Darcy Lewis - Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. or How I got a High Paying Government Job without even Trying
Chapter 2: Life Lessons or Why the Wizarding World needs Child Protective Services
For children, the formative years are meant to be a time of fun, laughter, happiness and learning. Children are meant to learn lessons from their parents that will help them survive the grown up world. These lessons are learned in many ways, they're learned from the hugs and kisses at night that teach children about love and caring and kindness. From parents telling their children to say please and thank you, so they learn all about manners and respect. They are taught in the chores given to children, so they can learn the value of hard work, and that money earned is sweeter than money given. All in all, these lessons are learned so that one day a child can become an adult, one that is independent, self-sufficient and capable of functioning in society. For Darcy Rose Potter, the lessons she learned in her formative years were very different from what a normal child learns.
The first important lessons Darcy Rose Potter learned were the value of research and silence. Despite being the first lessons learned, they were also some of the most difficult to learn. Darcy, like most children, was curious. Incredibly so, and like most children, the way she expressed her curiosity was through questions. However, unlike most children, who have a patient loving parental figure who is kind enough to answer their seemingly endless questions, Darcy only had her Uncle Vernon, and Aunt Petunia, who shared the same two go to answers for every question she asked, either "You will only speak when spoken to!" or "Go to your cupboard!" Needless to say, for a small child curious about the world she lives in, these are not adequate answers, so Darcy kept asking her questions "What is that?", "What does this do?", "Where are we going?" and so on and so forth. The lesson on the value of silence only truly sank in when shortly after Darcy turned four, she innocently asked her Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia "Where are my parents?" Instead of receiving one of the usual go to answers from them however, she instead received a glare from her aunt and her first taste of corporal punishment from her uncle. After that day, her endless questions ceased. Darcy learned to keep silent and that if she wanted the answers to her questions she would need to find them herself.
The next lesson Darcy learned, was the importance of rationing and why stealing wasn't always a crime.
Vernon and Petunia Dursley were, in their own opinions, hardworking and upstanding members of society. They had earned their place in the world and felt others should as well. While not an unreasonable viewpoint, it was unreasonable that they felt this should apply to there now five year old niece Darcy Rose Potter. After all, they never asked to be saddled with her, so why should they spend their hard earned money feeding her three meals a day (she was a small child and could surely get by on just breakfast) or buying her new clothes (Dudley's old clothes were after all, still in excellent condition, thank you very much). In fact, they decided that she owed them. After all they put a roof over her head (as well as a set of stairs), food in her stomach (though not very much) and clothes on her back (clothes that would fit a small elephant). Thus they came to the decision to make her earn her keep. From that day on, Darcy was put in charge of the cooking, the cleaning, the yard work, the laundry and washing the cars. Now, needless to say all this extra work took its toll on poor little Darcy. All the energy she expended on her chores could not be sustained by the meagre amount she was fed, so she realized that she needed a new source of food. It was during one of the rare afternoons that she had free from her chores that Darcy decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood. On her walk, she came across the local corner store, owned by an old and rather blind man. Her stomach grumbling, Darcy made the snap decision to take advantage of the situation and sneakily help herself to some snacks from the store. It was on that day that she learned that old, blind men had difficulty noticing small, hungry children. That night lying in her cupboard, with a full stomach for the first time in what felt like years, Darcy resolved to return to the store and continue partaking in the old man's unknowing generosity. However, she soon learned that the days she could get away from her chores and go to the store were few and far between, so she learned to take more and to hide it in her cupboard. Thus, Darcy learned the value of rationing, and that what one man called a crime, another called salvation.
These lessons continued all throughout Darcy's childhood. She learned how to stay out of the way of her uncle and aunt so she didn't get hit. She learned how to hold herself back in school so she didn't upset her relatives by outperforming Dudley. She learned that the way her uncle and aunt treated her wasn't right and was in fact abuse. Most importantly, she learned that adults were not to be trusted or relied upon. This lesson was learned when she told one of her teachers about how her uncle and aunt treated her. The teacher, as she was meant to reported Darcy's claims to the police, however when the police came to the Dursley's house to ask them, a few fifty pound notes slipped from uncle Vernon to the investigating officer had the situation resolved rather unfavourably for Darcy, earning her the worst punishment she had ever faced. The lesson was compounded when less then a week later the teacher who she had told, pretended to have no memory of the event, and began treating Darcy like she was a criminal. This was the day Darcy learned that in this world you could only rely on yourself.
Eventually all the lessons Darcy had learned compounded to teach her one thing above all, and that was how to act. Darcy learned how to act like she was less intelligent than she was. She learned to change how she walked and talked and held herself so as not to draw attention to herself. She learned to rearrange her hair and change her body language and manner of speech, so people wouldn't recognize her is she was seen stealing. Darcy learned how to be a different person whenever she couldn't take being Darcy Rose Potter.
At age ten, shortly before her eleventh birthday, Darcy's life changed, and new lessons were opened up to her. This change began when one morning, while collecting the mail, she found a letter addressed to her. Unfortunately, Darcy took the letter with her to the kitchen, where it was snatched by Vernon Dursley. This led to a long and ultimately fruitless attempt by the Dursley's to escape the letters that ended in a small house, on a small rock, in the middle of the sea, where Hagrid, personally delivered Darcy's letter, thus beginning the adventures that Darcy would face in the wizarding world.
Darcy's experiences at Hogwarts and in the wizarding world over the next seven years taught her many new lessons, and not just lessons in magic. She learned that the average wizard or witch was, frankly, an idiot, completely incapable of making rational decisions or performing even the simplest of tasks without magic.
In her first year, after avoiding the strange, possible clinically insane red headed woman who was for some reason allowed to yell and scream about muggles in the middle of King's Cross station without getting arrested for breaking the Statue of Secrecy, Darcy was sorted into Ravenclaw. Throughout the year, she reaffirmed her lesson that adults were not to be trusted or relied upon, when her warning that the Sorcerer's Stone hidden in the school was going to be stolen was ignored, forcing her to stop the theft herself, proving to her that Dumbledore was either an idiot or trying to manipulate her, although on the plus side, she made her first real friend in the muggleborn (she still believed the word "muggle" was an example of the racist ignorance of most witches and wizards) Gryffindor, Hermione Granger, as well as having the chance to study a person who was so mind numbingly moronic, that she was surprised he had ever learned how to dress himself, in Ron Weasley.
In her second year she learned that wizards and witches had a group mentality and were perfectly happy to both jump to conclusions without thought, and ignore any questions that lingered about an event as long as the event was resolved. She also discovered the only way to clear your name in regards to a crime was through an act of ridiculous heroism that borders on the absurd. This was learned when due to her ability to talk to snakes, she was blamed by the majority of the school for the attacks taking place, which led to her having to kill a sixty foot snake with a three foot long sword. The fact that she was the one who had to deal with the problem, once again pointed out to her that Dumbledore was likely manipulating her for his own reasons, a belief that would be proven time and again through the rest of her schooling. But once again on the plus side, she made another new friend in a first year Ravenclaw named Luna Lovegood.
Her third year in the wizarding world start rather poorly when she accidentally blew up her Aunt Marge, who was uncle Vernon's sister.
(It should be said that "blew up" in this sense means "inflated like a balloon", as opposed to the more traditional blew up as in "exploded and rendered into small, bloody chunks". Of course the latter definition may have been the better in the long run, as it would have saved social services thousands of pounds in tax payer money that was used to look after Marge Dursley in the years to come as her health failed her. Money that would be wasted in the end, due to the unfortunate accident involving a mobility scooter, three dogs, a large eggplant, a pound of butter and a bootlegged copy of the Star Wars Christmas Special. An accident that is far too graphic too describe here, and really doesn't bare thinking about)
However, this led to her spending the rest of her summer away from her relative's dubious care at The Leaky Cauldron, in Diagon Alley. The year however took a down turn when Dementors, the horrible guards of Azkaban were stationed at the school, to ostensibly protect the students from escaped mass murderer Sirius Black. Due to series of unfortunate events, Sirius Black, who Darcy learned was her godfather, and more importantly was innocent of the crime he was convicted of had to go on the run, after the true traitor Peter Pettigrew escaped yet again. On the plus side she learned the Patronus charm so she was quite happy with that.
The rest of her time at Hogwarts followed a similar path with each year having its ups and downs (though, admittedly mostly downs). In fourth year she was unwillingly entered in the Triwizard Tournament, and a disguised death eater masquerading as Mad-Eye Moody, demonstrated and in the case of the Imperious, used the unforgivable curses for her class, but she was happy to discover that she was a lesbian thanks to the French champion Fleur Delacour, and learned an adage that she would follow for the rest of her life in the phrase "CONSTANT VIGILANCE". The year ended on the unfortunate down note of Lord Voldemort being resurrected.
The fifth year ushered in the reign of Umbridge, ridiculous dreams of a random, obscure hallway (and really, if this plan to lure Darcy to the prophecy room didn't prove Voldemort's idiocy than nothing did. Their was no conceivable way he could have ensured that she would be able to find the hallway he was showing her in real life, yet he persisted in sending her visions of it night after night, with no directions as to where the damn hallway was.)
The annoyance of the visions Voldemort sent her was compounded by the annoyance of her failed occlumency lessons with Snape (Because of cause giving a jackass with a grudge against her father, and an extremely disturbing obsession with her mother free reign to batter her mind was just a terrific idea) and the emotional devastation caused by the death of Sirius Black, with the only upside being Lord Voldemort's exposure.
Sixth year started with her finding a book on occlumency and legilimency, (which it turned out when taught correctly she had a natural aptitude towards) and a potions book by someone called the Half-Blood Prince (a person who clearly believed they were far smarter than they actually were, while Darcy could admit the Prince's talent with potions, only an idiot would write spells in the margins of book and not add descriptions - admittedly, Darcy realised that she wasn't a prime example of intelligence, seeing as she chose to test the unknown spells anyway). It continued with tales of Voldemort's childhood, and the knowledge of Horcruxes. It ended on the high note (in Darcy's opinion at least) of Dumbledore's death, and the other high note (in most people's opinions) of Snape being a traitor.
What should have been her seventh year, instead led her on a hunt for Voldemort's Horcruxes, and a few magical artefacts which (apparently) were created by Death, as a reward to some brothers for surviving where they shouldn't have (by not drowning, because they were smart enough to build a bridge - though it does beg the question, if the three brothers had just decided not to cross the dangerous river, would that count as beating death?) The year culminated with the final battle at Hogwarts, a battle that ended with Darcy standing tall (at least, as tall as her five foot four frame allowed her to stand) over Voldemort's corpse, the Deathly Hallow's in her possession.
Darcy spent the next few years in seclusion, avoiding the new fame that came with upgrading her over hyphenated from the girl-who-lived to the woman-who-conquered, as well as avoiding the endless marriage proposals, and public demands for her to wed and have a child. The unfortunate side effect of her life up to that point as well as her current seclusion led to her developing (more so than she already had) rampant paranoia. Due to this paranoia she had a habit of keeping her most treasured possessions, as well as everything she would possibly need in an emergency, in a bag which she kept shrunken around her neck. Included in this bag were her photo albums, some of her more esoteric and interesting books, her broom, around fifty thousand galleons, twenty-five thousand pounds, numerous healing potions, and all three deathly hallows (which after repeated, but failed attempts to get rid of both Wand and Stone, she concluded were, to a degree at least; sentient, and bluntly refused to leave her alone - in fact the way they turned up again whenever she threw them out, made her fairly certain she was being stalked by the two inanimate objects).
She spent her time taking advantage of the vast amount of books in the Black family library, which had been left to her along with the rest of the Black Family estate, to learn new and exciting magic's. It was among these books that she found a spell that led to Darcy Rose Potter entering a new world and becoming Darcy Lewis.
The one problem Darcy had noticed with the Black Family Library was its age. Now the fact the books were old wasn't the problem, the problem was that over the centuries generation after generation had read the books in the library and many had added notes in the margins. These notes ranged from critiques and corrections, to the ever hilarious crudely drawn penis. However, the most interesting notes in Darcy's opinion were the spells. Scrawled in the margins, and inner covers of many of the books were incantations for spells. Unfortunately, few had descriptions of their effects, and Darcy was very curious. Curious enough that she began testing them.
So it happened that one summers evening, some three years after the defeat of Voldemort, Darcy came across a spell in tome theorizing about time travel, and alternate dimensions. Without thought for the consequences Darcy took out her wand and read the incantation aloud "Novum Testamentum ad iter aperiundum*!" And with a flash of light, Darcy Rose Potter disappeared.
As she disappeared, Darcy failed to notice that everything attached to her body was being systematically destroyed, which is to say, she was losing her clothes. This systematic destruction, unfortunately was not limited to her clothes, but also went about destroying her emergency bag, and everything in it, and while gold, and books, and broom were quickly torn apart on a subatomic level, the three semi-sentient, astoundingly powerful magical items known collectively as the hallows, were not so happy to quietly be destroyed. Thus they concentrated there power and were quickly absorbed into Darcy Rose Potter. Something she would not be aware of for some time to come.
As Darcy Rose Potter experienced a rather unscheduled departure, far away, in a distant universe, a hooded figure raised there head. The figure, a being of such power even Odin was wary of them, had been happily watching her beloved, as he joyously unalived people, whilst simultaneously ignoring her would be suitor, when they had felt it. A disturbance, an echo, an unannounced change in the fabric of this reality. More importantly, the figure felt a sliver of their own power. A small piece, but a piece none the less. A piece that sought to control the figure. For a moment the darkness beneath the hood seemed to become darker, and the universe itself seemed to chill as it felt the figures mounting rage. But the figure was old, wise, it would not let its anger make it act in haste. So it pushed the growing fury down, and sat back to observe. The figure would watch the newcomer's actions as they became accustomed to a new universe, and a new life. In time the figure would take action against the newcomer, but only after the figure knew what the newcomer would do.
In silence Death raised her head.
*"Novum Testamentum ad iter aperiundum" is Latin for "open a passage to a new world"