Response to Xiu: Thank you so much, you're my first-ever review! I'm flattered. Right now, I'm trying to update every other day, but that will probably decrease once winter break is over and I'm back at Uni. As of now, I have most of the content up until the sorting feast written, except for the alley shopping trip.
Yes, I decided to change the name. I feel like moths are more appropriate to this story than butterflies, don't you?
Feel free to make plot, character, and non-Iris pairing suggestions in the comments, everyone! I think it would be absolutely fantastic if the ideas and thoughts of my very earliest viewers shaped the progression of the rest of the fic.
Everyone on Privet Drive who had met Iris Potter could agree on one thing: she was quiet. Too quiet. No one that knew her Aunt, Petunia, could truthfully claimed that they liked her; but, at least on the issue of Iris, she was telling the truth. Iris Potter was a strange, unnatural child.
Those that had frequently called on the Dursleys in their home could testify that she grew almost unnaturally fast, and by the age of ten, had was well into starting puberty. She had that lightning-bolt shaped scar on her forehead that never seemed to heal, almost like the battle-scars Mr. Blake had from his time in the Falklands. Her beautiful shamrock-green eyes, which would be cooed and fawned over by the neighborhood ladies if they were on any other child, were only further evidence of her unnaturalness: they possessed a vibrancy and almost glowing luminescence that almost defied normal explanation. One of her teachers even claimed that she saw them glow in the dark during a classroom naptime.
Mr. Shelton from Number 9 once compared meeting her gaze to the time he had stared down a King Cobra on a business trip to India, and the residents of Privet Drive had to agree: meeting her gaze felt like staring down an apex predator, something so dangerous and foreign to your everyday life that you freeze in shock, unable to even breathe. To be quite honest, the whole neighborhood was terrified of her.
Of course, the child, if she could even be called that, always attempted to deceive them. She'd act shy and demure, and dutifully perform all the chores around her house, but the residents of Privet Drive could see the truth. They could feel the shivers run down their spines whenever the girl walked past them, could feel her intent to break and destroy. She was like a fox in the henhouse, an unnatural aberration that even the blind and deaf could sense was out of place, and she was just waiting for the right moment to strike.
So, the residents of Privet Drive glared, and muttered, and kept watch. They pointedly ignored her cousin's quests to rid the school of her presence and save all the other children from her unnatural gaze. For the only way to stop the fox from eating the hens is to burn its nose, and the only way to save the neighborhood from Iris Potter was to burn her with their words and gazes. They saw past her façade, and they were watching.
Iris Potter was a miserable child. She knew, from watching the telly, how a child's life was supposed to be. She should be happy and carefree, running and playing in the hours after school, her biggest problems being a grounding for a poor grade on a maths test, or avoiding an overly-doting elderly neighbor.
This was very much not the world she lived in.
For the first six years of her life at her mother's relatives, she held onto hope that if she just did her chores well enough, or acted deferential enough, maybe, just maybe, her relatives would like her. Sure, her relatives may have treated her like an indentured servant, relying on her almost exclusively for every household duty, but weren't servants loved in the noble aristocratic families? Her aunt loved the dramas on Masterpiece theatre, full of proud nobility, and the servants on those shows were certainly loved and treasured.
So, Iris held out hope that if she acted the good servant, eventually her relatives would come to care for her, that some of her many efforts would be recognized and lauded. She would even have settled for a stop to their use of starvation as punishment, eradicating the painful rumbles in her stomach wouldn't keep her up in her cupboard, but she hoped for a full acceptance into the Dursley family, and for some of the love that Petunia showed Dudley to be reflected onto her.
That belief lasted until the day Vernon first hit her.
When she was seven, Vernon got demoted at work, and of course, he blamed her and her "witchy powers". It didn't matter that the reason he was demoted was calling one of the new executives at his firm a series of racial slurs in what he thought was a private email; she was present, and she was different (although she didn't understand how), so it must have been her fault. When he got home, incredibly drunk and enraged, he dragged her to his room and beat her with the belt, to "teach her a lesson" for cursing him with bad luck. He threw her in her cupboard an hour later, bruised, bleeding, and with a dislocated shoulder.
After that, Vernon began to regularly take out his rage against the problems of his life on her young body. The abuse only intensified as the years went on, and Vernon's rage only increased. On the night of her ninth birthday, Vernon succeeded in beating her into a week-long coma after he had been demoted once again for an incident involving a gay coworker. It seemed that every trouble in Vernon's life was somehow her fault, and every lash onto her body somehow served as karmic retribution for his daily middle-class woes.
Passed over for a bonus? It must be the witch's fault, cane her. Dudley almost fails a class? The freak's fault, break her arm. Got a speeding ticket? It's that witch's curse, beat her until she removes it. Never bandage her, never take her to the doctor, she'll use her freaky powers to heal herself. Don't even give her food or water, she doesn't need it.
Iris quite honestly had no idea how she'd managed to live as long as she had. She wasn't any sort of medical expert by any means, but just from the basic lessons she had in school, she knew that a human's body was just not meant to survive that kind of abuse without medical treatment, let alone heal itself with minimal scarring.
Even if she wouldn't have been dead, she would expect to at least look like one of those torture camp victims she saw on the news: thin, brittle, and covered in horrible, painful scar tissue. No instead, she was in quite good health, and aside from the pale scars that littered her back from the belts and canes, she had no medical problems. Coupled with her rapid maturation and unnaturally vibrant eyes, it was almost enough to make her consider Vernon's constant accusations of magic. Sometimes, when it was just her and her thoughts for days on end, she believed him, and prayed desperately to God to make her normal, and remove the curse her presence brought. Despite what Vernon said in his Sunday rants, God never answered her prayers.
As Iris awoke on the morning of her twelfth birthday, she thanked every deity she knew that Vernon hadn't had any bad luck in the past few weeks, and so she could spend the day relatively pain-free. Last birthday she was still recovering from a broken femur after Vernon's car wreck; she had to spend the day moaning in pain in the darkness of her cupboard.
God, she hated that corpulent bastard.
Exiting her cupboard, began to prepare her relatives' morning meals, after grabbing a few slices of bread for her own Breakfast. As the fatty, greasy breakfast sizzled in the pan, she chuckled, imagining Vernon's inevitable heart attack. Suddenly, she blanched, and had to fight to keep her breaths even. If she thought a demotion merited a bad beating, how would Vernon respond to what he saw as an attempt on his life?
She managed to calm her breathing by the time the bacon was ready, and removing it, began to set up the table as Vernon thundered down the stairs, groggily wiping the weekend sleepiness from his eyes.
Vernon scowled after the first bite, glaring at her. "Can't you ever cook right, girl? This bloody bacon is burnt on the underside! Are you stupid enough to think this is well-cooked?", he said, shoving the crispy bacon into her face.
"I-I'm sorry sir", she said, hiding a glare with her bowed head. "I'll do better next time."
"You're bloody well right you will!"
As he returned to his food, grumbling, Dudley and Petunia came down the stairs. Sitting at the table, they also made the customary insults towards her cooking before digging in, leaving her standing to the side of the table. After a few minutes, Petunia finished her small portion, and held out her plate for Iris to take up.
"Go get the mail, Dudley", she said, looking around for the Home and Garden section of the Daily newspaper.
"Make the freak get it."
"Girl, go get the mail!"
"Yes ma'am," Iris replied, and exited the kitchen.
God she hated those petty, awful, cruel excuses for human beings.
She began sorting through the mail. Junk… Advert… Junk… Coupons… Bank statement… Ms. Ir–
Iris stopped, shocked.
Miles away, in the rebuilt Potter Manor, the peaceful morning atmosphere was disrupted by a loud shout. Rushing downstairs after ensuring the safety of her four children, Miriam Potter burst into the den to see her husband's head stuck in the fireplace, his arms gesticulating wildly. What on earth had happened?
AN: Yes, I know that February 29th, 2016 was a Monday, but I'm pretending it's a weekend because plot.
