It was on the verge of her fifteenth birthday that she finally took her own life by the horns and decided that enough was enough.
This could all be laid at the feet of an infamous poker player who only went by the name Patrick. She ran into him entirely by accident at Hogsmeade, and made him a deal.
If she won, he would give her the ability to age herself by ten years and reverse it whenever she chose. If she lost, then she still aged but she would have to go through the usual way to get back her years.
It intrigued the nine-hundred year old witch enough to consider her odd request.
So when she won, he gave her the secret to reversing the years he took once she was ready for it.
The removal of ten years would only take effect after she left the school.
Which lead to this moment.
Melody Rose Potter was sick of Privet Drive. It was time...for a change in scenery.
Melody was on the one swing that hadn't been broken, waiting for the perfect time to escape. Looking like a twenty-five year old sounded better than being a twenty-four year old.
Seeing Dudley boast to his 'gang' she rolled her eyes. Ever since he had hit puberty last year he had been intolerable. Mostly because the others of his gang had finally noticed that Melody was quite the looker since she had turned thirteen and her chest had started to grow in. She got off the swing and adjusted her bag on her shoulder.
She had already prepared Hedwig. In the event she didn't return, the owl would head straight to Sirius with a note and what little they could use to tie her down to England.
Specifically her 'friends', who hadn't been so honest of late, her photo album, her owl and her cloak. The rest was useless outside of the school.
Sirius would understand. She couldn't stand this place anymore, and she could care less about Dumbledore. This was her life, not his.
She felt a cold chill, and knew something was very wrong. Instead of going back for Dudley, she ran. Ran like hell as fast as she could.
Reaching into her pocket, she found the wooden chip with the number ten on it. It was the coin Patrick had enchanted to steal ten years off her life and age her to match that.
If there were dementors on her tail, she would rather have the aurors show up finding someone well over the age of seventeen instead of a fifteen-year-old. And since she hadn't taken any potions or spells, it would be hard to disprove the fact she wasn't twenty-five.
All she had to do was claim that she had beaten Patrick at poker. The aurors knew about him, so as far as they were concerned she was actually younger in appearance than she truly was.
She drew her wand and bit into the chip. She felt herself shoot up in height and had to cast a few quick resizing charms. Who knew she would be close to six feet once she grew up?
Seeing the frost, she prepared for a fight.
Tonks was the one on-call and the first to arrive at the scene. She found an exhausted young witch, too old to have triggered the alarms and what appeared to be a shredded dementors cloak. The girl was shocked, but very much alive.
She raised her wand and had the girl follow the light spell. Aside from being a little dazed she was fine.
"Name?" asked Tonks. Why did a dementor attack have to happen this close to Surrey? Poor Melody must be terrified.
"Samantha Carter," she said automatically. Tonks noticed an American accent. So she wasn't from around here.
"Age?"
"Twenty-five," she said. The wand didn't detect any lies.
"What happened Ms. Carter?" asked Tonks.
"I was flying through the area when these...things...attacked me! If it hadn't been for the fact I heard my parents killed by hunters I wouldn't have known that there were dementors in the area. I was barely able to land before I crashed and it took me a while to get a good enough memory to get rid of the things," she said.
"Well Ms. Carter, you were very lucky. Why there are dementors in a known muggle neighborhood I haven't the foggiest!" said Tonks, lying her ass off. She had a feeling they would have targeted Melody if not for this woman.
"Is there any way I could get a port key to Gringotts? I'm going to be late for my appointment with the goblins, and I couldn't afford one after the international one I had to get. Cheap ass little gnomes..." she muttered.
Tonks felt sorry for the girl, so she decided to side-along instead. She figured she owed the girl that much for dealing with dementors before they could attack Melody.
A sharp crack later, and 'Samantha' was gone from Little Whinging.
Tonks made sure that 'Samantha' was alright before she left to make her report, with what was left of the cloak taken in for evidence.
Melody looked at the bank with distaste. This was going to be a nightmare and a half explaining things to the goblins. She could only hope she didn't trip some alarm going in. That could ruin everything!
Gnarl took one look at the witch and rolled his eyes.
"Beat Patrick did you?"
"How did you know?"
"His magic is all over you. What's the business of your visit today?" he asked bored.
"Withdrawal and setting up a new account," replied Melody.
Gnarl gave her an odd look.
"Why would you need to set up a new account when you're making a withdrawal?"
"I'm planning to move my funds to a new location, one that won't be tracked," said Melody.
"Not my problem."
Melody went down to her vault, withdrew her funds to the limit and had them exchanged for bullion. She wasn't about to make purchases with goblin gold when it was easier to get bullion exchanged for muggle currency.
On the way back, Melody asked the goblin a question that had always bothered her.
"What do the goblins do with the muggle currency they get from muggleborns and muggle-raised?"
"We burn it. Not much use for paper currency in this economy," said Gnarl.
The goblins traded gold with the muggles and destroyed the pounds except for a small amount. The rest was used as fire starters.
Melody's eyes gleamed.
"How many galleons would it take for me to get the next round of muggle currency you intend to destroy?"
"Give me fifty galleons and I'll give you the lot," said Gnarl immediately. If this witch wanted the useless paper, she was welcome to it...especially if it added to his coffers in the process.
Melody, before they got to the surface, discreetly handed him fifty gold coins. Gnarl gave her an expanded bag full of pounds that were scheduled to be used to light fires before the next round.
There was easily a million pounds or more in the bag, and that was just what was on the top part!
A quick word to another goblin and she had a new account under her assumed name and a passphrase that no pure blood would ever figure out. Once she left Gringotts (having stashed quite a few of the pounds she had acquired in the moleskin wallet Hagrid had given her years ago) she went on a major shopping spree.
Any questions about her odd outfit were deflected by claiming she had just left an abusive boyfriend who had destroyed all her clothes except for what she had on her back...and that she had stolen his wallet which had been in the pockets of the jeans she had been borrowing.
A few days later she got a ticket to America...after she paid off the goblins for an ID that would allow her to operate in the muggle world.
She would need it just to get into America.
It took Melody ten hours to get to America, and another two just to get through immigration.
Once she was in New York, she went to the first large bank to exchange some of her pounds for dollars. Unfortunately they couldn't help her, so they directed to one that could. It took her another hour just to get that done, but it was well worth it.
By the time she had finished shopping, having a girl's day out, and finding a decently priced hotel across from a magical shopping district, she was exhausted.
But not so tired that she forgot something she had been planning since she left Britain.
And all it took was ten measly galleons to send off the broken pieces of her wand with the note to Dumbledore to get a new damn hobby.
He looked up from his card game. The odd ping on his magic was distracting, to say the least. And it was coming from New York, for some reason. Loki shrugged and finished his hand. He couldn't concentrate with that ping going off every fifteen minutes, and these guys were a pain in the ass to beat under normal conditions.
"I'm out," said Loki, putting his cards down.
"Folding already Loki? What's got you so worked up tonight?" joked Ganesh.
"No freaking idea. Something keeps pinging against my magic," complained Loki with a whine. He tossed Ganesh some peanut brittle before he vanished though. Hearing the elephant god's annoyed roar, Loki grinned. Ganesh was alright, for a pagan god.
Loki appeared in New York and started following the trail. It got stronger the more he walked into the hotel district.
He finally located the source of the pinging, and a little trickster magic got him into the hotel.
"What the heck?" said Loki when he finally found the source.
It was a witch girl, one who had been aged by outside magic instead of naturally. It took Loki a good hour to figure out who she was and when he did, he felt like banging his head against something.
No wonder his magic had been pinging like crazy. Melody Potter was finally outside of those blasted wards that kept him from doing his job!
Loki knew that the girl was supposed to be fifteen, but her body looked more like it was mid-twenties. So he decided to follow her to insure she didn't get into too much trouble.
Melody was irritated. She knew she was being followed, but she had no idea who would bother.
She went into the magical shopping district, hoping to find a wand makers.
Unfortunately there wasn't one this far away from Salem, the only magical school in America. She was able to get a few things to read later though.
Nearing dark, she overheard about a killer party.
"Why not? I came to have a life, might as well have one!" she said cheerfully.
Her mystery stalker followed in behind her, and kept a close eye on her.
Melody felt dizzy. She had several strong drinks, and being inexperienced with anything stronger than butterbeer was unaware that you needed to eat food and drink water in between alcoholic beverages or else you might throw up. Or in her case, start to get really woozy and unable to do more than sit down.
Melody was leaning against the chair, trying to keep the room from spinning. She felt something icy touch her forehead, and found a glass of what appeared to be ice water against it.
"Here. Try drinking this before you pass out. First time drinking?" said a man cheerfully.
"How did you know?"
"Most people at least have the sense to eat something between drinks," he said dryly.
"This is just water, right?" she asked.
"I think you've had one too many already," he said cheekily in return.
Melody accepted the glass with relief. She wasn't denying that she had one too many drinks. And she just knew she would be paying for it in the morning.
Still, the water did sooth her stomach a bit, and eating a sandwich helped the room to quit spinning so much.
"Melody," she said, holding out her hand.
"Call me Lo," he said in return. Now that she could see properly, she noticed he was at least ten years older than most of the people in the club.
"Mellow lo..." she said tiredly. The alcohol was taking effect and she was getting really sleepy.
"Right...time to get you out of here before some idiot tries something," said Loki. He managed to get her out of the club before anyone noticed, and once they were out of sight he took them to his special house far from New York. He made sure to pop in all her things so she wouldn't freak out later.
When Melody woke up the next morning, she felt like crap. Her head was pounding, the birds were so loud she could barely think, and she felt very nauseous.
Someone placed a cool cloth on her head.
"Easy. Once you get that booze out of your system you'll feel a little better. Normally I would give you a hangover remedy, but I think one would be a better lesson to not go out until you're actually old enough," said Loki.
"You're the guy from that club. Who are you?"
"Name's Loki. Your dad once summoned me to act as guardian, but the wards kept me from doing my job. Once you left England they broke, so I was able to find you," he explained with a shrug.
"What?" she said in shock.
Not that her dad had asked LOKI to guard her, but that the stupid wards that kept her trapped in that house had also kept someone who could have helped her out. If she ever saw Dumbledore again she was so breaking that stupid nose of his!
Melody spent some time in the bathroom throwing up everything she had eaten the night before. When she could finally leave the bathroom and eat something that wouldn't turn her stomach, she finally focused on her mystery stalker.
"So why did you show up now?" she asked.
"The mark I put on all the people I'm supposed to act as a sort of guardian angel went off and drove me nuts. Took me a while to figure out what the hell was going on, but once I did there wasn't a chance I was going to let you stay in New York when you're just fifteen," said Loki flatly, before adding "Especially since the first thing you did was go to a party for people well over twenty when you've never experienced anything outside of that weird butterbeer crap before."
"Hmph. If people are going to treat me like an adult, then I'll start acting like one. And I'm still a kid mentally, so it's only natural I make a mistake or two along the way," she said annoyed.
Loki lightly bopped her on the head.
"And it's that attitude that makes me glad you're not leaving my sight until we fix this mess or at least until you turn the age you look!" said Loki. Just because he had been unable to protect her growing up didn't mean he was going to skimp out on the only guardian job he had in centuries.
"You're worse than Molly... You're not my dad you know," she muttered.
Loki messed up her hair a bit.
"Not trying to be. But since you'll be stuck with me until I can make sure you're in a spot you can actually act your age, you can call me big brother Loki," he said cheerfully.
Melody didn't know what to say about that...but considering what little she had heard of Loki from the twins, he was as good as his word if he liked you.
If you got on his bad side or were as annoying as Malfoy, then you tended to get hit with his pranks.