Summary: I am Aileen Potter, Daughter of the Sea, Granddaughter to the Goddess of Love. I am the Champion of the Great Goddess Hecate. I am the eyes that see and acknowledge all that lays before me. I am the torch that burns like a beacon in times of darkness, pain, and sorrow. I am the protector of the weak, innocent, and just. And this…this is the story of my life.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. These worlds are the property of their respective writers and franchises. This is the one and only time that you'll see the disclaimer so please do assume that it will apply for the more than 100 chapters that I'll be posting for this story.

2020 A/N 1: I am going back and adding authors notes to my chapters which may happen to have any mature or unsavoury content in like child abuse, death or rape. Scenes of rape will be placed in bold to indicate what is written and therefore can be skipped over for any sensitive or young readers. Other dark or sensitive topic will not be highlighted in such a way and is something that you need to be made aware is included within this story. The scenes or mentions of rape are not explicit.

2020 A/N 2: This is a Mature story, please be aware.

2020 A/N 3: So, this story has gone through many edits in its time, but this edit is quite probably the largest. Some of the chapters which were ungainly long have been split so that no one chapter exceeds a word count of 20,000 or 20pages. Furthermore, I have added more to the relationship between Aileen and Petunia and several other select character, so that things I have written in later chapters make more sense.

2020 A/N 4: I have attempted to fix as many of my grammar and word choice mistakes as I can, including the use of Auror, but there is a chance that I missed something. I do not have a beta for the first 58 chapters of this story who can proofread through my work and so there is a chance that things were missed. The form of dyslexia that I have means that I struggle to see the mistakes that I have made in my own writing unless it has been years since I last looked at that piece of work. I wrote an email for work the other day, read through it three times before I sent it, and was then informed by my colleagues that there were so many mistakes in that email it was easier for them to come in person and ask what I wanted to know!

2020 A/N 5: I've had people complain to me about the lack of crossover with Percy Jackson series, and I have been asked to change the classification of this story. I refuse to do so for multiple reason: I include mention of gods and monsters right from chapter one, with flashbacks and introduction of Poseidon relatively quick into the story. Furthermore, Triton makes an appearance by chapter 60, and by chapter 100 Aileen will be making her way to America. So, in the beginning there is no mention of Rick's books, but that does not mean this isn't a crossover. If you don't like that fact, then you can wait for the second instalment of this story 'Like A Women Scorned' where I begin with the start of the Percy Jackson series but there is a very good chance that you will miss a lot of the character development, backstory and set up that I am including in this story.

A/N 6: The relationship development in this story is slow considering the mental maturity of my character – it will be around chapters 50 that FemHarry/Fred/George begins. However, if you don't like that partnership, simple hold old 'cause the plan is to have it as a FemHarry/Apollo (unless I change my mind).

2020 A/N 7: This is a goodDumbledore, goodSnape story and if you're coming into this story expecting bashing then you are sorely mistaken. Even if it looks like there may be bashing in the beginning – there is not. Just simple wariness. I was toying with the idea of making this a bashing story but, when I started this story, I wasn't a very good writer, and I wasn't confident in my ability to write something like that. Even now, while I feel more confident in my writing I have other Dumbledore-Bashing stories and the stories I had would change too much if I made this one such too, so I decided to stick with it and I quite like the relationship that has begun building between FemHarry and Dumbledore as we move from third to fourth year.

2020 A/N 8: You will quickly learn that I can't write fight scenes for shits, but I do try my best.

2024: A/N 9: I've been gone for a long time on this story. I'm sorry about this. I hit a break wall in regard to the time between the second task and the third task, but I think one of my problems with my motivation was that I hadn't done with this story what I'd done with the other's – create an excel timeline. I've been creating chapter summaries on a word document so I know where I'm at with each chapter, but my brain works in a weird way, and apparently, I need a timeline to work with. This is currently my longest story that I've written (although I do have similar length stories planned out) so I'm surprised it took my so long to have to go back and write this timeline. There has been major editing to a few of the chapters, as of posting this, the biggest change is on Chapter 13 but I'm predicting big changes on Chapters 25/26 and Chapter 27, Chapter 33, 34, 35 and 36 and also a few small changers in other chapters in third year and fourth year but as I've not edited beyond chapter 17 yet I'm just making predictions.

Chapter 1: Aileen Potter

Everyone knows that Mr and Mrs Dursley were perfectly normal, and that they were abnormally proud of this fact. In fact, everyone knows that they were the last people you'd turn to when you find yourself involved in the strange and mysterious, because they just didn't tolerate such nonsense.

Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunning's, which made drills and, I'm sure, made other construction equipment, but drills were the only department Mr Dursley ever talked about (because it was the best!). He was a big beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache.

He worked regular hours and was always home on the weekends. Once a month he would take his son out for a father/son bonding day. As far as his neighbours were concerned, these were the perfect attributes of a father. However, unknown to them all, he also had an unhealthy drinking habit. Every night he would have at least one glass of alcohol (normally scotch, vodka or whiskey) and when he could get away with it, or he had had a really good day (as a celebration) or really bad day (in commiseration) he would have a minimum of four pints of his chosen poison.

Mrs Dursley was thin, only just falling into the healthy weight category. She had soft blond hair, cut so that it framed her face, which had high cheek bones, and a slightly pointed nose. Her lack of fat made her face look slightly angular and gave her a pinched look. Like the rest of her body, her neck was long, but it didn't look out of proportion on her, and she put it to good use with her spying on the neighbours over the garden fences.

Mrs Dursley liked a pristine house, a regulated garden, fine food and a good gossip. However, she was not used to actually doing the work needed to keep a household in order. When she moved in with her husband, she only did what she needed to do to keep the inside of the house serviceable unless someone was coming round, in which case she would do a complete clean down. She would hire someone to look after the garden once a week because she didn't know how to care for it (it had been her father's area of expertise and she never saw herself becoming the housewife, especially a housewife with a husband who didn't care for a garden).

Meals were also something that she skipped on – four days a week they would have some form of take out or go to a restaurant since Vernon had expressed his dislike for the majority of her foods. During the early years of her marriage, she tried to adjust her cooking and learn what her husband liked. And after a few years of restaurant food and many nights of tears, she finally started producing food that her husband would eat. However, Vernon had gotten so used to eating take out that they still ate such two times a week and would go to a restaurant on the third day.

Nearly ten years ago the Dursleys had woken up to find their niece on the front step. However, in that time Four Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose to greet the same tidy front garden and light up the (regularly polished) brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley realised that something was afoot in the wizarding world. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed.

Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different coloured bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged, and kissed by his mother. It showed the slow progression of a young, innocent, and blond baby into the spoiled, arrogant, overweight boy that the Dursley's proudly called their son.

The room, the entire house even, held no sign that another had been surviving there for the past ten years. Yet Aileen Potter was still there. Tucked away and sat waiting for her 'Aunt' to wake up to begin their daily routine.

And indeed, Petunia's shrill voice soon made the first sound of the morning:

"Up! Get up! Now!" the sound of a bolt sliding open followed this shrieked demand.

Petunia immediately tapped on the door again. "Up!" she screeched in her high-pitched voice that grated at Aileen's sensitive hearing the same way nails on a chalk board did.

Aileen absently wondered if this was how Cinderella felt every time her evil stepfamily rang the bell and demanded something of her without first waiting the few moments it would take her to respond. The sound of Petunia's sharp steps moving towards the kitchen let Aileen know it was safe to start moving about without the continued shrill of her aunt's voice.

Aileen carefully lifted a spider that had found a home on her knee and placed it on the floor. Aileen was used to spiders because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them; and that was where she slept. Having already gotten dressed, she silently opened the door to her room and stepped out into the hallway. Stretching out her muscles slightly Aileen sighed before making her way into the kitchen on silent feet.

"You are supposed to have breakfast done by the time I get up. Vernon is already up and getting ready for the day. Now hurry up, I want everything perfect for Dudley's special day." Petunia snapped when she turned around to find Aileen in the kitchen.

"Yes, Ma'am." Aileen said softly. She started taking out the ingredients to make the pancakes that will go with the bacon that Petunia had 'thoughtfully' set to frying.

While she was cooking, Aileen absently took note of Dudley's presents that were covering the dining room. The new computer, television (although he still had a perfectly useable one in his room) and racing bike were taking up most of the room around the table, making her wonder how she was going to place the dishes on the table without moving something (which she was expressly forbidden from doing because they didn't want her contaminating their 'darling boy's birthday gifts' with her freakishness). Then there was the second question of, why did Dudley want a racing bike? He hated exercise of any form. Even if Dudley chose to ride the bike, it wouldn't survive long because it would buckle under the kids' weight unless the frame and wheels were reinforced. The only exercise that Dudley ever got was when he was beating up the kids in the neighbourhood.

Dudley's favourite punching bag was Aileen - but he couldn't often catch her. Aileen didn't look it, but she was very fast and nimble. Aileen had always been small and skinny for her age – not eating enough and living in a small, enclosed space tends to stunt one's growth. Aileen looked even smaller than she was because she was forced to wear Dudley's old cloths; Dudley was about five sizes bigger than she was. This meant that no matter how much she hemmed in the cloths, they were always too big on her frame; the more she hemmed it in, the more length was lost and if she hemmed it in enough to fit her skinny frame, it would no longer fit her length wise. Besides, she preferred the slight bagginess of the cloths because it disguised how thin she was from the sight of others.

Aileen had once been told that she has a very beautiful face (by the only person she trusted was not simply lying to her for some reason because they existed outside the Dursley sphere of influence and so did not see her as an ungrateful scruffy brat). At first, Aileen hadn't believed him, but having spent the last few years in primary school and seen the different appearances of children, she supposed that her face could be considered beautiful – although she thought she simple looked cute since she was too young to have a descriptor such as 'beautiful' attached to her. Aileen had been blessed with a heart shape face, with high cheek bones and sculptured eyebrows. Her most notable feature was her large almond eyes that seemed to alternate in its variety of green shades, which popped as a shocking colour in contrast to her milk pale skin and mid-night black hair.

Her hair, when it was let loose, fell like waves, down to the small of her back. Petunia had never successfully taken the scissors to her hair, and so it had been allowed to grow long. In order to prevent it becoming tangled and messy, and to stop Vernon from using it to hurt her by yanking at small clumps of hair, she would plait it back in one long tail.

She was meant to wear glasses, but the Dursley's refused to pay for the right prescription, so she had to learn how to judge distance and items by sound. Reading was harder since she normally had to have her face inches away from the book when reading, and she didn't even attempt to read anything on the white boards at school unless the writing was extremely large, and she was sat at the front (which she tried to avoid happening as much as she possible could).

The one thing Aileen liked about her appearance was her eyes (ignoring the appalling eyesight). She had discovered that when she was curious, they would go a deep-sea green; when she was sad, they would go a blue-y green and when she was angry, they would go a hard emerald green. Sometimes a fire would appear to burn in her eyes as well if she was so angry that it blocked out everything else. Normally they would stay a sea green with emerald flecks. If anyone knew her really well, her eyes would be a giveaway as to her mood because she had learnt not to show emotions on her face whilst around the Dursleys.

However, there was also something she hated about her appearance: a very thin scar, shaped like a bolt of lightning that was engraved just below her hair line and above her right eye. She has had it for as long as she could remember. One of the first questions that she could remember asking Petunia was how she had gotten it:

"In the car crash when your filthy parents died," - she had said. "And don't ask questions."

Which was why she didn't like it. Aileen was very good at telling when people were lying to her, and she knew that her aunt was lying about the car crash (since it was something her aunt would sprout off about repeatedly). However, she was not lying about when she got the scar – the night her parents died. It was a reminder of the night she lost her parents and was left with her 'relatives'. It was a reminder that her parents lost their lives when all she had was a scar to remember them by.

Despite not believing that her parents had died in a car crash she could not ask her 'aunt' for more details because one of the many rules of living a peaceful life at the Dursley's was 'Don't ask questions.'

Her 'uncle' entered the kitchen as Aileen placed the first pancake on a plate then flipped the bacon.

"Vernon." Petunia said, filling her obligatory role of informing Vernon of when she had (or had not) done something, even when he already knew the information that he was about to be told. Petunia deferring to Vernon with this information was her way of acknowledging that he was the one with the power in their relationship. "The girl slept in again, I had to start breakfast."

Aileen's back had stiffened from the moment Petunia addressed her husband; she couldn't have started breakfast that morning because she had been locked in the cupboard. Unfortunately, this would not stop the beating that she knew was coming. Carefully, Aileen removed the bacon from the flaming hob and made sure that the bowl of batter was nowhere near the edge – it would save her some trouble down the line because she had burnt the breakfast or made a mess with the batter.

"Did you now, Freak?" He sneered and Aileen heard his chair creek as he turned. "Answer me!" he barked.

Aileen turned silently, clenching all her muscles and focusing on a spot just in front of Vernon; she was fighting every instinct in her body that had told her to stand and fight or runaway instead of just taking it. She had learnt that running would lead to more pain, and that she couldn't fight back without severe consequence. Being silent and subservient generally meant she was in less pain by the time Vernon was finished or he was too exhausted to continue. If she made him angry, then he had more energy to continue.

"Yes sir." She answered softly, barely loud enough for the man to hear on the other side of the room. Although they didn't like to hear her speak, they still expected her to answer when given a direct order.

Vernon's eyes narrowed before he got up and stalked over to Aileen. The moment he was close enough to her, Vernon swung his fists and hit her across the face. Aileen went down with the blow; she could have dodged but to do so would have brought her more pain. Vernon then reached down, pulling her up and grabbing her arm, holding it over the flame until the skin began to blister. Aileen turned her head away and gritted her teeth against the pain, dearly wishing she had turned that off before she turned to face Vernon so that the pain wouldn't be as bad. An open flame was worse than just heated metal.

"Consider yourself lucky, Freak. I'll have to deal with you later. If it wasn't Dudley's birthday, I'd deal with you. Right. This. Second. Now cook breakfast!" he barked before throwing Aileen back to the floor.

"Yes sir." Aileen answered without any infliction in her voice, and once he was far enough away, she got straight back to cooking, ignoring the third degree burn on her arm and the slight tremor in her hand: she would heal it later.

Aileen was just placing everything on what little room was left on the table and putting a fresh pot of tea and coffee on, when Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother (who had left the moment she told Vernon that Aileen had slept in). Dudley looked a lot like Vernon. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes, and thick blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel – Aileen often thought that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.

Aileen was pouring Petunia a cup of tea and Vernon a cup of coffee while Dudley was counting his presents. His face fell.

"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father, ignoring Aileen's presence in the room since she was below his notice unless he wanted to have some 'fun'. "That's two less than last year."

"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, it's here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy." Petunia tried placating her son.

"All right, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face.

Aileen, noticing the beginning signs of a temper tantrum, quickly backed up and began doing the dishes. If she stayed out of the line of fire, then Petunia and Vernon would have to deal with it.

Petunia obviously sensed danger, too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?''

Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally, he said slowly, "So, I'll have thirty ... thirty..."

"Thirty-nine, sweetums," said Petunia.

"Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right then."

Vernon chuckled. "Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair.

Aileen shook her head in disgust as she discreetly splashed some water on her arm to help heal the burn (it was to sever to heal completely without submerging it for a couple of minutes which was not something she could risk doing at that moment with the Dursley in the same room. She didn't fully understand how water healed her, but she wasn't going to complain when it was probably the only reason she hadn't died of infection or blood loss when she was younger.). How could Petunia and Vernon not be worried that their ELEVEN-year-old son could not even count properly?

At that moment the telephone rang, and Petunia went to answer it while Vernon watched Dudley unwrap his presents. Aileen tried to ignore them as she continued to do the washing up, but she saw him unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote-control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR, from the corner of her eye. She had spent to long keeping an eye on her surroundings for the next attack or threat upon her person, that she unconsciously observed her surrounding's even when she didn't really want or need to.

Dudley didn't care where he dumped the wrapping paper since he knew it would be Aileen's job to clean it up. In fact, he was having great fun ripping the paper to pieces and then throwing it out around the living room. The more mess that he could make, the more fun he could have as he mocked Aileen when she would have to clean it up later that day.

He was ripping the paper off a golden wristwatch (most probably made with fool's gold or tinted that colour in order to make it appear expensive when it was probably a relatively cheap watch) when Petunia came back from the telephone looking both angry and worried.

"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs. Figg's broken her leg. She can't take her." She jerked her head in Aileen's general direction.

Dudley's mouth dropped open in horror and Aileen saw him tighten his grip on the wristwatch – most likely cracking the links in the delicate watch since he had never learnt to control his responses to anger/frustration or annoyance properly.

Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Aileen was left behind with Mrs. Figg, an old lady who lived two streets away. Aileen didn't mind going there because Mrs Figg would let her help with the cats, read and go out to the park. She wasn't obliged to do any chores beyond feeding the cats and cleaning their litters and she didn't have to put up with the Dursley's bullying. It was essentially the only time she got time to herself to just relax a little.

"Now what?" Petunia demanded; shooting Aileen a furious look, as though she'd planned for Mrs Figg to break her leg and not be able to take her.

"We could phone Marge," Vernon suggested after a moment.

"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the freak." Petunia snapped, she also disliked Marge and preferred to have minimal interaction with the vial women (which was one of the few things that Aileen and Petunia had in common, that and their hate for Marge's dog: Ripper). When Marge came to stay Aileen and Petunia had a silent, mutual agreement that they did what they could to keep Marge occupied for the entire visit and in turn Petunia ensured that Aileen got more food than normal and that she was also kept out of Vernon's line of sight for the visit.

"What about what's-her-name, your friend - Yvonne?"

"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Petunia her jealously leaking through; she had always wanted to go on holiday somewhere exotic like Majorca, but Vernon was a firm believer in having holidays in Britain ("helping the British economy" he would say, "not those money grabbing tourists").

"I suppose we could take her to the zoo," said Petunia slowly, "... and leave her in the car..."

"That car's new; she's not sitting in it alone..."

"Not to mention its illegal and I could die from heatstroke, and you would both be arrested and thrown in jail for child neglect and man slaughter." Aileen muttered under her breath in Latin, so quietly that Dursleys wouldn't have heard her even if they could have understood what she had said. She spoke her thoughts allowed whenever she could because it made her feel better – a little bit of defiance against Petunia and Vernon's rules (she wasn't supposed to talk out of turn).

She had learnt how to speak Latin fluently for the school play they did at the end of her second year. Most of the class had only learned a few words, but the language had come naturally to her so – with the help of a friendly librarian – she had learned to speak it fluently. The same librarian had also taught her Ancient Greek, New Greek and French. She was working on her Spanish and German, but she was discovering that they were harder for her to learn, even if she'd only been trying for twelve days.

Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he wasn't really crying - it had been years since he'd really cried - but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.

"Dinky Duddyums, don't cry, Mummy won't let her spoil your special day!" she cried, flinging her arms around him just as Dudley (and Aileen) had predicted she would.

"I... don't... want... her... t-t-to come!" Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. "She always sp- spoils everything!" He shot Aileen a nasty grin through the gap in his mother's arms. Aileen ignored it since she didn't care what Dudley thought, nor did she really care if they allowed her to go to the zoo or not. She would either be left in the house on her own, where she could spend the day reading or drawing to her hearts content, or she would be going to the zoo today, where she could see the animals. Either way she would have fun.

Just then, the doorbell rang - "Oh, good Lord, they're here!" said Petunia frantically - and a moment later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people's arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once which caused Aileen to roll her eyes as she began clearing the table (somehow, they had managed to eat everything between opening the presents and arguing). Next to his hatred of Aileen, Dudley had also learnt the art of presenting an image to the public from his parents. He wasn't as good at it as Vernon and Petunia because he was too emotionally impulsive, but he had his moments.

Half an hour later, Aileen was sitting stiffly in the back of the Dursleys' car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in her life. Petunia and Vernon hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with her, but before they'd left, Vernon had held Aileen back.

"I'm warning you," he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Aileen's (they were still inside the house so no one could see). "I'm warning you now, girl - any funny business, anything at all - and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas."

"I'm not going to do anything," Aileen said softly; even though she knew Vernon wouldn't keep her in the cupboard for that long, she was aware that he could (would) keep her locked up until the end of the school year - which was two months away.

Vernon didn't believe her. No one ever did. The problem was, strange things often happened around Aileen, and it was no good telling the Dursley's that she didn't do it, or that she didn't know how it happened.

When she was six, Petunia had been trying to force her into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's (brown with orange puff balls) but the harder she tried to pull it over her head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit Aileen. For some reason Petunia decided it must have shrunk in the wash and so she wasn't punished for freakishness (Aileen believed it was more likely that Petunia did not wish to see her get punished – and so didn't tell her husband – because she had also found the sweater revolting (a gift from Marge) and was pleased to have a reason to chuck it out).

On the other hand, she'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens and for convincing a fellow student to join her. Dudley's gang had been beating up one of the younger kids, as usual, so Aileen had picked the kid up (they weren't much shorter than her, but this didn't bother her overly much since she was stronger than she looked) and ran off, Dudley's gang chasing behind her. Then, much to her surprise as anyone else's, she was on the roof.

The teachers had been absolutely furious and the Dursley's had received a very angry phone call from Aileen's headmistress telling them she had been climbing school buildings (which she hadn't done till she climbed 'down' from the roof with the kid on her back much to the teacher's horror). The kid had hero worshipped her ever since, and he also started bringing his friends to join her in the school library to stay out of Dudley's way because Aileen was rarely in the school field and so unlikely to interfere all the time.

And then there were the monsters.

Aileen wasn't sure why but, when she turned seven, monsters from Greek Mythology kept appearing once a week or so. At first, she didn't understand what the monsters were but when they did the Roman gods in school Aileen looked deeper into the topic and found that the monsters that she was fighting on a weekly basis could have been from Greek or Roman history. She figured they were most likely from Greek mythology since a man handed her a pendent that turned into a sword about two months after the monsters started turning up, and said his name was Poseidon.

At the time she wasn't sure he was The Poseidon, God of the Sea, but when she looked back on that day, she remembered that he felt like the ocean: vast and powerful. However, the Dursley's knew nothing about these monsters – or the pendent/sword. It seemed like regular people couldn't even see them – which weirded Aileen out whenever one came to the school grounds.

She also met another person who she believed to be a goddess, not long after her encounter with Poseidon. For a couple of days after she saw the Sea God, she would leave the Dursleys and there would be a woman watching her. She always looked to be in pain, and yet there was hope in her eyes as well. The weirdest thing about the women was that no one else seemed to notice her.

After several days of being stalked by this woman, she just disappeared. Oddly enough, the same day that the women disappeared, the number of monsters that attacked her dropped to around one a month or so, as opposed to one a week, and the odd occurrences that happened around her (like turning her teacher's hair blue) were ignored by everyone unless it was something really big. Aileen didn't know who the women (goddess?) was, but she knew that she was the reason why her life got that little bit easier, and for that she was thankful.

But that didn't mean she let Poseidon's gift sit idle. She had survived those first few monster attacks through shear dumb luck, or because she had been able to make it back to the boarders of the Dursleys home where the monsters seemed to lose her. She went to the library and took out books on self-defence. When she had memorised everything that they had, she used the library computers to show her clips to teach her how to fight. Then she practised, learning to move her sword with deadly precision while her feet never stayed still. She also used other recommended exercises to get herself some strength on top of her natural speed and agility.

The monsters she generally fought were stupid and alone, having just stumbled across her scent and decided to try and eat her for a meal. Because of this she used her environment to her advantage. Setting up traps that meant she rarely had to engage in combat because she just wasn't confident enough with her sword skills yet to engage the monsters in open and (relatively) fair combat. She doubted she would ever be confident in her sword skills until she had a trainer who could teach her what she needed to know.

Today, she was absolutely set on the fact that nothing was going to happen that was a result of her conscious control; which, looking back on it, was a very foolish vow to make considering she never had any conscious control of the weird things that happened around her….

While he drove, Vernon complained to Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Aileen, the council, Aileen, the bank, and Aileen were just a few of his favourite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.

"... Roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.

It was a very sunny Saturday, and the zoo was crowded with families by the time they arrived (they had been caught in a traffic jam which meant the Zoo had been open for a couple of hours by the time they got there as opposed to the just opened zoo they had been attempting to arrive for). The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, the smiling lady in the van spotted Aileen hanging back slightly before they could disappear into the crowd.

"What would the Little Miss like?" she asked softly.

Aileen's eyes darted to the Dursley's before looking back at the smiling women. "I don't particularly like ice-cream, ma'am, but do you have any drinks?" Aileen asked softly before the Dursley's could stop her. Vernon's eyes narrowed on her before he forced a smile on his face and turned back to the lady who had grabbed a selection of drinks and placed them so that she could see.

"Please can I have a bottle of orange juice?" Aileen asked, not wanting to push the Dursley's too far by asking for a soda, or one of the more expensive squashes like the rubicon.

"Of course, sweetheart. That's another 80p." she added to Vernon before handing over the orange juice.

Aileen had the best morning she'd had in a long time. She was careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn't fall back on their favourite hobby of hitting her.

They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his Knickerbocker glory didn't have enough ice cream on top, Vernon bought him another one and Aileen was given permission to finish the first. However, she didn't eat sugary foods and so she knew it would be a very bad idea if she ate the cream that was left. She suggested that Dudley could add it to his second Knickerbocker glory so that he had even more. When Dudley did what she suggested Aileen relaxed slightly – wanting to keep what little nutrients she could inside her body instead of vomiting it.

After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see the huge poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can - but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.

Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.

"Make it move," he whined at his father. Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Vernon wrapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.

"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Aileen moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake, her eyes tracing its beautiful coils that glistened in the artificial light. She wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom – no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Petunia and Vernon hammering on the door; at least she got to go to school for eight months of the year and sometimes the Dursley's would kick her out of the house when entertaining house guests.

The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Aileen's. It winked.

Aileen stared at the snake, confused, before sending a quick look around her to see if anyone was paying attention. Seeing that they weren't she turned back to the snake and winked too.

The snake jerked its head toward Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Aileen a look that said quite plainly:

"I get that all the time."

"I know," Aileen murmured through the glass, though she wasn't sure the snake could hear her. "It must be really annoying."

The snake nodded vigorously.

"Where do you come from, anyway?" Aileen asked.

The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass.

Bo Cotrctr, Brzil

Tds spomem ws lcrd on th zoa

Aileen squinted trying to determine what it actually said. Dyslexia was something that she had been fighting against ever since she learnt how to read. With time and concentration, she could normally work out what was written, but it gave her a headache trying to take in a lot of information; that combined with the eye strain of trying to see the words meant that her love of learning was also a self-punishment. After a moment she was able to determine that the sign said:

Boa Constrictor, Brazil.

This specimen was bred in the zoo.

"Oh, you poor thing, you've never seen your home?" Aileen murmured softly.

As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout from behind Aileen made both of them jump.

"DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"

Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.

"Out of the way, you," he said, trying to punch Aileen in the ribs. However, Aileen was too fast and used to her cousin's sudden acts of violence. She was able to spin out the way of his punch and turned back to Dudley and Piers annoyed; she didn't often get to have pleasant conversations and she didn't care that it had been with a snake, they had interrupted her.

What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened - one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.

The glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had shattered. Luckily for Dudley and Piers, the glass fell into the tank – probably from their weight pushing the glass in. The snake had seen his chance of freedom and extended its slender body to reach to edge of the tank before sliding out – its body slowly uncoiling as he did so. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.

As the snake slid swiftly past her after snapping at her cousin's ankles, Aileen could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo, maybe we'll see each other sometime."

The keeper of the reptile house was shocked and angry by what had happened. All the glass enclosures were reinforced to prevent things like this happening, so to find out that the glass had shattered and one of their largest snakes had escaped (and not been re-captured) meant that they had to close the reptile house down and run an investigation.

While they were trying to figure everything out, the zoo director made Petunia a strong cup of sweetened tea to help calm her down. Petunia hadn't let go of her son since the glass had broken. Aileen stayed out of the way of the drama, sitting in a corner of the director's office and reading a book that she had pulled from the man's bookcase. After nearly two hours, the Dursley headed home with the zoo director's sincerest apologies and a promise that they will look into what had weakened the glass.

Aileen's day took a sharp turn for the worst once they were in the car on the way home. Dudley and Piers had been mostly quiet while in the office, only gibbering in shock whenever someone asked them a question. However, when they got into the car, Piers had finally calmed down enough to say:

"Aileen was talking to it, weren't you, Aileen?"

"No, I wasn't. Piers, snakes are unintelligent creatures they can't understand the human language so what would the point in talking to it be? It would be like talking to myself." Aileen said trying to salvage the situation, but she could see Vernon's angry glare in the rear-view mirror, even if Piers shrugged the incident off after her explanation, Vernon wouldn't let it go.

Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Aileen. He was so angry that he couldn't say a word. He simply grabbed Aileen by the collar and dragged her down to the basement. Once there he grabbed the chains that were suspended from the roof and clamped them around her wrist. Aileen fought him all the way but the way that he had grabbed her stopped her from fighting back properly.

Once she was hanging by her arms from the ceiling, only being tall enough for her toes to touch the floor, he left her in the dark.

This was not the first time he had chained her to the ceiling and Aileen knew that he would be back. He would beat her for what happened at the zoo.

She had thought about running many times in the last three years (which was when she deemed herself old enough to survive on the streets). But, for some reason, every time she tried running, something would physically pull her back. She always ended up back in the house, with Petunia staring down at her with pursed lips. The longest she had escaped for was five days, and in those five days it had felt like someone was stabbing her in the heart with little pins. It wasn't enough to make her return – she was far too stubborn – but she always ended up back there with no memory as to how.

She had also tried fighting back, which never worked. Although she had fought and killed monsters bigger than Vernon (although she normally only had to deal with hellhounds, and the occasional cyclops who wasn't friendly, would find her) she could never fight Vernon. Every time she tried, her arms felt like they weighed ten tons, and it would feel like someone was stabbing her in the heart – far more painfully than it was when she tried running away.

When she faced monsters, she had the advantage of knowing the turf and being able to use it as weapons against the monsters. But Vernon's turf was his house, and there was nothing she could do to directly fight the man because he was bigger and stronger than her. All she could try and do was avoid the reasons for the beatings in the first place. Keeping her head down, doing the chores she was assigned and not standing out in anyway.

Knowing that she was going to get very little sleep that night, she tried to relax her body as best she could and even out her breathing. Despite the pain of her shoulder joints being forceful wrenched from their sockets Aileen fell into a light dose.

Edited: 11/08/2023