Sadly, I have to abandon more of my crossovers and archive them here. Both are crossovers with survival horror games, and are also firsts for me. Heather Potter and the Legacy of Alessa was my first female Harry story, and had so much promise, being a good mesh between the Potterverse and Silent Hill 3. Unfortunately, like many of my abandoned fics, it very much falls under the 'good idea at the time' category. I never got the motivation to write the next chapters, so, I've decided to abandon and archive it. We will discuss Resident Evil: Basilisk when we come to it...

HEATHER POTTER AND THE LEGACY OF ALESSA

CHAPTER 1:

HEATHER POTTER

A derelict amusement park…

A whirling carousel, looking like an occult symbol from above…

A bizarre creature whose head was twitching and spasming at grotesque speed…

A doppelganger of herself, but with burns, and a bleak expression, wielding a knife…

Creatures attacking her, as she fled through the amusement park. Split-headed dogs with bandages and strange, tall creatures with massive club-like paws that snuffled and moaned…

The roller coaster, the tracks free of monsters, allowing her to move towards her destination…

The rumble on the tracks, a roller coaster car suddenly appearing out of the dark, its lights blazing…

Just before she was hit, and sent to her death, she thought, Now I know what it's like to be a deer in the headlights.

As she lay, bleeding and broken, her consciousness ebbing, she felt something grip her ankles. Even in death, she couldn't catch a break. But it felt like someone, or at least something with hands, was taking her away.

With the last of her strength, she looked up to see…a strange, humanoid thing, like something stitched together out of leather, with an apron. It's face was a near-featureless mask, twitching and spasming.

And as the darkness consumed her, she heard it say, No…your time hasn't come yet…Mother of God…

Heather Potter, now living as Heather Morris, opened her eyes. The red glare of a sunset seared at her eyes, and she blinked the sleep away. She was in a diner in a shopping mall, a short train ride from home. Or what home was now.

"What a nightmare," she muttered to herself. Even so, it didn't feel like a run of the mill nightmare. Luna had told her in third year that, like her, Heather had a touch of the Sight. And despite the surreal nature of the dream, it had the stink of a dream glimpsing the future dimly. She had learned more from the scatter-brained blonde than she ever did from Trelawney.

As Heather got up and paid for her meal, she contemplated what had gone wrong with her life. There were so many places to choose from, but she supposed it started in earnest with the fourth year, and the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Only, thanks to Barty Crouch Junior, it became the Quad-Wizard Tournament. Locked into a dangerous tournament with no way out, shunned by most of the school, including many she considered friends (Ron Weasley in particular), her only allies being Hermione, Neville, and Luna. Even after the First Task, and Ron realised how truly dangerous it had been, their friendship remained distant, especially once her most precious person in the Second Task was revealed to be Neville. Well, she had taken him to the Yule Ball, but Ron had a notion that he might end up marrying Heather. That notion had died hard, and it was only just before what would have been their fifth year that they managed to get their relationship back to normal.

Ah yes, fifth year. Which started wonderfully, with her friends forbidden to correspond with her, and only Luna flouting Dumbledore's rules, though Hermione, once she cottoned onto what Luna suggested, did follow suit, and eventually, so did Ron. They used the Muggle mail to send letters to him, mostly full of inanity, but with coded messages (activated only by their personal magic). It was through these letters that Heather learned that a smear campaign had been mounted against her and Dumbledore by Cornelius Fudge, all because she had told the truth.

Of course, in retrospect, what proof was there? The corpse of Cedric Diggory, and Barty Crouch Junior, who had been rendered soulless by a Dementor. Speaking of which, a couple of Dementors attacked her and Dudley, and while defending herself, she soon found herself effectively put on trial. And that's when things went horribly wrong.

Despite everything, the Minister had ordered her wand snapped, and her expulsion from Hogwarts. Heather was returned to 4 Privet Drive, but she wouldn't remain there for long.

A few days later, she got seven unexpected visitors, including Snape of all people. And Petunia, oddly, allowed them in. Petunia had actually been strangely sad about Heather being expelled from Hogwarts, and not just because Heather would have been out of her hair, otherwise. Letting wizards into her home was even more strange, though learning that she had known Snape since they were children did clear some of that up.

Hermione, Ron, Luna, and Neville were there. And the adults present were Remus, Sirius, and Snape. The four children were there to say goodbye, as Heather was going to be taken to a safe house outside the country. Sadly, Heather couldn't use Hedwig to correspond with them anymore. She couldn't even use the mirrors Sirius had considered. Instead, they created a similar method, a magical diary that could message people. Hermione had said it was almost like email(1).

She had said her goodbyes, hoping that one day, she would come back, and that they wouldn't be murdered by Voldemort. Unfortunately, what Snape and her father's two friends had to tell her suggested otherwise.

Snape had been told late last year about two horrifying things about Heather. She contained two evil entities within her body. The first was a Horcrux, a splinter of Voldemort's soul. The second was something even worse, something even Dumbledore didn't know what it was, save that it was demonic, and growing.

Heather knew about the latter.

Had it only been the Horcrux, Dumbledore would have tried his utmost to find a way of removing it without killing Heather. But with the revelation of the demonic entity growing within Heather, it seemed that Dumbledore had given up hope of saving Heather Potter. Even though Snape, in his researches, had turned up a potential cure in the form of Aglaophotis, but because it needed to be taken at a critical point in order to ensure the expulsion and dissolution of the being within her, Dumbledore had dismissed it. It seemed that in his despair, Dumbledore had utterly resigned himself to Heather Potter's death, in order to ensure that Voldemort died, and the demonic entity would die as well.

But as disheartening as that was, it was by no means the only startling revelation. Besides Snape actually not only defying Dumbledore, but helping Heather out. When he had been asked why, his cryptic remark was, 'You have your mother's eyes, no matter what these two will say'.

And what Sirius and Remus had to say dropped a bombshell as big as Snape's: Heather Potter was not the daughter of the Potters at all, save by blood adoption rituals. The story they told her, however, made sense of all those strange visions she saw while under the influence of the Dementors, and what Luna said about them.

It wasn't just reliving the deaths of the Potters, her adoptive parents: there were other visions. Of a mother like a hag, demanding that Heather share her power (but calling her 'Alessa' for some reason). Of burning flesh, her flesh, and the unbearable agony. Of being rescued unwillingly, of splitting her soul, part of it living on as a girl called Cheryl Mason. A bifurcated life, one spent in hellish pain, the other, in the loving arms of a father and mother, the Masons. Of the mist-bound town of Silent Hill, her being drawn there, of the creatures and entities there. Of being found by her birth mother, and forced to fuse her two halves back together to become the Incubator of Silent Hill's dark god. Of being saved by her first adoptive father using Aglaophotis, destroying the demon that had emerged from her. And of her recreating herself in a new infant, pouring most of her essence into that child, and leaving a remnant behind to make sure that her father escaped.

Sirius and Remus knew Harry Mason. Harry Mason's wife was an Evans, the aunt of Petunia and Lily, and if James and Lily ever had a boy, Lily had considered calling him Harry, as she had fond memories of her uncle. Unfortunately, the Potters had been rendered sterile by a curse inflicted on them by a malicious Death Eater. Harry sent them Heather, not realising that the Potters were in the middle of a war, for safekeeping, in case the Cult of Silent Hill came calling. The Potters used a blood adoption ritual to bring Heather into the family. And, well, from there, well, you know the rest.

Luna had already indicated this when she first met Heather, but while Heather did befriend the strange girl rather quickly, it did take her some time to even accept the possibility that they were more than nightmares, but memories of a life she had lived before. Now she knew. And she had to leave Britain before Dumbledore decided that her time was up.

The plan was this: Remus and Sirius would take Heather to the United States, as they had contact details for Harry Mason. Snape gave her a capsule of Aglaophotis in a locket, and told her to take it when the time was right. He clarified by saying that, when the pain got too hard to bear, and she knew she was on the brink of death. She would start feeling pains in her guts on a regular basis as the demonic entity grew closer to being born.

Remus, Sirius, and Heather made their way to the United States, and found Harry Mason in Portland in Maine. The reunion between father and adopted daughter was a strange one, but Heather found herself overwhelmed by the feelings of love she felt towards him, feelings she had once felt as Cheryl Mason. And Harry Mason, for his part, found the fact that his adopted daughter was a witch very easy to accept, considering what he went through in Silent Hill.

Remus and Sirius couldn't stay. They needed to make sure that neither Dumbledore nor the Death Eaters could track them down and get Heather's location out of them. So Harry and Heather moved, while Remus and Sirius went their separate ways, with Sirius ending up living in Las Vegas(2). Lupin, as it turned out, managed to persuade another member of the Order of the Phoenix to defect, Nymphadora Tonks, and they were living happily together in Virginia, despite Lupin's 'furry little problem'.

Which led Heather to this point. Two years, she had spent in the United States, while the Order and the Ministry ran around like headless chickens. The Daily Prophet, which she was able to get thanks to the local magic stores (hidden, of course), alternated between pleading for her return, and calling her a coward. Hermione and Neville had both left for France and Beauxbatons, while Ron, Ginny, and the Weasley twins took up their education in America. These decisions were influenced partly by Voldemort's rise, and partly by the fifth year's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher and High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, Dolores Umbridge. An odious little sadist that Heather remembered being at her trial, a toad of a woman dressed in garish pink clothing.

Heather didn't really trust anyone in authority in Magical Britain anymore. She just wanted to have a quiet life, and Snape had assured her that he would do everything he could to make sure that not only did Voldemort not win, but Dumbledore not get his hands on her. The last time he had contacted her, apparently Dumbledore had gotten cursed by a Horcrux while doing something foolish. Draco had been tasked by Voldemort to assassinate Dumbledore, but Snape did it for him at both Dumbledore's and Narcissa Malfoy's (admittedly separate) requests.

Though Dumbledore was dead, Snape warned Heather to stay out of the country. He was tracking down the remaining Horcruxes and destroying them, and when he found a means of destroying the Horcrux within Heather without killing her, he'd contact her.

All of this went through her mind as she walked through the shopping mall, and went for a payphone. As she did so, her instincts began screaming at her. She was being followed, she was sure of it. Mad-Eye Moody would be proud. Last she heard, the grizzled old Auror was working with Snape to track down and destroy the Horcruxes.

She rang home, and called. "Hello, Harry Mason here," came the voice of her father.

"Dad? It's me," Heather said.

"Oh, Heather. I was wondering why you were still out."

"Yeah. Sorry I didn't call sooner," Heather said.

"It's fine. You fell asleep in the restaurant, did you? Too tired from staying up to watch those old movies."

Heather smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess I was. Anyway, I'm coming home now." A thought occurred to her. "Oh, I didn't get that thing you asked me to."

"Oh, the shop was all out, was it? Never mind. I can live without it."

"Okay."

"Come home soon, Heather."

"Okay, I will."

"Love you, Heather."

"Love you too, Dad," Heather said, before hanging up, smiling, running a hand through her now blonde hair (colouring it to avoid identification as either Heather Potter, or the reincarnation of Alessa, and contacts to change her eye colour from green to hazel, though she couldn't do much about the scar, but hide it beneath her hair). The smile left her face as she noticed who was watching her, a scruffy, middle-aged, bearded man in a shabby coat and hat. She moved off, and noticed the man following her.

Eventually, he said, "Heather, I need to speak with you. My name is Douglas Cartland. I'm a detective."

Heather turned to appraise the man. A detective? Well, he was a pretty shabby one. "A detective? Really?" she asked sardonically. "Well, nice talking to you."

As she turned to leave, he said, "Hold on. There's someone who wants to meet you. Just let me have an hour, no, half an hour of your time."

Heather turned and glared. "Well, my father told me not to talk to strangers. Anyway, do you have ID?"

Cartland nodded, and handed a card over. She checked it with a frown. It seemed legitimate enough. He seemed to be a private investigator of some sort. As she handed it back, she said, "Even so, I'm not interested, Mr Cartland."

"Look, this is very important. This is about your birth."

Heather blinked. Then, she said, probably foolishly, "Which one?"

"Huh?"

"Listen, your employer, are they from Silent Hill, or England?"

Cartland shrugged. "Not from England. But beyond that, I can't say, even if I did know."

"Then I'm definitely not interested, Mr Cartland. Now leave me alone."

She began walking, only to realise that the man was following behind her. She whirled and glared at him again. Only this time, she made his trousers translocate about three metres away, leaving him only in boxers(3). "Now, you have two options. You either leave me alone, or I start screaming that you're a pervert, and given the state of your trousers…"

"What do you mean, my…?" He looked down, and almost screamed himself. As he spotted his trousers and scrambled to get them (thankfully for him, there weren't any other people around at the moment), Heather ducked into a nearby women's toilets, and clambered through a window, hoping that he wouldn't be game enough to follow through there.

She didn't know what his game was, but she was sure it wasn't good. She made her way down an alley, and then into another part of the mall. Many of the doors of this backroom area seemed to be locked, and she couldn't help but notice that this area seemed quiet and undisturbed. Surely there'd be staff members of the mall around?

She made it back into the mall proper, but many of the shutters were in place, the place looked grimy, and her only way to go anywhere was into a boutique clothing store. She frowned as she noticed a pistol on the ground. But then, she heard a bizarre, groaning and chewing noise, and turned…only to stare in horror.

It was a grotesque parody of a human form, with thin spindly legs, vast, club-like paws, and a cylindrical head that was currently eating the corpse of a woman with the only feature on said head, a grotesque mouth. And then, it turned its attention to her.

Heather reached for the gun, and yelled, raising it at the creature, "Stay back! Get the hell away from me!"

The creature didn't comply, and after a few shots, Heather decided that more extreme measures were needed. The Statute of Secrecy was more lax here, and she kept her wand elsewhere. The Trace didn't work here, and in any case, this was an emergency. She remembered one of the darker spells Snape had taught her, something he himself developed, something he had taught her just in case. Slashing her fingers down, she yelled, "SECTUMSEMPRA!"

The effect was immediate. Gaping wounds opened up on the monster, and with a bestial moan of pain, it slumped to the ground. As it died, spasming and twitching, Heather thought, What the Hell is this thing?!

But even as she thought it, she knew. Alessa's memories and Cheryl's memories were very clear on that score, even if they hadn't seen this thing before. It stank of Silent Hill.

Which meant that someone, or something, from that town was reaching out for her…

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

I hope you enjoyed this initial chapter. Things will start diverging somewhat from the story of Silent Hill 3. After all, Heather has access to all of her memories as Cheryl and Alessa, thanks to the Dementors and her own magic. The next chapter, being the first meeting between Heather and Claudia, is a case in point…

I feel that this was a relatively minor bashing of Dumbledore compared to many such stories, though. Now, I will discuss this in a later chapter, but after the events of what would have been The Half-Blood Prince, Snape ganked Voldemort, killing him, or at least turning him into a wraith for the time being. This was to buy him time to find the other Horcruxes, as well as to establish his bona fides to some in the Order. Moody is one of the few left in the Order, however, who will listen to him (ironic, given Moody's paranoia, but I also thought he was one of the smarter members). Snape hasn't mentioned killing Voldemort to Heather, though, because he thinks that might make her complacent. In any case, the rest of Magical Britain still believe he is alive, so her friends don't know.

1. While 1995, when that bit was set, was early days for home email, I'd like to think that Hermione, at least, had heard of it.

2. An oblique reference of mine to a number of fics where Harry is taken to Vegas (usually by Sirius or Remus), and ends up getting married. Most of the time, it seems to be to a superhero.

3. My little reference to an Easter Egg in Silent Hill 3: input the Konami Code, and Douglas wanders around with his trousers off, showing off his boxers. Hence, this scene. Heh heh heh…