Final warning. The story is dark.
November 9, 1989, four months later.
Harriet didn't know how old she was when her freakishness started. She was two or three when she first noticed it, though her aunt and uncle might have seen it before then. Perhaps she was simply born with it. That would explain why she couldn't remember their kindness.
For as long as she could remember, these phenomena sprang up around her when she grew angry or scared. At first, she didn't mind it. The other kids couldn't make things "happen" like she could (though she didn't know exactly what it was she did, only that her stomach tingled whenever it happened).
Once she learned that she was the source, she wondered if she could control it. She tried forcing the phenomena many times, but most attempts to make something happen just left her feeling light-headed and nauseous.
And the rare attempts that succeeded were noticed, followed by punishment. Every time her freakishness showed—whether it was turning a teacher's hair blue or teleporting her to a rooftop to escape bullies—the retribution that followed was extreme, even by the Dursley's standards.
Harriet learned to hate it. She learned to fear her freakishness. All she knew was that she didn't want to be weird anymore. Every time it saved her from some imminent threat, something worse would happen afterwards. It was why the Dursleys starved her; why they didn't love her like they did Dudley.
So she bottled it up. When her uncle screamed at her, she stared at her feet and accepted it.
She deserved it.
When Aunt Petunia made her weed among thorny rosebushes and her fingers bled, she told herself that she deserved it for not being able to control the freakishness.
She wasn't normal.
There were less accidents this way. So long as she bottled it up, kept the freakishness inside, nothing would happen.
She was a freak.
And indeed her treatment—while it didn't improve—didn't seem to degrade, either. The centipede incident had been a rare moment, and there had been no other outbursts since then. The punishment afterwards had been one of the worst she'd known, and she doubled down on her resolution to control the freakishness.
But today, she felt like something terrible was going to happen. She'd felt it all day since she woke up.
And it seemed her premonition had been right, because she was currently being chased. She'd been cutting through a park on the way back home from school when Dudley spotted her and thought a spot of "Harriet hunting" was in order.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as her breath came out in shattered gasps, forming little puffs of mist in the cold November air. Behind her, she heard whoops and hollers as Dudley's gang closed the distance, but she just couldn't keep up this pace for long. Even with most of a school lunch fuelling her, she was horribly fatigued from just a little bit of activity. She stumbled to a walk, staggering off the cement path and onto the grass when she realized she couldn't run any further.
Experience had taught her that it was better to find a soft place to land.
The initial shove took her by surprise, and she was eating dirt before she realized what had happened. Spitting out mud, Harriet rolled onto her back and spotted Piers Polkiss, a rat-faced boy not much bigger than her. He'd run up quietly.
"What's the matter, shrimp?" he taunted, chortling as he stood over her. "You trip?"
Three other shapes arrived, and Harriet had to squint her eyes against the sun to see their faces.
"Aw, you caught 'er first," complained a boy she didn't know.
"It's my turn," Dudley whined. "Stand up, Freak."
When she didn't, Polkiss came up from behind and hoisted her up by her armpits, only for Dudley to shove her back down again, harder than his friend had done. This time, the back of her head bounced off the ground, and the girl's vision exploded into stars, her glasses flying off.
"That was for making me run after you."
"Eurgh," she grunted. Disoriented and feeling sick, she barely resisted when someone lifted her again, and Dudley's fist connected with her stomach.
She coiled up into the foetal position, coughing weakly. That was when she felt it begin. A tingling, insidious feeling deep in her core.
Let me out.
No. It was her freakishness. It had gained a voice, of all things.
Let me out.
If she did, all her progress would be ruined. She'd be locked up for months—years—
Spotting movement out of the corner of her eyes, she sharply lifted her head, only to meet with the back of Dudley's hand. It connected harder than he probably meant, and Harriet accidentally bit a chunk out of her cheek.
Spitting out blood, she heard one boy speaking, a member of the gang with red hair.
"Dudley, shouldn't we stop…? Look at her eyes, she's—"
Her cousin scoffed, "She's a freak. Nobody cares what happens to her."
His shoe then connected in the same spot where she'd been punched, and she spewed her lunch onto the grass.
"Eww!"
—out let me out let me out let me out let me—
"You got that on my shoe, you freak!"
Dudley stepped on her wrist as he complained. The piggish boy wasn't paying attention, speaking in his overbearing manner, and his foot had her arm pinned at an awkward angle. He either didn't notice or didn't care. The pressure on her was immense; she could feel her bones creaking under his weight. She tried to scream, but with her throat burning and her mouth filling with blood, all she managed was a pained gurgle.
Then, Dudley shifted his weight, and a snap sounded out. Instantly, the boys fell silent.
"Blimey, did you just—"
A freezing wind swept its way into the park, sending up a swirl of dead leaves.
And Harriet let her freakishness out.
The girl was encompassed. Encapsulated in the heart of something far more terrifying than her uncle in one of his storming rages, she felt for the first time in her life that she did not need to fear.
Whatever this thing surrounding her was, it was strange. She could sense its emotions. It did not think—not in the way people thought—but it certainly felt.
It both loved and hated her. It wasn't human. It wasn't a beast. It wasn't even a thing, so far as "things" could be defined. But it felt.
One thing she knew for certainty: as long as she was within it, she was safe.
The screams barely registered.
Harriet came to blinking salt from her eyes. The world was blurry and everything spun horribly. Despite the fatigue, her nerves were alight with electricity, letting her feel every bruise with striking fidelity.
Something stank terribly, like the time Dudley had thrown her into the garbage bin, and to top it all off a hard object was digging into her back. She tried to sit up, but the instant her wrist moved, a spike of agony raced up her arm.
She hissed and steadied herself, focusing on breathing in and out. Her mouth wasn't bleeding any more, but it still tasted of stale blood, and it hurt to move her jaw.
The pain in her wrist wasn't crippling. So long as she didn't move, it didn't hurt worse than the time Uncle Vernon's belt buckle fractured her shoulder blade, or even the time Dudley's gang pushed her down a hill and most of the skin was scraped off her knees and palms.
Up above, what remained of the daylight filtered through a great bank of clouds. Only a few slivers of blue remained at the edges of the coat of white paint, while the further her eyes travelled down, the darker the clouds became until it was all a confusing mess of blacks and greys where the horizon met the tree line.
After a minute of staring at the darkening sky, the sensation of something digging into her back became too much and she collected herself enough to sit up with a groan, careful not to budge her wrist. She fumbled with her other hand until it found the object she'd been laying on.
Picking up her glasses with a thankful sigh, she noted that they were barely hanging together at the bridge. Still, she delicately put them on, trying not to mind the mud smeared over the lenses.
Then she saw the bodies.
One hour later. Guildford, Surrey
The Surrey Constabulary was a mess. Sheets of freezing rain pounded down above the chief constable's second floor office, forming a constant wash of noise. The calming sound did little to ease the headache that was building behind Lucian Fletcher's temples, however.
"In broad daylight," he said for what seemed like the fifth time.
"Yessir."
"And no one but this kid saw it happen."
"A man nearby thought he might've heard screaming, but he thought they was playing."
"…Playing."
The reporting sergeant shifted his weight uneasily. "They're a rambunctious lot, kids. Sometimes I can't tell if my neighbour's boy is having fun or terrified outta his mind when e's playing in the back garden. 'S an easy mistake to make."
'It was a small park,' thought Fletcher. 'The ground was churned up. Trees were uprooted and flung up to thirty meters away. Our 'witness' must be blind and deaf.'
"Thank you, sergeant." Sighing, the chief constable massaged his forehead. "And the rain started right afterward and ruined the scene. Do we have pictures?"
"Yessir," he replied, nodding at the constable by his side who stepped forward and laid a manilla envelope on Fletcher's desk. "It's not a pretty sight."
Lucian removed the pictures, spreading them out on his desk. What he saw matched the description he was given... but that didn't mean the sight wouldn't haunt him for the next six months. Things like this didn't happen in Surrey. The occasional drunken brawl or burglary, sure. Not this horror.
"Like a bear or a pack of wolves fell on 'em," the first constable at the scene had said, voice shaky even through the radio.
'Not a bear,' thought the chief constable, eyeing the damage while avoiding what lay at the centre. 'A dinosaur, maybe.'
The sergeant spoke after a minute. "The red-haired kid swears up and down it was the girl. Says she exploded or summat. He got too scared to say more'n that."
"I know what the boy said, but our primary 'suspect' in this case is an injured, malnourished, nine-year-old girl. Her parents were contacted, right?"
"Guardians, sir. Turns out that she's the sist—no, cousin of one of the boys what died. She lived with 'im. It's his parents coming down 'ere now, sir."
"Names?"
"Dudley Dursley's the boy, Petunia and Vernon are the parents. We don't have a last name for the girl yet, but the boy called 'er Harriet. 'Fore he broke down into a sobbing mess."
"Right," said Fletcher, standing up and holding down a button on his desk to activate the PDA system. "Detective Howard, please report to the chief constable's office immediately."
It was against regulations to interrogate a minor without the parent's presence, but something was out there ripping kids apart, he needed as much information as he could get, and quickly.
Once again, his eyes wandered over to the photos.
'What could have done it?'
The destruction said tornado, but the precision screamed serial killer.
The door to the office opened and an officer stepped inside.
"Ah, Detective—" started Fletcher, pausing when he noticed it was the unfamiliar woman standing in the doorway. She had brown hair in a pixie cut and a sharp j—no, a petite jaw, with rosy cheeks and… and…
'Wait a second…'
The longer Fletcher stared, the more it seemed that he couldn't quite nail down her features.
"Chief Constable Fletcher," said the officer, nodding politely. "Detective Wood, at your service."
"Wood? I called for Howard—and are you even a member of this department?" he asked, blinking furiously as he stared at the detective.
"Apologies for that. This case has been referred to another office," she said holding out an official-looking slip of paper. "I'm here to ask that your department halt the ongoing investigation into this incident. To help coordinate our own investigation, I'll need to see the evidence you've gathered as well."
Fletcher glanced at the slip, almost accepting the turn of events before the words caught up to him.
"Another—come again? That isn't—it doesn't work like that! You said your name was Wood? I'm looking into this right now!" Fletcher blinked once more, noticing the insignia on the officer's uniform. He could have sworn he was looking at a constable's number a second ago, but when he glanced again, it appeared to be something else entirely.
"What are you wearing?" he said. "That isn't a uniform I recognize. Are—are you even a proper detective?"
"Oh dear," muttered the woman. "Perceptive for a muggle, aren't you? Come on in, boys."
The door opened again as two more police officers joined the first.
Something was terribly wrong with this situation. These three people were strangers. Furthermore, when Fletcher inspected them as a group, their uniforms seemed to sway too much, almost as if they were wearing dresses. And the colours were all wrong!
"What's going on?" he groaned, a headache starting to build in his temples.
The three strange officers pulled sticks out from the folds of their robe—out of their pockets, and levelled them at Fletcher, the sergeant, and the remaining constable.
The chief constable frowned at the sticks. Had they pulled guns, he might have understood, but this just threw him. Still, he slipped his gun into his palm underneath the desk in case they were here to cause trouble. But why would his fellow police be causing trouble?
Once again, he caught himself. 'Why do I keep thinking they're police?!'
The officers exclaimed as one: "Stupefy!"
Seconds later, outside the Chief Constable's office
"I've got a Code Yellow. Petitioning for clearance on this one."
"Another one?" came a bemused voice from a two-inch wooden owl resting on Detective Wood's shoulder. "That's the third this year. Are they normally so common?"
Ada Wood ran a hand through her short hair. "Look, just file the paperwork with the Liaison Office. It's for a higher-up, the head of the Surrey police. Could be useful to have more eyes in law enforcement. Muggles are getting sharper these days, I swear."
"Or the Statute is failing."
"Don't say that."
"Of course, of course. Alright, I'll get it done."
"Right. In that case, I'm heading to the subject now."
"…Be careful, Ada. There haven't been any Obscurus sightings on British soil for decades. Merlin knows what it's capable of."
"You told me that before I left," she said. "And I'm always careful."
There was a slight pause in communication.
"…You know, I really should have come with you. It's not too late, I could hop over—"
"You aren't ready yet. Maybe in a year."
"Sure, because Obscurus attacks happen all the time! I'll just mark it on the old calendar, shall I?"
"Oh, shove off. And do I what asked you!"
"Your wish is my command, m'lady."
The owl's beak snapped shut, falling silent, and Ada Wood slipped the device into her robes with a wry smile. She turned to the man beside her. "Can you apparate, corporal?"
"Yes'm."
"I'll have you take me to this hospital where the girl is being kept. Leave one of your wizards behind so we have a presence when the Adjustors arrive. Quickly now."
"Understood."
The man gestured at the third cloaked man, who nodded and planted his feet outside the door of the office where the three unconscious muggles lay. The corporal grabbed the detective's arm, and the two of them disappeared with a pop.
Ada and the corporal reappeared in the hallway of a busy hospital, next to two rather nervous-looking hit wizards in brown robes. Muggles bustled back and forth, giving no heed to the four strange figures clustered outside the room of this patient.
"None of you have entered the room, correct?" asked Ada, straight to business.
"Yessir. Uh, I mean nosir. Ma'am," stuttered one of the wizards. "We haven't gone in."
"Standard containment charms?"
"Set the instant we arrived, along with the anti-muggle charms," chimed in the second, clearly more experienced wizard.
"Good work. I'll be going in there in a minute, but first…" She pulled out a length of rope in her gloved hand. "This is a portkey. Code word: 'cockatrice.' The three of you will wait out here with it. Keep your hands on it, bare skin. If I'm somehow incapacitated or the Obscurus gets out, the three of you will shout the code word immediately. It'll take you straight to the Auror HQ. Let them know it's a Code 17. The squad we have on standby will muster."
'Or at least they'll muster once they're back from their current mission. By then, I'll be Obscurus food,' she sighed. 'That's what I get for volunteering as the on-call Auror Detective for the DMAC. The things I do to get promoted.'
The corporal received the rope with his gloved hand. "Detective… shouldn't we go in there with you? What if you need backup?"
Ada looked the wizard over. "So far, corporal, you've followed protocol to the letter. It's a good job you contacted DMAC when you did. You have my appreciation for that." She fell silent for a moment, then gave an attempt at a kindly smile. "I'll be frank— This is Auror work. You and your men don't have the training to deal with an Obscurus. You'll give me more peace of mind by providing a safety net with that portkey."
The man looked unconvinced, but didn't argue further.
'Typical hit wizard pride. Take down a petty criminal in Knockturn, scare away a Snallygaster or two, and suddenly you're the hottest shit to ever touch a wand. A real Obscurus would eat the three of them alive.'
She continued, "For now, make sure nobody gets near the room while I'm in there. If the parents show up, have them stay in the lobby. The girl's probably a muggleborn, so the Adjustors will need to speak with them."
"Got it, Detective."
What Ada didn't also say was that those very parents would likely be facing a serious investigation. Obscurials didn't just appear out of thin air. It took a certain level of abuse to bring that particular monster out in a child. The hit wizards didn't need to know all that, however.
Ada Wood rolled her shoulders, putting a hand on the doorknob, preparing herself for a terrible conversation—and possibly the fight of her life—with the young Obscurial.
She entered the sterile room to find a tiny, stick-thin girl sitting up in her bed, arm in a cast. She stared straight ahead at a tray of snacks some nurse had probably placed there before the hit wizards made it to the scene. She didn't flinch when Ada flicked out a wand, casting a layer of wards to reinforce the other wizards' own sets. Once the magic had settled like a blanket around the room, the detective approached her. The only indication that the girl noticed her was a flickering of her eyelids.
In her uninjured hand she clutched at a pair of broken glasses. The bridge had snapped clean in half, making them impossible to wear.
"Hi. My name is Ada Wood," she said softly. "What's yours?"
There was no reply.
'Alright, let's try a different tack.'
Sitting down next to her, Ada spoke. "You have pretty eyes."
This garnered a reaction, and the girl squinted at the detective.
The instant she turned to look her, the Auror gasped.
Everything from the curve of the girl's lips to her eyebrows, even the doubtful expression on her face as if she'd lived through enough shite in her short life to doubt such a harmless phrase—the Auror had been transported ten years into the past.
"…Evie?" she breathed, voice trembling.
"What?"
Ada blinked.
"Yo-your eyes," she quickly corrected. "I think they're very pretty."
A pause followed as this sunk in.
"No, they aren't," replied the girl.
Still a bit shaken, Ada did her best to collect herself. 'At least she talked.'
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"'Cause I'm ugly."
The detective let a breath out of her nose. Then, fighting her Auror instincts (but obeying her instincts to comfort, to protect, to apologize), she stood up, moving over to the girl's bed and sitting down gently. "What's your name?" she tried again.
"…Harriet."
"Harriet. You aren't ugly. If you've heard otherwise, it was a lie."
The girl furrowed her brow, as if the concept proved difficult for her. Things would be easier if Ada could lightly dose her with some Veritaserum or even a Calming Draught, but Obscurials being the enigmas they were, she wasn't allowed to use any magic on Harriet.
"Now, why don't you tell me what you remember from today?" said Ada.
"I killed them."
Ada winced.
'She remembers that.'
"I'm a freak," she continued. "They're dead because I let the freakishness out."
"Harriet—"
"Are you the police? Are you going to lock me up forever?"
What struck Ada the most was how the girl didn't sound scared when she asked those questions. She wasn't apprehensive, or even sad. Simply resigned.
"We aren't going to lock you up, Harriet," she said.
If they couldn't get rid of the Obscurus in her, they'd do a lot worse than locking her up, but that didn't bear mentioning. It would never come to that if Ada had anything to say about it.
"And you aren't a freak. Don't say that. You're a witch."
The blank stare she received confirmed Ada's suspicions of Harriet's muggleborn identity.
Moving slowly, she brought her wand over to Harriet's hand. 'I can't heal her without knowing how the Obscurus will react, but this much should be fine.'
She tapped the broken glasses, and a spark leapt from her wand, fusing the broken halves together.
Harriet gaped at the fully functional glasses in her hand before slowly bringing them to her face.
"That's like the things I can do," she mumbled.
Ada smiled, and proceeded to explain, interspersing the descriptions with small displays from her wand—flickering lights, gusts of wind, even levitating the snack tray around the room. With each demonstration, she attempted to reassure the girl that she was normal, not unnatural. Not a freak.
With each passing minute, little Harriet seemed more overwhelmed. At long last, a faint voice from the owl in Ada's inner pocket notified her that the Adjustors had wrapped up damage control and were converging on her location to bring the girl to the Ministry.
"Harriet," she said, ending the discussion for now. "Some nice people are coming to take you to the Ministry of Magic—the centre of wizarding Britain. Doesn't that sound fun?"
Harriet clutched her knees to her chest.
It was too much at once. The girl had been abused, likely neglected, beaten, or worse. Like her. And she'd just been subjected to the sight of three horrible deaths.
'It's a miracle she isn't hysterical.'
A knock came on the door, and Ada answered. The corporal and his hit wizards were there, along with three new figures: black-cloaked Adjustors, hoods and charms concealing their identities.
"Gentlemen," nodded Ada. "The Obscurial is stable. We shouldn't have anything to worry about in the short term."
"Good to hear," said the leader. It was difficult to tell through the voice-masking charm, but they sounded frazzled. "I hope you will accompany us en route, detective? Just in case something happens, you understand."
"Of course," she replied.
"Excellent. With the turns this case has taken, there's no telling what the world will throw at us next. Who could have expected…" they trailed off, shaking a cowled head.
"Expected what?" she asked.
"What else? This entire situation! The saviour of the wizarding world was raised by muggles! And not only that—she became an Obscurial, and we only found out about it after she ripped through three muggle boys! If this gets out, the country will turn on its head, mark my words!"
The hit wizards listening in took in sharp breaths of air, and Ada's own mouth dropped open.
The Adjustor looked around. "What? You didn't know?"
'Harriet. Her name is Harriet.'
"Cor," she breathed, mask of professionalism slipping for the first time that day. "She's the bloody Girl-Who-Lived."
"Ada?" came the voice of the tiny owl in her pocket. "Ada, what happened?"
Terms:
DMAC: Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes
· Adjustors are from this department.
· Ada was working with this department, but as an on-call emergency Auror, not a member.
DMLA: Department of Magical Law Enforcement
· The Auror Office and the hit wizards (the Army Corps) belong here.
Code Yellow: an incident where a muggle or muggles have "seen through" the Statute of Secrecy.
Much of this story will borrow from HP lore, such as Obscurials, but don't assume that everything works the same way as it does in canon. Things like Grindelwald, The Statute of Secrecy, and the composition and function of the Ministry will be tweaked to fit this narrative (and this isn't even mentioning the nonsense magic itself is going to get up to).