Full Summary: Dying of a disease she has no hope in fighting alone, Hattie Potter must track down her birth family if she has any chance of living to see a new year. With only a locket and two photos to go by, and the secret work her adopted parents James and Lily partook in before her adoption, the twisted path of time travel and vampires leads her to one man. Edward Cullen. Jasper/Fem!Harry. Brother!Edward.
Tags: Bella/Edward. Rosalie/Emmett. Carlisle/Esme. Alice/Jasper(Friendship only). Edward/Hattie brother sister bond. Eventual Jasper/Hattie. Eventual Hermione/Alice. Slow burn. Slow moving. Adopted by the Potter's trope. Told in drabbles. Drabbles will range from 500-2000 words. Strong AU for both Harry Potter and Twilight. Strong M later on. More Tags to be added later. Begins slightly pre-Twilight and Post all books in Potterverse.
CHAPTER ONE:
Tired.
Hattie Potter's P.O.V
Resting on a cot in the middle of Saint Mungo's oncology ward, the healer's words came in a muddled and mangled mess. Malignant. Terminal. Comfort care. They didn't mean much to Hattie Potter. The finer details were simply picking what little flesh remained on the bones of the matter, scavenging a lost cause. No. It didn't matter. What did matter was the sudden realisation that came with those stilted phrases.
Hattie Potter was dying.
Now, unjustly, in her humble opinion, this was a sentence she had gone through once or twice before. It was nothing new. Indeed, it was almost soothing in its familiarity. Hattie Potter was dying, and she had been through this before, and she knew, intimately, what would come. Only… She didn't.
Not really.
Not at all.
This time was different, wasn't it?
Ordinarily, as if dying was bringing in the post to someone like her, Hattie was being slain from an external force. The killing curse aimed at her sitting in a crib. Devil's snare wringing her neck. A basilisk fang embedded in her forearm. A Dementor slurping the life-force out. A dragon's scorching breath missing her by inches. Tom Riddle laughing in the forbidden forest before a sudden burst of putrid green.
Hattie could fight all that, as she had in the past. Give all she had and then some. There was, right to the very end, some shred of hope to cling to. Hope that if she just pushed hard enough, battled long enough, struggled for her next breath more fiercely than her opponent, she would live.
But how was she meant to fight her own traitorous body?
How did she stop her cells from mutating?
How did she shake off a tumour growing roots in her lung?
Death was to be expected, Hattie had found in her short seventeen-year-old life. Like the Peverell brother, sometimes, you could only greet it as an old friend. It wasn't death, per-say, that Hattie had a problem with. If it was her time, as slight as her time on this green earth had been, then it was what it was. Nevertheless, she did resent the form that death took for her last fight. A form that was longer, more painful, drawn out and excruciating, than it ever needed to be.
Hadn't she fought long enough?
Her body, her own bloody body, was going to self-destruct day by day. Hour by hour. Cell by cell, it would collapse on her from the inside out. The tumours would grow, spread, devour, crush the very organs that toiled to sustain them.
She was going to cannibalize herself.
It was funny, in a sick way.
Hattie really was her own worst enemy.
Hermione, beside her, was crying. Sobbing. Ron had grown pale, wan, and had not spoken for, what felt like, hours. Molly Weasley, the woman who had brought Hattie here when she passed out at the Burrow, didn't seem to know what to do with herself. Standing, sitting, pacing, Molly was caught in movement. All Hattie could do was stare dead ahead at the wall opposite her, trace the crack in the paint with her eye. No matter how many times they painted the wall, the crack would always show because, like her, the wall was rotten from the inside.
That too was funny, Hattie thought.
This was all a terrible accident.
Yes, she was tired lately. So very tired. And perhaps she got a little winded every now and again, and the cramps in her gut were nothing more than that, cramps. Hermione had urged her to go to the doctor. Hattie had laughed her off. Some sleep and good company, after all they had been through a year ago, was all she needed, Hattie swore.
Then there had been a Quidditch match, one of many during her teenage years, outback of the Burrow, and despite feeling so fuckin' tired, Hattie had joined the Weasley brother's for a quick game.
She fell from her broom seven minutes in.
Gave her head a good whack, by the skin-knotting paste to her temple she awoke with.
Molly had rushed her unconscious body to Saint Mungo's, where she awoke a couple of hours later, disorientated and cotton mouthed.
The healers thought it was stress, and prescribed rest, until Hattie had let slip about the cramps in her stomach she had been having for the last year. The wheezing in her chest became slightly more problematic with that titbit of information. They kept her in overnight, just for 'observation' and some 'essential' tests.
Three days later, they found the tumours in her lungs, a large one in her left Hattie had nicknamed Tom. A day after that, they came with her diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer. Even for a Witch or a Wizard, the forecast wasn't… Great. Cancer was cancer, with or without magic. It was difficult to treat. Pancreatic cancer, they said, skulked. Symptoms, such as the cramps and breathlessness Hattie had rarely raised their ugly head until it was advanced.
Advanced enough to create the tumours that would spread to other parts of her body, such as her lungs. Treatment became more difficult after. Difficult, but not impossible. There was one last hope, they promised. An experimental potion commonly used by purebloods to thwart disorders brought about by their constant inbreeding.
By having healthy blood given, for it needed to be freely given and not taken, the potion re-wrote any mutations it came across using the familial blood as a template to base the new code on, and if luck was on her side, this could work for her too. Nevertheless, the problem with this solution arose quickly. The blood needed for the potion had to be familial related to the one who imbibed it.
Hattie Potter was adopted.
Lily and James had been infertile after the premature loss of their son in the womb, Harry, and the two had given up on having a family before they found Hattie. Petunia was her aunt only in law, and knowing the vulture of a woman as Hattie did, even if she wasn't, Petunia wouldn't give her the blood needed. Worst still, Lily and James had been, before her adoption, working with Unspeakables in the Time Division of the Ministry.
There was no paperwork.
No trace back to follow.
It was all in the name, really.
Unspeakable.
Whatever went down on the 31st of July, the day Lily and James Potter came home with a squawking Hattie in their arms and an old locket necklace Hattie would take to wearing as she grew up, the day Hattie would adopt as her birthday, no one really knew. They went into work at eight am, and by five they had a daughter. Sirius Black, her Godfather, knew the most, and even then, he only knew three facts he could pass on to a curious Hattie before he died.
Her biological mother had been dying, struck down with an illness.
On her deathbed, she begged for Lily and James to look after her daughter.
Sensing the magic in the babe, Lily and James, perhaps still aching from the loss of their son, took Hattie.
One.
Two.
Three.
Can you see the problem? Hattie sure could. All she had was an old, worn locket, and two tiny photos' perched inside. Sepia, aged, grainy. Decades old. Likely of her grandparents. Or great grandparents, going by the age of the locket and photos. A man and a woman standing together, happily married in a white dress and suit. The other of a younger man, perhaps the same age Hattie was now, grinning, holding a baby.
They had the same messy hair, Hattie and the young man who could be her grandfather.
In truth, they could pass for twins, if they stood side by side. She looked a lot like him, same hair, same cheekbones, same brows, now that she was grown.
As grown as she ever would be, seen as in seven months she would-
The walls of the hospital room closed in on her.
Hattie Potter was dying… And there was nothing she could do.
She yanked the starched sheets from her legs, tumbling to a shaky stand.
The glass of water on the side table crashed to the floor, shattering.
Shattering as her life had just moments ago.
The healer cut off with a splutter.
"Please, Miss Potter, you must rest and-"
"Home… I'm going home… I need… Home."
Hermione tried to grab her as she dashed for the door, as the healer rambled and blethered in those terms that meant nothing at all, and Hattie, well, she ran. By the time they caught up with her outside in the hall, the crack of apparition was already dying.
Just like Hattie.
Thoughts?
A.N:So, this lock down has actually proven to be useful in one regard; writing, lol. It is practically the only thing keeping me sane right now. I hope reading is keeping you guys sane too, or at least, bringing a moment or two of entertainment. If you liked what you read, please don't forget to drop a review, and with all this spare time to write, I will hopefully see you guys soon!