Disclaimer: Harry Potter, its copyright, trademarks, characters, and everything else part of it fictionally and legally are all owned by J.K. Rowling. This fanfiction gives me no monetary gain of any kind and in no way reflects the views, thoughts, or anything else of Ms. Rowling. It's just something I'm doing for fun.
A/N: The start of this chapter is a bit heavy. If you don't want the bloody details just skip to the paragraph that starts "That had been two days ago..."
Amelia Bones was not happy. No, it was probably safe to say that Amelia Bones was quite livid. It had all started with a letter appearing from what could only have been house-elf magic right in front of her over breakfast. The letter wasn't even very long, but it had spiraled into one of the biggest messes Amelia Bones had seen since the war with you-know-who. That it involved one of Susan's friends made it even worse than it already was.
Holly Potter. A girl that didn't even seem to exist until last August right when the boy-who-lived seemed to vanish. If not for the fact that Holly could access the female dorms at Hogwarts everyone would have easily been able to tell Holly was just Harry in disguise. That the opposite was actually true never even occurred to anyone as far as Amelia knew.
None of that was what had Amelia so angry though. No, what had her so absolutely incensed was what that letter she had gotten had led to and that she could do so very little about it. A letter that had 'in case of emergency' written on the envelope and that said it was supposed to have been delivered by owl from one of Amelia's niece's friends that was apparently related to the MIA boy-who-lived and all that could be spared was herself and one other.
Amelia Bones and Kingsley Shacklebolt turned up at Number 4 Privet Drive in Surrey unsure what to expect. It was around nine in the morning and everything seemed fairly peaceful. The door to the house was opened with a simple unlocking charm and the duo quietly made their way inside. It was only a dozen steps inside that they could hear sobbing coming from a little cupboard tucked away under the stairs. Amelia motioned for Kingsley to continue further into the house while Amelia knelt down at the cupboard.
Gently pulling the cupboard door open Amelia took note of the drying bloodstains that formed a path from the cupboard through the door Kingsley just went through. Peering inside though Amelia could see the small form of a little girl curled into a ball rocking herself back and forth. She was the one making the sobbing noises, and could very faintly be heard saying something to herself. At first, Amelia figured the girl had hidden away in this cupboard, but taking a look around at it she was forced to admit it was much more likely that this was the little girl's bedroom.
"Boss," came Kingsley's voice from the other room. "I think we're a little too late."
Kingsley's voice seemed to shock the crying girl back to herself and she looked up and met Amelia's eyes. With the deep red hair and the brightest green eyes Amelia had seen in over ten years she immediately felt like she severely failed one of her old friends. With a heavy voice, Amelia spoke to who could only be the child of Lily and James Potter.
"Just stay here, we're going to take a look around and then you'll be leaving with us. Are you hurt?" Getting the smallest visible shake of the head as an answer Amelia stood back up and followed after Kingsley.
The kitchen and living room looked to be the sight of a massacre. An extremely overweight man lay on the floor of the kitchen, over a dozen stab wounds littering his body. Most of them looked to be from a knife of some kind, but two pairs of them were much smaller and each pair of tiny puncture marks were the same distance as the other. One was in the man's neck, the other his thigh.
Near the man was a thing woman with a long neck. Amelia couldn't make out very many details about her face. She had clearly been beaten with a blunt object until dead, then her corpse continued to be beaten further. What made this somehow worse than the man thought was that the broken, mangled arm near, but not attached, to the woman was what most likely had done the damage to her.
Finally, in the living room, there were pieces of what used to be a person strewn about the entire room. From the state of the larger chunks of what appeared to have been a very overweight child, he was most likely torn apart, rather than cut. What added even more to the disturbing nature of the kills though, was the low amount of blood. It was there, oh Merlin was there blood around, but it was far, far too little for even the two adults, let alone them plus a child.
That had been two days ago when Amelia was feeling far too much of a mixture of emotions to really pinpoint what was the most prominent one. Today though, yes, today was most certainly anger. Not at the child, no, not at Holly Potter. Amelia was angry at Albus Dumbledore. She wanted to arrest that deranged old goat and force feed him to the first dementor she could find.
Albus had ignored Madam Pomfrey's advice, his deputy headmistress' observations, the pleading of a child and the reports of his squib informant. Every single one of them had told him to remove the Potter child from their residency at Privet Drive. Not only that, Albus had never once checked up on the child or informed them of anything at all until their 11th birthday. Even then he had sent what was probably the absolute worst person to inform such a child.
The more Amelia looked the more she learned that only made her more and more angry. Something was either seriously wrong with Dumbledore's head or he was legitimately trying to indirectly murder Holly. Even his defense of blood wards was flimsy at best. There wasn't any such ward currently at Privet Drive and only fading signs that the weakest of wards had ever existed at all. If they were anti-fire wards Amelia was doubtful they'd be able to put out more than a match.
Amelia was finding this rabbit hole went far deeper than she was ready to properly explore without more time. Unfortunately, even if she had proof that Dumbledore had held the Dursleys are wand point and forced them to do what they'd done to the Potter child she still wouldn't be able to win in court against him. It wasn't just because of Albus Dumbledore's considerable political power, either. No, the biggest thing working against Amelia in this situation was that Holly Potter was a vampire. Which meant as far as the Ministry of Magic was concerned she was treated as a dark creature and had just a few rights as a werewolf, if not fewer.
The most Amelia could do aside from trying to care for the poor girl was get her parents' wills unsealed. They shouldn't even have been able to be sealed, but when her digging had revealed that nobody had ever made any record of the reading of the Potter's wills she checked with Gringotts about the matter. She was borderline plotting murder when she learned even the Potter's didn't want Holly to go where she ended up. Thankfully Amelia Bones was on the list of people mentioned as their choices of a guardian for her.
So it was that Amelia came to be the guardian of a second child that had lost all or nearly all of their entire family to a madman with delusions of grandeur. Sitting down at her desk at the DMLE Amelia glanced at her pensive and put her hand inside her pocket with the bottles of memories she hadn't witness yet from all that took place at the Dursleys to Holly Potter. Dare she continue to torture herself by viewing them? She had originally offered to take them to dull the mental and emotional pain they gave Holly. Watching them to know the full extent of things was making her wonder if she should store her own memories of just watching the damn things.
With a long sigh, Amelia decided against it. She had already seen enough of Holly be beaten to the point that even her vampire healing couldn't keep up, forced into the sun until it was just shy of killing her, forced to work until she collapsed, had her newly surfaced status as a girl against her in ways that had Amelia forcing her way out of the memories, and starved to the point of losing her mind and attacking butchering her relatives. Not that they deserved anything less for what they did, but at the cost of making Holly feel like a monster it was not worth it. She just hoped Susan was having any amount of success with Holly back home.
"What do you mean Holly shouldn't go back to Hogwarts?" Susan had her hands on her hips, staring down a house elf she'd never seen before.
"There is a plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts this year," the house elf replied. He was wearing one of the grossest pillowcases for a uniform that Susan had ever seen. Clearly whoever he worked for didn't very much care about him in the slightest.
"Why exactly then haven't you warned the staff of Hogwarts?"
"Dobby must make sure Harry Potter is safe, Harry Potter is too important." Susan was starting to get slightly ticked off at this house elf calling her friend the wrong name. Turning to look at Holly, who was bundled up in a blanket on the couch, Susan crossed her arms.
"I'm gonna go floo call my aunt," Susan sighed. "Anything you need while I'm up?"
With a shake of Holly's head, Susan gave a nod and walked off to the nearest fireplace connected to the floo. Holly watched her go before turned to Dobby once she was out of sight. The two just kind of stared at each other in silence for a while. Eventually, Holly readjusted her blankets a little to free her hand. Offering said hand to Dobby she greeted him.
"Holly Potter. You do know I'm homeless now, right?"
"Sorry, Dobby did not know you changed your name. We house elves go by the magic, not the appearance. Yes, Dobby does know your family has been killed." Holly winced, recalling her hand to wrap the blanket more tightly around herself and sink further into the couch.
The two remained in silence from then on, Dobby staring at Holly and Holly staring at nothing in particular with a distant look in her eyes. Soon enough Susan returned, her aunt Amelia not far behind her. Susan sat beside Holly while Amelia tried to get as much information out of Dobby as she could before he popped away. It didn't amount to much though, other than Amelia asking Holly if she wanted a project to work on to get her mind off things. She gladly took the opportunity for the distraction.
"Susan's told me you've been studying runes and enchanting ahead of the curve to some success," Amelia told her. "How about you try to come up with some means of communicating with at least me in case this danger at Hogwarts isn't just house elf madness or a plot to get you to be uneducated. If you can't figure it out I'll see giving you a notebook with a protean charm on it that can communicate with Susan and myself." The two girls nodded, Amelia, giving Holly a worried look before heading back to the floo to return to work.
"Don't worry, Auntie will figure out who Dobby is owned by and makes heads or tails of all this," Susan reassured Holly, who just nodded back.
Susan was worried about her friend. She wasn't given all the details of how her aunt Amelia had found her but had enough to never want to leave the girl alone for too long. She'd already taken to holding Holly's wand-knife for her when she wasn't in active need of it as well. It was only the first weekend of July, so there was plenty of summer left for her to collect the pieces of her friend before they needed to get back to school. Step one was to not let Holly wallow in her own negative emotions.
"Come on, let's go try to figure out that communication problem," Susan said as she pulled Holly to her feet and lead her out of the room.
"W-why can't I just have animal blood like usual?" Holly complained.
"Because you can't survive off just the equivalent of salads for your entire life. You're a vampire, Holly, and should already have grown taller than me. I don't know who was in charge of your diet at Hogwarts but you can't survive off just cow blood. We can't really just give you that here, either. There's no way we could eat that much meat between just me and my aunt."
"So what's it gonna be Holly?" Susan put her hands on her hips. "It's been nearly five days since you last had anything so you're overdue. Just because you were forced to get used to it with those demons you lived with doesn't mean you should go that long or longer. So it's either take it from me or I floo call another close friend that you're comfortable enough with who would be willing to do so."
Holly tried to think of anyone else she could ask Susan to call, but of her short list of friends she only had Susan herself; Hannah, who was visiting family; and Hermione, who Holly really didn't think she was close enough to ask that of. On top of that Hermione lived with her muggle parents and Hannah was a bit squeamish and probably wouldn't agree unless it was an emergency or something if that.
Moving her gaze up from the floor to look at Susan Holly couldn't help but take a few moments to examine her friend. She was wearing a simple black dress shirt and a knee length plaid skirt. She had very smooth, creamy skin that made her reddish brown hair stand out nicely and frame her hazel eyes. The smallest glance at her lips with her this close though brought warmth to Holly's cheeks and had her backing up into the wall behind her.
"Oh, good idea," Susan commented. "If you're the one against the wall then I can step away if you're getting too into it."
"Wow, Sue, that really, really doesn't make this sound any better," Holly whined.
"Oh shush," Susan said unbuttoning the top button of her shirt. "You're so repressed you won't even shower if someone else is in the bathroom at Hogwarts. Don't you go being the one to make this weird like that."
Holly could do little more than press herself more firmly against the wall as Susan got closer. Holly could finally count the number of hugs she'd gotten on two hands instead of one, but being so close to someone for longer was still uncomfortable. She tried to push any thoughts of that night in Nocturn Alley or Vernon out of her mind as they came, but they still caused her to tremble. Eventually, Susan had rolled her eyes and moved Holly's head so her mouth was nearer her neck.
With a tiny gasp, Holly didn't have to try very hard anymore to distract herself from her thoughts. Susan smelled rather nice and, gently wrapping her arms around her, felt very soft. Any thoughts of Holly eventually thinking of guys the way she sometimes thought of Susan were dashed from her mind. She'd spent almost all of yesterday in the shower in pain because of the last few changes needed to make her 100% girl in everyone's books and she still felt this way.
Susan meanwhile, felt a heck of a lot more nervous than she was letting on. With Holly's mouth against her neck, she felt her face warm enough that she thought it looked like Holly's at that moment. She should ask her aunt a few things about all that. She braced herself for some amount of pain, and that did indeed happen, but nowhere near as much as she thought there would be. What she hadn't braced herself for was how nice it felt after that.
There was a subtle chill that spread a short distance from where Holly was biting her, and a sense of being lightheaded that slowly crept up on her. However, aside from that it felt almost, no there was no almost about it, this felt awkwardly, uncomfortably good. She really needed to talk to her aunt sooner rather than later about a few things.
It was Susan's legs getting shaky that finally tipped her off that she needed to step away. Doing so was harder than she thought it would be, but not because of anything physically impeding her. Taking a step back and steadying herself with her hands on Holly's shoulders her blush would have redoubled if she had enough blood to do so at the look on Holly's face. She could already feel the weird dreams she would have that night.
"Better?" Susan asked with a small smile.
"Much," Holly gave her a goofy grin.
So it was for most of July that Holly would work on some way to communicate over long distances. She gradually got out of being Susan's around the house, but whenever they left for whatever reason she would hardly move from the position. She was also very thankful that Amelia Bones had collected her memories of her time that summer at the Dursleys. She could still feel the mental damage they had done to her, but she could only ever recall anything in detail in short snippets. Sometimes something someone did or said would set off a series of those and she'd need a calming draught, but otherwise, she felt like she was doing pretty well.
Susan, on the other hand, had gotten quite good at brewing her own blood replenishing potions. She had slowly been getting Holly out of the habit of drinking animal blood ever since she saw how disappointed the girl looked with her meals after Susan had given her blood to her. She was okay with the few negatives that went along with doing so since the potions made it not last very long and the positives far outweighed them. Holly was looking healthier every day because of it, both mentally and physically, and Susan... Well, Susan didn't really get that big of a benefit from it. She still thought it was worth it though. Something about that was nagging at her though.
It wasn't until the Sunday before when Susan was asked who she wanted to invite over for her birthday that she learned Holly's birthday was only two days after Susan's. So at Susan's request and Holly's ignored denials, Amelia decided to have a joint party for both of them on the day between. Holly only had one other person to invite that wasn't already invited in the form of Hermione, who asked if her parents could come so they could see what a wizarding house looked like.
So it was, on the 30th of July that Holly wore her first dress. It was a simple knee-length thing, black with purple accents in the form of a bow on each sleeve and ribbon lacing up the back. She also wore her dagger in its sheath on her thigh, just in view, as well as her gold and obsidian torc bracelet. She wore her charms bracelet as an anklet just visible at the top of her small heeled boots as well. She left her magesight lenses in the room she was using but wore the ring on her thumb that let her remote manipulate her dagger. Susan called her paranoid, but Holly thought it was just practical that all her jewelry had an actual use.
It was a fairly small party, according to Susan, but Holly had never seen so many people in one house before, even if Bones manor was fairly large. Aside from Hannah and Hermione Susan had also invited quite a few of their housemates from Hogwarts. Holly didn't really ever leave Susan's side the entire party, which seemed to work out fine, since most people wanted to talk to both of them at some point anyway, being the reason for the party.
Holly did break away from Susan at one point to talk a little with Hermione. She wasn't as close with the bushy-haired girl as she was Susan and Hannah, but she still felt like she was a friend. She'd already forgiven her for telling Susan and Hannah about her being a vampire, so there wasn't really a reason not to be friends.
"So why are the two of you sharing a birthday party?" Hermione inquired at one point.
"I'm actually living here for the time being," Holly explained.
"Oh? Why is that? Something happen with the people you were living with before?"
"Yeah, they starved and beat me 'til I snapped and kill them all," Holly said in a tone of voice normally used for talking about the weather.
Hermione just stared wide-eyed at the vampire standing next to her. Her eyes flashed briefly toward the dagger on Holly's leg. "A-are you okay?"
"After the head of the DMLE, the department of magical law enforcement, took away most of the memories of it all, yeah. I still get flashbacks but only a couple times a day or so."
"Holly, having PTSD flashbacks once or twice a day isn't doing okay," Hermione started looking around for her parents. "Have you been to seen a psychologist at least?"
"What's PTSD? I think I might have heard of a psychologist before, they're like a head doctor, right?" Holly tilted her head a little in confusion. She didn't really want to explain to Hermione that the only reason she was even doing that well was because she was taking dreamless sleep every night she actually slept and what time wasn't spent on being productive was spent with Susan.
Before Hermione could explain any further they were interrupted by someone letting Holly know that gifts were being opened and she was needed in the other room. This actually kind of surprised Holly. She'd never gotten a birthday gift before. Maybe she'd get as many as at Christmas. That seemed like a lot of gifts for one year though if she got them at Christmas and her birthday.
Joining Susan on the couch in the next room Holly watched happily as Susan opened a number of gifts from her friends and Aunt. It took a little bit of prompting to get Holly to do the same, but she too opened far, far too many gifts in her opinion.
Susan received a number of things, though Holly mostly didn't know what they were or were simple things not worth mention or school supplies. From Hannah got a very nice looking notebook that matched the one that Holly got as well that she was informed was a diary. Holly figured she'd probably use it a more convent place to put down notes on her inventions and the like. There were other books as well, mostly with spells or other knowledge in them.
Holly got a good bit of candy that she planned on just giving to Susan later. She was very thankful for the thought though, especially since it was all from housemates she wasn't really that close too. Amelia got her a pair of quills she said would write down anything they heard. She was told there were two so she would still have one if she got curious and dismantled the other to see how it worked.
Her favorite gift, by and large, was from Susan, though. She was told it was just a toy that looked interesting, but to Holly, it was a whole lot more. It was a little palm-sized clockwork spider, enchanted to move around and follow very simple orders. Holly basically forgot there was a party happening around her while she played around with it. Eventually, she disappeared from the party entirely, taking the magic clockwork spider to her room to give it a proper examination.
"Why exactly didn't the sorting hat put you in Ravenclaw?" came the voice of Susan Bones from the bedroom door. Holly looked up at her, thinking back to almost a year ago.
"Something about not having the love of learning needed for it. I didn't know runes or enchanting exist at that time, so maybe I might have gone there if I did. After all, I never really cared a ton for school before. That was probably due in part or in whole to... You know."
"Sorry," Susan said in response to bringing up bad memories. "So I see you've already broken my gift."
"I haven't broken it," Holly immediately defended. "It actually comes apart quite easily. I figured I'd do so and see how all it works and how it's enchanted and the like. It's quite fascinating, I must say. I'm slowly figuring out what each part and section of the runes do and the charms on it. I don't really know much about charms, so any modifications I make to it will have to be done with runes though."
"Well, if you ever need a sounding board that isn't Hedwig just let me know," she chuckled. The snowy owl had hardly left Holly's shoulder ever since she'd learned that a featherlight charm on the bird would make it so her talons wouldn't cut into her flesh. Sometimes Susan swore Holly could actually understand the bird. That was just silly though, right?
Holly gave her a small smile and a nod before turning back to what she was doing. Susan stepped a bit closer to watch over the shoulder that wasn't occupied by an owl. It wasn't even halfway through August but Holly had already gotten noticeably better with her tinkering. Her answer to Aunt Amelia's communication problem was a stud earring made of apatite, a rather pretty blue stone. While worn the wearer could simply speak the name of anyone else wearing one and it would send their voice to their earring and vice versa. At first, you could only have communications open with one person, but it only took a couple more days for Holly to figure out how to talk to multiple people at once.
Aunt Amelia had been very impressed with Holly's work. She was curious how Holly had written her runes so tiny and Holly just told her she'd enlarged the earring before working on it. Susan thought it was very clever but her Aunt was convinced that was supposed to be impossible. After some testing on Holly's part, she learned she could only do it if she carved the runes with her dagger. Anybody else that tried to use the dagger for that purpose, however, found similar results in it being impossible. Actually, nobody but Holly could even get the dagger to cut anything, either. It was very strange.
Susan was starting to think Holly's knife as capable of some pretty amazing things, but could only do so much all at once. She did think it a little creepy that it had bonded of sorts to Holly's hand and wrist. It did seem kind of neat while it was there though since the blade bent to follow her index finger to do exactly as it was needed to. Susan thought it was even more creepy that it seemed almost, if not more, sentient than wands did at times.
"So how was hanging out with Hannah?" Holly asked, pulling Susan out of her thoughts.
"Good," she answered. "I would have invited you, but since the plan was going to a beach I figured you'd have taken a pass."
"Yeah, I probably would have. Know when we're going to go shopping for our school things?"
"I think we're going tomorrow with Hannah and her mom. Have you seen our book list?"
"Yeah, our defense teacher this year must be as big a fanatic of that Lockhart guy as you are."
"I am not a fanatic," Susan said with faux indignation. "Not anymore, anyway."
"Oh? What's changed to cause that?"
Susan couldn't help but blush a little and look away from Holly to stare at the wall. "Oh... Nothing, really. Just grown out of it, I guess."
"Didn't know people usually grew out of liking attractive men. Thought it went the other way, actually." Holly teased with a chuckle.
"Well..." Susan really didn't know how to reply to that. Not without saying something she wasn't prepared to even tell her Aunt yet, anyway.
