Prologue
It rages, hot and molten. Flashes of scarlet waves blaze and encircle her. She feels their scalding tendrils latch onto flesh and mar unmarked skin—thousands of needles piercing her body. The pain is numbing, blinding,and the shrill voice that breaks from her chest in a scream is foreign in her ears. Then, her eyes jolt open and glaring white is all she sees.
"…m…God! She's awake! Get…! Miss Hill is awake!" a voice soft, feminine, and panicked shouts.
Miss Hill? Her eyes shut tight, letting just the faintest dusty pink reach her corneas. She only uses that title for her mother. Normally, everyone calls her…. Her brows pinch. The pungent smell of something rotten and old shrouded in a thick mask of antiseptic wafts by.
Right, Irene. Right.
It's the shouting, the scents that make it so terribly difficult to think as she rattles around in her addled mind. She remembers the flames. The fire. How it had crept over her and seared flesh. Reflexively, she reaches for her shoulder. Coarse cloth sands at her palms.
She's been bandaged.
She blinks, eyes widening. It would only make sense that she's in a hospital. She's injured. And the smell. Irene's nose wrinkles up. What other facility could both smell like the dead and ethanol at the same time. "Maybe a morgue," she mumbles to herself, eyes wandering about.
It's chaotic. Footsteps storming to and fro.
She palms the thin pink blanket overtop her as the metal-framed bed creaks beneath. Ivory cotton privacy curtains box her in but leave an open view of the ward outside her space. Nurses in white cycle through her room and out to the other patients. They try talking, but Irene can't seem to focus or perhaps hear—she's not entirely certain—too busy tracing tiled walls and ceiling panels accompanied by hanging light fixtures as mouths move soundlessly around her. Everything feels off in this facility.
Something's wrong.
She feels wrong. Her teeth worry at her bottom lip. How long has she been here? Metal-wire beds and thin cotton blankets line the walls opposite of her while additional partitions of cloth separate and supply privacy to the injured and diseased. She runs her hand along the bandages again. It's been long enough for the searing pain of her injuries to dull to an ache. She blinks.
How did this happen in the first place? She remembers the flames, but—
Irene doubles over clutching her skull. Her head throbs angrily and insistently. With every thought her mind rattles in protest. She wants to know but the pain…. It's too much. She drops her inquiries. Overextending herself right now isn't a good idea. Irene massages the back of her neck, the horrid pounding already receding to a dull pulse. A cold sweat's developed on her skin—her lack of answers continuing to seep through in anxious perspiration.
"…iss…Miss. I don't think she can hear us." The woman to her right is charting something. It's only now Irene realizes the nurse looks like she's cosplaying in that outfit of hers—a white and red-lined dress paired with a small hat.
"I'll check." The doctor walks to the side of her bed.
Irene opens her mouth. Hot air rushes out and her voice cracks. She coughs—sharp and dry. It's a struggle but her stiff throat coats and she manages to squeak out a question, "I-how long have I been here?"
"Are you having any trouble hearing?" The Doc has his scope in her ear while he asks, completely ignoring her inquiry.
"No." She's just a little overwhelmed.
"You've been unconscious for about a week now." He asks her to open her mouth and she complies. He continues to evaluate her before speaking again. "You're lucky your burns weren't as severe as the witnesses reported. Most of your injuries are superficial although perhaps there will be some minor nerve damage. We believe it was the shock that left you in a coma." He frowns and pulls away from her to chart a few observations on his clipboard.
Her fingers thread her shirt hem. Witnesses? Did the apartment complex or shop catch fire? Nothing's ringing any bells, her memories remain elusive and jumbled. "I…I can't quite remember what happened."
The Doc's lips purse. "You don't remember?" There's a significant knot in the man's brows that sets Irene on edge. Did she just land herself a psych evaluation?
"I can feel the flames, see the fire." She winces and her head throbs. "But I don't recall what caused it. What happened?" she asks again with more force.
"The authorities believe you accidentally stumbled upon an inert explosive. Probably rummaging around where you shouldn't have been. The reports indicate that something on your person detonated, luckily limiting the victims to one."
Irene's brow twitches at the tone. The hint of disgust tells her he holds no sympathy for her situation. She wonders if it has to do with who she is. She runs a hand through her long jet-black hair, greasy and matted from her time unconscious.
"What is the last thing you remember?" The man asks, fingers patiently waiting to chart God knows what with her next words.
There's a moment when it occurs to her. If she's a completely blank slate thit could mean a one-way ticket to the asylum. Heaven knows her sort isn't exactly welcomed into the community. She pushes through the pain and tries to remember something, anything. Her head pulses as she attempts to sort through the tangled cluster that's her mind.
She gets flashes, pieces of something. A plane, garden shop, a book, her pet cat Horace. They don't make much sense. A collection of half scenes, fragments of what once was whole. When she pushes harder—blood vessels popping—she sees something new.
A woman. Red lies in ribbons over her body that's strewn across a mound of rubble, evidence of an air raid. Irene's breathing accelerates. She doesn't want to look, to know. The woman's golden hair is a matted flaxen, her clear blue eyes an unseeing dull grey, and skin a sickly blue pallor over what was once rosy-pink. Irene's stomach flips.
Mom.
She leans over the bed's edge and retches.
When she manages to clean her mouth—after a nurse hands her a handkerchief. She replies, "the Blitz…my mother," her words trail off as she vacantly stares into white sheets.
Her answer prompts murmurs from the nurses standing and watching them from the ward's hall. Heavy handed scrawl scratches across paper as the doctor writes something into the chart he holds. This gives her a good idea that something's amiss before the Doc says, "I'm afraid the Blitz was nearly a year ago. It's currently the eleventh of February, 1942."
"But the nineteen forties were nearly a century ago?" is her first thought, and isn't that absurd? She's probably still in shock or something. Tag on the fact that they're in the midst of a war, she's lived the Blitz, and saw her mom lying dead after the air raids, it's no wonder she's losing her mind. She swallows, feels the accompanying heartbreak and hollowness of grief and the utter, terrifying sense of wrongness.
"It is the nineteen forties," she reassures herself.
But then why does she know with absolute certainty that the war will end in 1945? Why does everything looks so outdated? The dangling ceiling fans are mismatched with memories of florescent square lights. Stiff metal-wire cots awkwardly clash with the familiarity of plush, adjustable beds. Flashes of something pass—memories of things that can't be possible.
She grips her shirt's hem, feeling the rough linen grind into her palm. Maybe her mother's chatter about past-er, future lives held some truth.
Or perhaps she's gone around the bend.
A confusingly quick week passes.
Irene imagined the stress of dealing with the police would create the illusion of time passing slowly but nothing of the sort happens. In fact, despite the overwhelming stress of lying to the authorities—if only to avoid placement in an orphanage—they hadn't noticed a single thing amiss with her thinly-veiled lies that her 'grandmother' was just out of the city at the moment. She scoffs. Her real grandma probably thinks she would be better off never being born—monstrous half-breed that she is.
Worrying at her lip, Irene slumps back into her chair. Shouldn't the police have been more suspicious that a week-long coma didn't upend her sweet grandmother's trip with an abrupt return? But no, they were quite happy to close the case and leave her be after taking her statement, confirming her citizenship, and returning a few damaged beyond repair items found at the scene.
Crinkled evidence of her place of birth mocks her as it sits atop the brown table that had seated two and now only seats an occupant of one. She pushes from her chair with a rickety squeak while pale fingers card through onyx locks; the irrational impulse to rip and tear at it lingers as she feels the strands flutter across her palm. It was so much easier when mom was around. Now she has to fight tooth and nail to belong, to exist.
Irene pads to the corner desk to file away her crumpled birth certificate. She does her best to smooth out its edges before closing the drawer. As she slumps over the desk, fatigue tugging at her body, she rubs her shoulder. The wrinkly, scarred mass of skin atop her arm shifts slightly under her touch.
It's an ugly thing, not something a woman would want on her skin in this day and age. She's fifteen, barely passed puberty, but old enough that marriage is on the table. The mark will bring down her 'value.' She frowns. Her mom would probably chide her for such thoughts. But she never had to worry about things like that before. The store and occasional begging of her mother to her wealthy grandparents were enough to support the two of them comfortably.
Now the threat of an orphanage looms behind her while the likelihood of ending up destitute rises every passing day. She bites her lip and pivots to check the savings box. An intricately carved wooden container sits on the bookshelf. It's an antique given to her mother from her father as a birthday gift. Apparently, that was just before he was deported, or as mom used to claim, 'ran away.' Irene presses a notch on the bottom of the box.
Click.
The top pops open and she removes the lid. A few notes, coins, and jewelry sparsely cover the bottom of the satin-lined box. After the hospital bills and declining sales from the store, she's now less than two months away from homelessness and that's if she limits her meals to one a day. Covering the container, she pushes it to the back of the shelf once more. She could sell her mother's jewelry to stretch for another month, but she'd rather die or get adopted by a pedophile than let go of her mom's things.
Almost on cue, or perhaps provoked by thoughts of eating, Irene's stomach rumbles in protest. She wanders to the kitchen in a daze. She has nothing to do now but sell what's left of the store's inventory and wait until she ends up penniless. Thoughts of the future seem dull and dark; thoughts of the past threaten to drown her in grief. Irene stubbornly keeps herself from thinking of her last memories as she opens the cupboard and plucks a tin from the shelf. Opening it reveals nothing but crumbs.
The whine that echoes is embarrassingly pitiful. It's the final straw, an empty biscuit tin.
She curls in on herself—knees tucked to her chest. How did she manage to make it nearly two years on her own? The loneliness is stifling, suffocating. Her mother's presence is everywhere tainted with the grief still fresh in her mind from that cursed accident. It's all consuming, as if her heart has been ripped from its case and replaced with a bottomless chasm. It sucks her in with an insatiable sorrow whenever it can, whenever there's pause. She runs from it every chance she gets for fear that if she stops, she won't be able to prevent the spiral of what-ifs. But as she shrinks into a ball on the kitchen floor, she can't run any longer—fatigue locking her in its grasp. The waves crash over her, regret and nostalgia rising high enough that she can't catch her breath. Her lungs hitch and rasp as wet streams rain down her cheeks.
In this silent house, once filled with her mom's endless, hearing-impaired singing and her own jovial, mocking laughter, her cries are deafening.
In mourning, she lets grief take hold of her.
Time passes while she wallows in her own self-pity and heartbreak, at first only sorrowful wailing but then transformed into calamitous agony. Irene wrenches the cupboards and drawers open, grabbing and throwing whatever she can get her hands on. Glass cups shatter against the wall, while metal trays bounce off the ground. It's loud enough to cause a disturbance as she screams and throws things about, anguished, but her neighbors are used to as much noise living in the 'economically disadvantaged'side of London. She wraps her claws around a box of hotcake mix and pitches it at the wall.
It's nothing but destructive, yet it frees her in its annihilation until the room is a perfect mirror of her soul.
The ache of her stomach and its vengeful anger at her neglect is what snaps her to stop. She stumbles down, back sliding against the sink's cabinet to sit on the kitchen floor once more. She breathes out heavily, exertion plain across her face.
It looks like a bomb went off in the room. Dishes, tins, and even some food are broken, scattered, and splattered across the floor. She really did a number in her misery. Sighing, she picks a silver platter from the ground beside her. Her manic face reflects against the dish. With swollen red discoloration around her sharp dark eyes, sweat covered hair clinging to her angular cheeks, and flour speckled across her skin, she can't help but double over. Laughter is choked out of her at the horrible sight she makes. A "right mess," is the only appropriate descriptor.
Her stomach grumbles.
Irene begins the toil of cleaning up before preparing a meal. She feels her soul stitch back together with every dish properly stowed away in their rightful place. However, all of the patches of flour and crumbs are impossible to clean with a broom. It's times like these that she remembers her 'other' life, as she's starting to refer to it as—rather than calling them her psychotic delusions. God, she'd kill for a vacuum at this moment, if only they weren't considered a luxury product. She continues scrubbing and brushing until the kitchen is in order.
Her stomach rumbles again—acid beginning to eat at its lining.
Diligently, she boils and mashes a potato with salt and pepper. It sits on the plate, a bland shade of white. Her go-to meal for the next several weeks. She grimaces and picks up her fork. The bite is about as fulfilling as she feared. Fuck. She could really go for some pork belly right—
Poof!
A puff of smoke expands then dissolves. She blinks. Her eyes widen to her brows. Succulent red glaze shimmers over tender chunky slices of pork. Perfectly fresh scallions are sprinkled over the dish which has taken place of her potato. Irene rubs her eyes. When she opens them, the food is still there. Blood of the Virgin Mary. She leans in and…sniffs.
Oh, God.
She salivates to the mouthwatering scent. Then her fork is upon the food, and the dish is in her stomach seconds later. The satisfying rumble of her stomach brings an end to her meal. She leans into her chair all smiles, momentarily forgetting her stroke of magic. When her dull mind catches up, she springs to her feet.
"How the fuck!?" she blurts.
Irene paces about the table staring at the empty plate. "That happened," she reminds herself trying to preserve the memory. Well, if she's going to have fragments of another time, it's only fitting to give her some sort of power. She cards her fingers through her hair. It's just like one of those sci-fi books the other her liked so much—characters gaining powers after some sort of incident.
Irene stops her prowling and turns to her dish. Pork belly, biscuits, dumplings. Her mind repeats the thought almost chanting, but nothing happens. No cloudof smoke. Nothing.
She grumbles. There's always something else to try. She takes her plate to the kitchen and places it in the sink. Stretching her hand towards the tiled floor, she mumbles a barely audible, "fireball." Again, nothing happens. Okay. Maybe it was the conviction.
"Fireball!"
Nothing but silence answers.
Her cheeks flare pink. However, going this far she doubles down.
"Menu!" she tries. "Status!" There's no floating screen of course. She huffs. "Embiggen!" Her arm doesn't enlarge to her disappointment. "Flame on!" No fire, just her pale skin. She chews at the inside of her cheeks which are now a bright red. "Ugh, fine. Arise! Moon Prism Power, Make up! Shazam…!" There's no pause between chants as she continues and eventually exhausts her extensive list of superhero-powerups.
At the end of her attempts, she's left rightfully embarrassed and mortified at her own insanity. Bloody Hell. At least no one is there to watch her descent into madness. Irene drags her hand down her face and makes for the bathroom. It's time to take a shower and get ready for bed. Maybe she can read one of her mother's books before sleeping. She opens the door; a round black bug skitters across the floor. She slips a house shoe off and wields it to strike.
Before the eventual slap descends, she twirls her shoe lazily and shouts, "Stupefy!" as she lunges. A red-light flares from the end of her slipper. It shoots and strikes true, leaving nothing but a black smudge in place of the roach. Her house shoe lands a second after with a lackluster plop.
Her jaw slackens as she slowly picks the slipper back up. She stares at the fresh scorch marks. "A touch overpowered for a stunning spell," she thinks a bit hysterically. But the dinner is fresh on her mind—the sudden replacement of her potatoes with pork. Transfigurations and now charms…. There's only one answer.
Harry Bloody Potter.