Chapter Four:
Impertinent.
Hattie Potter's P.O.V
The most noticeable feature of the palatial home to the Volturi was the large turret that rose above the rest of the rather squat structure. From Hermione's preliminary location spells, the majority of the building was actually situated underground, logical, given the Volturi's… Nature and the burning sun blasting down from the sky above. Though there were several entrances littered about the plaza to the fortress, the front door was located at street level, under the arch of a passing lane.
Across the way, standing at the cusp of a nearby narrow alley, Hermione and Hattie eyed the door as the latter chuckled dryly.
"And you said this wasn't going to be anything like interview with the Vampire."
Hermione huffed.
"And I stand by that assertion. Surely they can't be so stereotypical?"
"Says the witch who brews potions in a caldron while wearing a pointy hat."
Hattie didn't wait for Hermione's reply, as she made way for the door opposite the pair.
"Hattie!"
Hermione hissed.
"Hattie! Where the bloody hell are you going?"
"What's it look like?"
Hattie asked as she span on her heel, sauntering backwards towards the door.
"I'm going to knock on their fancy fuckin' door, and then I'm going to say surprise, and blast a stunner in their face."
Hermione darted out of the shallow cover the alley way gave, snatching at her friends' jumper cuff.
"You bloody well can't do that!"
Hattie stalled momentarily merely to frown, clearly put out by being told, in any form, what she could or couldn't do.
"And why ever not?"
Hermione spluttered.
"Because they're Vampires."
Hermione's response was a huff and a puff from the redhead, and if they weren't careful, and Hattie's patience ran out, the Chosen One might just blow the door down and be done with it.
"I'm not that slow. I know they're Vampires. That's the point-"
"The point is Vampire's don't sleep, you lunatic!"
Hattie winced.
"Don't they? How… Dreadful it must be not to dream."
Hermione's mouth opened, and promptly snapped shut.
Hattie had her moments of poetry, and startling insight, concealed far beneath her acerbic nature and relentless stream of sarcasm.
It was easy to forget that, sometimes.
"Well, yes, I suppose so… But if they don't sleep, we have no idea if a stunner or knocking them out will even work. Who knows, maybe they're unaffected by unconsciousness."
Hermione watched as Hattie's lip rippled, a sign her tongue was running over her teeth, a hint that the quick mind hiding beneath the cynicism was fast at work.
"Perhaps no stunner then. But we're not weak, 'Mione, we can hold our own if need be, and these are not our potentates'. If we go into the lions den smelling of blood, acting injured and scared, they'll treat us as the prey we think we are. What do you suggest we do?"
Hermione tugged on the hem of her shirt, back straightening.
"Knock and ask for an audience like civilised people, Hattie. That's what I think we should do."
Hattie, imaginably a little sceptically, made a grand show of waving her arm out, gesturing towards the door, for Hermione to take the lead, of which she did, head up, chin tilted just so, proud but not overly arrogant, perfectly respectable. Coming to the door, she lifted her hand to the gilt knocker, grasped, and rasped against the wood in a loud bout of three.
It didn't take long for the door to open to-
Well, it was hard to see the two people-
Vampires, Hermione reminded herself. It was hard to see the two Vampires underneath the velvet cloaks, hoods drawn, shaded to payne grey shadows in the dark hallways beyond.
Vampires, it appeared, didn't need much illumination to be able to see appropriately. Something to make note of Hermione reckoned. It might be useful later.
Later.
"Hello there. My name is Hermione Granger, and this is my friend, Hattie Potter. We were wondering if we could take a moment of your time to-"
"Leave this place within the hour Witch, or your head will be placed on a pike above the castle walls. One hour. Go."
And the door was swiftly shut in her face with a resounding thud.
Hermione blinked at the now closed opening.
Hattie-
Hattie, of course, laughed.
"You sounded like a bloody Mormon handing out pamphlets on their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
Hermione seethed. If there was one thing that could ruffle her feathers, it was a lack of manners.
"How rude! Not even a hello! Why I-… They just… I… Why I never! The disrespect to shut the door in my face before I had even finished speaking-… I…"
Hattie closed in at her back, up the steps to her side, hip to hip and face to face with the door.
"I did warn you. People in power are all the same. So… My way?"
Dear Merlin…
Well.
Hermione had tried to do this the polite way. What came next was really the Volturi's own fault.
"You know what, Hattie? Fuck it. Yes. Let's do it your way."
Hattie didn't need to be told twice, wand in hand already, smile blossoming toothy, and keen, and deadly. Her boot lifted from the floor, a pulling back recoil and-
Bang!
The door gave out under her foot, hinges breaking, aided by the silently cast Bombarda, and Hattie strolled into the dark recess of the castle as if she were walking into the Leaky on a Friday evening for a pint of Butterbeer.
"Buongiorno motherfuckers!"
A flash of red and lilac and a hex that sizzled blue in the heavy air, and Hermione had to jog to keep up with her cheery-rioting friend, right into the belly of the Volturi castle.
Bella Swan's P.O.V
Bella Swan made her way into the open hall of the Cullen home, fiddling with the strap to her backpack, eyeing the grand piano where Edward usually sat. He wasn't there today, as he hadn't been in his seat in Biology either.
Neither had he been in school yesterday, or the day before then. None of the Cullen's had.
As always in quant little Forks, it had been raining cats and dogs for the entire week, no sunshine, no hunting trips planned to her knowledge, nothing to say why Edward had not been in Biology, or school, or anywhere Bella had been in the last week.
Still, they had agreed to go to their field this Friday afternoon, and so, as soon as the final bell had rung loud in Fork's High halls Bella had dashed for her truck, buckled up, and made the short, meandering drive up to the Cullen house.
It was fine, she told herself.
Perhaps Alice had a vision, and for one reason or another, they had thought it best to stay off school for the week.
Without telling me.
No, Bella thought.
It was fine.
No one had answered the door, but it had been left unlocked, and Carlisle had told her she could come and go as she pleased, and surely if they were gone, for Bella had such terrible fear that one day she would wake up and find the Cullen's had never existed, the cars would not still be in the driveway.
The grand piano wouldn't be in the foyer.
There wouldn't be the sound of voices echoing off the myriad of windows.
Voices.
Bella didn't need Vampiric range to hear the voices coming from the kitchen.
Kitchen?
What were the Cullen's doing in the kitchen of all places?
Cautiously, Bella made her way up the stairs, across the hardwood flooring, passed the wall of Graduation caps, down the hall to the kitchen entrance. The voices stopped well before her arrival, having heard her footsteps perhaps from the very front door.
Her heartbeat too.
"Edward?"
Bella asked as she came around the corner.
Edward was there, very there, real, and that little voice in the back of her mind that kept telling her that one day he was going to leave, leave like her charming mother had left her tedious father, a father Bella took after more than anyone else she knew, momentarily quietened.
Edward was there and-
And so was Alice, Emmet, Rosalie, Esme, and Jasper.
Spotted around the kitchen, the Cullen's painted a rather sullen portrait, Bella thought.
Sullen and concerned.
"Bella? What are you doing here?"
Bella stumbled by the entrance, as if the query from Edward had teeth that bit.
"I-… Uh, we agreed to go out this evening?"
Distance and time away from him had not made Bella immune to the perfection of his face, and she was sure it never would. Her gaze traced over the pale white features, the hard square of his jaw, the softer curve of his full lips, full lips pulled into a concerned frown, the straight line of his nose, the top of his forehead, partially obscured by the jumble of finger tangled bronze hair.
He looked lost.
The most lost she had ever seen Edward look.
"Right… Yes. Of course. I'm sorry. It must have slipped my mind."
Bella couldn't help it. She laughed, perhaps a shade too squeaky, too high, too incredulous.
She was always so self conscious around Edward, as if even the little hairs on the back of her neck were somehow, constantly, aware of him, reaching for him.
"Slipped your mind? Since when did that happen? You remember what you had for lunch ten years ago."
It stung a little, Bella would admit, that their plans could so easily be forgotten when she had spent nearly all week thinking about them.
Thinking about him.
Edward, however, didn't have time to answer as Alice, standing by the countertop, froze.
Bella knew what that meant. What was strange, however, was what happened when Alice came blinking back into the present.
She was smiling. From the doorway, Bella could see Edward's hand clenching at his hip. Vastly different reactions to, clearly, the same vision Bella thought.
"This isn't funny Alice!"
Edward hissed, but his four-foot eleven sister only smiled brighter at the tone.
"Oh, come on Edward. It is a little, isn't it? Buongiorno… I must remember that one. Kind of iconic, I must say."
Edward bent heavy on the countertop, hands braced on rim, threatening to crumble the granite.
"What if she-"
Alice shook her head.
"She'll be fine. She'll have Caius in a headlock in about… Twenty minutes."
Bella, for the first time that evening, dared a step into the kitchen, speaking up.
"She?"
Was there-
Could there-
Edward-
Emmet, lounging back on a kitchen stool, grinned over at her.
"Edward's sister is currently confronting the Volturi, and is, according to Alice, steamrolling them quite effortlessly."
Volturi? Who were the Volturi? Who was-
Sister?
Bella blinked, shuffling in her sneakers, wincing heavily at the squeak they gave against the expensive slate tile of the kitchen floor.
"You mean there's another Cullen?"
Rosalie scowled by her mate, arms crossing over her chest, heels glimmering in the low grey light filtering in from the windows.
"No. There's another Masen… As if we didn't have enough trouble putting up with Sir brooding over there."
Seeing the confusion on her face, Edward sighed, politely ignoring the jab thrown at him from Rosalie across the marble island.
"My sister from my… Human life is alive. Alice has been having visions of her for the last week. Last night, she saw her-… Hattie in the Volturi castle."
Bella frowned.
"The Volturi?"
Alice nodded.
"The Volturi are the closest thing our world has to royalty. They enforce the law."
Bella slunk closer to Edward, into the kitchen, into the circle of Cullens, resting a soft hand on his arm, squeezing against the unforgiving shape of Edward's skin and muscle and bone, trying to offer a small comfort to a clearly unsettled Vampire.
"She got turned too? Is-"
Alice cut in, jumping up on the counter to sit, swinging her feet back and forth in the air.
"No, she's mortal."
Anew, Bella froze, hand lax on Edward's arm.
"Then how is she still alive? If you were turned in 1918, than wouldn't she be well into her eighties?"
Esme smiled sympathetically.
"That's the question, isn't it?"
Question? To Bella, it seemed more an impossibility than a question.
How could a mortal live for nearly a century without losing their mortality?
That was when Carlisle came walking into the kitchen, a stack of paper in his hand, fresh from the printer.
"I might be able to answer that. I just got off the phone with the Dustan Coven in London. They have a few special contacts that they've spoken to as a favour for me."
Coming to the counter, Carlisle placed the papers down for the rest to see.
The first was a photocopy of a… News article? A strange news article, Bella thought, by the papers name. Who named a paper The Daily Prophet?
Bellow was a photo, black and white and motionless, a girl standing next to a strange old man in long robes, a gentle hand braced upon her shoulder. The girl was covered in scratches, bruises thumbed an inky black on her jaw, a riotous set of curls half span out from a bun and-
Her eyes, even in the greyscale, looked-
Haunted.
She looked haunted, as if she had just gotten off a battlefield, as if she had just buried a loved one, all her loved ones, as if-
As if she had just lived through the single worst moment of her life, and had, by the flashes of pale blotches here and there on the photo, had people push camera's in her face for a story to run for the evening print.
Worse yet, even with the cuts and the bruises and the grim, bleak stare dead ahead, Bella could see the Edward in her. They had different mouths, the girls was slightly fuller on the upper lip than Bella's Edward, and her jaw was softer, sloping, more feline than Olympian, and her brows less heavy, nose a little tinier, but… There.
Just there.
Above the photo was a bold print sprawl.
HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE NAMED RETURNS:
Ministry Brawl Sees Girl-Who-Lived Hattie Potter Confronting The Recently Returned Dark Lord Head On Only To Lose Godfather In the Crossfire.
Find Out More On Page 3!
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and Girls-Who-Lived and… Ministry?
What the hell was going on?
Before Bella could ask any of the multitude of questions she had, or read more of the article left half-printed on the page, Carlisle reached over and tapped at the picture, right on the girls face.
"That's Hattie Potter. Seventeen. She recently survived a terrible war from what I could piece together from the information the Duskan coven sent me. She was adopted by her parents as a young infant. No one quite knows where she came from, only that a Lily Evans and James Potter came back to their home of Godric's Hollow one evening carrying a bundle. A few months later, they died in an attack from a… Well, what I can only describe as a cold-blooded killing from a megalomaniac. Hattie was the sole survivor, and the man, this Dark Lord, this He Who Must Not Be Named, went silent for a decade before reappearing, determined to finish what he could not on the Halloween all those years ago. Fortunately, Hattie seemed to be quite lucky… Or unlucky, depending on your perspective. She survived each attack and, a year ago it came to a head, where she came out victorious and this Dark Lord was finally vanquished."
None of these names meant a thing to Bella, not a single one, but first two…
Oh, the first two had an effect on Edward. A brittle sort of impact, like thistledown, soft and catching.
"James and Lily?"
Carlisle's nodded.
"That is what I first thought. Then, the Duskans sent over this."
He moved the article, and underneath was-
Adoption papers, but bizarre ones, ones that included-… Star signs? Alchemic Indication? What-
What was a Magical Aptitude Point?
Bella's gaze climbed to the top, above the cluttered jargon and gibberish.
Hattie Esther Masen.
Born: 31 July 1917.
"Is that a typo?"
Carlisle glanced her way.
"Everyone originally thought so… Now, not so much. It appears the Wizarding world has been meddling with time travel again."
Bella blanked, and then sputtered as if she was choking on her own tongue.
"I'm sorry, did you say Wizards? Wizards are real? Time travel is real?"
A breath, and Edward met Carlisle eye, a stretch of distance and emotion and something severe.
"Again?"
Carlisle's smile was a small thing, small and sad.
"I suspect they've done the same to Hattie as they did to me in 1640."
A.N: I said before that this started slightly Pre-Twilight, but I changed my mind lmao. I wanted Bella in already, as it sort of reduces the whole introductory drama of her, shifting the focus of this fic from Hattie, who is the main character, to Bella which was what I didn't want to do. So now this is set somewhere between Twilight and New Moon.
Similarly, I know a lot of you were looking forward to the Hattie VS Volturi showdown this chapter, but some plot points happen in that bit that need to be kept down low for a while. In short, you won't be seeing Hattie's P.O.V for a good while yet. I know this might disappoint some of you, and I'm sorry for that, but I do have some more good stuff coming up for you! So please put down the rotten fruit lol.
I'm also, throughout this fic, trying to make Bella and Edwards' relationship more healthy and less creepy/co-dependant/toxic as it was in canon. HOWEVER, to do that, I first have to highlight how bad it was, so we can see the growth throughout the story. Hence why Bella comes off a little bit… Needy here. And let's face it, Bella was hella' needy in Twilight, so it's not like I pulled it out my arse lmao.
Additionally, a lovely reviewer asked if Hattie was going to be turned into a Vampire. Short answer, YES, longer answer, it takes a long while before we get to that point.
THANK YOU all for the followers, favourites and the lovely reviews! I can't say how many times I've read every single one, and I just wanted to thank you all for all your kind words. I hope you all liked this chapter, and if you have a spare moment or two, please drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon!