She felt strangely bare without being in a forest and hearing the raspy, whispering voices she had come to think of as an assurance of her safety. Her school shoes drummed against the pavement, and she walked ever so slowly to St. Grogory's Primary School. She didn't particularly like it there, and neither did a particular teacher, or so her relationships screen showed her.

Patricia Hart: Rep -40. Enemy. (Type=Petty)

Mrs Hart, as Harriet called her, had been her teacher the year previous – and she had long since believed there was something wrong with her. She was too 'quiet' and 'creepy' according to the lady herself, as Harriet had happened to hear whilst milling about in the school grounds beneath the window of the teacher's lounge. Evidently there was something else to it though – because her relatives didn't like her either. Maybe because she was 'freakish'?

Harriet could only wonder if Mrs Hart would see her in the corridors and promptly think her even more creepy. She wondered if that relationship rep would also suddenly spike downwards. A sigh escaped her, feet kicking at some non-existent dust as she stared at what the rest of her relationships screen showed.

Petunia Dursley: Rep -44. Enemy. (Type=Abusive)

Vernon Dursley: Rep -68. Enemy. (Type=Petty)

Dudley Dursley: Rep -29. Hostile.

? ?: Rep +60. Enemy. (Type=?)

[The Player, Harriet Lily Potter, can permanently add relationships beyond the essential ones to the 'Relationships' Screen by saying 'Add: (Name) to Relationships'!]

Harriet blinked, staring blandly at the new window which had appeared before her. Her shoulders sunk, part of her feeling so tired and listless all of a sudden. The excitement of her life becoming akin to that of a game had been quashed by the terrifying chase through the forest, before being completely shattered by her aunt and uncle's reaction to her increased charisma stat.

"Stats," she mumbled, watching as that, by then, familiar blue box popped up out of thin air.

VIT: 6, STR: 3, DEX: 7, INT: 13, WIS: 12, CHA: 27

Unallotted Stat Points: 8

Part of her wanted nothing more than to put them into her charisma stat – because surely then she would understand the relationship between her and the rest of her family. Maybe if she was more beautiful than what she was right then… Maybe she hadn't improved her charisma stat enough… Yet she couldn't get her aunt's words out of her head.

The words she had spat out and bandied about like a cutlass.

"Stupid girl!"

Maybe if she was smarter and prettier, then her relatives would like her? Harriet could only ponder on it for a few moments before her lips were moving. "Three stat points to charisma. Three stat points to wisdom. Two stat points to intelligence," she proclaimed, watching as those numbers flickered and changed as they had before. A sign that she was getting better at whatever it was she had chosen to improve.

VIT: 6, STR: 3, DEX: 7, INT: 15, WIS: 15, CHA: 30

Unallotted Stat Points: 0

It didn't give her the thrill it had only the day before – when she had added all her points to her charisma stat. Yet it hadn't been enough. Harriet could only darkly wonder if it would ever be enough.

[A NEW QUEST HAS ARRIVED!]

[RANDOM QUEST: WISE BEYOND HER YEARS]

· Become wiser than anyone else your age! Obtain a WISDOM stat count of 50 before the age of nine!

[COMPLETION RATE: 15/50]

[REWARDS: +1000 EXP, +2 STAT POINTS]

Harriet blinked, tapping at the screen to get rid of it, all too aware of the little number which appeared in the button of 'Quest Log', as if to show that there was a quest active and waiting. Curiosity made her tap that button she hadn't really explored or used as much as compared to her stats and her profile.

There had been something in a reward the day before about quests to be received as rewards, hadn't there? Harriet tilted her head, eyeing up that very screen which appeared before her.

[QUEST LOG]

[RANDOM QUEST: WISE BEYOND HER YEARS]

[MAIN QUEST: THE CHOSEN ONE (LOCKED)]

[MAIN QUEST: THE LAST DRUID]

[MAIN QUEST: THE LOST ELF]

[HIDDEN QUEST: DUAL NATURES (LOCKED)]

Main quests sounded rather important, Harriet mused to herself, and yet the gates of St. Grogory's were already upon her. Harriet watched from the corners of her eyes as Petunia kissed Dudley goodbye at those gates and started making her way back home. She wondered why she felt so eerily numb and yet hurting at the sight, even as she fell in step with some of the others and made her way to their classroom.

She had the misfortune of sharing it with Dudley, Piers Polkiss, Dennis Harvey, and Gordon Stuart. Harriet could only be thankful Malcom Grouse hadn't ended up in the same class, otherwise all of the members of Dudley's so-called gang would be there and ready to torment her.

Harriet Hunting was a favourite of theirs, so long as it wasn't on the way to the potholed park – as some called her favourite place to go. Well, her favourite place before the day before. She didn't think she would be going back there anytime soon. At least not until she understood more about her skills and maybe had better stats. That place might well have been a higher-levelled dungeon, or one that had suddenly jumped in difficulty. She didn't want to be chased like prey again. She didn't want to face the possibility of death again, and so staying away from the park for the time being it was.

It wasn't like she couldn't hang out away from everyone else anywhere else.

Never had she perhaps wanted a friend as much as she did right then. Yet Dudley and his friends had scared any potential friends off, and she was alone.

Her improved charisma stat hadn't changed anything with her family – well, for the better, that was. She was even further in the negatives with her family relations, and Aunt Petunia had even become her enemy. The snide comments had grown worse, the ache in her chest feeling as though it were a chasm being torn open wider and wider with every scathing word and scornful hiss.

"Observation," she murmured to herself, watching as more white text appeared in her peripheral, hovering above the heads of the other students. It was confusing and rather hard to focus on all of those white letters, and more often than not she cancelled the observation skill before long. Headaches were all it gave her if she didn't use it carefully.

Yet the observation skill gave her the names of those around her – and some of those names were in red. Something she had learnt, marked them as enemies. Harriet could only ponder on the question marks beside that positive, yet enemy relationship. She wondered if she saw that person and used observation on them, whether or not she would have their name. According to that message which had popped up only moments before that was an essential relationship for one reason or another. Harriet didn't understand why that was the case, though she could come up with theories.

New theories which hadn't occurred to her only moments before.

It was a consequence of increasing both her intelligence and wisdom stats. When increased together, she came to realise, they improved how she thought and tackled a problem before her. Even those beyond her schoolwork. It was ultimately handy, yet now she had those increased stats she found herself wondering about the other half of her stats. Vitality, Strength, and Dexterity. Those stats had been mostly left untouched, and part of her was ever so slightly worried about that. Yet unallotted stat points didn't really grow on trees. They were given as quest rewards, but some quests only gave EXP or something else.

Yet she had improved DEX by two stat points all by herself—

"Harriet Potter!" her teacher's shrill voice rang out in the air, grey eyes glaring into her green ones. "Stop daydreaming, please, and say present."

"Oh, uh, present?" she tried, shrinking in her chair she didn't quite remember sitting down in as most of the rest of the class broke into poorly concealed snickers.

She didn't want to think of the circumstances which had led to her improving her dexterity. She didn't want to be in a situation like that when failure meant death. She didn't want to think about it, even though part of the reward had been those all important stat points.


Two papers were slammed down on her desk, and Harriet could only blink as her teacher loomed over her, looking as angry as Mrs Hart always had whenever she had to deal with her. It probably hadn't helped that her aunt and uncle had often made comments during parent's evening which had most of the faculty thinking that she was a delinquent in the making. Just like her parents. They weren't people to look up to, according to everyone who had never met them.

"Did you really think you could get away with it?" Miss Chenhelm asked, peering down at her with such judgemental eyes.

"Um?" Harriet blinked up, cowering ever so slightly less than how she would have before that first popup box had appeared in front of her. She knew more about people and their relationships and their mood. Her charisma stat was at thirty so perhaps that was why. Her eyes fell on the question papers – one of which she had done yesterday, the other a good few weeks back, both of which covered similar topics.

"You cheated," Miss Chenhelm declared.

Harriet frowned, lips popping open as she realised exactly why it might have come across that she had cheated on a test. Her INT and WIS stats had taken a sharp increase – in fact, they had good as doubled, and that had affected her school work. Yet it wasn't like she could tell anyone about that strange game interface which had taken over her life. She couldn't tell Miss Chenhelm that she had gained a large amount of stat points which had ended up in her INT and WIS stats. Yet who was she to accuse her without any proof? The thought snaked its way inside her mind. Her hands curled up into tiny fists, mouth moving before she could stop herself. "Your proof?" she asked, something in her shrinking at the idea of talking back to an adult. Nothing good ever seemed to happen when she did that. It was why Harriet didn't even understand why she had said those two words.

Maybe it was that boiling pit of anger and frustration which raged within her?

Anger was all too easily capable of overriding common sense – that Harriet knew all too well – like when she had argued with Aunt Petunia and earnt a sharp retort and cupboard time in recompense.

"Excuse me?" Miss Chenhelm spluttered. She hadn't been expecting her to speak back, Harriet realised dimly. Harriet didn't understand why she had spoken back either, and the only thing she could think to blame it on was her improved stats. Yet there was no stat for bravery or confidence, was there? "What—"

"I learnt," Harriet stated, words finding their way to her lips in ways which made sense, and faintly, she remembered that the charisma stat affected conversations as well as beauty and relationships. "I improved, and the evidence is in my test scores," she said. "Unless you have proof that I cheated, I think it's rather unfair to unjustly accuse me of cheating when my improvements have come from my own hard work." The hard work of running away from an assailant who would have murdered her in the small woods a little ways away from Privet Drive. Green chips bore into grey ones, and Harriet noticed the slight flinch her teacher gave at that. "If there's nothing else, I'd like to get to breaktime."

That said, she walked out of the classroom, nerves clawing at her insides as she let out a breath and wondered what exactly had come over her. Miss Chenhelm didn't follow, and Harriet studiously avoided the teacher for the rest of the day – well, as best as she could, given she was in her class.

She wondered why she knew that her teacher was so very unnerved by her, much like the rest of her class and the rest of the faculty. So many people had double taken when she had walked into school the first few days after she had obtained that odd game interface which was all too quickly becoming a normal part of her life.


Sitting beneath the open window leading to the staff room was something of an eye opening experience for her, especially when it came to understand the odd attitudes of everyone around her in regards to her presence. There was also the added bonus that Dudley and his little gang of friends wouldn't bother her when she sat there. Bushes lay around her, a few on either side, the dirt of the flowerbed bordering that section of the school wall being what she was sitting on.

It was rather comfy, in her own opinion, not that it seemed to matter all that much.

"Potter – she's changed," the familiar voice of Miss Chenhelm came, and Harriet could only hug her knees to her chest and tilt her head as she listened to the ensuing conversation about herself.

"God, when I saw her walk in on Monday I had to check that really was her," an unfamiliar voice sounded, and Harriet thought it belonged to one of the Year Six teachers. "She's always been a scrabbly little thing…"

"Are we even sure that's really her?" Mrs Hart asked. "I mean, you saw the pointed ears, right?"

Another person snorted in that room. "I don't think anyone could miss them."

"Honestly, with the amount of strange things which always happened around that girl, I wouldn't be surprise if the fae decided to abscond with the brat and leave an even creepier replacement in her stead," Mrs Hart said, and Harriet could only blink at that – at someone's declaration that she didn't seem human anymore.

"I think you've been reading a few too many fantasy novels, dear," someone said, but Harriet was already tuning out those voices as she sat amongst the dirt and flowers. Some of the things which had never hurt her before.

"Profile," Harriet whispered, watching as that familiar blue box appeared in front of her.

Harriet Lily Potter – Lvl.8 – Age: 7

Race: Elf Sponsor:?

Class: Arcane Archer Subclasses: Druid, ?

Title(s): The Last Druid (Other Titles Available)

HP: 60/60 MP: 150/150

Exhaustion: 37/300

Green eyes narrowed on the Race: Elf writing, part of her thinking back to when she had made that fateful decision to become an elf all because of the stat boost. She didn't regret it – because she needed that boost in charisma. Yet everyone around her was human. There had even been an option for her to remain human. But she hadn't chosen it, and instead she was an elf. An elf amongst humans. She stood out like a sore thumb. Fingers traced the defined points to her ears, a hallmark of being an elf, seeing as how she had always had rounded ears before she had chosen to become an elf. Rounded ears which everyone around her had.

Harriet looked at her knees, suddenly finding them rather interesting as the strangest sense of loneliness came to claw at her.

"Quest log," she said, a memory springing to mind as her quest log popped into existence at her request.

[MAIN QUEST: THE LOST ELF]

The quest title called to her like a ship to harbour, and she pressed on it, sighing as a notification popped up, stating that she wasn't ready and hadn't quite met the prerequisites for that particular quest. Yet it wasn't locked, unlike a few quests.

[Would you like to instigate the DAILY QUEST: PREPARATIONS FOR ELVENGUARD?]

Harriet blinked. "Uh," she mumbled. "Yes please?" she said, wondering what exactly those preparations were and what exactly Elvenguard was.

"It ties in, doesn't it?" Mrs Hart's voice sliced through her musings, and Harriet only scowled at that.

"Yes," an voice she didn't quite recognised came, shivers rolling down her spine as he spoke. "She does have an eerie beauty to her."

Harriet wondered then about her charisma stat and whether the subsequent stat increase had ended up focusing on her beauty and her conversational skills rather than improving her relationships as she had wanted to.

She wondered why she felt ice trickle down her spine, and why she felt like prey before yet another predator once more.