Through the Mirror.
Escape and Plans.
An hour later and Holly Potter was boarding a train bound for London. She had left the Dursley property and made for the railway station with plans to just head off into the city. Nobody had seen her, and when she had arrived at the station she had used her magic to bypass the cameras and avoid buying a ticket, and the few muggles there did not even see her. The platforms of the Little Whinging station were virtually deserted and aside from a few late night traveller's she would have had the place to herself.
The muggles on the platform did not know she was there, of course, since she kept the charms up. She had cast a few wandless notice-me-not and warming charms over herself, and she only had to wait for half an hour before the train was due to arrive.
She could have apparated into London; she had passed her exam with flying colours, but her current state made her worry about the possibility of splinching, so she had opted not to bother in the first place. And besides, a train journey would give her the time she needed to come to grips with what she had done.
She had just murdered the Dursleys; Holly wasn't concerned about that since she had mentally been prepared for the strong possibility she would have to kill them at some point. In fact, she was just relieved they had not tried to kill her long before, such as when she was physically a baby. And they could effortlessly have done it, both in her original reality and this one. Especially in this one, where she was positive the magical world did not care. They would have only needed to wait a few days following Halloween for bonfire night, and chucked her onto the blaze under the pretence of her tiny body being a large log of wood. That way nobody would have seen or noticed anything and she would have been burnt alive.
It had taken her a long time to realise the very danger she had been, when she had she had been chilled with how easily the Dursleys could have killed her, burning her to death. And they would have just gone back to their dreary, miserable and boringly 'normal' lives without anybody else being aware they had committed murder at all. They would have ignored the report of a child being found burnt to death on the bonfire, patting and congratulating themselves for ridding the world of 'another freak.'
Whether they would have paid the price was a matter of some debate. Dumbledore was not renowned for being hardline when it came to punishments, but Holly liked to think otherwise of others, even if the likes of Lucius Malfoy, who would have jumped at the chance to politically cripple the thoughtless old man, were scum to her.
Holly had often wondered to herself if Dumbledore was even aware of the pain and misery he was causing by leaving her with the Dursleys. He had to have known the Dursleys hated magic, and he knew how bitter and warped Petunia was by his refusals for her to attend Hogwarts and they had mixed with her envy and hatred for Lily and caused her to become more bitter and hateful to the point she refused to try to better herself for herself instead of trying to make her own parents see she existed.
But she had married a man who was a small minded thug, who hated anything different as well.
Sometimes Holly came to the belief Dumbledore had known, but he had simply not cared, and he had lived in hope. But if she had died the first time around, she knew he would have been more horrified about the perceived damage of the prophecy.
It wouldn't have occurred to Dumbledore that the prophecy might have been a fake and the person who gave it was a fraudulent insect who relied on cheap parlour dramatics to get her point across, and that there was still hope, but it would have been fascinating to see what he would have gone and done…
Holly shook her head. Thinking of the what ifs from her past were not going to help, though she was chilled by how easily she could have been murdered by the Dursleys; the second time around would never have happened since she would have known at once what was happening, and she would have raised the alarm with a sonorous charm to her throat.
She was on her way to London, but she had no intention of going into foster care.
She had toyed with the idea, but the thought of being with more muggles was something that made her physically ill. Holly knew precisely what would happen should she go into a foster home; sooner or later, her magic would react to something somebody did - while she had better control over her magic than most kids thanks to her time/parallel jump, Holly had essentially regressed in age, so accidental magic was more likely - and then it would start.
Everyone would begin pointing at her, taunting her, talking about her.
Then someone would begin calling her 'freak,' or 'weirdo.'
Everyone would then start bullying her, and the bouts of accidental magic would grow.
Tensions would rise, nerves would fray, and then someone would push her so hard she would lash out, and the muggle caregivers would begin seeing her with the same fear as the Dursleys had and help the kids in abusing her.
Holly had seen the pattern emerge before. She had suffered from it, so had Tom Riddle, and during the Muggle-Wizard war, she knew many muggle-borns had only been too happy to escape from their parents and the abuse of their peers to escape to the magical world.
She didn't want that to happen again, to herself, or to anybody else.
While living on the streets would be tough, Holly knew she could rough it out.