Chapter Ten
Summer begins with her receiving a letter from France.
While still bedbound in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts, she had written to the Flamels to apologize for the destruction of their Stone – mostly because it was the polite thing to do after pretty much indirectly killing them.
Yeeeah, she did not believe Dumbledore's crap about them suddenly being ready for their next 'great adventure' after evading death for the last several centuries.
Thanking the Flamels' owl with a treat and letting it back out the window, Dahlia opens the envelope by breaking the wax seal – a cross draped with a snake, and a pair of detached wings framing a hovering crown – and unfolds the parchment.
Dear Miss Potter, it read in a very old-fashioned script.
We were very pleased to hear from you, dear one. Your letter was much appreciated, though unnecessary – we do not blame you for the destruction of our Stone.
When Albus came to us, we were aware we may never see it again and it was a risk we were willing to take. Over our numerous years, we have seen many Dark Lords rise and fall, and while Voldemort is far from the worst to ever walk on the earth, he remains an evil that must be purged by any means necessary. Including the destruction of what amounts to a pretty paperweight on most days, useless to everyone but us. For the Greater Good, as Albus likes to say.
Sincerely,
Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel
PS: Darling child, have you forgotten? We made the Stone once, nothing says we cannot do so again.
PPS: Please don't tell dear Albus, but it was a fake. We're playing a little prank on him, you see.
Obviously, it was a fake, she laughs quietly. How clever to make Voldemort think the Stone had been moved while in reality keeping it in the same place.
And they could make another one if they so needed. Somehow, she got into her head they would require a few thousand souls as an ingredient.
… She may have watched a little too much Fullmetal Alchemist in her first life.
No, wait, there was nothing in the letter that disapproved that. They really could need a few thousand souls for the Stone.
Dahlia stares at the high-quality parchment with a contemplative frown. Perhaps, it was a good thing it had been a fake. She was in no hurry to find out if Hiromu Arakawa had been right. Hadn't the Flamels been born around the time of the Black Death? What if it had been created by them to collect all those souls?
Having survived COVID-19, she'd prefer not to be stuck in another pande – Ah, shit. She still had that to look forward to. Bloody time traveling.
At least by then, she'd be long gone from this shitty place. Aunt Petunia would have never allowed her or Harry to wander around disturbing her family and putting them at risk with their freaky magic germs if there was a lockdown and would have locked them up for months at a time. They'd have both gone utterly mad by the third week.
Letter dangling from her fingers, Dahlia leans back against the windowsill and surveys her – sorry, their room. Hers and Harry's.
It was the second largest of the house, but it wasn't big enough to comfortably fit two beds. Instead, they had a bunk bed with hard mattresses and creaky springs. They didn't have pillows and she had graciously given Harry the top bunk – it had been one of her childhood dreams in her first life to have a bunk bed and to sleep on the top. The only other furniture in the room were dressers, a messy one for him, and a messier one for her as she had more stuff to store and it didn't all fit into the drawers. There was a precarious stack of Walkman cassettes on it and a stack of muggle books – a haphazard mix of fictional and educational – on the floor by its side. There were papers filled with notes and pens strewed about. A backpack hung from the handles. What it didn't have was badly folded clothes hanging out – like Harry's – and dirty plates – thankfully, Harry wasn't that much of a slob either. Aunt Petunia would have raised hell if she discovered even a hint of mold or bugs in her house and Dahlia wouldn't have been far behind. Teenaged boy or not, she is not living in a stinky pigsty.
In the same corner her open school trunk was lying in, their two brooms leaned against the wall. Partly hidden by the dressers, they would be less likely to be noticed there by their relatives if they didn't look too hard. Harry had pushed his own trunk under the bed when they had come back and had so far forgotten about it, though not for long if she had anything to do with it. She'd had to argue long and hard to be allowed to keep their magic belongings during the summer and Harry wasn't going to let all her work go to waste.
Downstairs, a loud argument breaks out. Dahlia sighs, guessing what it was about, and turns to look reproachfully at Hedwig who was safely locked away in her cage on Harry's dresser. "If you don't quiet down, Uncle Vernon will have you stuffed and displayed in his office." She tells her.
The snowy owl hoots in response, twisting her head upside down.
"Blasted bird!" Uncle Vernon yells before his voice lowers again to a slightly more muffled shout.
The Dursleys had not enjoyed being woken at all hours of the night by a bird that refused to shut up, and had made their displeasure known very clearly and very often.
Honestly? She understood how they felt. Being woken five times a night for a week straight was unpleasant and she was half of mind to invest in earplugs. How Harry managed to sleep throw all that racket was a truly mystifying thought. Maybe Ron really did snore as loudly as the twins had implied he did.
Noticing the time, Dahlia tosses the letter unto her dresser, and makes her way downstairs, gathering dark hair into a tight tail. She never cooked with it down – it was a dangerous hazard around gas stoves and rotating kitchenware like blenders and mixers. Plus, she'd be finding strands inside her food and that was both unsanitary and disgusting. And then there was potion class... Professor Snape had personally chopped off the hair of a Gryffindor girl in their first year after she had come with it unbound for the third time in a row despite his numerous warnings. After that, no girl ever dared forget her hair ties.
Aunt Petunia was already in the kitchen when she arrives, furiously baking cookies for her lunch meeting with the other Privet Drive ladies.
"Good morning, Aunt Petunia."
Beginning her preparations for their breakfast by heating a pan and pulling out ingredients from the fridge, Dahlia dares to ask a question. "May I borrow the phonebook and the telephone later today, Aunt Petunia?"
The horse-faced woman looks up suspiciously from her mixing bowl. "What do you need it for?"
"One of Harry's friends is muggle-born." She answers serenely, cracking eggs. "Her parents are dentists. Very respectable. I was hoping he could visit. Hermione is said to have been the top student of their year, she could help him with the summer assignments."
"And who will drive him there?" Aunt Petunia harrumphs into her sticky dough. "Vernon doesn't have time for such nonsense."
"We'll take the Tube. I'll pay for the fare with my own savings." She cajoles while dropping bacon into the sizzling oil.
Aunt Petunia finally deigns to look up at her and Dahlia stops whatever she was doing to stare back steadily. "Nancy needs a babysitter this Sunday."
Success. "Mrs. Taylor from number 18? With the three boys? I'll be happy too."
"Is it ready yet?" Dudley stomps into the kitchen impatiently.
Dahlia turns back to her pan. "Just a moment, Duddy."
After a rather tense breakfast, when she leaves the house, she takes Harry with her to keep him out of trouble and away from their relatives. And she did promise to spend time with him even if it meant bringing him with her when she was working.
That day, she was helping out the elderly couple of number 14 by picking up their groceries, cleaning their house, and weeding their garden. Then, in the evening, she was supposed to stop by number 9 and tutor their daughter for a couple of hours. An easy day where Harry's presence won't distract her.
Dahlia had been doing similar odd jobs in the neighborhood for years. She'd begun because she wanted a little pocket money since the Dursleys certainly didn't give her an allowance, realized it was a good method to maintain a respectable reputation, and continued because it made her life infinitely easier even after she had access to the Potter Gringott's vault. With people believing she was a reforming naughty child – according to Aunt Petunia's old rumors, the first few years after she and Harry came to live with them had been a nonstop war, they had been that badly behaved – their attitudes towards her became much nicer after they saw her hard at work in one garden or another. It reflected well on the Dursleys too – their success into turning such a horrible little girl into the current sweetheart – so it marginally softened Aunt Petunia who enjoyed being admired which is why she allowed her to contact the Grangers. Book Petunia would have never.
"It really is an honor –" The sultry female voice gives her pause, and she slowly puts down the jar of preserves she was looking at back on the shelf, cocking her head to hear better.
"I'm sorry, I don't –"
"– simply must thank you, Harry –"
She's heard enough.
"May I help you?" She asks icily, rounding the corner to step into the next aisle and giving the woman's exposed breasts a derisive look. They were almost falling out of her shirt, she had tugged the collar so low. Did she truly think they would interest a pubescent boy?
The shameless woman cornering her brother looks startled. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Harry's older sister," Dahlia informs her and she blanches.
"I was just inviting Harry out for a cup of tea," The woman attempts to salvage the situation. "as thank you for defeating You-Know-Who. Maybe you could join us?"
"I don't want to go anywhere with you!" Harry cries out. "I don't even know you!"
"I'm afraid we are being expected elsewhere." Dahlia refuses with a tight smile. "Here, Harry."
Her brother happily hurries over to her side and takes her basket. She pulls out her wallet from her purse and hands that over too.
"Go pay." She tells him quietly. "I'll be right behind you."
Once Harry was gone, she glances back at the disgruntled woman one last time. "I ever see you around my brother again, I'm contacting the Aurors." Her tone was no longer polite, but downright venomous. "This meeting better be an accident, because if I found out you planned this…"
The bitch disappears with a pop, and Dahlia deflates. Jesus, she hadn't realized she would have to protect her brother's virtue from vultures at this age.
She'd been to some extent aware it might be a problem sooner or later, he was a rich celebrity and people were the same everywhere, whether they were magical or muggle, but she hadn't expected it that soon.
Maybe she should look into those jewelry wards the richer purebloods carried around. There must be one that protected the wearer against love potions.
She couldn't believe those abominations weren't illegal. In her opinion, they were worse than date rape drugs.
Walking back to number 14, she has a serious conversation with Harry. They've gotten lucky she'd been there to prevent anything from happening this time, but he also had to be aware of the dangers in case she wasn't.
"You need to be careful around people like that." She tells him, adjusting the plastic bags in her hands.
"Like the woman in the store?" He asks. "What did she want?"
Dahlia shrugs. "To marry you, I suppose."
"But, she's old." Harry makes a repulsed face.
Actually, she'd been only in her mid-twenties, but the makeup she had caked on had aged her. A male uneducated in the matters of cosmetics wouldn't have noticed.
"And you're a catch." She enlightens her brother. "Famous and rich and handsome. How could a gold-digger like her resist?"
"I'm eleven!"
"Yes," Dahlia laughs. "and that means you are innocent and naïve – easy to seduce because you don't know any better." She stops to gravely look Harry in the eye. "In the future, I want to meet each and every one of your girlfriends – or boyfriends, I'm not picky – so that I can vet them. And you will absolutely not have unprotected sex with anyone but your wife/husband. Even if your partner tells you she is using contraceptives, don't believe her. You'll wear a rubber or cast the proper spells on yourself. We don't need the complication of bastard children." Harry frowns, confused, and she laughs again. "We'll return to this talk when you're a little older. Just, for now, remember that you're too young for relationships and if anyone tries to pressure you into one, tell me. I'll sic the police on them."
It wasn't a problem only Harry had to deal with. No one had yet to approach her that unashamedly, but she was aware of the quiet competition for her favor happening behind the scenes of the Pit – and she suspected the Eerie – between the students from neutral families and even a few of the darker ones. The sister of the Boy-Who-Lived, eldest of the two remaining heirs of the Potters, not a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, intelligent, respectful of the traditional customs, pretty... All together, Dahlia might be a better catch than Harry himself.
She does her best to ignore it and thanks the heavens she wasn't in danger of being forced into an arranged marriage.
If she ever marries, it would be for love. And currently, because of her mental age, she preferred older guys, so the classmates vying for her hand were out of luck.
Three weeks into their summer holidays, they fall into a routine. Their mornings start early with one of them making breakfast for the entire household. They are out of the house by 8:30 and Harry accompanies her while she goes around doing odd jobs in the neighborhood. Occasionally, he helps out and they talk a lot about all sorts of things, though it was mainly about the Wizarding world. She tells him what she remembers of Lily and James from the short months between her awakening and Voldemort's attack, keeping to the light and happy memories and staying away from those tainted by the fear and paranoia that the adults had tried to hide from her with fake smiles. She also mentions the other three Marauders, always referring to them in the past tense and as Uncles Moony, Padfoot, and Wormtail. She might have inadvertently given Harry the impression they were dead and wasn't in a hurry to correct him. He'd wonder why they never came to get them from the Dursleys if they had been so close to their parents and she had no idea what to tell him.
Sorry, but one of them is a werewolf who can barely afford to feed himself never mind two kids, the second is languishing without trial inside a prison guarded by soul-sucking monsters for a crime he didn't commit and the third is hiding as your best mate's pet rat because he was, in reality, the one who committed the crime the second is accused off? That would go over well.
On the weekends, they board the Tube and visit the Grangers. Dahlia leaves Harry at the door and makes her way to a nearby park, where she lies down in the shaded grass underneath a tree and studies muggle subjects. It was her backup plan in the event she could no longer stay in the Wizarding world for whatever reason. Like the Death Eaters winning and her having to hide from them, an act which would be easier to do in the more populous Muggle world. In that scenario, she'd be cut off from her Gringotts vault and she'd have to find work. Possessing a high school diploma or an equivalent will mean she won't have to, say, wash dishes for a living in a tiny diner. And she'd have the choice of pursuing higher education. Since she would be doing this for a second time, her grades are bound to be better – maybe she'll manage to get into a prestigious university like Oxford? That would be nice.
Humming along to her new Nirvana Walkman cassette – the Nevermind album, finally, she'd been waiting for it for years – Dahlia lounges on her stomach, one leg bobbling in the air to the music's beat, and idly flips through her science workbook.
It was a nice day out, sunny, but not too hot, and that annoying little boy who was usually at the park with his mother around this time wasn't present. She'd been there for about an hour already, but she still had several more to go. Harry and Hermione had loved the chance to meet up so often, and the bookworm girl had seized the opportunity to get Harry more interested in studying with fervor. Apparently, like her, Hermione was certain he could do better without Ron's lazy influence – Dahlia likes the boy fine, he's brave and devoted to his friends, but admit it, he isn't the most studious.
Harry had always been a curious child. Unfortunately, at muggle school, he had to perform worse than Dudley to keep their aunt and uncle happy. Hogwarts should have been a new start but his very first friend just had to be Ron who would rather play chess or Exploding Snap all day than open a textbook. And her brother, scared of losing the redhead's friendship, also played chess and Exploding Snap instead of learning.
It was a little sad to watch when she remembered the little boy whose favorite word had been 'why' until the Dursleys had squashed it out of him. Maybe a summer with Hermione will remind him of his once love for knowledge.
Knowledge was good. Knowledge was power. Knowledge would keep him alive.
A shadow falls on her and she removes her headphones, staring up at the guy interrupting her studying.
He looked about her age with lanky blond hair and watery blue eyes. His average face was peppered with acne. She's seen him around a few times, messing with his skater friends.
"You a swot?" He asks.
One of her eyebrows lifts in indignation. "Excuse me?"
"I'm asking if you're a swot." He repeats. "You're always here with your giant textbooks."
"I'm only here once a week, babysitting my younger brother while he's visiting a school friend. And do I look like a swot to you?" She gestures to her Alice in Chains T-shirt and the studded belt holding up denim shorts.
The guy looks considering. "What are you listening to?"
"Nirvana." She answers shortly. "What do you want?"
"We're going to the arcade. Wanna come with us?" He offers, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
Dahlia glances at his group of friends standing some meters away from them. They were an almost even mix of both sexes and they were not the type of people Aunt Petunia would be happy to hear she was associating with.
Oh, what the hell. She was getting bored anyway. Shoving her textbook into her backpack, she stands up, brushing clean the front of her clothes.
"I'm Brian." The guy grins, leading her back to his friends. "This is Morgan, Chelsea, Tom, Jesse, and Robbie. And this," He grandiosely waves at the Airedale Terrier sitting calmly at Chelsea's feet. "is Beckham."
"Dahlia." She introduces herself, crouching down to give the dog a hand to sniff.
"Not a swot, then?" Chelsea asks with a contemptuous toss of her auburn ponytail.
"Nah." Brian's grin widens. "Pay up."
There're some grumbles, but money exchanges hand easily enough.
"You skate?" Robbie drops his skateboard on the ground and cruises alongside her as they begin moving in the direction she thought she'd seen an arcade before.
She shakes her head. "Don't even have a board."
Brian slows down to skate alongside her too. "We'll teach you next time. You're here every Sunday, right?"
A car drives by, the driver honking angrily at them for taking up most of the road and muffles her reply with the noise. Robbie yells back with foul language.
Yes, Aunt Petunia was certainly not going to be happy with her new acquaintances. Thankfully, this wasn't Surrey and she wouldn't hear about this from 'concerned' 'friends'.
Dahlia has never been in a real arcade. She's seen places with a couple of machines tucked away in the corner, but in her first life, it was already out of style during her childhood. In this life, there had been no arcades inside the area Dumbledore's spell allowed her to roam and by the time she started Hogwarts and it broke, she was no longer interested. This led to some teasing from the skaters while she got the hang of the controls and had her ass kicked in Street Fighter.
Originally, she tagged along because she had nothing better to do, and she's surprised she ended up having fun. The games may have been low-tech for a twenty-first-century girl, but the company was enjoyable. Chelsea had a rather amusing mean girl aura that reminded her of Avery, only she didn't insult Dahlia every two sentences. It was pleasant to not hear anything demeaning from someone so full of themselves, for once. Morgan was more of a dark, edgy type of girl. Not quite goth, but borderline. She gravitated towards violent games and had wicked black humor. Tom was a charming, handsome pickpocket/conman, that had been evident in the first five minutes into their acquaintance. She kept a close eye on her wallet after spotting him steal the watch of a woman he'd helped gather dropped groceries on the street. Jesse, she suspected, was actually a girl underneath the loose boy clothes, though everyone referred to him as him/he. She wasn't sure it was okay to ask to clarify and followed suit. Robbie was the rude daredevil who had the crazy ideas and Brian was his enabling stepbrother. They grew up together and were the same age. Apparently, there was a whole scandal surrounding all four of their parents and their births that no one except the older generation knew and they weren't talking because both boys were suspecting they were threatened to silence by someone which was a pity. Considering the couples had swapped – Brian's mum remarried Robbie's dad and Robbie's mum remarried Brian's dad – it was bound to be an interesting story.
Of course, because she can't have anything nice, as they are getting ready to leave, things start going wrong.
"She wasn't there." Morgan blurts out immediately after returning from checking the bathroom with an increasingly worried frown.
"We've looked everywhere else!" Robbie exclaims. "If she's not there, she's nowhere inside the building."
Sighing, Dahlia pushes herself off the wall she had been leaning on since Chelsea's disappearance had been noticed. It was near the entrance and she had been standing there guarding the doors while her new acquaintances searched the building.
She approaches the snack bar and the pimply teen manning the cash register lifts his head irritably.
"What."
Internally clucking her tongue at the excellent customer service, she waves her hand just above her head. "Have you seen our friend? About this high, brunet with a pink skateboard."
The teen returns to his Tetris game. "Saw her leaving with some man a couple of minutes ago."
"What did he look like?" She probes, annoyed.
"Mid-thirties or somethin'. Wore a fancy suit." Comes the distracted and uncaring reply.
"Thanks," Dahlia says and stomps off.
Returning to the skaters, she finds them busy arguing about their next move. Morgan and Jesse insisted they should wait for Chelsea at the arcade, the others wanted to go look for her outside.
"Anyone knows a man in his mid-thirties who wears fancy suits?" She interrupts.
"No, why?" Tom asks, confused.
"Chelsea just left with him." She updates them and the skaters exchange glances. "What is it?"
"We think she's rich," Brian explains to her.
"You think she's rich?" She repeats drily. "You don't know?"
Robbie nods. "She doesn't talk much about herself, but she got that posh accent, even worse than yours, that shows occasionally when she's not paying attention."
"She goes to boarding school out in the countryside," Morgan adds. "We only hang during the summer holidays."
"Right." Dahlia rubs her forehead. "Does she have a cellphone?"
"A what?" The skaters' chorus.
"Of course not. What was I thinking?" She mumbles to herself, before raising her voice again. "From this moment on, we are proceeding with the assumption that Chelsea had been kidnapped. Where is the nearest police station?"
"Kidnapped?" Morgan yelps, but Tom was nodding along.
"Makes sense. C'mon, it's not far."
For all she knew, the man could be a family friend or a bodyguard come to urgently pick up his rich miss or Chelsea's father or a thousand other things. But if Chelsea had known the man, she would have told her friends she was leaving. She knew they would worry otherwise. Which meant something was wrong.
And, Dahlia reflects as they untied Beckham's leash from the steel post they had left him waiting at while they were inside, she would have taken her dog with her.
"Wait! Wait." Jessie suddenly speaks up.
"What?" Robbie snaps. "We need to hurry."
"Someone needs to stay here." He says, sitting down on the curb, nervously bouncing his leg. "Just in case we are overreacting and Chelsea returns."
Dahlia had never been a runner. Physical exertion, in general, was not her favorite activity. She did the absolute minimum to remain healthy and it was enough for her. So, trying to keep up with the skaters on their boards was a painful experience. She develops an aching stitch in her side and every painting breath she took burned her throat.
As Gimli once said; she's wasted on cross-country. She was a natural sprinter. Very dangerous over a short distance. And short distance meant three hundred meters, four hundred meters max.
This is why by the time Beckham suddenly veers off, barking into a secluded alley behind a shopping plaza, dragging Morgan who was holding his leash behind him, she was almost dead on her feet, adrenaline long spent.
But when they come face to face with a man in a fancy suit holding Chelsea up to a wall with a snake-like thing half-burrowed out of his neck, she gets a second wind.
"What the bloody fuck is that?" Robbie inquires a little too loudly and the thing's head snaps around to look at them.
"Uh, we should run?" Tom proposes rather calmly, prompting Dahlia to slowly inch to his side because he was clearly a sensible person. When you see something as abnormal as this, you don't stick around to investigate. It will inevitably end with you either dead, possessed, or drawn into an ancient war where you are expected to save all of mankind. There is usually a prophesy involved too – Dahlia hated those.
The snake hisses at them and strikes at Chelsea's throat, digging deep into it.
The man's body drops dead on the ground. Morgan screams.
"Unlucky fools." Chelsea booms in a deep, echoing voice, turning to look at them. Her eyes were glowing. "For seeing this, you must die."
"Run." Tom decides.
Beckham lunges at what used to be Chelsea and they take the chance to escape. Scrambling back the way they came, they ignore the dog's hurt yelp. Someone else's pet wasn't worth their life.
"What about Chelsea?" Brian yells from somewhere behind Dahlia.
"Forget her!" Morgan screams at him. "I want to live!"
Classic Slytherin response. Dahlia approved.
They are almost at the exit of the alley when they get knocked right off their feet by tumbling over each other. It was like a domino effect – Brian, who was in front, trips first, then Robbie trips over him, then Morgan over Robbie, and so on.
Dahlia lands on her stomach, hissing when her palms and knees are scraped by the gravel and yelps when Tom lands on her back. "Get off!"
"Fuck!" Robbie curses when a trash can is thrown in front of him impeding his path. The snake must have done something to Chelsea because normal humans weren't that strong.
Another thrown trash can almost takes off Morgan's head.
"They're warning shots!" Tom realizes first. "It's playing with us! It'll really kill us if we try to leave!"
This was her summer vacation! It was supposed to be a break from the crazy! Dahlia dives for cover behind a metal dumpster, joined by Tom seconds later.
From where he was taking cover behind another dumpster with Morgan and Brian, Robbie curses again.
Spitting a few choice words herself, Dahlia roots through her bag for her wand. She's aware she was forbidden from using magic during summer holidays, thanks for the unnecessary commentary from the peanut gallery, but she's gotten a little paranoid during this life, and Quirrellmort's attempt to hold her hostage hadn't helped. She was carrying her wand everywhere with her now and she's read up on wizarding laws. In mortal situations, underage wizards and witches were allowed to defend themselves.
This was a mortal situation.
"What are you doing?" Robbie yells at her. "How's a stick going to be of use –"
"Shut up, I'm thinking." She interrupts.
Dahlia didn't remember ever reading about a people-possessing snake in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Granted, she's far from an expert in magical creatures and she'd been only half paying attention to what she was reading, but still. She thinks she would have remembered something disturbing like that. Not even James had ever mentioned anything similar and he loved talking her ears off about whatever strange creature he was studying at the moment to the point of rambling about them in his letters. How anyone could find Flobberworms interesting enough to keep a conversation going about them for two whole hours…
But – here her frown deepens – they didn't sound entirely unfamiliar to her. There was something, just at the edge of her memory… Books? No, no. Movies? TV. Fanfiction.
Her eyes widen. She knew what the snake was! There was this old show, in her previous life, Stargate? Something like that. And they had those alien snakes that possessed people. They were called goalud? No, it had an apostrophe. Goa'lud? Goa'uld? Goa'dul? Fuck, she'd watched the first season of the spinoff, the Atlantis one. They had Wraiths, not this shit. Why couldn't it be one of those? Actually, never mind. Wraiths were practically unkillable, she preferred tiny snakes she knew almost nothing about over vampiric hive-minded immortal humanoids. It should be easier to kill.
Probably.
Peaking around the side of the dumpster, Dahlia watches as Chelsea pulls off some kind of device from the arm of the dead guy. It was golden and shaped like a glove with an orangy-red gem thing on the palm. A weapon, Dahlia would wager anything.
Slowly putting the glove on Chelsea, the snake meets Dahlia's eyes and smiles a horrible smile. She ducks her head back behind the car and pursing her lips, she casts her gaze around for ideas.
Nothing. She had fucking nothing. They weren't going to win this without magic and she preferred to avoid that. It would cause her a lot of headaches with the Ministry after. And in any case, she had no idea how to free Chelsea.
"Throw!" Dahlia mimics the action of throwing to the skaters hiding behind the other car, exaggerating the silently mouthed word, then points to the broken asphalt beside them.
When pieces of asphalt fly at the snake, distracting it into using some kind of energy wave with the hand weapon to avoid being hit in the head with heavy rocks, she scrabbles over to their side, Tom at her heels. "We need to run." She declares.
"But Chelsea!" Brian objects.
"You feel like cutting that snake out of her?" Tom asks ruthlessly. "I don't know about you, but I'm not a surgeon. We'll kill her. Let the coppers deal with this."
The boy deflates.
"Are you done planning?" The snake calls out to them with amusement coloring its weird voice.
Oh. So, that was why it hadn't attacked yet. It really was playing with them. It didn't think anything they could do could hurt it.
It may be right.
Luckily, a door to a nearby restaurant opens and a young man steps out, carrying a bag of trash. "Hey, you can't be here." He says, noting Chelsea. "This is privaaate – what the fuck is this!"
"Run," Dahlia yells, over the man's own screaming.
Without looking back, they run.
It didn't mean they couldn't hear what was happening behind them.
Bet you weren't expecting that! 'Cause I certainly wasn't. Plot evolution!
What a Goa'uld was doing there will be explained. Eventually. I promise. Like, after Dahlia graduates from Hogwarts? And maybe after Voldemort dies?
I don't own Harry Potter, nor Stargate. Obviously.