Laurel Woods and Alexander Woods were both three years older than her and twins to boot. They did many things together, including, but not limited to, playing instruments, shopping for clothes, and making friends who could stand the pair of them.
Harriet didn't quite understand why some people didn't like them, kind, cheerful, and oddly mature for their grand age of eight as they were. They were vastly more tolerable than any other child either their or her actual age.
"So you play the piano and the violin?" Laurel asked, the pair of them sitting with her for their lunch break. "You're lucky. Mom only allowed us to pick one instrument each," she remarked, grinning at her, even at the looks they got, both what with how they were somewhat ostracised. "I picked the piano like you, and Alex picked the cello!"
"If you played the violin we could do a three-instrument piece together," Alexander mumbled, his voice far quieter than that of his sister's.
Harriet could only ponder on whether or not that was an overture of friendship from the quieter boy. Not that he was that quiet. It was just that his twin sister was far more chatty in comparison, or so she had swiftly figured out within her first minute of meeting them before her violin lesson the other day. It was a nice change from the quiet for once. "I think," she said, thinking then of that strange vision and whether or not she wanted to make it come true. "I think I would like that." That melody they had made had sounded so wonderful.
A scene flashed before her eyes, a boy of thirteen years singing in Ancient Greek, a wound beneath his fingers healing in a golden light, and Harriet could only stir herself from her daze and wonder why exactly she had understood Ancient Greek in the first place when she had never heard it spoken before. And why what could only be magic had been performed without a wand in her imagination. It made so little sense, along with her odd newfound ability for a language.
Or was that a newly discovered consequence of her reincarnation?
She wasn't quite sure when the supposed aftereffects of such a thing would fully be discovered, given how she knew by then that reincarnation was hardly common to those lands. She was hardly an idiot, even if she wasn't a Hermione.
"Great!" Laurel declared, eyes lighting up in excitement. "But we'd either need to find a piece that has each of our parts, or create one of our own…"
Harriet blinked, feeling as though she had vastly underestimated the twins' love for music and everything else about it. "Wouldn't that be a bit… like, above us, or something?" she asked, peering at the older girl. She hadn't been having lessons for too long in the grand scheme of things, and she wasn't sure of the specifics about composing a piece.
Alexander shrugged at that. "Music… It just seems to come really easily to us," he said. "Mom said we get it from our father…"
"Huh," Harriet mumbled, pondering then on the fact that Laurel and Alexander, like her, didn't have an active fatherly figure in their lives. "Cool."
"You can help us make it to," Laurel prattled on, smiling so very sunnily. "I heard you practicing the other day, and it was brilliant!"
Harriet supposed she was the eldest there in the simplest sense of the word, even if no one there was aware of it. She thought she might as well help as best she could. It wasn't like she had anything better to be doing, friendless and alone as she would be without the pair of them at her side.
"Yeah, it was awesome," Alexander mumbled, no less enthused or sincere.
A hint of a blush crept into her cheeks. "I'm not that good," she muttered, ever uncomfortable with praise and admiration as she had been before. After all, it was only thanks to her unique circumstances – her achievements that was – in that life and the one before. It didn't feel too much like anything gained through hard work. It felt like cheating, and there was that adage which said cheats never prospered. Aunt Petunia had told her that one too many times, not that she was still her aunt as such.
"But you're good enough to play with us, yeah?" Laurel said, grinning and slapping her small form on the back.
Harriet supposed she might as well enjoy her time with them – what with the fact they'd be off to junior high before her. Then she'd be on her own for three years, unless she managed to find any more friends. She doubted that though. Laurel had approached her first and all but demanded her friendship. She had the slightest of inklings nobody else near her age would do something like that. Neither did she want to approach anyone else.
Groups had long since formed, cliques as such, and Harriet was firmly in the outcasts section, along with another unfortunate boy named North Adrians. She didn't particularly feel the need to befriend anyone, either. It wasn't like she was lonely, especially with the twins still there. Besides, she was fairly certain they'd still be able to see each other, more so with all of them being musically inclined. They ran in the same circles, music wise, at least.
"Thank you?" Harriet tried, ever uncertain as to what she was supposed to say. She was different, older in mentality, and it showed. Children all too often were cruel to that which was different, clueless as to the whys of that difference. Her lips curled up into a smile at that. They weren't half as bad as Dudley who'd once pinched her arms and pushed her down into the dirt one too many times. Rather, they left her to her own devices, ostracising her in that way which was ever so slightly familiar to her. It brought back vague memories of being raised on Privet Drive and how the children at St. Grogory's Primary School had isolated her once before on the word of the Dursleys. That though – that had been worse than what she faced on her second go around.
The fact that she even had a second go around was mind boggling and still ever so slightly confusing.
A scene crept into her sight then, hallmarked by the shades of gold which crept into the very corners of her vision. That wasn't what startled her though. Rather, it was the fact that nothing had changed besides those gold hints in her peripheral. She swallowed, feeling an odd lump in her throat at the sight.
"Hey, losers!" Cathy Beckett from the twin's class called, jeering at them then. "Why're you hanging out with a baby?" she demanded, storming over to the end of the table where she towered over the twins and sneered at Harriet.
Another small child sauntered over to them, and Harriet could only wonder why the kid thought that walking that way was cool. He just seemed to be trying way too hard. "'coz they're babies too, obviously," Gabe Jinkson declared, smirking at the three of them. Harriet could only ponder on how exactly those things were the kind of words the pair of them would spew. She had already had plenty of experiencing the two older kids and there form of admittedly rather pathetic bullying. Even Malfoy had managed better. Though Harriet supposed it was a lot to expect from eight year olds. All too often she forgot how small and young she was. On the outside, at least.
A carton of milk was poured over Laurel's head, and Harriet blinked at that, watching as Laurel turned in outrage and the voice of one of the teacher's sounded.
The vision ended, the golden tint vanishing from her sight, Laurel waving a hand in front of her face, and Harriet felt her cheeks heat at the acknowledgement that she really spaced out far too much. Really, she would be useless in a fight like the ones she… daydreamed about so much. "You okay?" Laurel asked, peering at her in concern – in a way which told her that her darling, beloved mother had asked the older kids to look after her. It was only a matter of time before Celeste Carter demanded she meet her only friends.
"Hey, losers!" an all too familiar voice sounded with those all too familiar words. Harriet felt her heart skip a beat, a dawning sensation of dread weighing down her stomach. It wasn't possible – it couldn't be. "Why're you hanging out with a baby?" Cathy Beckett questioned, ignorant to the sheer utter terror those words evoked within her.
Footsteps echoed in her ears, a churning sensation in her gut at the sound of those small feet padding closer and closer with a mouth ready to say words she didn't want to hear. "'coz they're babies too, obviously," Gabe said, jeering at them.
Harriet's eyes flashed up, her breathing shaky as she watched the older boy open the carton of milk and pour it over Laurel's head, feeling sick to the stomach at the sight even as the world around her exploded into noise. Her stomach twisted, the sound of Cathy's screeching voice and Gabe's nasal laughter echoing in her ears as she sat there, far too shocked and terrified to move. Part of her wanted nothing more than for them to both shut up. Irritation stirred, overcoming her terror for but a moment. The power in her belly stirred, rising up through her, no longer feeling warm and sunny. Rather, it wanted to hurt. Harriet couldn't find the strength within herself to stop it, only able to watch as it seemed to harmlessly lash out at the two children who had turned her world on its head. A teacher's voice came over the din and the pounding in her ears and her head at what she had just witnessed. Her hands shook, part of her screaming inside of how it was a fluke and that it couldn't be real. The other part of her sat in a quiet numb compliance.
There was a twisting sensation in her gut, memories of bloody visions and flesh being rent coming to the forefront of her mind. It hadn't mattered too much before, being just her overactive imagination. It hadn't been like there were real people murdered before her eyes while she sat there and did nothing in the slightest. Harriet leant over the side of her seat and retched, a hot, burning sensation in the back of her throat as her undigested lunch came right back up.
Voices reached her over the pulsing in her head, a teacher's face appearing in view, the ringing in her ears as she stared at them, breathing heavily, feeling altogether too warm and unquestionably sick in that instance.
Naturally, she was swiftly taken to the nurse's office, her mother called to pick her up as she sat there, staring blankly into space. She didn't pay too much attention to that though, what with the terrifying thought that those visions of hers were real. Real beyond the sense that she saw them. Real in the fact that she might have been witnessing real, living people – real, living children – die in front of her eyes when she could do nothing to save them.
Harriet wasn't quite sure when she fell asleep, but a familiar train greeted her tired, blank eyes as she sat perched on the edge of the train seats. The familiar being was back, watching her with eyes which seemed to suck away all light as though she was staring into the void. Pale blonde hair was braided up that time, loose strands framing his face as he stared at her and smiled darkly.
"Denial does not suit you, Harriet," he purred, resting his chin on his palm as he sat on the train seats opposite her, completely and utterly relaxed as opposed to her tense form. "I told you once before: your father's blood runs thick in you." He tilted his head, chuckling lowly under his breath. "Did you truly think there would be no consequences to being one of your father's most powerful children to date, hm?"
She stared at him, too busy reeling at the idea that she was seeing the future. In the words of Professor McGonagall, divination was codswallop. Divination had just been a bogus subject she had taken to stick with Ron and get an easy OWL. Not that she had gotten that particular OWL, and nor had it been easy in the slightest. So how did that translate to seeing the future and the rest of the world around her in her newest life? She didn't understand in the slightest, and part of her felt as though she never would, even sitting there in that unexplainable train with an inexplainable being.
"You care far too much, child," he murmured, shaking his head and breaking the odd staring contest they had just been having. Not that Harriet felt she was aware enough of her surroundings for that. Rather she was still reeling at the fact that she could possibly, maybe, apparently see the future. Like a true seer. "Learn your boundaries – you cannot save them all, little hero. Some of them have already died long before you came into this world."
Harriet blinked, crinkles forming in her brow.
Laughter rang out again. "Those who truly see, see both past, present, and the future yet to come." Fingers brushed against her skin, cold and inhuman. "There is a reason that none of your half-siblings have yet inherited the prophecy abilities of your father in full." A smile curled at his lips, dark eyes glinting with barely concealed amusement. "It drives an ordinary mortal's mind mad. How lucky you are not so ordinary." Teeth bared in an approximation of a grin, canines unusually pointed. The smile of a predator. "There is only a little risk of you going completely insane and being smited by that little lightning brat. Delightful."
"Huh?" she muttered, staring at him in abject confusion. She barely understood anything which came out of his mouth, and that was before the bombshell that it wasn't her imagination or daydreams she had been spacing out over. She apparently could see the future. Not only that but the past and present too. Harriet didn't understand in the slightest. She didn't want to. It was just a terrible dream, and that was all. "I'm not a seer," she said almost reverently, earning herself a pitiful look from her dreamtime stalker. "I'm not." Her hands shook, bile rising in her throat at the memories of all the gruesome deaths she had seen over the years. "I'm not."
"No, darling," he murmured softly, hands patting down on her shoulders, lips coming to rest by her ear. "You are an arbiter of fate, and all that entails." His hands clapped down on her shoulders once more. "Do try not to drive yourself insane, and do the world a favour and stop denying what you know deep down to be true. It will make it so much easier on us all."
"Harriet!" her mother's voice snapped her from the clutches of the dream, the lingering image of the smug, satisfied grin curling at the lips of that creature ingrained in her mind as she blearily opened her eyes and stared at her mother. "Come on, sweetie," her mother murmured, stroking a cool hand across her brow. "You've been asleep for so long, so you're probably real hungry by now. I made soup," she declared, and Harriet only heard her stomach rumble pitifully. "Come on. Sit up and have some."
A tray was deposited on her lap once she had shuffled into a seated position, propped up by a mound of pillows. Her mother crouched beside her, looking at her in palpable concern as she slowly ate the soup her mother had prepared for her. Numbness was all she really felt, sitting there, a terrifying prospect looming over her like a thundercloud as she tried to deny what she saw when daydreaming.
Only she couldn't really call it daydreaming any longer, could she?
Harriet swallowed thickly, stomach twisting as she sat there, paused in her eating as the reality of the situation seemed to slap her around the face once more. It couldn't be true. She didn't want to have been watching the deaths of real people. Hermione had always said she had a hero complex and all that entailed. It would drive her mad to see people dying, when perhaps she could have saved them. What else would visions like that be for? Harriet didn't understand. There was always a choice between doing what was right and what was easy. Rare was it that she chose the easy route. Her life as a Potter had always been such.
The soup settled in her stomach heavily, and she let go of the spoon with a distinct clink of metal on china. She still felt so horribly ill, the queasiness she had felt earlier not having subsided in the slightest. Her hands shook, a feeling of dread settling into her stomach at the prospect of another vision. She didn't want to see any more death. Though Harriet knew better than to cling to the flimsy thing called hope. Death was an unfortunately intrinsic part of her life, what with the amount of times that death hadn't stuck to her – hadn't left her floundering around in the supposed afterlife. Harriet could only wonder if she had been banned from the afterlife for one reason or another. That would certainly explain a lot of the madness which always inevitably followed in her wake.
Her vision shifted, bile rising in her throat as a forest crept into her gold-tinted vision. She had seen that place before, in another, earlier vision. That was a fact she knew in her bones. She also knew it had been one of the ones with such a violent ending. Why it was seemingly repeating itself, Harriet wasn't sure. There were a couple of them which kept on repeating, the scenes of children wearing newer armour and those others who wore clothing of that time period, the stories yet to pass and come true as the fate before her decreed.
The same fate she was seemingly exempt from due to her little reincarnate status. She was not a being originally of that world, and she hadn't the first idea of how she was supposed to feel about that, normal as she wanted to be. Yet she could never be normal, and that fact was slowly starting to sink in, no matter how much she wanted to deny her ability to see the future. And the present and past.
Two children smiled and laughed, the night sky blanketing them as they wandered through the forest, lingering near an archery range. Camp Lagoon's archery range, if the sign nearby was anything to go off of. Blonde hair gleamed in the moonlight, blue eyes glinting as they saw the targets at the end of the range. Harriet felt her stomach drop to her toes, a daunting, gaping chasm opening up in her belly. She recognised those faces, older as they were and without a significant amount of baby fat. How could she not, when she had seen them, so much younger, earlier that very day? Laurel and Alexander Woods smiled and laughed beneath the moonlight on a humid night, a bit older than their current eight years of age.
She saw strings that time – a flash of two yellow strings beneath a pair of scissors, ready to snip – and her stomach twisted, knowing instinctively what that meant.
A faint hissing sound met her ears, and Harriet felt her hands go to her hair and pull even as the twins – her friends – carried on, oblivious as to their approaching doom. "Turn around," she whispered, already knowing they wouldn't hear her. It was just a vision, after all. It wasn't like she was actually there. "Please," she muttered, only able to watch as movement stirred the underbrush and a serpentine figure slid across the grass.
Clawed hands reached out, closing around Laurel's ankles and dragging her back into the underbrush, bow and arrows clattering to the ground as blonde hair vanished into the darkness of the forest. "Laurel!" Alexander screamed, even as Harriet covered her ears, bile rising in her throat as the familiar sounds of flesh being rent by claws and teeth met her ears. The wet slapping sounds and the high-pitched screams of one of her only friends ringing in her head. "Laurel!" Alexander yelled, looking terrified even as he strung an arrow on his bow and ran into the forest.
"Idiot," Harriet muttered, hands shaking as his screams reached her as he lost against the monster in the woods and was subsequently devoured. Her eyes stared blankly into space, shivers rolling down her spine. "It's not true," she whispered, wishing fervently that the being on the train was wrong – that what she saw was mere coincidence.
Yet she could never be normal, could she?
"Please," she mumbled brokenly, because she didn't want her friends to die. They were the only ones she had – the Granger and Weasley to her Potter. "Please…"
She saw the title of the news the day after that, the words engraved into her brain. Tragedy Strikes Camp Lagoon: Two Children Killed in Animal Attack. Gold faded from her vision, the sight of her bedroom coming back into view, the sunshine yellow of her walls seeming to mock her as she stared sightlessly at the wall opposite her. Pale white curtains were drawn, the lack of light seeping through the cracks indicating how very late it was in the day.
Numbness clawed at her, body feeling ever so heavy even as she lunged for the bowl her mother had left by her bedside and threw up once more. Sounds of skin being torn and devoured rang in her ears as she sat there, trying to eat to the best of her ability. Her hands shook, the familiar feeling of nausea coming back around to bite as she sat there, trying to make sense of everything. Yet for her, it seemed, nothing could ever, truly make sense.
"Oh, Harriet," her mother whispered, appearing there all of a sudden, concerned as ever. "Sweetie, can you tell me what's wrong?" she asked, and Harriet only blinked blandly. The words wouldn't come to her lips, part of her too caught up in the vision which had just hit her. Sightless blue eyes weren't what she wanted to see. Blood-streaked golden locks weren't what she wanted to see either.
Her back flopped against her pillows, her mother wiping away at her mouth with a damp cloth. She waited until her mother had finished before she grabbed at her quilt and pulled it over her head, curling up into a ball beneath her blankets and shaking like a leaf as her vision turned a familiar tinted gold. Not yet, she wanted to plead. Not again. Yet those words wouldn't come to her lips, and she was forced to watch scene after scene play out, monsters which would haunt her nightmares looming before her and the children they would kill.
Distantly, she was aware of her mother rubbing at her back, and the tears pricking at her eyes as she lay there, drifting between vision after vision, ever traumatised by witnessing death after death, with little happier respites few and far between. It was no wonder why ordinary mortals, ordinary children, would go insane from such sights. Harriet wondered if her own abnormality would be enough to keep her sane amidst all the deaths she saw.
Part of her doubted that much.
::
"Morning, Sweetie," her mother called, even as she padded into the kitchen quietly, her apparent sickness over and done with after a number of days of being tormented by vision after vision of the future. "The school just called," she said, looking between her and the fried eggs and bacon sizzling on top of the stove. "Apparently they had to close the facilities after yesterday."
Harriet tilted her head in question, the silence she all too often maintained after those days of visions and her screaming herself hoarse for it to stop because she didn't want to see those things anymore unnerving her mother ever so slightly.
Her mother smiled almost indulgingly. "They're checking the facilities," she stated, a soft sigh escaping her. "There's a real nasty virus going around, and it hit everyone at your school real hard – it's spreading fast and they're trying to see what could have caused it."
"Virus?" she croaked, wondering if it was just her luck that the day she had been determined well enough to go back was the day that her school was shut because of a virus.
"Yeah," she nodded at her question. "Apparently some kids older than you, Gabe Jinkson and Cathy Beckett came in the day after you were ill with a nasty virus and spread it around. I do hope they're alright… They had to be taken to hospital and everything – there was a facebook post wishing them a quick recovery – though those twins of yours managed to avoid the worst of it."
Something sunk in Harriet's stomach at that pair of names, the vaguest sense of guilt rising, but for what, she didn't quite know. They were bullies who liked to pick on her friends and anyone younger than them for one reason or another. She shouldn't have felt guilty about anything, really.
"So, I know you have some schoolwork to catch up on," her mother said, catching her attention. "But since we've got the day off to spend together, is there anything you'd like to do?" she asked, peering down at her, even as she flipped the bacon and readied some plates for their breakfast.
"Can we have waffles?" Harriet mumbled, thinking of one of her favourite breakfasts or sometimes desserts in that life. Maybe that would be able to cheer her up somewhat, after all the madness which had descended on her forever odd life.
Her mother blinked, glancing between the bacon and eggs before smiling. "Tell you what, we'll go out later to that nice little diner which does those waffles you like," she said, ruffling her hair, and Harriet attempted a smile – something which had escaped her ever since the reveal that she might be a seer or whatever it was called.
Denial doesn't suit you, Harriet.
The words echoed in her brain, the permanent sense of dread which had lingered over her like her own personal storm cloud returning at full force. She didn't want to see more people die. She didn't want the twins to die. Yet she couldn't stop that gold-tinted vision from descending upon her every time she was awake. Part of her almost wished she could sleep forever and never see another vision again. That would be an easy way out though, and even though she was a Carter rather than a Potter the fact remained that she would always choose what was right over what was easy.
The right thing to do would be to save as many as she could, wouldn't it? Her stomach twisted, fear coming to eat away at her as she seated herself at the table and stared at the plate her mother set before her. She wondered if it would be that easy to change the futures she had apparently seen. A scoff escaped her as she ate. Denial was seemingly fleeting for her. It was almost odd how quickly she was coming to terms with her newfound ability. Though weird things had always happened, thanks to her odd luck, and she had always found a way to overcome them.
Harriet smiled shakily, trying to enjoy the day off from school that she had, and true to her mother's word, they went to the quaint diner a little down the road and had the most delicious waffles for dinner – a special treat, her mother called it. It was – special, that was. If only because they didn't manage to go back to the diner for over a year, thanks to the pandemic which erupted across the globe, spreading at an unprecedented rate in the course of a few months.
The source of the pandemic was traced quickly back to its origins: her elementary school.
::
Laughter echoed in her ears in her dream, the familiar sight of a train carriage reaching her when she went to sleep amidst the lockdown which had been declared over the USA. The being across from her laughed and wiped a tear from his eye as he doubled over. His hand slapped his knee, his smile turning dark and highly amused as he stared at her dumbfounded form. "My, Harriet," he murmured, almost purring her name as they sat there in that all too familiar carriage. "First you discover your father's prophecy ability, and now you have found your father's plague ability. Wonders and entertainment never do cease with you around, little arbiter…"
"Huh?" Harriet blinked, a weight settling in her stomach at his words. "Plague…" she mumbled, trailing off as she wracked her brains and prayed it wasn't what she was thinking. It couldn't be. Denial was ever a thing for her, or so it seemed.
"Do you not understand yet?" he asked, peering at her with those dark eyes which always unnerved her so. "This pandemic of yours was not supposed to happen according to the original fate of this world. Though, admittedly, there would have been one in a good few years time. Now, there is only one kind of being who could cause such delightful chaos: an arbiter of fate. One born outside of this world's fate and able to change it at will." Sharp teeth glinted in the green light. "Guess who happens to be the only little arbiter of fate in existence currently?" His eyes glittered with untold mischief and delight as she quivered before him and his words. "Oh, that is right – you."
Harriet blinked, the statement taking a few moments or minutes to sink in as she sat there in her strange dream. "No," she muttered, thinking of the rising death toll and hospitalisation rates she had seen on the news before her mother had switched it over to a children's channel. "No!"
"Yes," he murmured, a grin on his lips as he found amusement at her expense, as ever he did. "Do you not remember? Though I suppose you were experiencing an odd upheaval with figuring out what your visions truly were… Your distress caused you to infect those two bullies of yours and your friends with a nasty little virus." He smirked at her silence, oblivious, though more likely uncaring, as to her own distress in that very moment. "Truly, you really are the most powerful child of your father to date – inheriting two of his rarest abilities," he said. "To think you would be capable of causing a pandemic at your age. Most who inherited that plague ability could only cause the mildest of hay fever at your age too. So very powerful…"
"I don't want it," Harriet said softly, hands shaking as the truth came to claw at her much quicker if only because she remembered. She remembered the hot, harmful sensation in that glowing probably-not-magic within her. She remembered it lashing out at Gabe and Cathy. Besides, it wasn't like the being before her had ever lied to her, strange and terrifying as he was. It wasn't like that glowing ball of power she sensed in her body behaved like she thought magic was supposed to either. Little things were adding up, painting a picture she was slowly beginning to dread.
"You hardly have a choice," he replied, smiling still. "One does not choose their abilities. You are simply born with them to make of them what you will."
Harriet blinked, stomach feeling as though it had shrivelled up into a tiny pea-sized ball as she sat there, caught between acceptance and denial. It wasn't like strange things hadn't happened around her – it was just this time they seemed to be amassing a body count. Harriet didn't want to amass a body count. That was what Voldemort had done, and she was nothing like him, no matter how similar their childhoods were.
"Relax," he murmured. "Do you really think that lightning brat and his motley crew would not realise that this lovely pandemic of yours is not supposed to have happened?"
"I—I…" she muttered, feeling an explicable sense of guilt at the thought of how exactly a deadly disease had spawned from her of all people. Typical Potter Luck. Or should she say Carter Luck? Harriet wasn't entirely sure. A choked laugh escaped her, vision growing blurry as tears filled her eyes. Her own brand of luck had never caused such deadly chaos before. "I didn't mean to," she whispered, thinking of that hot, angry sensation in her belly when it had gone down.
"Your father is fixing things, cleaning up the mess one of his children has undoubtedly made," he said then, and she blinked at the hand which came to rest on her head, ruffling her golden locks as she sat there, torn between guilt, dread, and the dawning sense of realisation. Something she should have realised long ago.
"Magic," she said, the word almost feeling foreign on her tongue. "It doesn't exist here, does it?" she spoke, the tears in her eyes only burning heavier. Though her words didn't really come as too much of a shock to her. There had always been that strange niggling feeling that something wasn't right whenever she thought of the magical community and how she hadn't even seen whisps of MACUSA's presence or anything of the like as there should have rightly been. "This place isn't the… world… I knew and loved." Her hands shook, the phantom whispers of the ideas of meeting aged-up versions of Ron and Hermione in Wizarding Britain vanishing like smoke in the wind.
The hand in her hair ruffled her golden locks once more, and that time there with that strange being suddenly didn't feel as eerie or scary as it once had. Instead it felt strangely comforting. "Poor child," he said softly. "Did you honestly think there were no worlds other than your own? Did you truly think you had been reincarnated in your same universe? Such an idea would be inexplicably cruel, even for myself," he continued, heedless to her sniffles. "To be amongst friends when they know not who you are, years after your supposed death."
"At least it would have been familiar," she muttered, pulling her knees to her chest and burying her face in them.
"There is magic, as such, in this world," he spoke, and Harriet looked up, almost hopeful, meeting those dark eyes which seemed so very ancient and infinite. "But it is not like the magic you were so used to in that boring old world of yours."
Harriet sat there, silence falling between them even as that hand kept mussing her hair as she stayed seated, frozen and lost in thought as she tried to piece things together. If it had been Hermione, Harriet was sure she would have already figured things out. She wasn't her past best friend though. Her brow furrowed, brain racing a mile a minute as she thought on everything that strange being on that dark train had told her whenever she dreamt.
"Never mind," he said, evidently spying the concentrating, confused face plastered over her expression. "Your father will fix this mess of yours – though I would advise you lay as low as you can, unless you want daddy dearest to drag you off to camp. An exception would likely be made for the Ancient Laws in such a case as this, if only to stop you from causing more chaos…" He grinned. "Ah, how I do love chaos…"
Harriet blinked, the ceiling of her room coming into view, the light flooding through the gaps in her curtains casting her bedroom in a warm glow. Her eyes felt heavy, nose feeling so terribly blocked as she lay there and stared above her. The ceiling was just so interesting all of a sudden, until something clicked in the back of her head.
"My father," she mumbled, teeth sinking into her lower lip, hand going to pull at her chin as she wracked her brains. It wasn't like her mother seemed anything out of the ordinary magic or not-quite-magic wise. All the clues lain at her feet by that strange being seemed to lead back to her father. Whoever he was. Harriet hadn't quite thought her father's identity had mattered, what with him not being there. She had never really asked her mother about him – she'd had one father before, the one who had given his life for her and her past mother. It wasn't like she had truly needed another one.
Her door creaked open in that moment, familiar blue eyes peering at her, and upon seeing her awake, her mother came into the room. "Harriet," her mother murmured, a soft sigh escaping her as she spied her ill form. "Honestly," she said, moving to wipe at her brow, pushing back her sweaty golden locks. "You'd think you'd get a respite from being ill," she muttered, shaking her head. "I'll bring you some breakfast in."
"Mom," she croaked, a small clumsy hand snatching at her sleeve, stopping her before she could leave. "My father," she continued, ignoring the tense expression that spread across her mother's face. "Who is he?"
Blue eyes bore into her bright ones. "You've never asked about this before," she said, almost seeming to silently ask why now as they stared at each other.
"I wasn't curious before," she stated, holding that gaze until her mother finally relented and answered her question as best she could. "I am now."
"You have to understand – your father and I weren't together for long," her mother explained, looking wistful as she mused on the memories her father had left her with. "His name was Fred, and we met when I was a folk singer before I had you. He… liked music, and we grew closer thanks to that." She paused, evidently trying to wrack her brains for something else to say about her suddenly rather mysterious father.
"There wasn't anything strange about him?" she asked, staring right into her mother's eyes then.
Her mother's face froze in a tense smile. "No," she said, and Harriet wasn't entirely sure where her gut feeling came from, but she knew her mother was lying right then and there. "Now, I think it's time you had some breakfast, Sweetie."
She flopped back on her bed, head landing on her pillow. The impact felt off though, and Harriet frowned at that, knowing there was something under her pillow. Though she hadn't left anything under her pillow the night before.
An echo of laughter rang in the back of her head, and Harriet shivered at the idea that someone or something had been in her room while she had been sleeping obliviously. She sat up, scrambling to lift up her pillow and see what had been left there. Knowing her luck it could have easily been something dangerous.
Harriet stared, light glinting off metal beneath her pillow. "Scissors?" she muttered, glancing between the three items which had been tucked underneath her head without waking or stabbing her. Scissors and a pair of knitting needles. The metal wasn't silver like was usual for those kinds of implements either. Instead they gleamed a shiny bronze-like colouration.
Gingerly, she lifted them, a pair of knitting needles in one hand, the scissors in the other – which was, of course, when her mother returned with the usual porridge she ate whenever she was ill. Her mother's eyes fixed on her new, odd array of acquisitions. Her tray of porridge was set on her bedside table. "Harriet, where did you get those?" she demanded, holding out her hand. "Those are far too sharp for you."
Scowling at the reminder of her tiny body, she begrudgingly held them out to her mother, only to blink when her mother's hand passed right through those scissors. "Huh?" she mumbled, glancing sharply between her mother and the scissors, watching as a dawning realisation spread across her mother's face.
"Harriet, where did you get those?" her mother questioned, reaching for her shoulders and holding her in place. "Please. This is important."
She shrugged at that, feeling mightily uncomfortable at the sight of her mother's gaze, intent and fearful as it was. "They were just under my pillow when I woke up," she answered, tightening her grip on the scissors and knitting needles which only she could apparently hold. "Also," she murmured, uncertain of where her sudden burst of courage came from. "You lied when you said there wasn't anything strange about my father." Her eyes held her mother's gaze, watching as she seemed to wilt under the intensity of her strange stare.
Her mother breathed out a long sigh, a soft laugh escaping her as she stared down at her, so irrevocably fond. "Truly," she whispered. "You take after your father far too much."
"Well, I look like him, don't I?"
"Your hair is paler than his," her mother murmured, eyes growing distant as she evidently immersed herself in the memories of her father. "Plus you have my eye colour. Besides that though…" she trailed off, smiling then, oblivious to the way Harriet's own smile had become fixed – because her mother's eyes were blue. She grabbed a hold of the porridge as it was given to her on her usual lap tray, waiting until her mother had left the room with a fond smile before she grabbed a hold of the small mirror on her bedside table.
Her reflection stared back at her, her golden hair bright, and her unnerving golden eyes staring back at her.
Laughter rang out once again in the back of her head, and Harriet knew undoubtedly who that laughter belonged to as that familiar voice rang out in her mind.
You hardly thought I would make it that easy for your father to find you, did you?
