A sharp rap at her cupboard door awoke her, the sound seeming to echo in that small space she occupied. Her eyes felt ever so heavy, sleep not having come, and Harriet could only listlessly crawl out from the coat which had become more of a blanket. It was a nice thick coat, and there was plenty of space beneath it. Plenty of space in which to hide her blood-and-white stained body away from prying eyes.

Her body surprisingly enough, didn't hurt all that much, but Harriet had soon figured out the reason for that – and it came in the form of the 'Cursed Skill Box' which had been one of the numerous rewards for completing that bonus quest. She shuddered, the memory of his corpse coming to mind, and the eyeball which had lain on the floor, in a pool of blood and other bodily fluids she didn't think she wanted names for.

Healing (Novice) Lvl.1

It was an important skill – that she had no doubt of, and it was clearly one she had verily needed. Not that it could take away – heal – those memories what had gone down only the night before. There was something of an alarming tendency to her days by such a point, and how they could change so sharply at the drop of a hat. Harriet wondered whether or not she could blame it on the game. The same game which had brought nothing but strife to her life, and yet with it a sense of realism and power.

"I need a shower," she mumbled listlessly, feeling dried blood and white stains cracking as she moved. The cupboard door creaked open, the world outside coming into view, and she shuffled from there listlessly. No longer was there any joy to the motions. No longer was there any fervent hope for her aunt to love her. That had all too recently been crushed under a heel and ground to dust.

"Where are you going?" her aunt's voice sliced through the air, her relative peering at her from where the kitchen met the hallway.

"To have a shower," Harriet answered blandly. "I did run through the forest, after all," she said, lifting up her muddy, bloody hands and wiggling them, a smile curling at her lips at the disgusted face her aunt made at that. How had she ever thought that lady would love her was beyond her. "You wouldn't want me to infect Vernon and precious Diddykins with any of my nastiness, would you?" She tilted her head, watching as her aunt blinked, perplexed probably by her new, sudden attitude.

It was almost amazing – the new perspective she had of things. All it had taken was a selfish 'bastard' intent on taking what he wanted. Harriet prayed she never ended up like that.

"Well, no…" her aunt said, snapping back to herself just as quickly as Harriet remembered. "Go, girl, and don't you dare waste water!"

Harriet hummed under her breath.

"And get rid of that filthy coat while you're at it!"

Her hands closed around the coat hiding her away from the world, hiding what he had done to her and the proof left behind. That coat was hers now, and she wouldn't be relinquishing it to anyone. Not even eyeball guy, the man who'd tried to use magic on her. Or would've, had she not made her quick escape.

The bathroom was quiet, neither Dudley nor Vernon being up just yet, and Harriet took the chance to peel off that coat and step beneath the cool water running from the jets. It was summer, the heat already permeating through the house, and so the temperature was bearable. She usually had cold or perhaps lukewarm at best showers. She wasn't allowed to waste the hot water, after all.

The water was soothing against her heated skin, the muck and blood coming off her ever so slowly as she sat beneath the cold jets, the phantom sensation of too large fingers roaming over her thighs still with her. No amount of scrubbing could get rid of it, and Harriet didn't have the slightest idea about what she was going to do about that. It wasn't like there was anything she could do about it.

A distraction presented itself in the shower with a soft ding, yet another bonus quest reward making itself known in the form of a quest.

[STORY QUEST: BONDS OVER BLOOD]

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: HARD

Blinking blandly, she reached out, pressing on that blue box, watching as more information cropped up in front of her, and a stirring of hope she had all too recently learnt to hate stirred within her.

Sometimes, family is what you make of it.

Harriet blinked once more, confusion, hope, and hatred swirling within her as she wondered just who would accept her as she was. She stared down at the space between her legs, tears choking her as she remembered who had settled in between them, a choked howl wanting to escape her lips as she remembered just how helpless she had been. How she had just lain there, unable to fight back amidst pain and pleasure – of all things. A crack pierced the air, that volatile force within her stirring with her emotions, the screen door of the shower cracking along with some of the tiles.

[BONDS OVER BLOOD QUEST: FINDING FAMILY]

· Find the members of your soon-to-be beloved family!

[COMPLETION RATE: 0/7]

There was no reward marked for it, but, Harriet mused, finding such a family would be a reward in itself, wouldn't it? Her lip quivered, part of her wondering then on just how the game knew how many family members she would have. And then wondering on what exactly a family was. She had thought her and the Dursleys a family. Yet they weren't. Something had fractured irreparably between them thanks to the night previous.

Bonds over Blood.

There was no mistaking the blood, in that context. The Dursleys were relations of her by blood – by her mother's blood. Yet they weren't her family. She swallowed thickly, shame welling up in her once more. Her arms wrapped around herself, fear gripping at her heart at the thought of meeting supposed family and not being wanted. She felt ever so dirty, like there was a stain upon her which couldn't be washed off, like there was a brand on her forehead which told everyone of what had happened to her. Most people didn't like dirty things.

It was why her aunt had allowed her up there to that shower, because she was dirty and her aunt didn't want to see that. Shame curled in her gut at that, the part of her which didn't want to be seen by anyone – especially eyeball guy, if only because he knew what had happened to her. All of them in that forested area had to have seen the proof, splattered across her in white and red.

A rattle at the door, the sound of a familiar meaty fist hammering on the wood ringing true. "What in the blazes are you doing in there, you little freak?" her uncle demanded. The tone was ever so familiar, and a soft chuckle almost escaped her. It gave her just the slightest sense of normalcy amidst the craziness of almost everything.

"Showering," she sing-songed, watching as those cracks only grew, spreading and ruining that glass. Almost miraculously though, it didn't shatter. The dark part of her – the part where that wound of being cut from her once assumed family festered – almost hoped that it would shatter on one of her relatives.

Dimly, she could hear her uncle pause, even as she stared down at her then-clean body, staring at that place between her legs which they had yet to learn about in primary school. That was for the big kids. Yet littler kids like her – who didn't know a thing – had been used for that odd part of their bodies. The same part of her body which had betrayed her and made something of his ministrations feel pleasurable.

Her lips curled into a sneer, even as she turned off the cool jets, wrapping herself up in her thin towel – a far cry away from the thick, plush towel Dudley got to use. Just how blind had she been to think that things would get better between her and that fake family of hers? She almost wanted to bash the head of her past self against the wall.

That girl had been ever so naïve, seeing the world through tinted rosy lenses.

Those lenses were nothing but shattered glass beneath her feet right then and there – glass which bit into the soles of her feet with every painful step she took forwards.

There was still police tape wrapped around the trunks of that red grove she had once built herself. Looking at it now, Harriet could safely say she despised the colour red. All it did was remind her of blood. Elizabeth's blood, her own blood. The blood he had drawn when he… sexually assaulted her. That was what had happened to her was called.

She still remembered the times it had come up in all-caps, a warning of what would come to pass if she couldn't complete a quest. The trees had completed her quest for her, though she had the rewards for some reason, but the trees had come too late.

"Lady… druid," a tree crooned, and Harriet was starkly reminded by the fact it was a tree. An oddly sentient tree, but a tree nonetheless. It didn't understand the harm done to her, though it only seemed to recognise when death was imminent to her.

Thunk.

The sound of wood clunking against the pavement made her pause, part of her wondering whether or not she was supposed to run. Her eyes narrowed, catching sight of the familiar figure of Alastor Moody. He was wearing another coat, much like the far too large one she wore – proof that he didn't need the one he had given her back. Two parts of her went to war, one whispering that he was there to use magic on her, whilst the other mused on how he had covered her up that night and no longer had his wand in hand right then and there.

"Stats," she mumbled.

VIT: 11, STR: 21, DEX: 13, INT: 20, WIS: 20, CHA: 35

Unallotted Stat Points: 16

There were sixteen points she could put somewhere if it came to it – though she would have to move quickly if he tried to cast that silent spell and bound her hands. Those were the only two methods by which she knew she could interact with the game and the boxes it had brought to her life. Speech and touching those box screens which popped up.

She knew just how helpless she was without either of those two things.

Bile rose in her throat, the memories of the night she wanted to forget ever there and ever present. Her breath came in short, sharp pants, and Harriet scowled, fingers pinching at the skin of her wrist, pain bringing her back to the present, and fading just as quickly.

The repetitive, thunk, thunk, stopped, and Harriet blinked, finding eyeball guy seated on a park bench nearby. She didn't understand why he wasn't coming closer – wasn't chasing her. Yet somehow her legs moved like they had a mind of their own, taking her there to sit down beside him. It wasn't magic – that much she was sure of. She knew of magic intimately enough after only the night previous.

"This coat is mine now," she muttered, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them.

A gruff bolt of laughter echoed in the quiet morning air – it was still ever so early in the day. "Keep it. I have plenty more to spare," Mr Moody said, and Harriet only stared at him suspiciously. He was being nice. Suspiciously nice. "He's dead, you know," he stated, and Harriet could have sworn she felt the temperature drop by a few degrees as she sat there, the sight of his corpse hung there from the trees like a macabre Christmas tree decoration stirring to the forefront of her mind.

"I know," she croaked, her voice so pitifully weak. Harriet hated the sound – weak as it was. She hated weakness, especially her own.

"He can't hurt you anymore," he told her, and Harriet felt her hands spasm and clench at her legs. The overly large coat was nothing but a comfort, hiding her from the world and its searching eyes – much like the wild electric blue one strapped to Mad-Eye's head.

"I know," Harriet mumbled, pausing then and shivering as she wondered if he would somehow come to her as a ghost. Though Charly was the only ghost she had seen after the events of that night. She wondered what it took for there to be ghost. "Why're you here, mister?" she asked – demanded, really. "Are you here to follow protocol?" she spat, remembering those spell wands and how they had fired spells at her. Spells which had made her helpless.

Another bark of gruff laughter came, oddly hoarse. "Don't tell the others, but I'm not," he said, sitting back into the bench then and taking a swig of something from his hip. A hip-flask, she vaguely remembered such a thing being. "Protocol would demand that you're obliviated, and things never work out too well when it comes to trauma and obliviation." Harriet flinched, the whispers of her being traumatised making her want to curl up into a ball and hide away from the rest of the world. "Besides, you'll be part of our world eventually. There'd be a scandal if it was found out you were obliviated, and the press are hungry vultures with no common decency." A sneer curled at his warped face, the sound of his voice oddly soothing to her, as was the rough way he spoke – the truths he didn't try to hide from her.

The moon was high in the sky when she slipped out of the house and ventured over to her forest which was lit a pale, unearthly blue by the scattered fireflies – memories of dead girls who had once walked beneath those trees while her would-be killer was alive and well.

Her hand strayed to the knife she had strapped to her hip, a parting present, along with the coat, which Mr Moody had given her, with the brief remark that, "Even lambs should have teeth."

Grass was soft underneath her bare feet, the whispers of trees, and phantom voices of the dead ringing in her ears in some sort of harmony as she stood there, wondering why she was there once more. She wondered why she was standing there, in front of the macabre throne made of bones, branches, and flowers which didn't seem like they were about to wither and die.

Life and death intertwined.

Skulls sat at the end of the armrests, and Harriet wondered how she could tell that somehow those skulls belonged to Rose and Elizabeth. The ghosts who were gone – who had moved on and left her behind.

"Such a strange creation, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Harriet mumbled almost automatically, blinking as she felt something click in her voice. Her voice had sounded strange, and there was a sound which was akin to a hiss. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end, the slow part of her brain finally registering the fact that someone had spoken next to her – or perhaps slightly behind her. She spun around, spinning on her heel and almost tripping up over a badly positioned tree root which soon moved.

Jörmungandr's Kin – Lvl.17 – Age:15

The white words loomed over a reptilian head of what had to be the largest snake she had ever seen. It loomed over her, green eyes seeming to gleam as it stared at her, and Harriet felt her heart thump in her chest. "You speak the noble tongue?" the gigantic snake asked, almost eagerly, and she fought with the sudden urge to run away screaming.

But she didn't want to run away again.

Her fingers closed around the hilt of the knife concealed in the folds of her overly large coat, but a sudden ding made her pause and her eyes widen as she stared at the snake which had spoken what sounded like perfect English.

[ALERT! Quest Progression!]

[BONDS OVER BLOOD QUEST: FINDING FAMILY]

[COMPLETION RATE: 1/7]