The world swam in and out of focus like a shattered kaleidoscope.

Harry blinked, his wand slipping from his fingers to clatter against the frost-bitten ground. The ringing in his ears swallowed the sound. He doubled over, his breath fogging the air in ragged bursts. Each exhale was a ghostly plume that hung for a moment before dissolving into the night. The cold still clung to him, a phantom weight pressing against his ribs, but it was lighter now, like the lingering ache of a wound that had stopped bleeding but hadn't yet healed.

"Pop goes the poltergeist!" Jinx whirled around, her blue braids catching the faint glow of the rift vanishing behind her. "Did you see that? Poof! Gone!"

She tossed the monstrous minigun over her shoulder with a casual flick, the strap—too thin, too fragile—digging into her shoulder as if it were no more than a child's toy. Her grin stretched too wide, her teeth gleaming under the dim light. Her eyes—glowing, foxfire eyes—danced with something unhinged.

Something that made Harry's stomach twist.

"So, scar-head…" She giggled, spinning on her heel until she was an inch away from him and pointing her finger at him. "Why are you, and why did your creepy monster friend crash my party?"

Harry batted her hand away before it could touch him.

"What— That wasn't— What are you even talking about? You're the one who—" His gaze flicked past her, and his stomach lurched. "Dudley!"

Dudley lay sprawled on the thawing grass a few feet away.

His bulk formed a dark mound against the pale frost. His meaty hands clutched at his chest, fingers twitching like dying spiders. His piggish eyes stared blankly at the sky, his mouth hanging open in a silent gasp. Frost clung to his skin, glistening like a second layer of sweat, his cheeks splotchy red against the sickly pallor of his face. His breath came in shallow, ragged bursts, each one a faint puff of vapor that barely rose before it vanished.

Damn it, Dudley, why didn't you run?

Then again, Harry was supposed to save him. He'd managed the Patronus charm before, in much worse conditions. What had gone wrong with him today? Why were the bad memories so strong?

"Dudley! Come on, get up!" Harry dropped to his knees beside him, the cold seeping through his jeans, biting into his skin. He shook Dudley's shoulder, the flesh beneath his fingers clammy and unresponsive. "Wake up, you great lump!"

As Harry shook Dudley's clammy shoulder, a little voice in his mind told him to let it go.

It whispered how Dudley had been making his life miserable for fifteen years. How Dudley was a menace to society. A spoiled bully. No one would miss him except Vernon and Petunia. Why bother saving him? It would be so much easier to just… let him go.

Harry shook his head.

He didn't know where the little voice was coming from, but it was wrong. Harry was not that kind of person and he never would be. He'd save Dudley, and he'd have done the same for anyone else.

"What's wrong with him?" Jinx crouched next to him like a cat stalking prey. "He's not dead, is he? That would be boring."

Harry's jaw tightened.

Dudley's skin was so cold. He was so still, like the dementor had sucked the life out of him, and all that remained was a hollow shell.

All because Harry couldn't get a spell he'd already mastered to work.

Skeletal oaks loomed overhead, their branches clawing at the smothered sky like desperate hands. The air still reeked of burnt ozone and decaying flesh, the stench clinging to the back of his throat like a warning. The rift behind Jinx pulsed faintly, its edges fraying into smoke, the air around it crackling with residual energy. The ground beneath them was slick with frost, the grass brittle and dead, crunching underfoot like broken glass.

"Hello! Earth to Bolt Boy!"

Harry shoved her hand away, the heat of her skin a sharp contrast to the frost clinging to his fingers. "Stop that! He's not—"

His throat constricted as Dudley twitched, his lips parting in a weak whimper. His face had lost all its usual piggish color, descending into the pallor of old candle wax, his skin slick with cold sweat. Harry's pulse pounded at his temples, a steady hammering like distant war drums.

"He's not dead…" Harry sighed. "But he's not okay either."

Jinx leaned closer, her nose nearly grazing Dudley's clammy cheek. She inhaled a deep, theatrical sniff, then pulled back, her brows scrunching together.

"Huh. Weird. He smells like… I dunno, sadness and sausages." She rocked back on her heels. "So… what now?"

"You're asking me?" Harry's breath hitched. "I don't even know who—or what—you are! You just… showed up, blew up a Dementor, and—"

The sheer absurdity of what he'd just said slammed into him like a rogue Bludger. Saying out loud made it sound even more insane, and it was true. How insane was that? He was living in a world of flying cars and werewolves, and somehow… He's managed to get himself into something impossible.

Again.

"Yup! That's me! Chaos, explosions, fun times!" She extended a hand to him. Grease stained her fingers, and soot burrowed deep into the cracks of her skin. "You're welcome, by the way."

Harry didn't move.

The grime on her fingertips looked like it had been there for years, embedded beneath her nails, worked into the calloused skin as if it were part of her. Something darker smudged the creases. Oil?

His stomach twisted.

Jinx's grin wavered for half a second before her lips twisted into an exaggerated pout. "Rude…"

She let her arm drop with a theatrical sigh, slapping her thigh with a mock-wounded expression.

"Fine. Don't shake hands. Not like I saved your bacon or anything."

Her boots crunched against the grass as she took a lazy step back, tilting her head at him like he was some strange, half-solved puzzle. The movement was too sharp, too sudden—like a marionette with tangled strings. It was as if her limbs were jerking instead of flowing.

Harry's heartbeat thundered like a wild animal was slamming against his ribcage.

His mind struggled to settle—to make sense of the past five minutes—but it refused. Everything felt off-kilter, as if the world had shifted beneath his feet without warning. Dudley, limp on the ground, his breath thin and fragile. The Dementor, gone, annihilated in a flash of impossible energy.

And her.

Jinx stood there like she belonged in this moment, like it was normal to tear through reality and obliterate creatures of nightmare with a glowing gemstone. But nothing about her was normal. She vibrated with an energy that crackled in the air, static curling around her, setting Harry's nerves on edge.

He swallowed hard and bent down to retrieve his wand.

His fingers fumbled over the wood, the retreating coldness seeping through his palm like winter's first frost sinking into the earth. He gripped it tight, but the usual reassurance—the familiar anchor—had turned hollow.

"Who…" He took a deep breath. "Who are you?"

Jinx twirled.

Her long blue braid whipped behind her, slicing through the air like the tail of a comet. The sleeveless cropped top she wore clung to her wiry frame, the fabric a deep violet stained with streaks of soot and faint chemical burns. Straps crisscrossed her torso, some functional, others purely decorative, each fastened with mismatched buckles that jingled softly with her movements.

She spread her arms.

Her shorts, jaggedly cut and uneven, bore the marks of past mayhem—scorch marks, faded paint smears, a tear along the thigh that hadn't quite unraveled yet. One stocking rode high, patterned in bold stripes of violet and magenta, while the other sagged just slightly, fraying at the knee. Her boots—steel-toed and battered from use—thudded against the ground, the soles caked with a mix of soot, dirt, and something that glowed faintly under the dim moonlight.

"Jinx!" She giggled. "It's really not that hard to remember, Bolt Boy."

She stopped mid-spin, her head snapping toward him so fast Harry half-expected to hear the crack of vertebrae. Her gaze flicked up and down, narrowing just slightly, her pupils dilating before shrinking to pinpricks.

It was as if she was a fox assessing a hound.

"Who are you, though?" Her finger jabbed toward him again. "You're the one who tried to kill that poltergeist with a stick."

Harry's grip tightened around his wand.

"I mean, seriously, what's with the stick?" Jinx's nose wrinkled, her lips pursing as she tilted her head. "Ooh, does it zap things?"

This girl is insane.

"It's a wand."

Damn it… He spoke before he could stop himself. The last thing he needed right now was to break the Statute of Secrecy and make things even worse for himself. On the other hand, the girl had just killed a dementor. Even if she wasn't using a wand, there was a good chance she wasn't a muggle.

He glanced at Dudley, still lying there on the ground.

This conversation was taking too long. Dudley's breaths were coming in sharp, uneven gasps. His chest was barely moving. The dementor hadn't taken his soul, of that, Harry was sure, but Dudley was a muggle. Harry had no idea what kind of effects dementors had on them.

Jinx followed his gaze, her smirk fading.

She crouched beside Dudley, balancing on the balls of her feet, one hand reaching out to… hover over his face. Like she was waiting for him to twitch, to move, to give her something. The soft hum of static crackled in the air around her, faint, almost imperceptible, but Harry felt it, curling at the edges of his senses like the first whisper of a storm.

"What was that thing called?" She scooped up some dew from the thawed grass and watched it trail down her slender fingers in thin rivulets. "The creepy, floaty, poltergeist?"

"A dementor." He watched her as she stood over Dudley. "They're prison guards. I have no idea why they're here."

Though, with my luck, I'm surprised there was only one…

"Dementor, huh?" She rolled the word around in her mouth like a piece of sour candy. Tasting it. Testing it. "Nasty prison…"

She giggled.

Not a light laugh. Not amusement. Something jagged and offbeat, like glass rattling inside an empty bottle.

"Guess you get used to weird monsters around here too, huh?"

"Used to—what?" Harry frowned. "No! They're—"

He stopped himself with a snap of his teeth.

The Statute of Secrecy. He wasn't sure whether she was a muggle yet, so he had to follow the Statute of Secrecy. Besides, where the hell was he even supposed to start? How did you explain something like Dementors to someone who had never seen one before and had obliterated one without even blinking?

She pursed her lips at him.

"What are you doing here?" He exhaled, raking a hand through his hair. "How are you here?"

The night pressed down, thick with the remnants of magic and the acrid tang of ozone. Jinx tapped a finger against the monstrous weapon strapped across her back, each tap a sharp metallic click that punctuated the lingering silence. Her grin softened just slightly, but the wild gleam in her eyes never dulled.

"Let's call it…" She tilted her head, tapping her temple with the same lazy rhythm. "An accident. One second, I was somewhere else, and the next—boom!"

Her arms flung outward, mimicking an explosion, her braid whipping over her shoulder like the lash of a striking serpent.

"Here I am." She shrugged. "No idea where here is, by the way, but hey—beats getting blown to smithereens. Probably."

None of this made sense.

The words, the ease with which she said them, the sheer impossibility of what she'd done. No spell, no incantation, just raw, burning destruction. She'd torn through a dementor—a creature that fed on magic—like it was made of paper, using a weapon that shouldn't have existed in any world Harry knew.

The truth sat just beyond his reach.

The truth… was jagged and wrong. Like looking at a puzzle where the pieces had been jammed together even though they didn't fit. His fingers clenched around his wand, the wood biting into his palm. He needed something solid. Something that followed the rules.

"You're not a witch," he muttered, more to himself than to her.

Jinx's head snapped toward him.

"A what now?" Her grin lingered, but her eyes sharpened like a blade flicking out of its sheath. "Witch? That your fancy word for weirdos with sticks?"

Harry barely heard her.

His mind churned, logic twisting itself into knots. If she wasn't magical, then how had she done it? The explosion, the lightning, the sheer force that had torn the Dementor apart—none of that belonged to Muggles.

"You don't have magic." He tested the words, as if speaking them aloud would make them true. "You're… you're a Muggle… You must be…?"

Jinx blinked.

"That supposed to be an insult?" She laughed and wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye. "Cuz, trust me, I've been called much worse."

Muggles couldn't see Dementors.

They could feel the way the cold seeped into your bones, curling around the marrow, prying into the deepest corners of your mind and dragging your worst memories into the light. Muggles couldn't see dementors, but they knew the terror of a dementor.

Jinx saw it and didn't know terror.

His gaze darted over her again, as if the answer was somehow written in the sharp angles of her frame, hidden beneath the leather straps crisscrossing her torso, or scrawled like a secret along the spiraling tattoos up her arms.

Her fingers kept drumming against the strap of the monstrous gun slung over her shoulder. Her body never stilled. Her weight shifted. Her stance changed, like a wind-up toy that couldn't stop moving or else it would snap apart at the seams.

"How did you see the dementor?" His voice dropped lower, as if speaking louder might break whatever fragile thread of logic was holding this conversation together. "Muggles can't see them."

Dudley let out a faint, wheezing noise—not quite a groan but almost. It should have been reassuring. It wasn't. Harry exhaled sharply. He didn't have time for riddles and conversations, but… This was important. This girl had appeared out of a rift in reality and saved him.

"Well…" She tapped her chin. "I guess that makes me special, huh?"

"How did it feel?" He frowned. "Being near the dementor?"

"Not got, that's for sure…" She rocked back on her heels, crossing her arms. "I sure didn't like seeing the creepy floater. Game the chills. Made me think of…"

Her eyes flickered, their glow dimming slightly as if she'd stepped into shadow. Whatever thought she'd started seemed to twist and writhe in her mind, her hands twitching at her sides like she couldn't shake it loose.

Harry pressed his lips together.

Oh, he knew that reaction. Her reaction was brief and barely noticeable, yet it left a sour taste in Harry's mouth, as if he'd bitten into rotten fruit again. Whatever memory the dementor had drawn out of her must've been bad, and Harry wasn't intending on prying.

"It didn't just give you the chills…" He looked down. "It drained all happiness out of you, didn't it?"

"Meh…" She clasped her hands behind her head. "What's happiness anyway? Never really been my thing?"

A strange pang twisted beneath Harry's ribs as he studied her.

The way she stood. The sharpness of her grin. The speed of her movement, like a sparking wire threatening to snap. Her words—What's happiness anyway?—the brittleness and hollowness they pushed into the air around them, like the echo of a joke that wasn't funny.

Her eyes betrayed her.

They dimmed and flickered, just for a moment, as if something dark and heavy was constantly reaching from the depths of her soul to attack her for a single moment before retreating back down into the abyss.

He'd seen that look before.

Not just in the mirror. He'd seen it in Sirius and Remus. In people who carried scars too deep to heal, who wore their pain like armor because they didn't know how to take it off. Hermione might have thought him clueless, and he was for many things.

Just not for this.

Only… Jinx was different. She didn't wear her pain like armor. She wore it like a weapon. Like a jagged blade she wanted to use to cut the world itself.

What happened to you?

The question pressed against the back of his teeth, but he didn't ask it. He couldn't. Not when her grin was already stretching wider, her fingers drumming and drumming, her body shifting restlessly like she was seconds from bolting or exploding or both. She wasn't the type to answer questions like that. Not honestly, anyway.

Maybe not at all.

"You're not fine…" The words were barely more than a whisper.

He hadn't meant to say them at all, but they slipped away from him. They shouldn't have. He didn't know her. He didn't know what she'd gone through or where she'd come from. He did know what it was like to wear a mask, though. To laugh when you wanted to scream. To pretend you were fine when you were anything but…

Her grin faltered. "What was that?"

"Nothing…" Harry shook his head. "Nothing at all…"

Except it wasn't nothing.

It was the fact that Dudley lay on the ground because of him. Because the Patronus had failed. Because, for the first time since he'd learned it, the darkness had been too strong. The thought coiled like a snake in his chest.

"Alright." She straightened and stepped away from Dudley. "I ain't about to push you on it."

"Thanks."

"I'm me. That's all you ever need to know. I do have a question for you, though." She glanced down at Dudley, who hadn't stirred from his frost-coated spot on the ground, and then back at Harry. "Are we gonna stand around playing twenty questions, or are we gonna figure out what to do with lumpy here?"


That's a wrap for Chapter 2!

For anyone wondering, Jinx teleported to the Potterverse while she was messing around with the stabilized hextech crystal in Episode 5. Think before Silco "drowns" or baptizes or whatever it is he did to her to "kill" Powder. Also, for anyone wondering why Jinx didn't turn into a freaked out mush next to the dementor, as she should have, that was planned and the hextech crystal is the why. It's also why Harry keeps perceiving her as vaguely magical, even though she's technically not.

Let me know what you liked and disliked, I love and appreciate all constructive criticism, especially since I always keep editing and improving these chapters. I would love to hear all your thoughts!

Check me out on p. a. t. r.e.o.n.. c.o.m. /TheStorySpinner (don't forget to remove the spaces and dots) for early releases of new chapters and bonus content.

The following chapters are already available there:

Chapter 3: The Art of Bad Timing

Chapter 4: Red Stains on Privet Drive

Chapter 5: The Edge of the Map

See you in Chapter 3!