AN: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise.

Chapter 6: Quiet

The quiet sound of pages turning. The scratch of a quill on parchment. The soft 'thump' of a child walking on hardwood floors.

That was what existing in the Potters' library sounded like, and the small, sickly child was the only Potter to know that. They were the one turning pages, the one using a quill and parchment, the one walking on the hardwood floors. No other Potter ever stayed in the library long enough to add their own sounds to the library, or even just listen for a while. James, because books had never held his interest. Lily, because she thought she had amassed enough knowledge and seen enough books. The happy Potter twin because he found books to be boring and quiet to be treasonous.

So, the smaller twin made their sounds in the library.

They flipped the pages of their books, wrote things on their parchment with their quill, and quietly walked on their library's hardwood floors. They sometimes cried or laughed in the library, but it was always done quietly. And the library, for them, was peaceful. It was nice, and they knew they were the only one to have found the dusty little corner of the library with the soft green chair and the pretty lamp. It was where they felt safest, even compared to the other dusty corners of the house they had found in their pursuit of solitude.

So when James started drinking a bit more than usual and got loud they fled to the library.

In the library, James shouting, "Goddamn it, Fudge is a piece of shit! Why hasn't he been voted out already?" was inconsequential. The only sounds in the library that mattered were pages of books turning, quills on pieces of parchment, and a child carefully walking on the hardwood floor as they looked for another book to read. In the library, it didn't matter that they hadn't started displaying signs of magic like their brother. It didn't matter that they looked three steps away from death. It didn't matter that nobody cared whether they took those three steps.

James started actively muttering things when the small Potter twin was seen going between rooms, hesitating in doorways to rooms their family was in.

Lily and the acknowledged twin didn't notice or care, the smaller twin couldn't tell which.

One particular incident involving James' evolving feelings toward his sickly little child was especially noteworthy. Not because he finally decided that both of his children deserved attention, but because he decided that one of his children required more attention than he wanted to give. It's obvious which one.

That incident started the same as many others in the past. The sickly little child was, of course, sick. But that day, they were especially sick. They couldn't move their head without feeling dizzy, the world felt fuzzy around the edges, and they couldn't decide if they felt like they were freezing to death or sweltering. To top it all off, they were sluggishly rolling around in bed and mumbling fevered nonsense. Of course, with their room being so close to their parents' room and it being the middle of the night, James was awoken.

He was tired, had a hangover, and his sleep was interrupted by his child. He may have just rolled over and went back to bed, but the child kept up their incessant mumblings about something or another. He tried to just ignore 'her' as he always did, he really tried, but the hangover and the tiredness decided for him that there would be a confrontation.

So, he got out of his gryffindor red blankets, put on his gold robe, and stomped across the hall towards the sick child's room. Why they were ever so close to everyone else, he didn't know. But he stormed into their bedroom and shook them awake. The child's expression couldn't decide whether to become hopeful or fearful once they saw his face. He decided for them when he started telling them to be quiet at a more and more loud volume.

The child looked decidedly fearful then.

They cried. James realized what he had done. He felt a bit of regret for being so loud and aggressive with a child.

He did it again three weeks later. After that, it wasn't quite as horrifying to realize he had screamed at his own child, who hadn't even gotten old enough to go to Hogwarts yet.

The child in question got used to it after a while. They didn't enjoy being yelled at for small things, and they still flinched when they saw that expression on James' face, but it became something to be expected rather than something quite as new and terrifying as it was that first time. The first time James yelled at them would become something they saw when in the presence of dementors. They had hoped, in their feverish delusions, that James was there to comfort them. And that hope had been brutally ripped away the second James started chanting, "Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet!" louder and louder until someone started grumbling in their sleep.

A very dementor-worthy experience for a six-year-old.

Once the screaming started happening during the day, when the sun was still shining and the rest of the Potter family could hear, the sickly little 'girl' would go to the library as quickly as they could without actually running- "What are you doing running in the halls? You stupid child, you're making a racket!"

"I wasn't running, I promise dad, please-"

They did not run in the halls.

Everything was fine in the library, though. They had found another dusty little corner, this time on the second floor of the library, with a velvety blue ottoman and soft blankets. There was even a desk and some old-looking books near it as well! So the little child fell into another routine.

In the morning, when the house elves were starting breakfast, they would wake up and get dressed. Afterwards, they would seek out the house elves and accept whatever advice and knowledge they had to share. Then, they would eat breakfast. They never did this with their family, but they were able to eat in the kitchen or the library and were rarely disturbed. After breakfast was done, their twin had lessons with various tutors for a few hours. Sometimes, when being alone wasn't something they could handle anymore and it seemed worth it to brave James' sharp words, the sick little child would look through the door to their twin's lessons and pretend they were being taught and praised as well. Once lessons were done, lunch was usually served or maybe Lily would read to their twin for a while. The smallest Potter ate lunch in the library while they read whatever books they wanted. After lunch, lessons for the day were done and their twin was allowed to go into the yard and fly on a broom. They weren't, and arguing would get them nowhere, so they stayed inside and poked around into whatever corners of the library they hadn't found yet and pretended that they chose to stay inside and didn't want to be outside with their twin and parents. For the most part, they didn't even have to pretend anymore. Eventually, they would get tired of roaming around and go to their corner of the library to try to read. They were getting good at it, they thought. Sometimes, one of the house elves who could read helped them, but other times they tried to read or write on their own. They never knew exactly how long they stayed in the library, trying to feel like they belonged somewhere, but eventually a house elf would pop in with dinner. After dinner, they went to bed and the process repeated.

Everything was fine.

They stayed in the library, where pages turned, and quills scratched on parchment, and the quiet 'thump' of a child walking on the hardwood floors could be heard. It was nice, and quiet, and they didn't have to think about James and the putrid stench he sometimes had when he got especially loud and stopped enunciating words as clearly as usual. There was just the sound of them flipping through books, practicing writing, and daring to walk just a bit louder than normal.

In the library, everything was fine.