says that he'd rather walk the plank than become a pirate. Dibs thinks it's weird when he does; no one ever asks.
It's the one time Peter can be found talking to himself.
They've dubbed the man Captain Hook because he looks like the dummy captain on the pirate ship─greasy, black hair and a vulture's movements─and because his nose looks like a hook. His skin is pasty, and the twins swear they've seen him pull off the tails of lizards and pocket them. Even Tally says he's seen the lizard tails, but when he saw them, Captain Hook was dumping them in a cauldron.
Dibs thinks they've all lost their minds.
All she really knows is she sees him flinch when the big clock tower in the middle of the park strikes thirteen (the clock is quirky and crooked, and Dibs isn't even sure it's on time). It's as if it heralds the dawn of a worse day each time; he hurries on a limping leg towards the pirate ship, and whenever the clock has rung its bell for the thirteenth time, he meets the rest of the pirates and leaves the park.
Dibs likes to imagine that the clock striking is a signal that someone even meaner wants his attention, and that Captain Hook is just a blind soldier fighting a lost war.
.ooo.
"Will you show me around?"
Startled, Dibs spins around and looks right into Wendy's big eyes. Before Wendy snuck up on her, she was looking at the sign on which it says Neverland. The letters are big and round, and white lamps line them. Sometimes, Peter plays with the faulty wiring until the lights go on and light up the park, but right now, Peter is asleep, and the park is dead.
"Why?" Dibs asks, not unkindly.
"Because you're the only other girl here," Wendy says. "And sometimes it's nice to just be girls."
"I'm not a girl!" Dibs replies with fervour, although she knows that maybe she is.
"Aren't you?" Wendy asks, and Dibs shakes her head, a deep frown creasing her forehead. Wendy doesn't argue. She sighs. "I'd still like to see it."
Dibs asks if Wendy wants to walk or fly.
"I can't fly." Wendy looks away as if she is ashamed.
"Peter can teach you!"
"Maybe later."
They go to the waterpark first. White metal chairs with peeling paint lie in all positions in the water. The bottom of the pool is mostly dark with only occasional blotches of bright turquoise where the floor isn't covered with leaves and dirt. In the middle of the pool is a giant squid.
Then Dibs shows her the Whomping Willow, where you sit in carriages and get spun around and up and down.
She also shows Wendy the village, which Wendy thinks is 'charming'.
Finally, they have a look at the castle. It's grimy and splotchy now, graffiti covering its walls─some of it sprayed on by them─but it's still easy to see how enchanting it once was.
Wendy looks sad, but Dibs copies her and says she thinks it's charming.
"Why?" Wendy asks with a shocked expression on her face.
Of course, Dibs mostly said it to mess with Wendy, but she doesn't want to tell Wendy that. "Well, because it's ours, see? If it was pretty and neat, all sorts of people─" she doesn't add like you, "─would want to come and visit, but this is ours. We don't really have anywhere else to go, so this is our castle, this park is our home, and we are each other's family!"
Dibs thinks she sounds bloody brilliant, saying stuff like that, but Wendy utters a pained sound and gives her a hug as if she should be pitied.
Dibs writhes in Wendy's arms.
"I'm so sorry, Dibs," Wendy whispers into Dibs' hair.
"Why?" Dibs asks, still trying to dodge out of the embrace.
"Because you're all alone here, and the world outside is horrible, so you can never go home."
Dibs thinks Wendy has lost her marbles, but the part about the world outside makes Dibs' spine tingle. Even though the Lost Boys are all brave and manly and sometimes fight pirates, there is one thing that none of them like: leaving Neverland. Peter says it's because people grow up when they go, but Dibs doesn't always believe him.
Something dark flies over their heads.
"What was that?" Wendy asks.
Looking up, Dibs sees a black figure. She shrugs. "Oh, that's just Voldemort."
Gasping, Wendy draws back a little. "Voldemort?"
"Yeh," Dibs says, her eyebrows furrowing. "Peter's shadow. He's the one who helps Peter find Lost Boys."
Across from her, Wendy looks up after the shadow, and Dibs follows her line of sight. "Look," she points at the shape. "It even has Peter's broom!"
"How?" Wendy says quietly.
"How what?"
"How does Voldemort help Peter find the Lost Boys?"
Dibs shrugs. "I don't know."
"Let's go back," Wendy says and turns on her heel.
.ooo.
Dibs finds Peter back at camp, his hands cutting quick, measured splinters off a slim branch with a knife. She thinks it looks like a flute.
"Peter?"
"Hm?" he says without looking up.
"Why am I a Lost Boy?"
"What?" Now he looks up. Whatever he was fidgeting with is locked at his side when he places his hand there.
"I mean, I'm a girl."
"No, you're not." Dibs knows he isn't angry, but she still recoils a little when he says it.
"Why not?"
"You know how Lost Boys come to Neverland, right?"
Dibs nods eagerly. "You find them when they get lost and their parents don't find them within seven days." She puffs out her chest.
"Well, girls are much too clever to get lost," Peter responds.
"Then why is Wendy here? She's a girl!"
"No, she's not!" Peter argues. "Wendy is here because she's our new mum!"
.ooo.
They clean up one of the houses for Wendy because she doesn't like to live outside.
Dibs wants to think it's dumb, but when she sees how happy it makes Wendy, she's sort of happy for her.
.ooo.
She hears Wendy and Peter argue one day. The others have gone slingshot practising on the side stalls, and Dibs is left in the treehouses to carve a new one. She broke Slightly's, so Slightly took hers.
Those are the rules.
"I know who Voldemort is," she hears Wendy say. As a result, Dibs lays down flat on her stomach to watch the two older children.
"My shadow," Peter responds. He's still carving, and Dibs isn't sure it's a flute anymore.
"Peter," Wendy says as if her patience is running thin. He doesn't reply. "Dibs said he helps you find them─us."
Now Peter looks up. "You're different."
"How so?"
"You remember."
Wendy looks like she's considering this. "Are you the one who steals their memories?"
"I don't steal anything. I exchange them." Peter's voice has a haughty twang to it, and Dibs holds her breath.
"For what?"
"For dreams. For Neverland."
Dibs can see the blue dress move, but not until she adjusts can she tell that Wendy has sat down with her head in her hands. Just as Dibs has finally got a steady look at her, the older girl looks up and rises from her seat again. "I'll take them away from here."
"You can't."
"Why not?" Her voice hits a desperate pitch.
"Every day, when the clock strikes thirteen, the park disappears."
"What do you mean?" Wendy's eyes are big.
"We're only allowed out to scavenge before thirteen o'clock. My shadow says so." Peter shrugs. "Only pirates can leave this place."
"Voldemort is not your shadow!"
Peter goes very quiet. "He's a part of me, and I'm a part of him."
Wendy thinks about this. "So in order to ever leave, we'll have to become pirates?"
Again, Peter shrugs.
"You're bringing them up for slaughter." Dibs thinks it's a cruel thing for Wendy to tell Peter, but a part of her shudders at the thought that Wendy might be right.
"No," Peter says. He's walking away from her now, and Dibs tries desperately to keep track of them. "You are."
"Excuse me?"
"You're their mum." When Wendy doesn't speak, Peter continues. "Some of them started asking about their mums, so I brought you here."
"A mum is a grown-up. I thought you didn't like grown-ups."
Through the slit between the boards, Dibs sees Peter turn around to look at Wendy with a cold expression on his face. "I don't."
.ooo.
Pirates only attack at night. Peter says it's because they're all cowards. Dibs wonders if that means they're all girls; after all─they wear robes.
Because Lost Boys are usually asleep at night, they've set up an alarm, but that night, the alarm doesn't go off. Dibs is awake anyway, unable to forget the conversation she overheard between Peter and Wendy.
Her new slingshot is lying beside her, ready to be picked up, when she hears the boards creak. She sits up immediately, but before she can reach her weapon, someone points a stick─it looks like whatever Peter was carving earlier─at her throat, and her voice dies in her throat.
Dibs thrashes wildly in their grasp all the way to the pirate ship, but no one hears the noise she so desperately tries to make.
She wonders if it's because Peter gave the others more dreams in exchange for memories and if they've already forgotten her.
Looking around curiously once inside, Dibs sees flickering lights that cast every piece of furniture into contrast. She also notices that it smells like men, and Dibs is suddenly glad she's not a boy or an adult.
When the question is asked, Dibs shakes her head: she'd rather walk the plank than become a pirate, just like Peter. The men─she wishes they were all girls instead─laugh and shout that she would like to be fed to the crocodile. Dibs thinks that she said no such thing, but not for long; in slithers a man with scaly and sickly green skin, slits for eyes, and a snake by his side.
He looks like a shadow and speaks in a foreign language, and all Dibs can think of is that she wouldn't mind being found now; the dream Peter once gave her has turned into a nightmare.