Chapter One: A Sister
"I was quiet, but I was not blind." –Jane Austen (Fanny Price: Mansfield Park)
Harlona Stark is born is the midst of a bloody war. She has Minisa Whent's green eyes and Caitlyn Tully's copper hair. The coloring is the only thing she gets from her Tully blood. The sharp look from her father's father, the pale rice white skin, the catish slant of her eyes. Even the sad sullen look on her face, as if she knows the world she had been born in.
Cold and alone.
She is born in the middle of the night with a scream tearing from her throat. Her brother comes soon after and only then does she quiet. Harlona and Robb are the heirs of Winterfell and sure to do brilliant things.
Her mother has her for all of three weeks.
Then she is gone.
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Harlona Potter was born in the midst of a bloody war. She is said to have her father curls and her mother's coloring. She is said to have have his pureblood bones and her pale skin.
Her parents have her for all of a year.
Then they are dead and she is whisked away.
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Freak is a small girl with a bony body and bruised skin. She knows pain and starvation and fear. She knows the burn of the sun and the thwack of leather on pale skin and the tear of a jeweled ring across gaunt cheeks. She knows the smell of blood and the ache of cracked ribs and the sizzling burn and the smoky smell of burning skin.
But she doesn't know her name.
She is four years old and she can't remember the last time she cried. She is four years old and she can't remember the last time she ate. She is four years old when she learns to fly.
Cousin was watching Tv in the living room. The sounds float down the hallway and into her cupboard. The screech and caw of the birds envelopes her as she rests her aching back against the broken springs of her cot. Freak listens intently as the speaker described the mating call of Wren's. She imagined what it would be like to fly as the strange warmth she harbors in her chest slowly furls outward and past the house and up towards the sky. Wafting over the very bird the man on Tv was talking about.
The wind is cold beneath her feathers. Cold and cutting but soft on her hollow bones. She swirls and dances on the wind currents as she cuts down toward the earth and to her nest.
She trills, loud and sharp and high as she comes closer and closer to the ground. Then suddenly she pulls up, and whips through the air as her brown feathers tremble.
She squawks in delight and goes faster and faster and faster before finally fluttering down on the tall tree where she built her nest. She shakes out her feather and plucks out the bugs and dirt as she settles on the three lovely eggs nestled in the moss.
She pecks at the small pile of bugs and seeds she had collected and began to eat. The crunch of the beetle comes with the slippery feeling of each of it legs falling past her beak.
She gives one last trill as the sun dips below the horizon and settles to sleep.
Freakbird opens her eyes with a inaudible gasp. Clutching at her chestfeathers in the panic of what am I? She brings her arm wings close to her mouthbeak as she remembers the crunch of bugs and the whip of wind and the three warm eggs beneath her.
Freak is four years old when she learns of magic.
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Freak learns her name is Harlona when she is five years old and nursing a bleeding cheek. She is Harlona Potter and she is an orphan. Her mother was a whore and her father was useless. They died when she was 15 months old while they were drinking and driving.
She should be happy Aunt took her in and put a roof over her head and clothes on her back and food in her stomach. It's only fair that she earns her keep. Freak is Harlona at school and she isn't allowed to tell people about happens at home and she isn't allowed to get better grades than Cousin, and she isn't allowed to be strange in any way.
Freak learns cousin is called Dudley and Aunt is called Petunia and Uncle is called Vernon. And she is called Harlona Potter. Her name, her name, her name.
[Freak - or is it Harlona? - is cold. Cold cold cold.]
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Heat. Slit pupils watch her pray silently. Nary a sound or movement. Still. The food walks on four paws and scuttles around with its fast beating heart.
A thin tongue slips past a pointed mouth to taste the air. She slithers up slowly, making sure that her pray can't see her move. She keeps her curves wide to muffle the sound.
Her prey tries to dart away but it's too late. She is already there. It squeaks as she wraps her body tight, she can taste the terror and the panic. She revels in it. It's bones crack but she doesn't stop. It lungs collapse and it's heat begins to slow. But she doesn't stop.
She can taste the sweet waft of fresh death.
Her food is ready. Blood. Bone. Full.
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The warmth in her chest slithers past her heart like the snake. And flys through her ribs like the bird, and it travels along her bones up her arms to swell between her burnt palms. Cool relief comes as the pain fades away. She can feel thousands of tiny legs crawling through the warmth and along her skin. Bugs, beetles, spiders.
She is so tired.
Drift wood sinks into her skin, the fire bursts blue under her fingers as the sea salt burns such a beautiful bluegreen under the torrent of her flames. She is black and yellow and green and aching from all the bruises painting her skin. It's been three days since she last ate, a week since she last bathed, a month since she last smiled on the school roof with paws as her hands and snout as her mouth.
[Freak, freak, freak, freak, freak, freak-]
Something in the small hut on the sea sounds faintly of knocking. But the waves crash against the rotten wooden walls and then all she feels-
-water in her lungs and her fins washing through the waves and the bubbles that fall from her gills. There is a squirm of her throat but not yet full. She sweeps past the coral and speeds along the current to her feast. The fish die between her teeth and the blood floated from her mouth to stain the water red with her kill. She can't stop moving- she can't stop moving. Stillness means death, dead like the feast in her stomach and the water in her gills and just li-
Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock -
The watch chimes to eleven fifty-nine. Her name is Harlona, not freak, not snake, not bird or bug or shark. She is Harlona who is nearly eleven, Harlona who trembles around her driftwood fire and who has hunger eating through her body and tearing through her stomach. Not shark, not shark, not shark.
Blood is strong on her tongue, and bones in her teeth and scales cutting the tough top of her massive jaws, water bubbles, air in her body, faster faster faster, teeth sinking into tender meat-
Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick -
Her fingers are covered in dust, and highlighted by the blue fire, is a parody of a birthday cake created on the soaking floor with her blood stained fingers and tears streaked cheeks. She is eleven years old and hasn't eaten in three days, hasn't showered in a week, hasn't smiled in a month, and has only known her name for six years. Only a minute ago had that tally been five.
She is Harlona Potter. She was born July 31st 1980. Her parents were James and Lily Potter. Her father was a drunk who turned her mother into a whore and got themselves killed in a car crash when she was only one. They were freaks just like her and there was no hope and in the end she would continue the cycle that her mother started and-
Boom - Boom - Boom.
The hut moves. Swaying with the ocean and rock and thunder. She huddles near the almost dry sofa. The fire flicks out, sea salt flames withering to die as the plastic chip bag melted and the wood dampened from the drip drip drip of the rain falling down the chimney.
She stills.
Breaths out and focuses all her attention on noise and sound and the movements of the wooden monstrosity sitting in the middle of the black endless ocean. Vernon snores, Petunia rolls, the stairs creak, the roof bows, Dudley huffs and puffs and his lungs fight to supply his heart with enough oxygen to survive the night. She is calm, still, waiting and watching and lurking in the underbrush and the tree branches. She can almost feel the hiss on her lips and the fur on her back and the twitching of her ears. She is familiar with the cats of Wisteria Walk.
Boom - Boom - Boom.
The door bursts off the rusted hinges. Falling just as the lightening strikes with deafening thunder and a shadow looms over the small girl painted black and blue.
Then she is a Witch, A half-blood, a savior and the girl-who-lived.
A eleven year old in a world too big. A eleven year old with the weight of that world on her thin bruised shoulders.
She is eleven years old, and the war begins.
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[Freak - or is it Harlona? Is it Harry? Or Potter? Girl and beast and witch and whore. Demon's Spawn and Hell Child? Ungrateful Wench? - is cold. Cold cold cold.
Snake and bird and spider and shark and cat and dog and- it's never enough. She aches and she's empty and she's always always always alone.
She's never once been human.]
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They are horrid, dull, obsessed people.
She looks at them and feels nothing.
She looks at Petunia Dursley, her mother's only sibling, who was supposed to braid her hair, steady her hands and teach her to navigate a man's world, and feels nothing.
She looks at Vernon Dursley, uncle by marriage, who was supposed to show her how to wield a drill, and handle her money and teach her how to rise up when everyone wants to throw you down, and feels nothing.
She looks at Dudley Dursley, the closest cousin she will get with her blood, who was supposed to fight her and join her and push her to be greater, who was supposed to fight the ones who hurt her, who was supposed to bicker and tease at the dinner table, who was supposed to race her across the swing set with wobbling young feet, and...feels...nothing.
She's ten years old and- [She. Feels. Nothing.]
And it lingers in something so cold it burns.
[Something so cold it burns and burns and burns until she feels like she is being eaten alive. Until all she feels is rot and and mold and the guts of spider friends mashed between her teeth.]
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Crack crack crack. Escape, break free, get out. Crack crack crack. Scrapping on her. Thump thumps thump. A flare of warmth and she curls her wings and legs closer to the warmth.
She is cold.
Crack crack crack
Escape, break free, get out. Fly. Fly. Fly. Eat. Eat. Eat. Fire. Fire. Fire.
The egg breaks under her claws. Shattered in the spread of her wings. She is free. The world is bright, she breaths and a sleek snout flares. Blood and bone and meat and blood and food. She devours, still empty, still empty, still empty.
Fire.
She tears her head at the heat her yet not her throat and sees herself, curled copper hair, pale skin and lightening bolt scar and-
And- milky white eyes- her yet not her. Her yet not dragon - not human. Her yet- yet-
She blinks to awareness as her head bounces up from the Hut's wooden floor, seeing only pale eyes and hair and skin. A smirk, a smile, a fearfulness in the grey eyes staring back at her through Hagrid's small hut window. [Her yet not her- not dragon- not human.]
"Malfoy!"
He races away from the hut at Hagrid's yell, and back towards the castle filled with people who hate her and watch her and see everyone but her.
She turns back to the dragon clawing at the wooden table inside the wooden hut. Can almost feel fire in her throat and emptiness in her stomach and cold in her bones. Her yet not her. She shivers, it racks up her body and rises goosebumps from temple to toe.
[What would happen if she never turned back to Harlona?]
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"There is only power, and those too weak to seek it."
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She stares at her yet not her sleeping on the tiny bed in the tiny room from the tiny cage she was trapped in. There is the smell of blood in the air, fear and angry and desperation. She fluttered her wings against the cold trap around her and clacks her beak on the not food.
She turns sharp golden eyes towards the sky, she can hear the scuttles of the mice in the flowers, the buzzing of crickets in the grass and the croak of frogs in the flowers her hatchling digs around in during the day.
She longs to fly, to stretch the wings her hatchling loves and to bring back a feast of mice so her hatchling can eat as well. She moves her feet, and suddenly she is swinging, back and forth, back and forth, her body rattles as the cage crashes into the barrier between her and the sky.
She falling and can not catch her self because of her trapped wings. She caws and caws and ca-
Harry blinks awake with a need in her chest and panic in her heart and a caw in her ears. Hedwig. She falls to the floor with barely a sound, crouching like the cats had taught her and light like she learned from the bird. She tenderly picks up the cage trapping her beautiful familiar. Running her hand over the lock with a whisper. It clicks softly and falls into her hand. Hedwig hadn't flown since they had arrived from Hogwarts nearly a month ago.
Harry would do anything to sate this need thrumming across her ribs and to her heart. She carefully smoothed Hedwig's salt and pepper wings and slowly slides up the window. Pausing for a moment to listen, creaks of the air conditioner, the pattering of the ice maker. Everyone in the house was sleeping.
The warmth, the magic, slithers from her center to pass her heart like the snake. And flys through her ribs like the bird, and it travels along her bones up her arms to swell at her fingertips, the metal bends at her wish like butter under a hot knife. She breathes in the fresh cold air, taking it deep in her lungs and holding it there when the dizziness begins to overwhelm her. Only then does she stop pushing the warmth to burn. The bars are parted only big enough to allow Hedwig to jump out.
She watches the beloved owl fly away, wishing and wishing and wishing to join her.