Full Summary: In those first tender years of her life the Shadow was all Poppy Potter had, her characterless dreadful shade. It was, in the end, want and need and something pitch black in its most simple perception, a murky promise of an inevitable craving. The Shadow was her friend, but they aren't a very nice one, and they have set her on a path of blood, betrayal, and brotherhood. Why play cat and mouse when you could play cops and serial killers? Mosercest! Fem!Harry. Adopted!Harry. Moser!Harry. Brian/Fem!Harry/Dexter. Dark. Strong M.
Hematophagy: Hematophagy is the practice by certain animals of feeding on blood.
Chapter One:
The Shadow on The Wall
Mama help me, I've been cursed
Death is rolling in every verse
Poppy Potter as a child used to lay flat on her back on the cot underneath the stairs of 4 privet drive. The door to her cupboard was askew, allowing a spill of pale hallway light to seep in through the crack at just the right times of day. Dusk and dawn and deadling hours. She would spend hours there, hours gifted by Petunia's disregard and hateful eyes, fixed and flushed with one hand raised casting undulating shadows on the wall.
Most times, the Shadow talked back.
They didn't have a name, her Shadow, her friend, her other better-worse half, that droplet of dark someplace skulking inside her. Neither did it have a face or a form, none but the ones she gave it, little masks she imagined for her friend like she was playing dress up, not with a barbie doll but with Frankenstein monster stitched together with parts she had scavenged for it to wear. It liked disguises, her Shadow, her first friend, it liked the game they made of them, the trickery of it all, the ruses and the secrets and the sticky-fingered deceits.
It liked to play, her Shadow.
Poppy didn't like letting it play.
It didn't talk, not like Poppy or Petunia or anyone else would. It was a… Sense. A feeling. A torrent of emotional vapour right to the brain. Sometimes it chirped, sometimes it hissed, and other times it made that ps-ps-ps noise like one would use to call a cat to heel or the bacon would make when slapped onto the oiled frying pan.
Poppy liked to think that it was trying to say her name.
She knew better when she got older.
Still, in those first tender years of her life the Shadow was all she had, her characterless dreadful shade. It was, in the end, want and need and something pitch black in its most simple perception, a murky promise of an inevitable craving. On the bad days, which she had plenty of, when Poppy's belly was so empty it knotted itself up into a lump of squirming hunger, and her clothes and skin were unwashed and the door to her cupboard locked for hours, it shows her things, suggestions of a loose life outside the damp walls and the electric box, then taunts her, flashes things at her, pulses on the wall with shapes of Petunia's broken neck and Vernon slipping with his favourite razor one Sunday morning when shaving or Dudley being tripped down the stars.
The message was clear.
You could have it all… If you took it all.
The Shadow is her friend, but they aren't a very nice one.
There was another once, something else, just as broken and dark and awful. Poppy remembered it as a writhing thing, emaciated and damaged, a large chunk of flesh-
Her friend gets rid of that early on, lashes out so violently and viciously, stomps and clomps and dances upon its head until there was no other, just her and the Shadow, her Shadow-
She thought it's name was Tom, that little shattered thing.
It didn't matter.
That was gone.
Her shadow, her friend, remained.
They were the best thing to ever happen to her.
They were the worst thing to ever happen to her.
String me up from atop these roofs
Knot it tight so I won't get loose
Poppy Potter did not see blood until she was seven years old, and it goes as well as one might expect. Vernon and Petunia had been careful with her, cautious with their anger, and although there had been pain, sometimes blinding pain from belts and buckles and boots, bruises and bumps and red lines of welts across the hidden expanse of her back, there had never been a cut.
Dudley ruins that.
Dudley ruins the both of them in one fell swoop.
Poppy didn't quite remember what they had been doing in the front yard that Friday afternoon after school. She thinks she might have been sitting underneath the tree, plucking at blades of grass, minding her own waned reality of merely existing. Maybe she had been making daisy chains or humming a lullaby, or other such nonsense other children were supposed to do at her age.
Her Shadow shows her squishing ants from an ant hill underneath her thumb. One by one by one, marching to their deaths, to her little pale digit-
Poppy never will truly remember which one had been real. The tree or the ants.
Maybe both.
Nevertheless, Poppy did know Dudley spotted her at the tree trunk, she knows he thought it might be fun to play his favourite game, Push the Poppy, and he had barrelled into her, twice her size and twice the stupidity, and she had fallen over, caught her ankle in a tree root, twisted-
Landed on a sharp rock.
It was barely a scrape, a scratch across her knee, and Poppy had felt worse pain, had thought nothing off it but an inhale of breath, sharp and crisp like a breeze in her lung, as she lifted her leg and-
A droplet of blood rolled down her calf.
She remembered seeing that blood, burgundy, brilliant, trickling and-
Suddenly she was no longer in the garden. Suddenly she was somewhere dark and enclosed and echoing, and it wasn't only a droplet, but a river, sinking her deep down, rising up to her waist, she smelled the rust of it, could smell the copper twang too, could taste the spoiled salt on her tongue as it seeped into her clothes and her skin and weighted her down so heavy, so tightly-
There was roaring in her ears, roaring that pitched higher and keener than Dudley's laughter, and it spluttered, and spat and stuttered and-
Crashed apart.
It became something else. Deafening, thunderous, the only thing she could focus on, the only thing Poppy could see and feel and hear, a visceral sound that seemed to drive deeply into her bones, a mechanical whirr chug, chug, chugging with the frantic beat of her heart.
Poppy didn't remember looking over to Dudley, she didn't remember the abrupt mark of fear upon his round, thick face at whatever he saw in hers, in the reflection of her green eyes, perhaps her friend, her Shadow, nor did she remember if she had lunged first or Dudley had run for the pavement just outside the garden to get away from the thing driving for him, fingers curled like claws, teeth bared like a beast.
Either way, they end up there, right at the curb, and her Shadow was a grotesque thing slithering in her mind, showing her things, telling her others, the robotic roar still echoing in her ears.
It was just bad luck that Poppy shoved the boy just as the car was speeding around the corner.
Then there had been more blood, so much more, too much, spilled across the asphalt, and still, as Poppy stood and stared, watched the red seep and sweep and swarm, even as the couple in the car shrieked and cried, all snotty nosed and wide-red-eyed and tumbled out their doors, crying for an ambulance, all Poppy could hear was the sound of a chainsaw revving and the screams of a dying woman.
Not my children! Please, not in front of my children-
That was the day Poppy Potter discovered she hated blood, feared it, as she hated and feared her Shadow, as she loved them both too much and something else pitch black entirely.
Woo or Boo?
A.N: I actually have this entire story written up and collecting dust on my hard-drive. It needs a few tweaks here or there, I wrote it a while ago, but instead of letting it languish in limbo I decided to give it a shot and post it on the advice of my beta who read it and enjoyed it. What do you guys think? The Dexter fandom isn't dead is it? I always arrive way too late to a party lol. Either way, I couldn't help myself, so here's a little treat and me dipping my toe into the water to see if I get a nibble. Christian Camargo and Michael C. Hall, their chemistry, was the best thing about Dexter hands down, and I thought it was such a shame how their story together was cut short.
P.S: The lyrics in this chapter are from Bleed It Out by Linkin Park.
Hope you all liked it, and if you guys want to see more, do let me know. Hope you all have a lovely, safe, and fun week!
