July 1991
"Ellie?"
She paused, a bit of toast held suspended halfway to her mouth. Petunia sounded slightly scared, but only slightly, the tone she got when she was trying to not give it away and was making a poor showing of it. The sound of Petunia being scared wasn't an unfamiliar one, by now, but at the moment it was just kind of weird.
Ellie hadn't even done anything, not for over a week.
She glanced up from her plate, finding Petunia across the table — Dudley flinched, cringing away from her attention passing even that close to him. Petunia was standing over the table, the tall, skeletally-thin woman looking slightly absurd in her usual needlessly nice dress — it was almost like she dressed up for breakfast, honestly — topped with an apron that had become a mainstay since Ellie had started refusing to do any of the cooking. (She'd always suspected Petunia made her do the messy things, now she knew for sure.) A moment ago, she'd left to get the mail, and now she was holding out toward Ellie a thick envelope of what looked like heavy parchment. There was a peculiar look on her long, narrow face, warily staring down at the letter, as though it might explode or bite off her hand or something, a steady pulse of low-simmering terror and hatred throwing sparks into the air around her.
Which was...odd. Seemed like a rather overblown reaction to a bloody letter. She hadn't even opened the thing! So, Ellie took it with more than a little curiosity — especially when she noticed there was no return address on the front, nor postage, and there was an extra line specifying which room she was sleeping in.
Ellie realised she had absolutely no right to say this about anything ever, but that was just sort of creepy, wasn't it?
Of course, when she opened the letter she was left with more questions than she'd started with.
"Did you know about this? This Hogwarts thing." She knew the Dursleys had always hated anything abnormal — a hatred that had smoothly transformed into horror once Ellie's mind-control superpowers started being a thing — but by how terrified she'd been just by the envelope...
Petunia bristled, struggling with that old indignation, that old insistance that Ellie not ask questions. For a few seconds, it looked like she would answer, but she bit her tongue in the end.
Not that it mattered, Ellie just read her mind for it anyway.
She'd figured out she could do this a few months after she'd made Vernon stop, though she rarely actually used it. Not because people could do anything about it, no, they hardly ever seemed to notice. Of course, that could just be because that creepy little girl is reading my mind is a hell of a conclusion to jump to, they probably just assumed they were having a nostalgic moment or something, just remembering things wasn't inherently suspicious.
The Dursleys were different, they were wary enough of her they almost always noticed. Not that they could do a bloody thing about it.
Despite how easy it was — like reaching out and plucking at strings, fishing out thoughts and memories, or just passively letting them wash over her, like notes in a song — she hardly ever did, because even the minimal effort just wasn't worth it. Sex, money, sex, gossip, work, sex, money, sex...
Turned out, people were just fucking boring. Given the choice between spending her time reading minds or reading books, she'd stick with books.
But this time, Ellie actually did find something interesting. She was seeing it now, a woman in a stiff, very old-fashioned grey checkered dress, showing up at their door, telling them Lily was special, she'd be going to a school for special people, to learn magic—
Petunia had known Lily was magic, how could she not, the way she ran around healing injured animals, or making flowers bloom out of nothing, or jumping off of things from far too high — about gave Grandma a heart attack with that one — or turning that Snape boy's hair pink and refusing to fix it — Petunia had tried to chastise her for that, Mum and Dad had said to keep it secret, but it probably sounded too fake, it was just hilarious — she'd always known Lily was special, and it was honestly pretty cool sometimes, but she'd be going away, and—
Bloody freak, with her runes and her wand and her newt eyes, and Petunia was certain she'd overheard Lily and that Snape boy whispering about blood sacrifices, and there was no way that kind of talk would go anywhere good, but Dad hadn't believed her, no, his precious magic little girl couldn't be up to anything nefarious, oh no—
She'd feared she would be just like her mother, and she was, the letter proved it, but it was worse than that, it was so much worse than that, no matter how strange and disturbing she'd gotten Lily had never actually scared her, she'd never used her magic against her, this girl was a bloody terror, like having a demon squatting in their spare bedroom or something, and how much worse would she be after being properly taught the stuff, Lily's hellspawn would be the death of them all, she just—
Ellie pulled away from her aunt's mind, one of the strings catching a little, snapping back with a metallic twang. That probably felt odd, judging by how Petunia jerked away — shooting Ellie a narrow, fearful look. Realising what had just happened, she guessed, knew Ellie had just seen all that, worried she'd be angry, take it out on her.
Which was just silly, honestly. When had she ever done anything to the Dursleys just for the hell of it? She could, yes, but she only ever did anything to them to get them to leave her alone. Okay, being a bit afraid of her was just natural at this point — she had threatened to kill Vernon, and had reiterated repeatedly over the two years since that she could at any time she liked, he'd certainly told Petunia about that — but when had she ever, what, gotten angry at them and blown up at them over it? Never, that's when.
She had considered it, hurting them, because she could, and they couldn't stop her. She'd admit the thought was even...fascinating, a little, but in the end...
She just wanted them to leave her alone.
For a long moment, Ellie stared, the room around her tense and quiet, time marked with nothing but the clinking of cutlery and the sipping of coffee. Petunia, sitting partway around the table now, kept fidgeting more than normal — clearly aware of Ellie's attention on her, fear thick and slimy on the air. And Ellie kept staring, considering the information she'd just learned, from this letter and her brief glance into her aunt's head.
She'd put together, before, that her aunt and uncle must have known she was magic. There had been a few minor incidents that, in retrospect, must have been her magic doing weird things — suddenly appearing on the roof of the school was the most obvious one, but there had been several others — but she suspected they'd known even before that. Or, perhaps, some event from earlier than she could remember had originally cued them in...but she suspected not, that they'd known what she was from the beginning.
She couldn't explain exactly why. When she did come into her ridiculous mind-control superpowers, when they'd realised just how screwed they were, they'd seemed strangely...unsurprised. They'd been horrified, yes, a visceral, awful, animal thing that hadn't diminished even after a couple years, but it felt like... In the moment, as they came to understand how things had changed, they hadn't felt surprised, but vindicated. Like, this was something they'd always known would happen, that they'd feared it, and now it was staring them right in the face, they were right to fear her.
They'd always called her a freak. She'd admit she was pretty freakish, yeah, but they'd started long before her mind-control superpowers kicked in. They'd always known what she was, since before even she'd had any idea.
Ellie had even had occasion to wonder if it weren't the reason they'd always treated her so terribly. It had taken a long time for it to click that what they did to her wasn't in any way normal — in fact, she knew after a bit of reading a couple months ago now, it was illegal. She'd wondered, if they hadn't been trying to... She didn't know. They'd obviously been scared of her before she'd learned to mess with people's heads, before they'd had any real reason to be, maybe they'd meant to...
She didn't know. Hurt her before she could hurt them. That did make sense. Almost.
Now she knew.
Ellie knew virtually nothing about her mother. She knew she was Petunia's younger sister, her name was Lily, she had red hair, and she'd been a useless flighty slag who'd gotten herself killed in a car crash...which, that part probably wasn't true, now that she thought about it. (She suspected people who'd gone to schools for witchcraft and wizardry simply didn't die in car crashes.) Petunia didn't talk about her, ever. Just that Ellie was just as much a waste of space as her mother, it must be genetic — she'd made it clear ever since Ellie had been old enough to know the words to understand that both Petunia and Lily had been adopted, so they weren't actually related (which did make sense, Ellie and Petunia looked nothing alike) — that Ellie would be just as useless and stupid and awful as her, would carry on the tradition of dying young unloved and unmourned in a ditch somewhere, if she didn't stop being such a lazy freak and do what she was told, so help her.
That had all been lies, at least important parts of it. Because Lily hadn't been some drunken whore shacking up with some equally drunken layabout, no, she was magic. And apparently successful at the magic thing, if the jealousy on Petunia's thoughts meant anything.
And her idle suspicion had been right: Petunia had been scared of Ellie's ridiculous superpowers, had known about them far earlier than Ellie had. Because her mother had had them, so clearly she would too. And she'd been angry, with Lily, and scared of Ellie, and she'd...
She'd tried to make Ellie weak, and quiet, and obedient, so when she did come into her magic, she wouldn't use it against her. Petunia hadn't quite thought that, directly. But it was the undercurrent, in her fear, in her hatred, in her shame. She'd wanted to, to train Ellie, like one of Marge's bloody dogs.
Ellie almost had to laugh at that — if Vernon hadn't tried so hard to break her, she might not have figured out the mind-control thing, and she might have had no reason to use her magic against them. But fine, okay then.
Turning over all this stuff in her head took a couple minutes, the whole while the room silent around her, Petunia fearfully fidgeting, Dudley nervously stuffing his face. Finally, Ellie came to the conclusion that it didn't matter. Not really. What her aunt and uncle had known, why they'd done the things they'd done, it didn't matter, she didn't care. What was done was done.
(She only wanted to be left alone.)
But there was one thing she did have to ask. "So, you would know where to go? To get these things."
Petunia let out a shaky sigh, seemingly unable to decide whether she should be anxious or relieved. It was very clear she really didn't want to go to wherever this place was. That she would do it, to get rid of Ellie, but she would hate every second of it.
"I'll take the train by myself. Just think about where to go, very loudly."
Which didn't seem to make her any more comfortable. Peeking into memories of a dingy pub near Charing Cross in London, Ellie smirked.
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Ellie was starting to wonder if she maybe hadn't thought this through very well.
In her defence, she hadn't really been thinking much at all. She'd gotten the impression from Petunia that this Hogwarts place was a boarding school — she'd be away from the Dursleys, for months at a time, to learn magic. It had seemed the obvious thing to do to go to a magic place and start in on this stuff, or at the very least find some way to contact the school, tell them she was definitely, definitely coming. (We await your owl, honestly.) She'd had the presence of mind to ask Petunia for some money, at least.
(She could just use her mind-control superpowers to take everything she needed, of course, but it was probably smarter not to. She didn't know if magic people would have greater defences against it, and getting caught out using magic to steal things from other magic people would have unpleasant consequences.)
That had been kind of funny — she hadn't even needed to make Petunia do it, she'd slapped a couple hundred pounds on the table and told Ellie to get out of the house and stay gone. (Well, she hadn't said it, but she'd thought it, very loudly, which was practically the same thing.) Which, fine, no argument there. Ellie had packed up her (very few) belongings into her school bag and walked out the door, without a word or a backward glance.
If she was very lucky, she thought, she'd never see the Dursleys again.
It was probably a bit...reckless of her, to just...walk out, like that. But she had considered it before. It shouldn't be particularly difficult to get by on her own. A place to sleep? Go to a hotel, and tell the people there to give her a room. Food and clothes and stuff? Just take whatever she wanted, and tell the people running the stores to let her have it. If people get suspicious of a kid living on her own, well, she could just tell them it was fine, obviously she was supposed to be here, or just tell them she didn't even exist, problem solved.
People's minds really were quite malleable, when it came down to it. Making people hurt themselves, that was difficult — she really could have made Vernon blow his own head off that day, but it was a strain, it'd be hard even after all the practice she'd gotten. Sometimes, when people were scared or angry enough, they could shake her, if they were lucky. But making them just ignore her, that was stupid easy. Pretty much all the mind-controlling she'd need to do to get whatever she needed boiled down to making people ignore her, so, shouldn't be hard at all.
Mostly, she just hadn't thought it was worth the effort, before. By this point, she had the Dursleys mostly trained to not bother her. She'd rather not be anywhere near them if—
(—echo of it lingered on the air like a bad smell—)
(—feel his eyes on her skin like wasps—)
—she could help it, but it just... It simply took less effort, to stay. Getting by on her own would take much more work, however easy it would probably be, and it was just easier to do nothing.
But when the excuse to leave had presented itself, she'd eagerly jumped, with hardly a thought.
And now, after a bus then a train then another bus, she was standing in, quite certainly, the single strangest place she'd ever been. The cobblestone street was lined with the oddest buildings, crooked and leaning and painted in garish colours and filled with the most absurd things — potions and spellbooks and wands and magic bloody broomsticks, on and on and on — crowds of people walking around in brightly-coloured...well, they looked kind of like bathrobes, honestly, but long and baggy, and less fuzzy, many of them wearing silly hats in all kinds of styles, from things that might have been pulled out of the 20s to absurd pointy, wide-brimmed, floppy...
Magical people, Ellie quickly decided, were very strange.
And she had a problem: she was alone, in a completely unfamiliar place, with a pocket full of hundred-pound notes...and magic people apparently used a different currency entirely.
Well.
After a bit of dithering back and forth, Ellie finally sucked it up, asked a random passerby if she could do anything about that. (Maybe someone would trade?) She picked a soft-looking older woman, her mind slow and warm and gentle, poking at it even as she spoke. She didn't poke hard, or anything, just a...nudge, a little one, hopefully making the old woman more inclined to be helpful. She did look like a nice sort, but you couldn't always tell by looking, so just in case...
Oh, there was a bank she could change her money at. That...seemed obvious, in retrospect. In her defence, she wasn't certain she'd ever actually been inside a bank before, she didn't really know what she was doing.
(She was ten years old, okay, honestly.)
The bank was almost impossible to miss — at the end of the main street, a big thing of shining white marble lined with gleaming gold and silver. The door guards, in full medieval armor holding big bloody axes, weren't even people at all, little things — they were about her height, despite presumably being adults — with craggly skin, sharp eyes, and big pointed ears. Which wasn't as much of a surprise as it probably should have been. This was the land of the freaks, it just sort of made sense that there'd be all kinds of things around.
Passing by, though, Ellie did give them a double-take, nearly freezing in the middle of the doorway. Their minds were...different. They weren't, like, animal different — they felt just as big and active as normal people, they must be intelligent. They were just... Ellie couldn't say, exactly. They felt all...sharp, and stiff, and just...
Different. Just different.
Ellie hoped she wouldn't have to make any of them do anything. She wasn't sure her mind-control stuff would work on these weird people the same way it did with normal people. They did feel a bit...solid. Like a knife, hard and firm and pointy. They might not bend as easily. Hmm.
One very confusing hour later, and Ellie walked out of the bank again, her pockets jangling with coins gold and silver and bronze, and her mind spinning with more questions than she'd started with.
But none of that was particularly important right now, she would wonder about trusts and titles and contracts and such later on. Once she could pick up a couple books, and figure out what a Wizengamot was, and maybe who Dumbledore was — wasn't that what the Headmaster at the magic school was called? — and why she'd been sent to the Dursleys if he was supposed to be her guardian. (The goblins had been less than helpful, they didn't seem to get she didn't know what any of these weird big words meant, it'd been frustrating.) She'd be buying books anyway, the ones on her school list, she could see if there was anything maybe helpful for all that stuff while she was at it.
Though, her school supplies could wait. She needed to figure out how the hell magical people sent letters to each other. (Something about owls, apparently?) And she should maybe find a place to sleep, where she could hopefully stay until September. And she was starting to get kind of hungry...
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Dear Mme McGonagall,
I would be very happy to attend Hogwarts this year. Was there anything else I needed to do to confirm I'm going? The letter just said you were awaiting my owl, but I wasn't sure what for.
If you could, please send information about where the school is exactly. I know term starts the first of next month, but I don't know how to get there, which does seem kind of important.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Potter
August 1991
When Minerva McGonagall found her, Ellie was sitting outside of Fortescue's, slowly picking away at yet another free ice cream.
Ellie thought, quite seriously, that Florean Fortescue very well might be her absolute favourite person she'd ever met ever. A couple days after she'd basically moved into a hotel down the block — called the Gryphon's Rest, the sort of place people said had character and that Petunia would absolutely hate — Ellie had spotted the ice cream parlour while wandering along back toward the bookstore. In a rather odd, tingly moment, Ellie had realised she could get some, if she wanted. Nobody was stopping her.
She'd never actually had ice cream before. Her aunt and uncle, of course, would say that freaks didn't deserve such nice things, but bought Dudley all the treats he wanted. Dudley, of course, made a point of eating things she couldn't have right in front of her — noisily, and if he could help it messily, forcing her to clean the drips and smears out of his clothes later. Since she'd started making the Dursleys be less awful, she...
Well, it had just never occurred to her, had it? Honestly, though she realised giving biscuits and candies and ice cream and stuff to Dudley, blatantly and frequently and right in front of her, had been intended as a taunt of some kind, it'd never particularly bothered her. After all, it wasn't as though she'd ever had biscuits or candies or ice cream before. She wasn't even certain she'd like them. In fact, in the years since her partial freedom, and the weeks since her full freedom, she'd quickly realised she didn't really have the stomach for sweet things. Some of the magic candy she'd bought just to try had made her a bit nauseous, actually. She could probably develop a taste for sweet things if she really wanted to, but...why should she bother? It wasn't like she was particularly missing them, putting effort into developing a taste for sweets just seemed...kind of silly.
But, she'd still decided to check out the ice cream, just to try it — if she didn't like it, she could just never have it again, it wasn't a big deal. The lady at the counter had, of course, recognised her instantly. It hadn't taken very long for Ellie to get used to magical people, just, knowing her name at a glance, and honestly getting a little bit silly over her. Turned out, Ellie was...apparently a celebrity over here? Which, okay, she guessed? Bloody weird, but fine. Anyway, picked an ice cream flavour at random, puttered over to one of the tables, and gave it a try.
And instantly hated it. It wasn't...awful, exactly. Just much, much too sweet, enough it was syrupy and sticky and blech on her tongue, only took a couple bites for her to start feeling a little sick. She had given it a try, but, no, not her thing.
She'd been sitting there, staring at her mostly-full bowl of ice cream and wondering if anyone would notice if she just threw the whole thing away, when an older man had walked up to her table, asked if everything was alright. Slightly frustrated with everyone else's taste in treats being terribly sugary all the time, Ellie hadn't thought before she spoke, saying this stuff was, just, disgustingly sweet, she couldn't stomach it, it was gross.
Turned out? Yeah, the old man was the owner of the place. Oops? If she'd known that, she might have tried to be a bit more polite. (Though, she didn't know how to do that very well — the Dursleys hadn't taught her proper manners, they'd just told her to be quiet and do as she was told. Not helpful.) Luckily, he didn't get annoyed with her or anything. Instead, he yanked away the bowl of sickening frozen sugar-milk, told her to hold on for a second, and disappeared behind the counter.
A minute later, Mister Fortescue had turned up with Ellie's first free ice cream. (And she hadn't even had to make him give it to her, it was very weird.) That one had been...better. So dark it was almost black — some kind of chocolate was involved, she was told. It was definitely less awful than the previous one, and she did like the coldness and the creaminess, that was pleasant, and the chocolate part was fine. Still a little bit too sweet for her, though. She'd probably even be able to finish it, if she hadn't already made herself a little queasy from the other one. She didn't know if she liked it enough to bother having it again, though.
Once she'd eaten as much of it as she was going to, Mister Fortescue had snatched the bowl away again, and said if she came back tomorrow he'd have something whipped up for her. She'd protested a little bit — it wasn't like she really wanted to find ice cream she liked that badly — but it wasn't worth arguing about, she'd just gone along with it.
It'd taken two more tries for the silly old man to find something she actually liked. The cream part itself tasted a bit buttery and cinnamon-y and vanilla-y, which Ellie thought was perfectly nice — Mister Fortescue claimed he'd cut the sweetener he used by nearly three-quarters, which was absurd, people liked sugar too much — and it had little pieces of almonds and chocolate mixed in. She rather liked it, it might be her favourite food(-ish) thing ever. It was very silly and maybe not very healthy, but she had some every day now, her lunch for the whole last week had been ice cream. (Because she was on her own now, and she wanted to, and she could.)
He'd even started making small batches of the stuff to sell to other people, advertising it as Ellie Potter's favourite ice cream flavour, because mages were very silly about her. It didn't sell very well, though, the few people who tried it had it once and never asked for it again. Apparently, it tasted really bitter to other people...which was weird — it was creamy and buttery and a little tangy, it certainly didn't taste bitter to her at all. But fine, more for her.
Despite coming over to have "lunch" here every day now, Mister Fortescue refused to take her money. Because of the whole celebrity thing, she assumed — people could be very, very strange about that, Ellie tried to not let it bother her. (She could feel their eyes on her skin like ants.) And, more often than not, he'd come to sit with her for a little bit at one of the tables outside, munching at ice cream under the summer sun, talking about lots of things. Magical Britain things, mostly — Ellie did have a lot of questions, and Mister Fortescue was more than willing to answer them. He didn't know everything, of course, but he was smart, and nice, and gave her free ice cream, and...
It was almost, she thought, what having a friend might be like. Was that weird? She meant, he was like six times her age, and she was a little girl on her own, and he was giving her sweets and stuff. Sounded like that should be in creepy old man territory. She didn't care, she was just saying, other people would probably think it was weird.
(Which was just appropriate — she was a freak, after all, it only made sense that the first thing she had even a little bit like a friendship would be weird.)
So, when the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry decided to find her, she knew exactly where to look. People were very silly about this Girl Who Lived thing, a rumour that she had lunch at Fortescue's every day had probably started getting around by now.
Ellie spotted McGonagall before she introduced herself — she'd been far enough in Petunia's memory to recognise her, though she didn't look quite exactly the same. She was older, for one thing, more lines in her face, looking very severe, as though a thin-lipped, disapproving little frown was her default expression. (Petunia remembered her as being stern but mostly pleasant, brusque but still cheerful, which looking at her now Ellie couldn't quite imagine.) And she was in magical clothes now, instead of the normal (if old-fashioned) dress she'd met Petunia's family in, coloured in rather muted black and red. Her hat was nice though, big and wide and very shiny, almost sparkling in the sun.
Sometimes, Ellie wondered if she should start wearing one of those hats so many of the mages went around with. If she sat out here in the sun with her ice cream and Mister Fortescue and her books too long she started getting burns, the huge brims these things had would probably help with that. They just looked so silly and awkward, though...
(Not to mention, her hair was impossible, it probably wouldn't cooperate.)
McGonagall walked right up to her table in front of the little ice cream shop, fixing her with a thin, unpleasant smile — she was trying to be friendly, Ellie thought, she just wasn't very good at it. "Good afternoon, Miss Potter."
Ellie almost greeted her by name, before remembering at the last second she had no good reason to know it. (People got very uncomfortable if they knew about her mind-control superpowers, it was probably better to try to hide it.) "Ah, hi?"
The woman's smile flickered, a bit of warmth seeping into it, looking real for a second or two before it faded back into fakeness. "I'm Professor McGonagall, from Hogwarts. Do you mind if I sit?"
Ellie shrugged. She wasn't entirely sure how to answer that kind of question, a shrug was the best she had.
McGonagall gracefully sank into the seat across from her, took a brief moment to shuffle in place, settling into the (enchanted?) metal chair. She didn't say anything, staring over at Ellie for a long, uncomfortable moment, apparently considering how to go about saying something.
She could feel her eyes on her like ants, it was bloody uncomfortable. Ellie fixed her eyes on her ice cream, listlessly picked at it, waiting for the woman to stop bloody staring. (She hated how magic people kept doing that.)
Eventually, what felt like several minutes but was probably really only a few seconds, McGonagall spoke. "Excuse me, but... Are your aunt and uncle about? Should we be waiting for them?"
"Nope." Ellie reached out toward the woman's mind — she didn't do anything to her, kinda...hovered, just an inch away from touching it, so she could watch more closely. McGonagall seemed a bit...anxious? Uneasy somehow, shifty and distracted, Ellie couldn't tell exactly why without pushing in further. She weighed the risks and benefits of taking a peek, before deciding it probably wasn't important enough to bother, might not even have anything to do with her. People worried about all kinds of things all the time, after all. "Did you get my letter? Am I officially in, then? Is this about getting to the school?"
McGonagall stared at her for another moment, her gaze heavy enough Ellie turned back to her ice cream. "Yes, Miss Potter, you are registered for the coming term. I wondered..." The woman trailed off, the weird fidgetiness in her head sparking brighter for a moment, before moving on again. "The train leaves at eleven o'clock in the morning on Saturday the Thirty-First this month, from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at King's Cross Station. Do you...know where that is?"
Ellie blinked at the hesitation on that last question, shrugged. "I can find King's Cross." She recognised the name, at least, and it wasn't really difficult to get to anywhere in London. The Underground could probably get her straight there. "But, I don't think there's such a thing as Platform Nine and Three-Quarters — that sounds very, like, magic, you know."
For the next couple minutes, McGonagall explained about how to get onto the hidden train platform which was...quite silly. These were magical people they were talking about, so Ellie had learned by now to expect silly, but just because she knew it was coming didn't mean she would ever get used to it. (Well, she probably would eventually, she just hadn't yet.) Once that bit was done, McGonagall fell into an uncomfortable silence again, staring at Ellie, again, really wished people would stop doing that. "Miss Potter... Is there anything you would like to talk to me about?"
"Erm...no?" She did still have questions about some of the things the goblins had told her when she'd first gotten here — she'd tried talking to them again but the second time hadn't gone any better than the first, they were singularly unhelpful — but that didn't really seem like the sort of thing she was meant to be talking about with some random school teacher.
There was another hesitation, but shorter this time, McGonagall's head hardly shifting, her decision already made in an earlier awkward staring moment. "Is there something wrong? I mean... It is not unheard of for the non-magical families of magical children to...not take it particularly well."
Ellie smiled — not particularly well, that sure was a way to put it — but the smile vanished almost immediately. This really wasn't something she wanted to talk about with some random school teacher. "No, ma'am. Everything's fine."
"Miss Potter..." McGonagall sighed, leaning forward onto her elbows, shaking her head a little bit. "People talk, Miss Potter. I've heard you're living here on your own, out of an inn on Errant."
"Well, yeah." She wasn't surprised by that, McGonagall had known exactly where to go to find her. "So?"
If anything, that response just seemed to make the woman more uncomfortable. There was an odd lurch in her mind under Ellie's, something warm and twisted and nauseous. Anger, definitely — not at Ellie, it felt too distant and cold — and...guilt, maybe? That was...odd. Ellie focused for a moment, poking a little further into McGonagall's head.
She broke off quickly, turning back down to her ice cream, frowning. That Dumbledore bloke, the one who was supposedly her guardian and also the Headmaster of the school, was the one who'd placed her with the Dursleys. McGonagall had been there, at the time. That odd guilty feeling she was having, she was remembering the day Ellie had been left on their doorstep. (She'd honestly thought Petunia was being hyperbolic, saying she'd literally been left on their doorstep overnight without a word, it was just so silly.) Apparently, McGonagall had spent the whole day stalking the Dursleys — as a cat, because she could turn into a cat, because magic was so cool — and had quickly decided they were awful, awful people, and really shouldn't be trusted to take care of Ellie.
Dumbledore had insisted, and McGonagall had given up, trusting him. That was why she was feeling guilty right now, because she suspected something had happened with the Dursleys, and she'd done nothing to stop it.
Staring blankly at her ice cream to avoid looking the woman in the eyes, she had absolutely no idea how to feel about everything she'd just learned in the space of three seconds.
"Ellie," McGonagall said, a bit of the emotion in her head slipping into her voice, "if you need to talk to—"
"I'm fine." Ellie could feel she didn't believe her, so she looked back up, trying not to glare (and probably failing). "I don't need to talk to anyone—" (She wasn't supposed to tell, it was one of the rules.) "—or anything, it's okay. I'm fine on my own. My parents left me all this money, you know."
McGonagall looked back at her, her face stiff and blank, her mind still shifty and uncertain. She didn't believe her, Ellie could tell, she wasn't convinced even a little bit.
"Look, it's fine, really. I've already been here a month or so, and it's only another couple weeks until term starts. Can't we just...leave it?"
"...If that's truly what you want, Miss Potter."
Ellie sniffed — McGonagall was lying, she wasn't going to leave it at all. She was going to leave, and talk to other people about this, and they would decide what to do without her. Which was frustrating, McGonagall thought she was helping, Ellie could tell that much, but she didn't need help, she was fine. But, well, adults weren't usually inclined to listen to disagreeable children, Ellie doubted talking to her about it more would do any good.
So instead she pushed further into the woman's mind again, but instead of just listening, she pushed, gripped, twisted her thoughts into the shape Ellie wanted. McGonagall didn't have to worry about Ellie Potter, everything was fine, there was nothing at all unusual going on.
But before she could twist them around all the way, McGonagall's mind twitched, shivered, and with a hard jerk was yanked out of Ellie's grip — it wasn't the first time that had happened, people had successfully resisted her before. (She hadn't even been trying that hard this time, hadn't thought she'd needed to, getting people to not think about her was easy.) What was weird was the way, immediately after shaking her off, that McGonagall's mind slammed closed, almost painfully, like Ellie had caught a finger in a door, hard enough she even yelped out loud, shaking her head. McGonagall had gone as hard and smooth as a rock. Ellie could still feel her, emotions flicking off like sparks from a fire, but she couldn't catch any more, the finer details of her thoughts hidden under a solid, iced-over surface.
Even at a glance, Ellie instinctively knew she could crack through the ice if she really wanted to. But she'd have to push harder than she had probably since that first time with Vernon, when he'd thought she was making him kill himself, and it would be very, very obvious.
As soon as Ellie was done being distracted by how bloody weird that had felt, she realised McGonagall had jumped to her feet, staring down at her, offended outrage and frustration and a tiny shiver of fear tainting the air around her, so thick Ellie could almost taste it.
She knew, without needing to look in her head, that McGonagall knew exactly what she'd just tried to do. (Probably better than Ellie did, honestly, she was a magic teacher.) And she was on her guard now. It was much harder to make people do things if they knew it was coming, she might not even be able to pull it off, especially with how angry and worried the woman was.
Turning back down to her ice cream, Ellie let out a long, defeated sigh. She'd known someone would catch her out on her freakish mind-control superpowers eventually. She should probably feel grateful the person who had caught her seemingly wanted to help her (no matter that it was unnecessary and unwanted, and Ellie had probably ruined it by being creepy and scary).
Instead, she felt McGonagall's eyes on her skin like wasps.
Ellie's month of freedom in Charing, the little magical village hidden in the heart of London, hadn't been wasted. She always had spent most of her time reading — it wasn't as though she ever had much else to do — and that hadn't changed at all now that she had access to books that talked about magic. She'd poked at her school books a little, but they were mostly boring, she'd been reading through other books she found that caught her eye instead.
It was in one of these other random books that she'd learned exactly what her mind-control superpowers were.
Though, when it came down to it, the book she'd found on mind magic hadn't offered very thorough explanations on how this stuff actually worked — the impression she'd gotten was that it was a branch of magic most people didn't bother learning, it was very rare. It was apparently very difficult to learn how to do well if you weren't born with a talent for it. Control of one's own mind, called occlumency, that some people studied. The idea was to improve people's control of their own feelings, to detect outside influence and, ideally, resist it. Basic occlumency — greater awareness of your own mind, detecting when someone was poking at it enough to turn yourself opaque like McGonagall had done — was somewhat common, some people in the government and paranoid nobles learned that much. More than that was unusual, though.
For active mind magic, doing things outside yourself, there were two main kinds. The most common was mind-altering charms — compulsions, certain illusions, some curses, and there was a legilimency charm — which, as Ellie understood it, were pretty much fake. They weren't really mind magic, the book had explained, but charms pretending to be mind magic. (There was a difference, apparently, but Ellie wasn't clear on what it was.) They were, like, the equivalent of picking a lock with a gun — very messy, very loud, and very obvious, even people who hadn't any training with occlumency at all could usually notice them happening. Not always, since people got better with them with practice (especially the legilimency charm), but they were generally easier to detect and much easier to stop.
The other kind could only be done by natural legilimens, who were born, not trained. Basically, they could do all the mind magic things — compulsions (that was what Ellie was doing making people do things), picking up feelings and thoughts, forcing people to have feelings or thoughts, viewing memories, editing or erasing or inventing fake ones, in extreme cases eating people's minds, taking everything and leaving them an empty husk (just, fucking hell). But they didn't have to be taught these things, they just...did them. More complicated or more extreme things, those were noticed more easily, and were more easily resisted, but even competent occlumens sometimes wouldn't notice minor tweaks, and it was almost impossible to entirely stop a true legilimens from picking up your feelings. And if a legilimens didn't care if they were noticed, it was often very hard for even master occlumens to stop them, and people who didn't know any were pretty much completely defenceless.
Which, Ellie had noticed that — she could have made Vernon kill himself if she really wanted to, after all. Because she was one of these legilimens people, apparently. At least, she was pretty sure that's what was going on with her but, even within the category of people with ridiculous mind-control superpowers, she was a bit of a freak. (Because of course she was.) See, though it was an ability people were born with, it didn't start working until later in life. Mid-to-late teens, apparently, sometimes later. Legilimens who started before puberty were very rare, it almost never happened. (In fact, the book claimed every single known case involved childhood trauma or abuse of some kind, the ability apparently activating in self-defence.) Child legilimens were almost always considered very strange, usually a kind of creepy devil-child situation, if she was getting what the book was suggesting right.
So, it turned out she was a freak even by freak standards. Ellie couldn't honestly say she was surprised.
As Ellie understood it, she'd basically been handed one of the best cards in the deck — she was naturally very good at something other people couldn't even learn properly. But, there was a charm that copied the effects and, while it was still inferior in most ways, natural talent sometimes simply hadn't the advantage over skill and practice.
This was made very clear to her the first time she met Albus Dumbledore.
He came later the same day she'd run into McGonagall, finding her up in her hotel room in the middle of eating supper. It was a perfectly nice place, a bed and a desk and a couple chairs, all made up in greens and browns, the wood a bit scuffed, the cloth on the furnishings a little ratty and faded. She just knew Petunia would hate the place, but she thought it was nice. Nicer than her room back at the Dursleys', anyway — even if it weren't quiet and muted and overall pleasant, the absence of her awful relatives did wonders for her mood.
She was sitting at her desk with a bacon and cheese sandwich (with extra bacon), slowly picking through a book as she ate, trying not to get grease on the pages. Her own tastes, she'd found, were heavily weighted toward fatty things — probably a consequence of being raised on cheese and bread and bits off beef and pork nobody else wanted (mostly gristle and fat, the parts Petunia would throw away otherwise) — and alongside the special ice cream Mister Fortescue had invented for her fried bacon and cheese sandwiches were pretty much her favourite thing ever. Almost every evening, when (if) she started getting hungry again, she went to the kitchen downstairs and asked for one, then went right back up to her room.
There was a dining room down there, and she could eat with other patrons if she wanted to — and she had, a couple times. But she preferred not to. People noticed her too much. It had taken a few days for the rumour to spread, for the other people staying at the Gryphon's Rest to realise that that tiny, twiggy little girl with the absolutely awful hair sitting in the corner was their vaunted Girl Who Lived, and once they had stomaching much of anything in the dining room had become pretty much impossible. (She could feel their eyes on her skin like ants.) She could just make them ignore her, of course — that was usually just as easy to do with magic people as it was normal ones, especially if they hadn't even noticed her yet — but that did take constant attention to keep up, to make sure the idea didn't slip, to catch new people walking in. So it was just easier to retreat up to her room.
Besides, it was bloody noisy down there. She'd rather be alone, where she could read in peace and not end up with an awful headache.
But anyway, the point was, she was alone, and she had every expectation she would be staying that way. (She suspected the staff were keeping people away from her room, she'd been slipping them extra coins now and again because she didn't know how else to thank them.) So the knock on the door came as something of a surprise. Slowly chewing at a bite of sandwich, Ellie hesitated for a moment, frowning at the door — she could feel the person on the other side, the now familiar intense ticklish energy of a magical mind, this one tight with focus, determined, and almost...concerned? afraid? Something in that neighborhood, anyway. While she was trying to make up her mind about whether it was a good idea to answer that or not, the person knocked again.
Shrugging to herself — if he did have bad intentions, she could probably stop him with her mind-control superpowers anyway — Ellie set down her sandwich, walked over to open the door. The person on the other side was, perhaps, the strangest person she had ever met, and a month in a bustling magical village had given her a lot of previous examples to compare to. He looked very old, all thin and frail with absurdly long hair and beard a faded greyish-white — seriously, absurdly long, his beard reached down below his waist — wearing the same loose, baggy robes a lot of people did, but in eye-searing oranges and blues, the colours clashing so terribly it was almost painful to look at. His hat was just as colourful, though in a burning red that didn't match anything else — Ellie noticed a half-dozen golden buckles on the thing, which didn't seem to actually do anything, bloody weird — and peeking out from under his robes were a pair of black leather high-heeled boots, which...
Okay, Ellie had noticed the women and the men both wore heels over here, it wasn't just a girly thing. Though it was mostly older people — going out of style, maybe? It was just sort of weird. And also made her seem shorter than she actually was, with half of everyone walking around with an extra three inches, but she was used to being tiny, so.
For a couple seconds, Ellie could just stare at the man, who beamed back at her from behind half-moon glasses with a faint blue-ish tint. (Ellie noticed he was wearing a twinkling smile that didn't at all match the uneasy, nervous feel of his head, he was faking.) Finally, she muttered, "Er, hi?"
"Hello, Ellie dear," he said, his voice low and warm and friendly. "Could we speak for a moment?"
He was asking to come inside, she knew, but she felt herself tense, wariness settling over her without any real thought. She didn't let anyone in her room as a rule, even back at the Dursleys' — she didn't even like letting in the maid, always made sure she was out while they were doing the cleaning so she didn't have to think about it — and she didn't even know who this old man was...but he was talking like they did know each other, all soft and warm and Ellie dear. The over-the-top familiarity and niceness right off the bat, it was setting off alarm bells in her head. "Who are you?"
Bafflingly, her question, asked less than politely, had a faint shade of relief slipping through his head. Weird. "I never did introduce myself, did I?" Of course he hadn't, that was only the second full sentence he'd ever said to her... "I'm Professor Dumbledore—" (Ellie had always thought it was silly, when adults used titles with their own names.) "—and I'm the Headmaster at Hogwarts. If you'd prefer, we could go down to the dining hall...?"
Oh. Dumbledore. She'd read a bit about Dumbledore by now, much of which was strange and confusing — he'd apparently fought in a war and defeated a Dark Lord, and was head of the government and a school? and he was one bloke? — but she was mostly concerned with the him supposedly being her guardian thing. Supposedly, which was odd, because this was the first time she'd ever seen him. She'd assumed, after meeting the goblins, that he'd been the one to leave her with the Dursleys, and McGonagall's memories had confirmed it.
(The whole thing was just bloody weird. It was common knowledge, apparently, that Dumbledore had taken custody of her after her parents had been killed, everybody knew about that. But they also assumed that Dumbledore had actually been involved in taking care of her. People had a lot of weird ideas mixed up in that, that she was being raised up to be some kind of magical superhero, being trained by Dumbledore himself, learning all kinds of awesome and secret magics. Which was very silly, none of the books that mentioned her, of which there were far too many of, said anything about all of that, Ellie had no idea where people had gotten it from.)
Point was, Ellie still had absolutely no idea how to feel about Albus Dumbledore. He had left her with the Dursleys...but she'd also never seen him before, so she wasn't sure if she could blame him for...things. A long time ago, she used to daydream about someone showing up to rescue her — she'd given up on the idea, what felt like forever ago — which was technically Dumbledore's job, since her family was all dead, but maybe he hadn't known what was going on, hadn't known there was anything to save her from. (Not that there was, not anymore, she'd taken care of it.) And, he was the leader of these Light people, she assume things called "Light" were probably good, and he had defeated that Dark Lord, people called "Dark Lord" were probably bad, so...he was probably fine? maybe?
At the very least, he didn't seem likely to try to hurt her or anything. (And even if he did, she could stop him, just like she had Vernon.) So she stepped out of the doorway with a shrug. "No, here is fine."
The old man walked in, Ellie closed the door behind him, watched him silently take in the state of her room. It was a little bit more of a mess than it'd been when she'd moved in — her school supplies, many of them still untouched, sat with her trunk in one corner, books scattered in a few separate piles, new magic clothes lying here and there. It wasn't a complete mess, of course, her school things in neat stacks, the books arranged according to subject and how interesting she found them and whether she'd read them or not, her clothes out of the way and properly folded. Or, when she knew how to properly fold them, she didn't know what to do with the bloody robes, those were just hung over the backs of chairs.
She did actually have new clothes of her own now, for the first time in her life, though she'd only gotten a couple sets on top of her school robes. She had the money for pretty much whatever she wanted, of course — her wizard father had been stupid wealthy, apparently — but she just...didn't care? Just, once the bare minimum things to wear line was crossed she was pretty much done with it already. She was wearing new magic clothes right now, technically, though just simple shorts and vest...which mages technically considered underclothes, so she didn't go out like this...
...and probably should have thrown a proper robe on before answering the door. Oops? Too late now...
"I see you've gotten your school shopping done already."
"Oh, yeah." Ellie walked back to her desk, not knowing what else to do with herself, plopped into her chair. "So, er, what did you want to talk about, exactly?" She plucked a loose piece of bacon off her plate, popped it into her mouth.
"Yes, about that. I understand you met Professor McGonagall earlier today, and..." Dumbledore trailed off, giving her a look Ellie couldn't quite read. It...seemed like it might be trying to be something soft and...concerned, maybe? But the softness and the warmth still didn't match his head, that was shifty and uneasy. "I had heard the rumours that you'd been seen on your own here in Charing, but I'd thought they were only rumours."
Right, okay, this was going to be one of those...adults being concerned about a little girl living on her own things. Ellie never quite knew how to deal with those conversations. People had tried to have them with her before, over the last month, and they tended to be very strange and confusing, she never knew what to say — she mostly just told people it was fine and made them go away. McGonagall was the first one she'd run into that that hadn't worked on. (Stupid occlumency, bleh.) She clumsily grasped for words for a moment, picking at her sandwich. "Yeah, well, I'm fine on my own." She picked up her sandwich, took a pointed bite out of it.
Dumbledore didn't at all seem pleased — his face still wanted to look all nice, but his head wasn't, if anything it'd only gotten sharper, more anxious, something almost frightened. "Ellie, dear, I'm sure your family is very worried about you."
She failed to hold in a laugh, coming out odd and muffled through cheesy bacon. Ellie wasn't sure of that, not at all — in fact, she was sure of the exact opposite. If she never saw the Dursleys again, that would be great, and she was confident the feeling was very mutual. But she didn't say anything, not really sure what to say (and she wasn't done chewing yet).
But Dumbledore had picked up on her disbelief, that sharpness in his head getting all the sharper. He started saying something about whatever disagreement they'd had couldn't be that bad, blah blah, family and love and togetherness, and she'd miss them eventually, she didn't know what she was doing, blah blah...
(Which, to be fair, she didn't really know what she was doing, as her initial problems with the money and finding a place to stay had proven, and her continuing issues getting the goblins to explain anything in a way that actually made sense. She was eleven, after all, and barely that. But she was doing just fine, she thought, certainly no worse than with the Dursleys.)
She only half-heard the things he was saying, because she got rather distracted by odd tingles trickling down her spine. She felt her thoughts turning toward the Dursleys, thinking about why she'd come here and why she didn't like them and what she'd done to them, and why and what and why and how...
Which was dumb, because those were questions, with answers she already knew and so had no real reason to be asking. And she wasn't asking, those weren't her thoughts — well, they were her thoughts, but they felt odd, grinding and almost painful, twisted into a shape they didn't belong in. It was the strangest feeling, one she'd never had before, it was distracting and nauseating and wrong...
It reminded her of making people do things, but from the other side.
Panic sending her heart jumping up hard into her throat, magic like copper fizzing on her tongue and sparks flickering rainbows behind her eyes, Ellie desperately reached back toward him, coming down on his mind hard. Like a knife slamming into a cutting board, telling him to stop, go away, leave me alone—
Her command bounced off the surface of his mind, reflecting with a heavy clank more felt than heard.
Ellie shook her head, dazed — while she was distracted, the fingers poking at her pushed deeper, and images were flashing before her eyes, memories of compelling the Dursleys, over and over, dozens of moments passing in seconds, over and over and over and over and—
Gritting her teeth, she tore herself away from the magic forcing her to remember, instinctively slashing at the bits of her that were not her, burning them away until nothing was left. She saw, in her peripheral vision, Dumbledore stumble a little, as though suddenly yanked off balance, but Ellie wasn't really watching, glaring at her mostly-eaten sandwich. Her head was pounding, unpleasant stinging through her neck half down her back, and she felt peculiarly sick and feverish, as though she'd suddenly gotten quite ill out of nowhere.
Dumbledore had just been in her head.
He wasn't like her. The stuff twisting her thoughts hadn't felt like a person, no, instead the bouncing, tickling electricity of magic — he'd been using that legilimency charm thing, not "true" mind magic. (Apparently the book was right about there being a difference.) It had been easy to break out of, once she'd concentrated on breaking it, instead of reflexively trying to hit back at him like an idiot. She had strained herself a little, but he'd barely even fought back, he probably hadn't been able to, but...
He'd gotten in, she'd hardly even noticed it, and he'd seen things. She didn't know how much of what she'd been made to remember he'd actually gotten, but he'd seen something, he'd been in her head.
(She felt his eyes on her skin like wasps.)
Dumbledore started talking again, and — her stomach twisting and her neck aching and her eyes stinging — Ellie missed the first bit, in the middle of a sentence by the time she focused on him again. "...not tolerated at Hogwarts. The use of such magics, outside of a few particular circumstances, is against the law, in fact, and at my school we take such abuses most seriously. Our Potions Master in particular will have quite a lot to say if you are found to be compelling your classmates excessively.
"Also," he continued, his voice still smooth but now low and stern, "I feel I have to make very clear that, whatever disagreements you might have, your treatment of your family is illegal under current muggle protection laws. I'm not saying I intend to turn you in — I think it best we keep this whole incident between us — but it is something to keep in mind.
"Do you understand me, Ellie?"
Oh, yes. Yes, Ellie understood him quite well. Using mind magic was a Bad Thing to Do...
...for Ellie.
Dumbledore had just used it on her, but that was fine — that apparently counted as one of those particular circumstances it was fine in. He hadn't spelled out what those particular circumstances were, but she didn't need him to. He'd said her treatment of the Dursleys didn't count, and that was all she needed to know.
Anything Ellie had to use it for didn't count. Getting people to leave her alone, getting the things she needed, making Vernon stop hurting her, none of that was okay. It would never be okay when she did it. Obviously.
(He did know why she did it, right? He'd seen her doing it, he must have seen why. Right?)
(It didn't matter. She didn't want him to know, she didn't want to talk about it, it was over, it didn't matter.)
(She felt the echo of it on the air like a bad smell.)
He'd just been in her head, and that was fine, but her doing the same thing, no, no that wasn't okay. But she wasn't even surprised, she understood.
Dudley had been the one lying. The thing that'd gotten her the belt, the first time, she remembered (long-healed lines across her back flared), Dudley had been lying, about a maths test. He'd said she'd cheated, she'd said she hadn't. And she hadn't, Dudley was just a bloody idiot, she'd been telling the truth.
And she'd been punished. For lying.
So, yes, she understood. Ellie was a freak. And freaks did Bad Things. Even if they were things other people did, and if it was okay for other people to do them, when Ellie did them they were Bad Things.
Even if she didn't do them.
Because she wasn't going to stop. She couldn't stop, she needed it. She wasn't going to go back, to being helpless, to, to not being able to take care of herself at all, to being a weak stupid useless girl who couldn't do any—
(—to being bent over the sofa, her knickers dangling around her ankles, biting her finger and trying not to cry, Vernon hated it when she cried—)
She wasn't going to stop. She couldn't.
But she'd maybe be more careful about not getting caught.
Her mouth feeling numb, her voice coming out flat and hoarse, Ellie said, "Yes, sir. I understand."
And Dumbledore smiled. That same warm, friendly smile from earlier, but his mind hadn't changed, it was still sharp and cold and afraid. A familiar kind of afraid, it reminded her of Petunia and Vernon, when they'd realised they'd been right, that kind of horrified realisation, something you didn't want to be right about, but you were, and you were afraid, because it was bad and you couldn't stop it, and you didn't know what to do, and—
Ellie turned back to stare at her sandwich, but she didn't pick it up. She didn't feel like eating anything right now.
(Vernon hated it when she cried.)
፠
It was a strangely disconnected feeling. Ellie hardly felt like all this was happening, that it was a dream, or something happening to someone else, someone very far away.
Dumbledore was setting her trunk, now stuffed with all her new things, down in the entryway of the Dursleys' house. He was talking to Petunia about something, by the sound of it trying to be reassuring — as though Petunia had actually been concerned about Ellie's extended absence, which she very much doubted. Vernon was standing a little bit away, looming in the doorway to the living room, all big and mean and purple (The echo of it lingered like a bad smell.), too powerfully horrified by someone quite so freakish-looking as Dumbledore being in his house to speak coherent English.
Ellie didn't see Dudley. She did hear the television going, behind Vernon. Dudley might not even have noticed anything out of the ordinary was happening.
There was an odd feeling on the air — not the tension of the conversation Ellie wasn't listening to, or the fear and anger from her aunt and uncle, but something else. A tingly energy, it almost tickled, focused tight around Vernon and Petunia, strings of lightning connecting them to Dumbledore.
(He was reading their minds. Obviously. It was wrong for Ellie to do, but it was okay for him. Because of course it was.)
And it didn't feel real, not really. Standing here in the hall, in a place she'd never wanted to be again, only a few steps away from the cupboard, with perhaps the most obviously magical-looking person she'd ever met talking to her thoroughly unmagical aunt and uncle, who she'd wanted to never see again, forced to be here, Dumbledore hadn't really given her a choice in the matter, hadn't taken no for an answer — ...for your own good, my dear — and Vernon looking as angry as she'd ever seen, and...
She wasn't here. Not really. Because she was never coming back, she couldn't be here. This wasn't real.
She felt...floaty.
Dumbledore was saying something to her — it took her a moment to notice, she hadn't been paying attention, this wasn't real. "Huh?"
"I'll be seeing you at Hogwarts in two weeks' time, Miss Potter." He was still doing the fake soft warmth, though there was a harder tone on his voice this time, stern with a shade of disapproval. Probably had something to do with the frustration and anxiety that had only built as he looked through the Dursleys' heads...or maybe just because she clearly hadn't been listening, could go either way on that one.
He clearly expected an answer, but she had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to say. She settled with, "Yes, sir."
With a last friendly (fake) smile, the old man said his farewells, and stepped out the door, closing it behind him—
—leaving Ellie with the Dursleys, again.
She bent over to grip the handle of the trunk, pulling it up to roll away — she'd bought one with weight-reducing enchantments and wheels on one end, because that'd just seemed the obvious thing to do. While her aunt and uncle fumed, apparently searching for the words for what they wanted to say (minds thick with uncertain fear — Dumbledore had told them she'd be good but they didn't believe him), Ellie stared at the door, through it toward Dumbledore's back. She could still feel him out there, the tingling, intense presence of his mind and magic, slowly receding as he walked away. Then, around where Ellie guessed the pavement must be — it was hard to get a feel for distances with this stuff — the electric envelope of magic around him flared, burning bright for an instant, twisted—
And he was gone.
"I'm going. Tell no one I left, and I won't either. If everything goes well, we'll never have to see each other again."
Some of the tension in their minds eased away, feeling lighter and softer, Vernon's face fading from an enraged purple to an angry red. They liked that idea, Ellie could tell. They liked it very much. "And it'll stick this time? I thought we were well shot of you for good, and that mad codger comes dragging you back."
Ellie sighed. "It turns out I'm a bloody magic celebrity, or something." (The Dursleys flinched at the M-word; Ellie ignored them.) "He only found out where I was because people talked, he followed the rumours. I'll just stay in a normal hotel instead. They'll never find me."
"Did... Did you need more money? We could—"
Ellie glanced at Petunia, the silly woman breaking off and paling — she hadn't even done anything, was just looking at her. (She sometimes thought just how afraid they all were of her was, just, completely absurd...but then she remembered she was a creepy little devil-child, so, checked out.) Her own voice sounding less empty than it had a second ago, slightly amused, Ellie said, "You know I can just make people give me whatever I need. I'll be fine."
Honestly, the horror her aunt and uncle felt at the flatly-delivered statement was really quite funny. Ellie didn't know what that said about her, but it probably wasn't anything good.
Smiling almost despite herself, Ellie pushed open the door, pulling the trunk packed with all of her earthly possessions rolling behind her, and walked out of the house without a backward glance. She left her aunt and uncle's house for what would be, if her luck held out, the very last time — she planned to never see Privet Drive ever, ever again.
(She couldn't quite convince herself she wouldn't. She simply wasn't that lucky.)