Harriet swung her legs back and forth, the few truths she knew ringing about in her head as she sat at the table, eating her usual fare of porridge. She had inherited abilities from her father, rare and powerful as they were, and her mother was lying about how very ordinary her father was. The strange being in her dreams was probably related somehow to her father, and was all too happy with her odd, unlucky existence there. In fact, that being was probably one of the reasons she had been dragged to that world.
All in all, Harriet still wasn't completely certain of her thoughts and feelings on the matter. Like everything, acceptance took time, and she was fairly sure she had that in spades, what with how she was six-years-old with the rest of her life lain out before her.
"Harriet!" her mother called, a smile on her face as she came back from the front door. "There's a surprise waiting for you at the front door," she said cryptically. "Get dressed once you're finished," she said, turning to head back towards the entranceway. "We're going out for a walk now that things are opening up again!"
She tilted her head at that, curious as to what exactly the surprise was. Humming to herself, she finished her breakfast, put her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, and scrambled into her room to get ready. Everything was slowly going back to normal after the pandemic which she didn't want to think about all that much. That was her fault after all, thanks to her anger and the lack of control she seemed to have over the not-quite-magic which bubbled in her chest.
People in hospitals had been getting better, the mortality and hospitalisation rates on a steady downward curve, a vaccine had been created in record time and distributed just as swiftly, and Harriet had the sneakiest of suspicions that it had something to do with her wayward father who was never really named. Fred seemed like an all too ordinary and mundane name for the powers her father apparently possessed. A pseudonym.
Her vision swam with gold, the sight of her two friends standing outside her door with their mother greeting her. Harriet blinked, the gold tinge disappearing, and she smiled somewhat sombrely at that. There was one thing about seeing which was perhaps both an upside and a downside – it was a bit hard to surprise her, especially as she started seeing more and more of the futures of those around her. Though admittedly there were all too many downsides to what she saw, and every next vision of hers all too often brought her back to the death and despair which seemed to consume the world.
"You cannot save them all, little hero." The words of her dreamtime stalker rang in her ears at that, and Harriet almost thought she heard the faint chiming sound of laughter ghosting in her ears. Her stomach twisted at that, thinking then on all those gory, brutal deaths which all too often awaited those strange children who seemed to wield power beyond that of a normal human. They were strange and varied, yet more often than not there seemed to be a set power for each child – a concept which was just a bit too odd to a girl who had grown up in a world where magic made many a things possible. Yet therein lay the problem.
It wasn't like her magic could explain things, what with the apparent lack of it in the world around her. Instead, the power which bubbled in her chest was something different. Something which gave her plague and prophecy powers, though neither were on the scale of anything she had seen before.
"The weight of what you see would drive an ordinary mortal's mind mad." That smile of his cropped up in her memories, the glint in those terrifying eyes forever haunting her the longer she thought of him and his strangeness, and the many, many dreams he had intruded upon. Though she had more nightmares than dreams those days. It couldn't be helped, what with how much death she saw.
Yet she was too small – too slow to do anything involving what she saw. Half the time she never truly knew when something was set to happen. Part of her hated the uncertainty, while the other part of her wondered about whether it had happened because if it hadn't then surely meant there was still a chance. She could save them, that was if she could somehow use her not-quite magic. Her eyes fell to her hands, and briefly she pondered on that bubbly wellspring of power within her.
If she could use it, then maybe, just maybe, she would be able to save the ones she saw die. Maybe then she'd be able to save Laurel and Alexander… She gritted her teeth, staring at her tiny hands which couldn't do much as of right then and there. Aside from cause plagues. Her stomach twisted at the reminder of that, thoughts straying back to the death toll and the lives her plague had claimed.
"Harriet!" Laurel's voice stirred her from her stupor, calling her out from the dark twists and turns which overtook her mind far too often those days. "Surprise!"
Harriet smiled, waving then at her two friends, blinking as she found herself wrapped in an excited hug. "Hi Laurel," she greeted, smiling shyly at the pair who were staring at her.
"Aww, why aren't you more surprised?" Laurel asked, peering closely at her face. "Did your mom tell you that we were here? Spoilsport," she grumbled, pouting. "I wanted it to be a surprise!"
"Mother didn't tell me anything," Harriet mumbled, smiling still, thinking then on why and what gift of her father's had allowed her to see them coming. It was a curse far more than a blessing – at least because she hadn't managed to save anyone just then. "I just have my ways of knowing…"
"Huh," Laurel blinked. "Well, never mind that," she said, planting her hands on her hips. "We've got places to be." She grinned, and Harriet only tilted her head and wondered about what had Laurel looking so excited.
Gold crept into her vision, an archery target coming into sight, the sound of arrows being released ringing in her ears. Laurel grinned, holding her bow, her arrows grouped close to the centre of the board.
Harriet blinked, finding Laurel waving a hand in front of her face. "C'mon, slowcoach," she said, grabbing a hold of her hand then, Alexander sending her a sweet smile as Laurel tugged her out of the door. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can have fun!"
"Sure thing," Harriet murmured, letting herself be manhandled out of the door and into the car alongside her mother, all of them making small talk as they were ferried off to their surprise destination. Yet it was no surprise to her when they pulled up at an outdoor archery range, nor when Laurel and Alexander grabbed her and got them all ready.
"Coach said we're naturals," Alexander said softly, looking inordinately pleased with himself all of a sudden. It was a look which Harriet almost felt indulgent over, if only because her two friends were oddly cute in the grand scheme of things. Well, when one had the perspective of an adult in a strange new world, that was. "We've got good aim, according to him – though mom says that's no excuse not to practice and get better."
"Oh, I see," Harriet mumbled, thinking then on all her past visions of archers, the majority of them seeming to have had blonde hair and blue eyes, or at least one feature or the other. Much like the twins in front of her. She tried not to think of how many of them she had seen die.
"Try not to space out this time," Laurel chimed in, planting her hands on her hips and staring her down. "Coach won't like that if that happens," she said matter-of-factly, and Harriet could only shrug and promise to try her best. It wasn't like she could control when a vision would hit her. That was a skill beyond her, if it was even within her grasp in the first place. She probably would have tried to stop seeing such things, at least until she was big enough and strong enough to stop tragedies from happening. What was the point in slowly driving herself insane watching things she couldn't stop? Her hands shook, even as she held onto the bow she had been given, and the arrows which had been given to a baby archer of her size. Harriet was fairly certain that arrows didn't go much shorter or smaller than the ones now in her hand.
"Mn," she muttered, not wanting to linger on her own powers of prophecy – wanting instead to shoot some arrows. "Let's go and see if I'm as much of a natural as you two."
Visions flickered, gold haze dancing in her eyes, and she saw then: blue eyes turning gold in anger, arrows soaring through the sky, yellow lamp-like snake eyes glinting in the dark, a whispering in that language she understood – a prayer to heal, bodies plagued by illness, golden hair fluttering in the wind, tanned skin glistening beneath golden light, and her with a golden sphere of light gathered on the tip of a finger.
"Have you got a tissue, Harriet's Mom?" Laurel's voice echoed through the haze and the pulsing headache which had come into existence behind her temples. "Her nose is bleeding."
"Gods, Harriet!" her mother exclaimed, even as her normal sight returned to her just in time to spy her mother fishing a pack of tissues out of her bag and handing them over to Laurel who all but shoved a tissue beneath her nose.
Warm liquid trickled down from her nose, a coppery taste on her tongue as a few droplets missed the tissue Laurel was using to pinch her nose shut. "Weird stuff always happens around Harry," Laurel mumbled, peering at her closely. "You okay?"
"Harry?" she echoed blankly, thinking then on that boyish nickname Hermione and Ron had called her. It wasn't like it made her heart ache whenever she thought of the two. Though that might as well have been a big fat lie, and she knew it even more so with the odd feeling she had for truth and lies. She missed them, there was no way she couldn't, yet ever so slowly, Harriet hoped she was moving on from that, what with being immersed in a strange new world. The same new world she was bringing chaos to seeming by merely existing there.
Laurel blinked, large blue eyes wide and guileless. "That's your nickname… unless you don't like it?"
It was her turn to blink, nostalgia and wistfulness flashing across her face – not that her friend really knew either of those two emotions or what they looked like on her expression. "Nah. It's fine," she said, watching as her friend smiled and removed the bloodied tissue from her nose.
"Ooo, looks like the bleeding's stopped!" Laurel declared, Alexander looking over her shoulder and nodding in confirmation. "Time for archery!"
"Harriet, are you feeling okay, sweetie?" her mother asked, stopping Laurel with a hand on her shoulder before she could drag her off to fire arrows at a target.
Harriet nodded. "Mn. I'm fine," she said, ignoring the way her mother frowned at that. Yet she still relinquished her grip and let her friend drag her off towards the pretty targets which she had a good feeling she would probably be able to hit with some degree of accuracy. The ones she so frequently saw in her visions often had good archery skills, more so if they had blonde hair and blue eyes, or one or the other. Part of her wondered if archery was one of her father's abilities as well, and if she would be particularly skilled at it. She wasn't entirely certain she wanted to be that skilled at it, given how very seemingly monstrous her prophecy and plague abilities were. There was such a thing as too much power, and she was far too familiar with the phrase that 'power corrupts'. Not that such a thing had affected Dumbledore – it wasn't like he had been evil, perhaps manipulative in some ways but never evil. Not like dear old Tom. Yet she wasn't Dumbledore, she certainly wasn't Tom Riddle, and somehow she had already caused one calamity from her anger and distress.
Guilt surfaced once more, and Harriet swallowed even as she was led to the white tape drawn across the grass and taught the very basics of how to shoot an arrow, intimately aware of Laurel's gaze fixed on her as she took her first couple of shots.
They hit the target face as well as she had expected, just about breaking the line of the innermost gold ring of the closest target which really wasn't all that far away. In her chest, that sun-like power bubbled, a familiar feeling like when she had lashed out and caused a plague – a pandemic. Harriet hated how she could almost think of that so simply, as though it were a simple matter to create a deadly virus and spread it to the entire world. Really, it shouldn't have been so simple, and yet it was just her luck.
Fear made her clamp down on that bubbling power, part of her acknowledging that she necessarily wasn't about to cause another plague. She hardly wanted to take that chance though. She didn't want to kill off another proportion of the population by accident yet again. Her eyes narrowed, arrow loosing from her bow, power rising in her unbidden as the shot went wide. Only for the arrow to curve mid-flight and slam into the centremost spot on the board – the point she had been trying to aim at the entire time.
"Good shot!" the adult whose name she couldn't remember said, and Harriet only blinked and nodded at that.
That familiar dangerous power swirled in her chest, and Harriet stared down at her bow, her arrows all spent, before stepping back from the shooting line and bumping straight in to Alexander. Blue eyes so much like his twin's bore into her. "That last shot was weird," Alexander said, frowning as he stared towards the target. "It was almost like it curved," he mumbled, still staring at the single arrow on the target she had been using with utter fascination.
Harriet laughed, her voice sounding strange and high-pitched to her own ears. "I guess even the wind is on my side!" she exclaimed, still utterly spooked by the stirring of the once dormant power in her chest. It had moved of its own volition, proving once more that it was far removed from the magic she once knew. Unless it was something like accidental magic? Harriet chewed on her lip, trying to keep a better handle on the power which bubbled and fizzled inside her chest. Why couldn't things go normally for her even once? It wasn't like she had seen others in her visions struggling with their powers. Rather, they all seemed to take it in their strides and command power over water or the earth so very naturally. Even the other plague-causing boy had seemed to mean to cause a plague.
She paused in her thoughts then. Because obviously she wasn't the only one of her father's children. In fact, she likely had multiple half-siblings, if the ones she saw in her visions were anything of an indicator to go off of. Blue eyes stared at her, Alexander prattling on about something while she was lost in thought, and Harriet felt her stomach twist at the idea – the seed which had been planted.
It seemed the universe and the being in her dreams had a funny way about going about granting wishes. She had once longed for a big family, alone as she had once felt in the world before that one. If she had a big family, Harriet knew that she would want to cling to each and every member with a reverent ferocity of a mother bear protecting her cubs. What was hers would stay as hers, she had decided after having a mother who had lived to her second year. Yet there she was, watching a number of golden-haired and blue-eyed children die. Dimly, Harriet wondered if there would ever be a world where people or other beings didn't conspire to rip everything she had away from her hands. She wondered if lives would ever stop slipping through her fingers like grains of sand. Oh, did she ever doubt that much. Carter her name might be, but she was forever cursed with the forsaken Potter's Luck which brought naught but tragedy in its wake.
The whistle blasted, the command to collect arrows ringing through the air, and Harriet stumbled from her daze and strode over to collect her arrows tipped with red and black fletching. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled out the centremost arrow, pondering then on whether arrows like those could do anything about the monsters which haunted her visions.
She wondered if they could save Laurel and Alexander when it came to Camp Lagoon and the terrible snipping of fate bound to happen. Her teeth gritted together, a scowl curling at her lips as words came to mind and her mouth moved of its own volition.
"Sun's twins tread in forest beneath the moon,
Twilight's hour within the fated lagoon,
A sister and brother's final breath,
The scissors snip to a certain death."
"Neh, the hell are you talking about?" Laurel asked, arrows in hand as they walked back past the shooting line.
"And in such a scary voice too!" Alexander chimed in, skipping along with his arrows until an adult yelled at him to walk because those are arrows in your hand, young man. "It sounded real spooky, and it was about twins, wasn't it?"
"Uh," Harriet mumbled, scrambling to think of an answer – a reason – to what she had spoken. A ghost of laughter rang in her head, a familiar voice echoing in her ears.
"You know exactly what that was," the shadow of the being who bothered her in her dreams whispered then to her whilst she was awake, and her stomach twisted. Memories rose, unbidden, of that time with Trelawney in that Divination Classroom when she had spoken that prophecy to her in that spooky, raspy voice of hers. "Look at you, my cute little baby oracle… Already giving out prophecies… Such a shame your father won't be able to find his darling little prophet-technically-oracle-daughter."
"Harriet!" Laurel waved a hand in front of her face. "You okay?" she asked, peering at her curiously and in mild concern. "Maybe don't say weird stuff again?" she spoke, pressing a tissue just as Harriet felt the tell-tale signs of blood leaking from her nose. "Your nose is bleeding again."
Harriet sighed, somewhat fed up of the calamity which was her life. Was it too much to ask for the vaguest sense of normalcy? "I really hadn't guessed," she muttered grumpily, scowling as her mother hurried over then, an almost ever present concern scrawled across her face. "Hey, Mom," she mumbled, voice sounding weird rather than scary thanks to her obstructed nose.
"Again?" her mother murmured, taking over tissue holding duty from Laurel and bodily carrying her away to the nearest bench. She was annoyingly small for six-year-old, and that time around she didn't have malnutrition or the Dursleys to blame. Though she supposed there was a small, tiny part of her which liked being carried. The Dursleys had never done anything of the sort with her – only precious Diddydums had the right to be carried. Harriet wasn't Diddydums though she was probably blonder than him those days. "I think it might be best if I take Harriet home," she said, glancing at Laurel and Alexander's mom – whose name Harriet still had no idea of despite having met her over an hour or so ago.
"Seems like that might be a good idea," Laurel and Alexander's mother said, which was ultimately how Harriet found herself shipped back home after a short, fun trip to an archery range of her friends' choosing. Wisely, she chose not to linger on the musing about them possibly being half-siblings, more so because they had come up in her visions. Normal people didn't tend to come up in her visions all that much. Normal people certainly didn't tend to be devoured in the woods by monsters supposedly from myth and legend either. Harriet wasn't normal, and she had a horrible feeling her friends weren't either. Not that she was sure if they knew that much yet.
It wasn't like there was a Hogwarts or whatever the American School had been called around to teach them whatever it was they needed to know.
::
The familiar black train was a sight for sore eyes, or so Harriet thought to herself as she dreamt of that place and that being who always sat opposite her. Dark eyes stared at her, a smile curving at his lips as he spied her there. "Hello, darling," he purred, ever amused at her very presence there and in that world. "Having fun?"
"Not particularly," Harriet mumbled, staring at her knees rather than him. It was easier and safer than staring into those eyes which seemed so ancient and dark. Like a void, and Harriet didn't want to look into the abyss. "Why are you so determined to not let my father find me?" she asked, gaze flickering up from her knees for the barest of seconds.
He pouted, face unbecoming of the terror he was capable of evoking, and yet that carefree expression didn't quite meet his eyes. "Can I not simply just find it funny to watch him run around like a headless chicken?"
She shook her head. "That isn't everything," she said, a creeping, insidious feeling slithering down her spine at that. "At least I don't think that, and these days I'm pretty good at telling truth from lie," she stated, chewing on her lip and daring to meet that heavy gaze if only for a few seconds. "What do I need to know?"
"Right," he spoke. "I suppose this is a conversation we would have had eventually, little oracle," he murmured, shaking his head. "There was a part of me, no matter how small, which wanted you to enjoy your first few years here in peace, though—"
"That ship came, went, sailed, and sunk when I was in the womb," Harriet muttered bitterly, her longing for normalcy ever coming to nip at her heels. She could still vividly remember the first death of a hero she had seen whilst she'd been in the safety of her mother's womb. The first warning of the unordinary life which was waiting for her. The same warning she had ignored like a fool. Nothing could ever be normal for her.
"Bitter little bean, are you not?" he said, laughing at that, ignorant to the way it ignited the precarious flames of her all too fickle temper. Ever did she have a short fuse when it came to visions and death. "To be fair, I hardly had too much control over whose child you were born as, but do you not think that it is some delectable irony…? A girl whose life was controlled by a prophecy is born with the ability of prophecy…" he trailed off for a moment. "By the way, I must say; you have some of the most interesting facial expressions." His face changed in the blink of an eye, from amused to deadly serious, and it was like a sucker punch of realisation and reminder to the gut. "There are precious few who would pull a face before me as if they are about to punch me in the hopes of breaking my nose…"
Her jaw clenched, and Harriet swallowed back her irritation as best she could, ever reminded that the being in front of her was indulging her. The reality was he could crush her like a bug whenever he so wished.
"I have told you before but you are currently the only arbiter of fate in existence," he said, the words vaguely ringing a bell in the recesses of her mind. "Surely you can put that moderately big brain of yours to use and come up with some ideas from that very statement?" One pale eyebrow raised, dark eyes looking at her intently as if the answer was dangled before her on a bright red string.
Harriet frowned, playing his words over and over in her mind for a couple of moments before the answer hit her like a sledgehammer to the face. "Currently," she blurted out, brain working overtime to slot the pieces of the puzzle into place. "I am currently the only 'arbiter of fate' or whatnot in existence… but that doesn't mean I am the only one ever…"
A bright smile curled at his lips. "Correct!" he sung. "However, there is something you should be well aware of, given your current existence – that being that not everyone, not every single one of my kind, are fond of arbiters of fate."
She blinked at that, a frission of fear trickling down her spine at the hard look in his eyes, a dawning sensation of dread building up in her stomach. Something which told her she wouldn't like what he was about to say.
"Here," he said, reaching across the aisle to prod her forehead with one finger.
Her vision swam with gold, and Harriet reared back at the sight of a small mound of corpses which vanished in mere seconds, the sight of the green-lit train carriage coming back into view. "Huh," she mumbled, throat turning dry because there was something that all of those corpses had in common. "Were… those the past arbiters of fate?" she asked, somehow praying that the wild conclusions her mind was coming to as she tied the threads of clues together were somehow terribly wrong.
"Yes," he answered, face solemn for once as he looked at her frankly.
"They were all killed…" Harriet mumbled, hands shaking as the truth of why the being before her was concealing her from her father suddenly hammered in home. "Prophecy and archery…" she said, recounting two of her father's abilities – because every single arbiter of fate he had shown her had been done in by arrow wounds.
"It is not your father specifically," he told her, a soft sigh escaping him. "Like the Fates, once your father believed that it was right to kill those who could warp fate. However, much like the Fates, over time he began to hate some of the fates shown to him, especially those concerning his children and more often than not, his lovers too. Though I suppose the Fates – those old biddies – got a bit bored of the predetermined future and thought that letting the arbiters run wild would be more entertaining and fun. Your father was slightly less concerned with the entertainment bit, for obvious reasons…"
"Then why—"
"Because it is not your father alone who decides things – rather that is somewhat down to your grandfather, and he cares little for the lives other than sometimes, perhaps, the ones he sires directly himself. Arrogant, prideful little lightning brat indeed… so prone to blaming others, sometimes for things beyond their control…"
Harriet paused, her mouth feeling dry, the weight of the realisation about what she was and the possible consequences coming to hit home then. And how terribly alike her apparent grandfather was to some of the denizens of the Wizarding World whom she'd loathed with a passion.
"Honestly, some simply do not understand the joy of chaos, the unpredictability of a spanner thrown in the works, and how very interesting that is as opposed to simply watching predestined threads unravel in a boring, predictable manner…" He clicked his tongue. "They have no taste. Far too straight laced, in my humble opinion."
A sob of laughter escaped her. "You're the furthest thing from humble," she muttered, a puddle of dread building in her stomach then at the thought of what she would have to hide. Of what would happen should her father find her and then find out about what she was… She swallowed thickly. "So you're hiding me from my father so he doesn't decide to… end my existence… and I'm still somehow supposed to cause chaos and provide you with entertainment…"
He tapped at his remarkably hairless chin. "Your father's hand would likely be stayed by the fact you are his child," he said. "Besides… it is not particularly difficult to avoid being ousted for that which you are. In fact, you are at a greater advantage because you are an oracle – and that is yet another reason your father would allow no harm to come to you. You are no blind arbiter. You see the future and the strings. As long as you do not change too much fated future – for instance, that of a prophecy – in front of others of my kind besides your father then you should be fine."
"A prophecy…?" she mumbled, chewing on her lip, thinking of what she had spoken earlier that day.
"A prophecy given by one other than yourself, and a prophecy heard by too many others," he elaborated, smiling secretively at her. "You can save those twins of yours without fear of being exposed to all bar your father."
"My… father," she echoed, nerves coming to eat away at her stomach once more. Perhaps before that very dream she might have looked forwards to finally meeting with him. After that conversation though, that was another story entirely. How was she supposed to meet with someone who had killed others like her before – someone who would kill her for simple existing had she not been his daughter?
She was tired of being hated for something she couldn't control. There was nothing more tiring and frustrating than that. Her jaw clenched. It wasn't like she had wanted to be born there in the first place. A scowl curled at her lips. It wasn't like she could change the fact that she existed and that she wanted to live a long life in that world. Her hands curled into fists. She was tired of having to prove herself right – of having to prove that she deserved to live in a world which had once loved her and cursed her in a single breath. She was tired of sheeple and those who so reverently believed in an absolute justice which was never supposed to fail – that it was fine to blame a child for another's crimes, or for crimes they had yet to commit in that very case.
"Do you truly think your father does not look out for his children?" he asked, tilting his head and smiling slyly. "Had it not been for the fact I am shrouding you, then he would already be watching his darling, pandemic-causing child from afar… or possibly have dragged you off to camp for training lest you cause more of the population to perish."
Harriet flinched at that reminder of what she had done – and what she couldn't take back.
"He watches the twins from time to time, you know," he said, shifting topic fast enough that she actually felt the sting of whiplash as she tried to keep up. "Do try to stay… what was that phrase again? Ah, under the radar, if you could please, at least while you are around the pair of them. Otherwise he might just grow a bit too curious about who is hiding you and why."
Harriet blinked blankly.
"No more arrows which curve to hit your target, please, darling?"
"Oh," she mumbled. "I'll, um, try?"
"Also, do try not to cause another pandemic," he remarked so very flippantly, and Harriet was ever reminded that was something she could seemingly do at the drop of a hat. Not that she ever wanted that to happen again. "I did say that only an arbiter of fate could cause such chaos, yet you have been rather lucky in the fact that it was written off by that little lightning brat as a freak occurrence from a very powerful child of your father. They do happen from time to time, missed possible outcomes, and, well, the fates of mortals… they do tend to be more flexible, you see. Oftentimes the future isn't quite as fixed as people believe it, and sometimes a string can have multiple possible snipping points. You will likely see more and more of both possibilities and the ironclad fate – which really isn't so ironclad with you in the mix – as you grow."
"Okay," Harriet said glumly, thinking then on how she was supposed to suppress that not-magic within her. It wasn't like she had deliberately loosed it at the two schoolyard bullies. Yet if it actually somehow was anything like with accidental magic, then she was probably going to have to figure out her powers somehow. Train them, like how they had 'trained' and learnt at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Yet unlike at Hogwarts, there was no one around to teach her how to use her abilities in a safe and controlled manner.
"Good luck!" he remarked, waving at her from across the carriage, and perhaps it would have been a sweet gesture if not for the smirk which crossed his face only moments later. "You will need it!"
Harriet blinked listlessly and found herself staring at the smooth ceiling of her room then, waking up feeling almost like she hadn't rested in the first place. "Wonderful," she muttered, feeling oddly numb at the amount of information which had been dumped into her lap. She pressed her palms to her eyes, hiding her eyes, feeling as though she was about to break down and cry. Tears never came, her eyes seemingly have dried up after the far too many tears shed over the visions which had haunted her far too much. "Just wonderful," she mumbled, still pondering over what exactly she was supposed to feel after learning all that on top of trying to deal with the deaths she saw and the deaths she had already caused.
::
She kept her head down as best she could from then on, aiming for blues and reds rather than the gold when she went for archery with Laurel and Alexander, attributing her first better shots as simply beginners luck. It was for the best, truly. It wasn't like she wanted to catch the attention of her father. It wasn't like she needed it, seeing as she had been coping just fine without him or any form of paternal love.
Dimly, Harriet despised the fact that she registered that last thought as a lie. She could almost hear a snarky voice in the back of her head telling her how very pathetic it was to be unable to lie to herself, thanks to what could only be one of her father's more subtle, passive abilities. It wasn't like she had been any good at judging between truth and lie before she had been born into that weird world. Musing then on what other abilities her father had, she lay back, staring at the darkening blue sky outside her curtains.
Gold swam in her vision, ever telling that she was no longer seeing the world around her. Golden eyes glinted, a smile appearing on the lips of an older her. Little things which looked like golden fireflies flittered around her, sparkling like little drops of sunlight. The scene changed in the blink of an eye, a dark-haired teenager screaming at something until it crumbled into ash.
Pain brought her back to the present, a throbbing in her temple, and she wondered then about the possibility of controlling her visions or at least what she saw. Because she'd wanted to know about her father's abilities just then. Somehow she thought what she saw regarding that was no coincidence. As to whether she could replicate that specific sort of vision was another question entirely. "Ugh," she muttered, wincing as she grabbed her head, already feeling the tell-tale trickle from her nose which certainly wasn't snot. There was a heavy metallic smell in her nostrils as it was, and it was becoming far, far too commonplace.
Her mother had terrible timing as per usual. "Harriet!"
Harriet scowled, already holding a tissue to her bloody nose as her mother came in and made a fuss of her. It wasn't that she hated it – disliked it, perhaps, yes – but her mother cared for her and she was alive to boot. In that way oftentimes she hated herself that much more whenever she was so grumpy with her mother. It wasn't like her mother was shutting her in a cupboard out of sight and our of mind.
"One nosebleed every now and then I could understand," her mother said, pacing about the room, looking at her with those blue eyes narrowed in worry. "I think it's about time we went to a doctor about this, sweetheart. They're too regular—"
"No point," Harriet grumbled, cutting her off before she could continue on that line of thought.
"Harriet, this is serious," she said, blue eyes narrowing that much more. "The body has a way of telling us when something is wrong, and constant nosebleeds are one of them!" Fingers dug at her shoulders, clutching and pleading with her to understand.
Yet therein lay the problem – she understood too much. She understood what was the cause of her nosebleeds. After all, they always came after she exerted herself in a vision somehow, whether it be by seeing too many of them in a short time or by trying to force herself to see something in particular, it seemed. "Would a doctor really be able to help?" she asked, staring determinedly at her kneecaps then.
"Of course—why wouldn't—"
"Because the problem stems from my father at the end of the day," she said, not bothering to watch as that shut her mother up before she could even blink. "Do you think a human would be able to figure out what's wrong with me?" she asked, knowing just by the deathly silence which had fallen that she was somehow barking up the complete right tree.
Her father wasn't human.
"I… inherited talents from my father, you know," she mumbled, almost losing her nerve right then and there. Yet she hadn't been a Gryffindor for nothing, no matter how lost and confused her reincarnation had made her. "But you were already aware of that possibility, weren't you?"
Her mother's lips clicked shut with a soft pop, that damning silence falling once more for a few moments. "How long have you known?" she asked, voice heavy and full of dread.
"Does it matter?" she questioned, finally lifting her golden eyes her mother couldn't see to meet the blue ones everyone seemed to think she had. There had been clues presented to her ever since she'd been trapped in that once blissful safety of her mother's womb.
"Yes," she said, voice still heavy, eyes flickering about the room nervously as though something might spawn from the shadows and consume the pair of them whole. "The more you know, the more danger you'll be in."
The statement rang out as pure, honest, terrified truth, and Harriet swallowed thickly. "I don't know who or what my father is," she murmured softly. "All I know are some of the things he has control over…"
"Archery," her mother answered. "When… well, that doesn't matter—your father told me about what a possible child of his could be capable of. His… children… you… are generally exceptional archers and healers." She sighed deeply, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. "It might be a shock for you to hear, but you have other half-siblings."
"I know," Harriet said, biting her tongue to stop herself from saying I've watched too many of them die.
Her mother's shoulder's sunk, a heavy weight resting on them, and Harriet could only shift where she sat upon her bed. "I don't quite understand how you figured it all out…" she spoke then, sounding so very lost.
Harriet felt her lips pop open, tongue curling as if to form the words, only for her to remain quiet as she wondered then – about what her mother had been through, raising a child like her. Loving a weird child like her. It was more than the Dursleys ever had, and it wasn't like her mother was dead like the Potters had been. She could actually talk with her mother. There was no being shunned or shoved off into her room or cupboard in the hopes of never seeing her and her weirdness. It was a normal mother-daughter relationship. And normal children talked about things with their parents, didn't they? "It's not just archery and healing," she blurted out, making her mother freeze before she could head back out to start dinner.
"I know," her mother said. "There's music, as well. It's why you have a natural inclination—"
"Plague – disease," Harriet stated, stomach twisting into a tight knot as she spoke aloud the rare inclination she had. "That's something else my father has control over."
"Harriet?" The look of confusion and slowly dawning horror and realisation made her stomach twist itself into tighter knots. There was the underlying question of how? How do you know that, Harriet?
A soft burst of miserable laughter escaped her. "Didn't you ever find it strange how a pandemic originated from an elementary school?" she asked, watching as her mother shook her head – but not in answer to her question. Rather, it was a headshake of denial which was something Harriet was all too familiar with. Like mother like daughter, or so it seemed.
"That's impossible," her mother said, a quiver in her words as she spoke. "You're too young to do something like that… I might not know everything, but I know that those… like you grow stronger with age. To spread a disease so contagious it becomes a pandemic… that's beyond you, Harriet."
"You're wrong, you know," Harriet stated with dead certainty. It wasn't like the being on the train would ever probably lie to her. It wasn't like his words had registered as a lie. "I was there, and I felt it when Cathy and Gabe started trying to bully me and my friends. I know what happened, impossible though it might seem to you. Think of it this way," she explained, images of herself but older flickering in and out of gold-tinted sight. "If this is what I'm capable of now, then how terrifying do you think I'll be when I'm older…"
"Harriet—"
"Don't!" she hissed, hands curling into fists. "Stop trying to lie and say I didn't! I know what I've done! Don't invalidate that," she muttered. "Don't try to convince me when you have no idea what went down that day… what's been going on ever since the day I was born… or technically before that… What I felt stir in my chest at that pathetic attempt at bullying was real…" She panted, mildly out of breath from her rant, wind suddenly taken out of her sails as she sat there, teeth gritted.
Her mother gritted her teeth as well, running a hand through her hair. "I see," her mother muttered after a terse silence. "If you truly think yourself capable of causing a plague at your age, then I suppose I might as well give you the option."
Harriet blinked. "Option?" she echoed.
"There's a camp – for kids like you," her mother said. "Before I… well, before I had you, your father told me all about it. It's generally a summer camp, especially for your father's children, though you can stay all year."
"A camp?" she asked, brow furrowing before something occurred to her. "What's it called?"
Blue eyes blinked. "Camp Half-Blood."
Harriet frowned. "Oh," she mumbled. "It's not Camp Lagoon then…"
"You could start going there from this coming summer… from now until you turn eighteen," her mother explained. "There they could teach you how to control your abilities… and your father might even take notice of you…"
"Oh," she mumbled once more, intrigue suddenly fading at the mention of her father's attention. That was something she was aiming to avoid for a good while. Until she ultimately changed the twins' fates. "No." She shook her head. "Maybe in a few years, but not now."
"If you insist you caused a pandemic at the tender age of five—"
Harriet ground her teeth together. "Not yet," she hissed – because if she went to Camp Half-Blood then obviously she'd miss out on Camp Lagoon, and that was something which couldn't happen. If avoiding her father's attention wasn't enough of a reason, then that was. "There's something I have to do first."
"What could be more important than going to camp?"
"Saving lives," Harriet grumbled, mouth moving on its own before she realised it, chanting out that terrible, horrible prophecy she had made to the twins.
"Sun's twins tread in forest beneath the moon,
Twilight's hour within the fated lagoon,
A sister and brother's final breath,
The scissors snip to a certain death."
The silence which fell was deafening, the look of dawning horror on her mother's face telling her she knew of the curse she had inherited from her daddy dearest. "Harriet," her mother whispered. "Oh, Harriet…"
"I'm going to change it," she murmured, leaning into the hug her mother pulled her into. It was warm and soft, like a snuggly blanket in the depths of winter. "I've seen far too many of my possible siblings die." Golden eyes narrowed, a slow burning fire of promise hidden deep within them. "They're not allowed to die anymore."
