Harrietta Shelby's P.O.V

The muggle telephones in 1920s England were mindbogglingly confusing, as if the thing itself wasn't sure it was a phone at all and not a radio or candlestick or some strange amalgamation of both that should never have been created. The base was round and flat, a dial pad sitting on its face in a brass circlet. The rest rose up from the centre, thin and long with a coned head at top that looked a bit like a daffodil, and a fork on the side balancing another cone at the side attached by a cord. For a moment Harry sort of understood Arthur Weasley's fascination with Muggle innovations until, of course, frustration had started to seep into her wonderment.

It had taken Harrietta Shelby an embarrassingly long time to figure out which end was the ear piece and which one the mouth, and it took her even longer to get across to an operator to put her over to the Grand Birmingham hotel and for those to finally hook her up to Hermione's room. By the time the line had clicked and the static of a breath on the other end came through, Harry had already been sitting at Ada's phone in her study for a good twenty bloody minutes.

Patronus calls, which Harry had used when she had slipped away from the bookies earlier that morning with the excuse of using the phone, were much more practical and far less time and sanity consuming.

"Please tell me this is Hermione Granger?"

The chuckle that came through the phone dropped Harry's shoulders in relief.

"Who else would it bloody be you nitwit?"

"You'd be surprised. Phones here are mental, 'Mione. I've had to speak to four other people before reaching you and I couldn't hear the first two because I was speaking into the fuckin' headset and listening through the bloody mouth bit."

"No? Harrietta Shelby forced into socialisation? The travesty."

"Oh fuck off."

The line buzzed with her own laughter, the strains and stresses of the day slipping from her body like steam rises from hot water. Best friends did that, you see. Made things light enough to float.

"So what do I owe the pleasure for this titillating phone call beyond reason for you to moan your indignation?"

Harry eyed the study around her, the soft dark woods and the opaque green paint and the thick drapes on the window near the closed door. Through that closed door and down a hall and a large set of steps, Ada and Polly Shelby were making tea in a kitchen, perhaps with little Karl sitting in a high seat babbling.

Family.

If the phones were strange here, then the concept of Harry having family that didn't want to chuck her in a cupboard or make her sleep outside in the rain or, you know, prick her with sewing pins and curse the very ground she walked on was bloody insane to her.

"We're still in London. We won't be heading back until later when Tommy and his brothers get back. Polly said they've been waylaid at a bakery or something, and by the time we pull into Birmingham it's going to be the early hours of the morning. Pol said I could crash at hers, so I won't be back at the hotel until tomorrow. We can meet up in the morning if you want?"

"Yeah that's great. I have a few things left at the bank to set up and we should be ready to roll."

"You sorted the papers, then?"

"Got them all stacked and prepared. Birth certificates for me, school records and awards for us both, bank accounts ready to transfer money in after we both sign the agreements which we can do tomorrow when we meet up. Everything will look above board if someone has the inclination to peer into our pasts. Nothing untoward to see, just two girls born in 1906, both fostered in a home for girls, went to a private boarding school in Scotland, and wa-la. Two very normal, very muggle existences."

That was when the guilt, hot and slick like an oil spill in her gut, came settling in her bowels. Here Harry sat in a softly cushioned chair, dinner cooking below the floorboards of this nicely decorated study, warm and dry, and she'd left Hermione to deal with fixing their history-

"Don't."

Hermione barked through the phone.

"I know you, I know you're currently pulling that wounded puppy face I can't stand, so don't. It was a few conjured records; a pair of transfigured photos and documents and a couple of phone calls over in ten minutes. I was done in an hour and spent a lovely afternoon sipping gin and cucumber cocktails at the poolside out back. There's nothing to feel embarrassed about enjoying yourself for once, Harry. You don't need to be the one at the helm twenty-four seven."

Is that what this was? Was she enjoying herself? Harry couldn't remember the last time she had enjoyed anything beyond being on a broom in the sky, and even that peace had been ephemeral and fleeting, tinged with the adrenaline of do or get splattered across the pitch. Petunia and Vernon had been vindictive enough to ensure her childhood lacked that, enjoyment, anything that made it a little brighter and less covered in cupboard mould and bacon grease fat and the feeling of a belt buckle being walloped across her hands when she burned Dudley's toast. And then Tom Riddle and the war had come along and-

Harry had never really had time to just… Sit in a cushioned chair in a nicely decorated place with her feet up and she… didn't know what to make of it. This sudden complacency she felt, peace and silence that settled across her valley of a war-torn mental state peppered with childhood pain. Being without the threat of if she didn't move now then something bad was going to happen.

The truth was, as pathetic as it sounded, Harrietta Shelby didn't know how to relax. Perhaps that was why she was ringing Hermione up now and not down stairs with a cup of tea when she had only spoken to her that morning. Maybe she was waiting for the axe to fall, something to go wrong because something always went wrong.

"Tell me what they're like then?"

Hermione brokered, likely sensing Harry's rocketing mood, and Harry hummed across the line, flicking her thumb nail across the cord by her ear.

"My-"

She winced and quickly cut herself off. Harry isn't used to employing the word dad or father, particularly to someone still alive. It feels too… Close. Too private. Too vulnerable. Much too personable for people who had only met less than twenty-four hours ago.

"Tommy is fine. The Shelby's are… fine."

"Fine?"

Hermione huffed from the other side of the phone incredulously with a chuckle.

"Come on, you have to give me more than fine."

"They're muggles. I… Tommy's a business man. He owns a betting shop in Birmingham and some property. He has three brothers, Arthur, John and Finn, and a sister called Ada, the woman I'm named after. There's another woman called Aunt Polly, but I'm not quite sure if she really is an Aunt, whose Aunt she is, or where she falls on the family tree exactly. Ada has a kid called Karl. They both live in London."

Static, fixed and deafeningly silent.

"Right… Well, I suppose that was something."

Harry grumbled.

"Well what do you bloody want from me, eh?"

"Some flavour beyond a textbook paragraph, maybe? Merlin Harry, you've just met your birth family for the first time and you sound like your rattling potion ingredients off Snape's blackboard."

That was where Harry and Hermione split ways, the largest way. Hermione was a girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, for friends and house elves alike, who wasn't afraid to say how and when she felt what she felt.

Harry respected it, truly. She just couldn't emulate. She'd always been a lot more reserved, less willing to speak the storms in her mind out of her mouth, less quicker to smile or laugh or cry. Only ever faster to throw a punch or a spell. She puts it down to their differing childhoods. Harry's cupboard where she'd be beaten black and blue for making a noise, for reminding people she existed, and Hermione's feather bed where she got her skimmed knees kissed when they were grazed.

Don't get her wrong, Harry doesn't blame Hermione for it. Fuck, she's thankful her best friend didn't have to live through the hell-scape of Petunia and Vernon and Tom fuckin' Riddle quite like Harry did. She's happy Ron and Hermione had at least eleven years prior to the shit hitting the fan, where their biggest worries were cavities and if Fred or George had put itching powder in their jumper again.

It just makes moments like these difficult, makes meeting people like Hermione half way nearly impossible, makes her feel like shit because she can't say what she really means to say.

That's what trauma did to a person. It wasn't a one-time deal. It didn't happen and then not happen. It's there. A part of yourself that you hate. It lingers in the back of the mind always, a shadow underfoot following, always fuckin' following, always looking for a way to trip you bloody up.

"I-…"

But Harry tries. Tries her best. Tries the little she can because she wants to be like Hermione, wants to know what relaxing feels like, wants to know what kissed knees and feathered beds make for sleeping dreams.

"Finn's the youngest. He's two years younger than myself which is… Odd. Feels fuckin' weird if I'm honest, having an uncle that has baby fat in his cheeks. Ada's nice. I think you'd like her. She makes a mean cuppa. Arthur and John seem fun in that reckless Gryffindor way. Polly's clearly the boss around here. You should see the fur coats she wears. The woman has style. Tommy is… Nice. I look a lot like him still."

Harry wrapped the cord around her thumb, tugging until the joint locked up in her hand.

"I think him and my… Lizzie had me young, you know? They mustn't have been a year older than myself now given how Tommy can't be older than thirty-something, and… Fuck, I can't imagine having a kid at my age. I don't… I don't blame them for how it turned out. Circe knows life isn't easy on the best of days and… I don't blame them."

A crackle, a creak.

"You don't blame them like you thought you might."

Harry shook her head despite knowing Hermione wouldn't see it.

"I didn't think I would come in here yelling and screaming if that's what you mean. But I thought I might have felt more…"

"Resentment?"

"Maybe. Perhaps… Bitter? I don't bloody know. I don't feel it, anyway. I'm just… Happy they seem happy. Happy they're still alive. Happy that they were-"

Far away from me, the curse that is my presence, and the war, and any chance of getting caught in the crossfire.

"Does that make any sense?"

Harry could hear Hermione snort from the other side of England.

"Of course it does, Harry. This… there's no rulebook here. Take the time you need. Feel what you have to feel, whether that's good or bad. Cry if you have to. Laugh if you want. Take your own space, and take your own time. Do whatever you want to do in your own way."

In your own way.

Yeah… Yeah, Harry could do that. Perhaps not in Hermione's heart-on-sleeve or Ron's open-book dance, but in her own stilted, sensitively inept way.

"So that's the Shelby's. What about your mother? What's she like?"

The cord around her thumb tugged, the little digit going cold and numb in its strangulation.

"Don't know."

"Don't know? What do you mean you don't know?"

"Haven't met her yet. She and Tommy… They're not together anymore. I don't think they've been together for a while now. Tommy said he'd take me to see her soon. Apparently she still lives in Birmingham."

Soon. Tommy had said soon, which wasn't really any time at all. It was a half-way guarantee, spoken in vacillation, a way to get a side-step in without looking like a side-step was being took. Harry would know. She'd used soon plenty of times in her life. Soon she would be out of the cupboard. Soon she would be back at Hogwarts. Soon Tom Riddle would leave her the hell alone. Soon the war would be over.

Sidesteps taken to outrun herself and the truth that it wasn't going to be soon at all.

Here though, here, there's not much room to dodge. Harry sees it for what it is. An escape of having to give anything concrete, anything binding. She doesn't know why Tommy felt the need to do it, perhaps him and her birth mother were viciously contemptuous of each other now. It wouldn't be the first time, or last, that old lovers turned fierce rivals.

Divorce, after all, was as old as bloody marriage.

Still it makes Harry wonder. Makes her think. Makes her… Worried.

And of course Hermione Jean Granger sees right through her too.

"There's something there you aren't saying."

Harry leaned back in her chair, head lolling on the rest to stair up at the ceiling, taking the phone with her. The plaster up there was spotless, pristine white. Harry hated the sight of it all the more for its cleanliness. She remembers how bad her hands ached after Petunia had made her scrub the skirting boards and doors with bleach and a sponge for hours, remembers the burns from the bleach because Petunia wouldn't let her wear gloves. Remembers-

Remembers too much of her fucked up childhood, and knows, bloody knows, that things and people that clean are always trying to hide something.

"I don't know… Tommy seemed… Hesitant when I asked after her. Polly and Ada appeared the same, reluctant to answer more than the bare minimum when I edged my bets with them earlier when we got back from the fish market. I just… Hope she's doing okay."

The line buzzed.

"I can try and find an address if you want? An Elizabeth Stark shouldn't be too hard to track down now that we know she once lived and might still be in Watery lane. That way we can pop over tomorrow when we meet up?"

Harry wavered on the phone, but it didn't take long to get over her momentary reservations. She hadn't jumped nearly a century into the past to be put off by nerves and worries of first meetings now.

"Yeah, if you can. Don't worry if you can't. I just want to make sure she's alright."

"I'm on it-"

The abrupt bout of three sharp knocks on the study door made Harry jump in her seat, cursing as a thick Birmingham accent came blustering underneath the cracks.

"Harrietta, you in there?"

Tommy.

Harry pulled the phone away from her face.

"One second!"

Sitting up straight in the seat, Harry swivelled anew.

"Gotta go, 'Mione. Tommy's back. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah. Meet me outside the museum at ten, and I'll try and find an address. Stay safe."

"You too."

Neither of the girls say goodbye. They'd had enough of them during the war.

Harrietta Shelby's P.O.V

Harry had just put the daffodil-cone-phone back on its bizarre hook when the study door opened with a low winded whine. Tommy came in as far as two steps allowed him, still in his coat and gloves. He must have come right up here as soon as he came through the front door.

"Dinner's waiting on the table."

Harry smiles and nods, pushes her chair out and stands. It's only as she's padding around the desk to head down stairs when she realizes her mistake. From her dip in the prawn barrel earlier, Ada had burrowed her a dress while hers dried on the line outside. It was a nice dress, cotton, light, blue and reached her calves. But she didn't have socks on, the ones that reached her knees. Her right leg was on show.

Tommy was looking right at it.

The scar on it was a nasty thing, perhaps the worst scar, of which she had many, that she housed. Rageful red and splashed up from foot, where it was worst leaving no skin untouched, to thigh where it thinned out in little bursts of thickened flesh. She'd gotten it from Bellatrix's vault, from the cursed cup that burned and kept multiplying. Ron had managed to get up on a dresser in there, but Hermione had been slower and closer to the Horcrux. Harry had thrown her up and over her shoulder, out of the way, but by the time she'd gotten Hermione from the line of fire she hadn't been able to do the same favour for herself.

Her leg had copped it from the black magic curse, and in the end it had been an option of either drop Hermione into the fuckin' fire and save herself, or hold as much as she could until they got the Horcrux under control.

As you can see, it had been no option at all.

"It looks a lot worse than what it actually is."

And because she's Harry, she doesn't know when to shut up.

"The nerve damage was minimal, really."

Sort of.

Harry winces, and Tommy's still looking at her leg, the leg Harry's fighting not to shove back around the desk to stop it from being seen, and she can't rightly tell what he's thinking in that face of his, behind those pale cool eyes. Disgust? Revulsion? Antipathy? It's hard to read a man like Tommy Shelby, and maybe finally Harry knew how everyone but Hermione felt around her.

"How did you get it?"

There's a note in his voice that Harry can't quite pick out from the heavy rope of his tone, a note she hasn't heard often in her life, a little strained but somehow delicate. Maddeningly, her first reaction is to tell the truth. Tell him about the wizarding world and the war and Tom Marvolo Riddle. Tell him about the lemon sherbet sweets and grandfatherly smiles Dumbledore had used to buy his child soldier's loyalty. Tell him about the stone and the wand and the fuckin' cloak.

She doesn't though.

One day she will, Harry thinks. One day she will need to. As family, as blood, the statute of secrecy doesn't extend to Tommy and the Shelby's. She could tell them everything right this minute-

She doesn't want to.

She really doesn't want to.

It's selfish certainly. She's under no false pretences about herself. Selfish and sad. The wizarding world had become something… Sour to Harry. Something forever linked with Riddle's red eyes, Remus's corpse on the rubble, with Sirius hand just out of reach and the cackle of Bellatrix's laughter and the blood of a child between Fenrir's teeth. What had once been so fuckin' magical to Harry, a whole other word in a castle in the Highlands, a chance out her cupboard and into the light-

It had become blood-soaked in war and death and fuckin' misery, and she can't think of that place anymore without thinking of what it had become, what it had cost her, what it had taken.

Her fuckin' life. Every drop of it until she had nothing but dust left.

So selfishly, greedily, she doesn't want that, those memories that keep her up at night and unable to relax in the day, touching what she had here. Something new and clean where she doesn't have blood on her hands and scars on her body and a broken soul in her chest. Where she didn't have to be The-Girl-Who-Lived or Undesirable N.1 but just Harry.

The girl she never got to be growing up.

"A house fire. I didn't get out fast enough."

It's the best way Harry can describe the war, and as close to the truth as she dared venture. A fuckin' house fire with her trapped inside, and there's nowhere to run, no firefighters coming to save her. It's all ablaze, the windows and the floorboards are caving in, so she digs into the bloody earth with her nails, digs down until she can't no more and her fingers are nubs, and hits a gas pipe she strikes in that final shock and the whole thing blows up in her face.

Tommy doesn't say anything for a long while, and fuck knows what that means. Harry thinks, maybe, he might be disappointed. She would have been too faced with what he was. If he ever truly thought she would find her way back to Watery Lane maybe he had been hoping for a girl with ribbons in her hair and freckles and hearts-on-sleeve.

Someone like Hermione. Poor bastard got Harry instead. Yeah, she'd be mightily disheartened too. Ask for a refund, probably.

Or maybe it's the ghosts talking in her head again, the ones Hermione call Lack and Of and Self-esteem. Old friends, those three.

"Does it still hurt?"

It's not the question Harry's expecting, and it throws her for a moment. No one had seemed to care if something hurt her before. Vernon and Petunia had gotten satisfaction out of her pain. Dumbledore had expected her to soldier through for the greater good. Tom-

Tom Riddle had just wanted to bash her brains in.

She's not used to people asking if she's hurt, only people telling her to pick herself up and finish the fuckin' war.

"Sometimes."

She says because she can't lie, never fully, not with the other scar on the back of her hand.

"When it's really warm out or I have a bath too hot. Makes 'em feel tight and prickly."

Tommy nods and tries to smile but it doesn't get very far on his face at all.

"No problem with warm weather in England, eh?"

Harry's answering smile does reach her face though as the tension breaks at the glib joke. And maybe that's why Tommy had said it, giving them both an out from the stifling heaviness of something big and black hanging above their heads.

Something big and black and worth sixteen years of history.

"If you think this is bad, you should go up to Scotland."

Tommy doesn't say anything more on her leg, and if he sees the scar on the back of her hand as she walks on by and into the hall, takes another gander at the one on her forehead or forearm, somehow sees through her dress to the Slytherin S branded on her breast, he doesn't speak on that either. She's thankful, truly. Harry doubts he'd buy the excuse of house fire to explain away how I Must Not Tell Lies had gotten scrawled across her knuckles.

And as the two made their way downstairs for dinner resting on a table, Harry thinks she might tell him one day but for now… For now she just wants to be Harry.

No One's P.O.V

Polly was in the passenger side of the car when Tommy slunk into the driver's side, slamming the door shut behind him. When the back door of the cab stayed stubbornly shut, Polly flickered her gaze over to her nephew.

"Harry not driving back with us?"

Tommy, gaze dead ahead, rolled over the engine.

"She's driving back with John and Arthur."

"Ah."

Polly tutted with her tongue on the back of her teeth.

"I suppose that is Tommy-speak for we need to talk out of earshot, then?"

Tommy waited until the other car pulled off from the road, crawling passed and down the street, before he too pulled out, gesturing goodbye one last time through the window to an Ada and Karl waving from door stoop before they too retreated into the warmth of their home.

"I saw the scar on her leg, Pol. Saw most of it."

"And?"

"She says she got it in a house fire."

Picking up speed, Tommy kept the car in front close by and in sight as Polly pulled out her silver case, offering her nephew a smoke.

"You don't believe her?"

Tommy took one, rolling it against his lower lip, striking the match against the wheel much like his daughter had done.

"That wasn't a burn from a normal flame no matter how big the supposed house fire got. Reminded me of the scars the poor bastards on the front came back with from mustard gas. Never mind the one on her hand and the one on her fuckin' arm and face, and who knows where else. Has she said anything to you about where she was before coming here?"

Polly took a long drag, blowing her smoke out and into the night.

"Just that she lived at an all-girls home in Scotland with her friend Hermione. You think they might have been hurting the kids?"

Tommy tapped his fingers against the wheel.

"She's meeting up with Hermione tomorrow morning, she tells me. I told her to bring the girl over for dinner. If she has scars too then it's likely the all-girls home."

"And if she doesn't?"

The tapping on the wheel abruptly stopped.

"Then I need another address to go and pay a visit to."

"Tommy…"

Polly sighed.

"You can't undo old wounds. You can't erase scars no matter who you blind. You know that."

"No."

Tommy agreed briefly. Of course it didn't last for long.

"But I sure as fuckin' can make sure they won't give anymore out. What do you want me to do, aye, Pol? Sit on my hands on this?"

"No."

Polly chuckled.

"But I expect you to not forget the person carrying those scars while you go out seeking causes."

That hung thick and tight in the darkened cab.

"You really think I would do that, eh?"

"I think if you think there's a war to be raged, you forget that anything but the battlefield exists."

"So you'd rather I just forget about it then? Pretend not to see 'em and wash my hands of it?"

Polly rolled her eyes.

"Of course not! Why do you think I dug about the all-girls home to begin with?"

Polly pivoted in her seat, legs and face aimed at her nephew after throwing the butt of her smoke from the window.

"Just don't forget why it's needed to be done. Harry's got her scars, Tommy… Just don't make it feel like that's all you've seen. You'll only push the lass away otherwise."

Tommy's nod was slow to come, but come it did, and then his eyes drifted from the road, over the console and the seats, right to Polly's own.

"Why was she in Ada's dress, anyhow?"

Polly resolutely turned away, swivelling back to the window.

"She got hers wet playing in the sink with Karl."

"She did, did she? So nothing happened while I was away?"

Polly shot her nephew a glare that blistered and scalded.

"That's what I said, wasn't it?"

"Right-"

Tommy scoffed as he turned the car down a country lane, heading out of London.

"What did you see, Pol?"

"I don't know what-"

"What. Did. You. See?"

They both know Tommy doesn't mean anything as redundant as seeing with her eyes.

Polly rolled her jaw.

"Caught a glimpse of her palm. She's got a lot of pain in her hands, that one, the longest life-line I've ever seen, but a whole lot of love too. Sweet love. Like nectar… And like honey, its' gonna attract some bees you'd rather not have buzzing around, Tommy. Bees that will bloody sting you."

Tommy snorted.

"I'll swot 'em."

"Oh, aye. Yeah you will… but not so much the bear. You try and swot him away from the honey and he'll take your hand clean off. Tommy-"

Polly said softly, catching her nephews' eye.

"She will be happy… in the end. Very happy. As you will be if you both put your Shelby egos down for five fuckin' seconds. You're going to have to remember that in the coming years. She's a lot like you. Too much I'd say. Stubborn, tenacious… You'll have your barmaid, and she'll have her bear and-"

The mention of a barmaid is enough to set Tommy off with a bark.

"What the hell are you talkin' about, Pol? Bears and fuckin' barmaids… Have you been in the gin again, eh?"

Polly's smile was like the moonlight peeping through the cloud cover. Pale and silvery and eerie.

"You'll know when you know, and when you do... Don't say I didn't fuckin' warn you Thomas Shelby."

Even Tommy knew not to push Polly when she was done with a conversation, and so the engine purred, and the car trundled along the dark road heading to streets unseen.

Heads-up for the next chapter, Lizzie and Harry meet for the first time and I will say it does not go well. HOWEVER (lol) it sort of goes wrong in a very understandable way, if that makes any sense, and although Lizzie comes off a bit shitty in the beginning, once you get to the root of it emotionally from Lizzie's perspective as an early 20th century woman, it's clear why she reacts the way she does. I just wanted to say that quickly before next chapter comes out and everyone starts throwing rotten fruit at me as the resolution of that meeting won't happen next chapter but the one after that but when it does come the hurt makes the fluff even sweeter.

Thank you to everybody who has favourited, followed and reviewed. If you have the time, drop a review, they're the fuel to my mad muses. 😉