Chapter 1: When the Night Breaks
The summer evening pressed its fevered palm against Little Whinging, squeezing the streets until asphalt groaned and cracked. Harry's soles ground grit into the pavement with each step, the frayed laces of his trainers slapping like dead tongues against his ankles. Stale air pooled in his throat. Burnt rubber and diesel fumes clotted his lungs, and the aftertaste of the Dursleys' meatloaf soured his tongue. Streetlamps flickered awake above, their jaundiced glow leaching color from the world, turning hedges into hunched specters and parked cars into fossilized beasts.
He didn't look back.
Uncle Vernon's roar still vibrated in his ribs, the man's jowls quivering like raw sausage casings as he'd slammed the door.Out.The memory tightened Harry's fists, nails biting crescent moons into his palms.
Let the walrus-faced bastard stew.
His trainers scuffed faster, eating the distance to the park, where skeletal oaks clawed at the smothered sky. A chain-link fence snagged his sleeve, rust flaking onto his wrist like dried blood. He shook it off, the metal's shriek echoing the one trapped behind Harry's teeth. Cedric's blank eyes stared up at him from every shadow.
The words echoed in his ears.
Cedric's father's shouts of 'Not my son, not my boy!'. The Minister calling Harry a liar. Denying the truth. Worse, burying the truth. Shoveling dirt over Cedri's corpse and calling ita tragic accident. As if moldering bones could silence the hiss of that voice, serpent-smooth in the graveyard.
'Kill the spare.'
The park gates hung crooked, hinges weeping orange tears. A swing shuddered in the windless dark, its frayed rope noosing the air. Harry's scar prickled, a needle of ice drilling into bone. Above, the crescent moon grinned, sharp as a sickle.
Something rustled in the thornbush.
Harry's breath hitched and muscles coiled, but it was just a rat, scuttling over crumpled crisp packets. The wand in his pocket pressed against his thigh, its core humming like a trapped wasp. Useless.
What was the point of a wand if he wasn't allowed to use it anyway?
He kicked a stone, sent it skittering into the void where the slide's yellow paint had peeled to scabs. His shirt clung to his spine, sweat pooling where the rucksack straps dug grooves into his shoulders. The night smelled of rotting mulch and dog piss, a sweetness beneath it… wild garlic? Or the floral reek of the Dursleys' air freshener, cloying as Aunt Petunia's simper.
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years of their care, and they'd still flinched when he reached for the marmalade that morning. As if he'd sprout fangs. As if his very existence would somehow twist them into something that no one could ever undo. Wasn't the fact that he'd never even tried to get back at them for the way they raised him enough of an indicator that he wouldn't hurt them?
A twig snapped.
Harry spun, wand half-drawn before his brain registered the sound. Darkness breathed back, swollen and patient. The swing creaked again, chains rattling like vertebrae.
You're losing it, Potter.
He forced his shoulders down, fingers uncurling. The stars were gone, smothered by clouds fat with unshed rain. Only the moon remained with its slivered smirk. It reminded him of Quirrell's turban unwinding, of the face beneath—Voldemort'sface. The face of the now returned dark lord. Laughter bitter as bile bubbled in Harry's throat. Let Fudge bury his head in the sand.
The war had already begun.
Wind stirred at last, carrying the reek of the meatpacking plant across the river. Harry's scar flared again, a lightning fork searing his skull. He pressed a palm to it, the skin feverish and slick. Somewhere,hewas stirring. Somewhere, red eyes slithered open.
The swing fell still.
The wind shifted, dragging with it the cloying stench of hair gel and sweat-soaked polyester. Harry's shoulders stiffened before his brain registered the voice, a nasal sneer that always caught in the teeth.
"Think you're clever, freak? Hidin' out here?"
Dudley's shadow spilled across the cracked footpath first, bloated and quivering as he lumbered into the streetlamp's pallid halo. His meaty fingers gleamed with grease from the takeaway bag clutched in one hand, the other already curling into a fist that resembled a raw ham hock. Behind him, Piers and Malcolm simpered like hyenas waiting for scraps, their shadows stretching toward Harry like grasping talons.
Harry's wand hand twitched. "Piss off, Dudley."
"Heard Dad chucked you out. Bet you'll be sniffin' round our bins by dawn." He took a step closer, his bulk blotting out the moon, the streetlamp casting his jowls into sagging cliffs of shadow. "Maybe we oughta make it quicker, eh? Give you a head start."
The swing's chains rattled as Harry backed into them, iron links biting his spine. Dudley's eyes—piggy and glinting—tracked the movement. His tongue darted out to lick fried chicken residue from his thumb.
"Scared, Potter?"
Yes.
The admission hissed through Harry's veins with the coldness of the arctic. He wasn't scared of Dudley's fists, but of his own fingers itching to unleashExpelliarmus,Levicorpus, or a Bombarda. Something that would paint the pavement with Dudley's fear. The air thickened, static electricity prickling his skin as magic coiled in his chest, restless as a caged beast.
"Look at his face!" Piers crowed, crouching to grab a stone. "Like he's gonna cry for hisDaddy!"
Malcolm's snort dissolved into a phlegmy cough. Harry's jaw clenched until his molars ached.Daddy.Cedric's father's wails at the Triwizard Cup ceremony clawed up from his memory once again, raw as an open nerve.
The wind died.
It just vanished amid Piers' laughter, as if the night itself had grabbed its throat and clenched to strangle it. The streetlamp's bulbsizzled, glass blistering black as if a flame no one could see had kissed it. The light dimmed to a sickly ochre halo, painting Dudley's face jaundiced, his sweat-sheened jowls glistening like rancid butter. Frost bloomed across the seesaw's metal rails, crystalline fractals spreading like shattered glass in a time-lapse.
Piers froze first, his ratty sneaker hovering mid-step over the curb. "W-what's thatsmell?"
The stench burned. Moldering lilies, cloying as funeral parlors, undercut by the sweet-rot tang of meat left to bloat in the sun.
Malcolm gagged. "Let's get out of here!"
They bolted, sneakers slapping pavement in panicked syncopation.
Dudley froze in place.
His sneer faltered, his piggy eyes darting to the rusted park gate where Piers and Malcolm's fleeing footsteps still echoed. The streetlamp above them guttered, its jaundiced light shrinking until it clung to the bulb like a drowning man to driftwood. Harry's scalp tightened, each hair lifting as though charged by the static crawling up his spine. A wetclicksounded from Dudley's throat. His sausage fingers twitched toward the scattered takeaway, ketchup smears on his shirt now black as old blood in the failing light.
"N-not funny, Harry…" He stared at Harry with gaping eyes. "N-not f-funny, m-man…"
Harry's wand slid into his palm, holly wood humming against his calluses like a hive of wasps trapped in bone. The air curdled, the stench of fried chicken blooming under the sweet rot.Not rot. Damp wool. Decaying flesh.
Harry's stomach clenched.
Dudley staggered back, tripping over the seesaw's twisted metal frame. "S-stop it…"
Frost spiderwebbed across a discarded Coke can, crystalline veins devouring red aluminum.
Not me.Harry's pulse hammered against his eardrums.Not my magic.
Liquid shadows pooled between the oaks with hunger and thirst. A sound slithered through the darkness, wet fabric dragging across gravel, and the suck of a lung collapsing. Harry's scar ignited, white-hot wire searing through his skull. He gagged on the taste of copper, of lightning, of the rain-soaked earth of the graveyard.
"M-mum'll…" Dudley's jowls quivered, sweat glazing his neck as he scrabbled backward. "M-mum'll k-kill y-you—"
The streetlamp blinked out.
A hood tilted.
Cloth whispered with the slither of maggot-riddled bandages unwinding. The thing glided forward, its cloak devouring the scant moonlight, edges fraying into smoke. The air around itwarped, the pavement cracking as grass beneath its tattered hem withered to ash.
A dementor…
A blade of the coldness of the grave tore through Harry's chest. His lungs shrank, breath catching in his throat as if the air had thickened into ice. The dementor loomed ahead, its presence warping the night—shadows curdled at its edges, the darkness itself retreating, as if even the stars feared shining upon it. A rancid chill coiled around Harry's bones, sinking into his marrow.
His scar burned with the whisper of old wounds never fully healed.
His wand trembled in his grasp, the wood slick with sweat. "Expecto…"
Happy memory…
He needed a happy memory. Hermione and Ron, quidditch, parties in the common room, anything… Anything to make him forget Cedric's glassy look after the sickly green light smashed him into that headstone…
"Expecto…" His fingers clenched tighter, knuckles whitening as he forced the syllables out. "Expecto Patronum!"
Silver light flared at the tip of his wand, sputtering like a dying ember.
No… Focus, focus on happiness…
The dementor surged forward, an endless void gaping beneath its hood, an abyss that drank in the world, swallowing warmth, color, and sound.
Harry's breath hitched.
It was looking at him. Seeing him. Dragging memories and happiness out of him with its eyeless stare.
The coldness deepened.
"Expecto—" His limbs locked, his vision blurred at the edges. "Expecto—"
His mother's scream, 'Not Harry, just not Harry!', Voldemort's command, 'Kill the spare!', Voldemort's laughter as he tortured him. The dementor's fingers, reaching out towards Harry, peeled away his defenses like old parchment even from a distance, stripping him down to the rawest, most broken parts of himself.
Then—lightning!
Silver lightning cracked through the night, splitting the darkness with the sound of cannons firing in a theater. Thunder followed, a violent detonation that rattled his ribs and sent shockwaves skittering through the grass. The dementor reeled back, its tattered cloak snapping like a banner in a storm.
The air split open.
A rift pulsed before Harry. A wound in reality. Smoke bled from the edges, curling with an unnatural slowness, tinged with violet and electric cyan. Magic thickened the air, a pressure that made his skin prickle and his ears ring.
Something shot out of the smoke.
No, someone.
A girl hit the ground hard. Everything about her crackled with movement and energy that contrasted her small and slight frame. Strands of wild blue hair whipped across her face, catching the eerie glow of the rift behind her. She smelled of metal and something acrid, sharp, like burnt wires and gunpowder. Her arms—bare despite the cold—bore tattoos of blue clouds.
A grin slashed across her face. Too wide. Too sharp. Not quite reaching her eyes.
The world reeked of ozone and burning air, a sharp tang that clung to Harry's tongue like metal and static. His chest heaved, lungs straining as he stumbled back, his trainers slipping against the frost-slicked grass. The warmth of his Patronus had vanished, the feeble glow at his wand's tip snuffed out, leaving only the suffocating chill of the Dementor's presence pressing against his ribs like iron bands.
And then there was her.
A streak of wild blue in the darkness, standing between him and the Dementor like some unhinged, grinning guardian angel. But there was nothing angelic about her. She practically buzzed, a live wire humming with something barely restrained, her hands steady on a monstrous weapon clutched against her shoulder.
How does she even carry that thing…?
The weapon—a minigun that must've weighed a hundred pounds—whirred and clicked, gears grinding like broken clockwork. Each sharp snap scraped at Harry's nerves. Sparks spat from the mess of exposed wires laced along its barrel, brief flares of electric blue that threw jagged shadows across her face—sharp cheekbones, sweat-damp skin, and eyes that glowed, eerily bright in the dark, like foxfire caught in the night.
Even the dementor hesitated.
The void beneath its hood pulsed, the air around it thick with frost, shadows bleeding outward like ink spilled in water. Harry's breath clouded in front of him, mist curling toward the creature as if drawn into its abyss. His fingers tightened around his wand, but the cold gnawed at him, leeching into his bones, slowing his limbs.
"Ugly bastard, aren't you?" The girl—whoever she was—grinned. "Let's see what you're made of, yeah?"
Her grip shifted on the weapon, and the contraption in her hands let out a rising, electric whine. The air crackled, the charge building, lifting strands of her hair in static-laced tendrils. Burns licked up her forearms, old wounds stretched over pale skin, crossed with jagged lines, as if she'd torn herself free from something that hadn't wanted to let go. Grease clung to her chipped blue and pink fingernails.
The dementor drifted back.
"Oh come on…" She tilted her head. "You're not leaving me just yet, are you?"
She shifted, boots crunching over the frost-bitten ground. Harry swallowed, throat dry as parchment. The absurdity of this—this girl standing in the way of something that had brought fully grown wizards to their knees—burned in his brain like a fever dream.
"Who the bloody hell are you?"
The words shot from his throat raw and hoarse, barely cutting through the electric hum of her weapon. The cold still gnawed at him, but the sheer impossibility of the moment rattled him more.
She turned, just enough to glance at him. Her grin stretched wider, teeth bared like a wolf before a kill.
"Me?" The sound slipped out in a breathless, jittery rush, as if her own voice couldn't keep up with her thoughts. "I'm Jinx!"
"Jinx?"
"That's me!" She shifted her grip on the weapon, her fingers flexing over the trigger. "And I'm having so much fun right now."
The way she said it—wild, electric, like someone standing at the edge of a cliff and laughing at the drop—made Harry's stomach twist.
Then she fired.
The weapon shrieked. A deep, metallic whir built from within the beastly contraption, gears grinding, barrels rotating, until the noise crescendoed into a furious roar—a tempest of lead and fire. Muzzle flashes burst in rapid succession, painting the night in erratic pulses of electric blue and molten gold.
A hail of bullets erupted, streaking through the frozen air like shooting stars made of death.
Each shot left behind a ghost of light, streaks of cyan carving through the gloom like neon veins. The sheer force of the weapon shook her entire frame—her arms locked, her boots dug into the brittle grass, but she seemed to barely feel it. Like the recoil was nothing. Like she'd done this a thousand times before. Spent shell casings rained around her feet, clinking against the frost-coated pavement like a perverse wind chime.
Harry had never seen anything like it.
Magic was unpredictable, but this… This was chaos. This was destruction bottled in a machine. This was war, condensed into something she could wield at will.
And it did nothing.
The Dementor didn't even flinch. The bullets carved straight through its shifting form, swallowed by the endless void beneath its hood. Not a ripple. Not a pause. Not even a flicker of resistance.
Jinx's grin faltered. Just for a second.
Then it came back wider and sharper.
"Oh-ho-ho, you're gonna be a problem, huh?"
The minigun still spun, the barrels whirling with a hungry metallic growl as her thumb lifted off the trigger. A final bullet streaked harmlessly through the Dementor's darkness before the weapon clanked to a slow, disgruntled stop.
The dementor moved.
Its cloak billowed like an oncoming storm, the edges of its form fraying into mist before reknitting, drifting forward with awful inevitability. Ice crackled outward from where it hovered, death blooming beneath it.
Jinx clicked her tongue. "Alright, Plan B."
She let the minigun drop, its immense weight thudding into the frozen ground. She didn't hesitate. Didn't pause to register the sheer absurdity of a weapon like that failing.
Instead, she reached for something smaller.
The pistol snapped into her grip with a practiced, almost lazy flick of the wrist. Where the first gun had been a monstrosity of wires and gears, this one was sleek, deadly in its simplicity. Black and cyan. A single chamber glowing faintly with residual energy and something simmering beneath the surface.
BANG
The shot cracked through the night, the sheer concussive force of it making Harry flinch. Louder than a wand's spell, sharper, with no incantation to warn of its coming. The bullet blazed toward the dementor, burning blue, as if infused with something more than gunpowder.
It passed through just like before.
No impact. No reaction. The dementor floated onward.
"Are you kidding me?" Jinx scoffed and fired again.
BANG
BANG
BANG
The gun barked in quick succession, hammering the silence apart. Sparks flared as the bullets found nothing to hit.
It's magical…
He wanted to say it, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth. Not only because of the Statute of Secrecy—honestly that didn't matter when life was on the line—but because he couldn't move. The sight of her firing at the dementor with no fear or hesitation…
He was transfixed.
"Okay. Alright. That's fine." She let out a high, jittery laugh, one hand snapping the pistol's chamber open. A spent round popped out, landing in the dirt with a hiss of smoke. "Didn't wanna waste my ammo on you anyway."
She holstered the gun in one swift motion.
Then she went for the belt.
Grenades clanked together as her fingers danced across their metal casings, choosing, deciding, discarding. She plucked one free—a stubby, rusted thing with a surface covered in scrawled, half-sane symbols scratched into the metal.
"Oh, you're gonna love this," Jinx purred. She thumbed something on the grenade, then hurled it underhand.
The metal cylinder tumbled through the air.
The dementor ignored it. For exactly one second. Then it exploded.
The park detonated around them, blue fire blooming outward in a shockwave that sent dust and shredded leaves spiraling through the air. The night itself bent inward, pulled toward the core of the explosion, sucked into a swirling vortex of fire, smoke, and deafening force.
Harry slammed against the ground.
His ears rang. The world vibrated around him. Every nerve in his body screamed. The sound swallowed everything. His heartbeat. His breath. The distant honk of cars too far to know what had just happened.
For a moment, nothing existed but blue fire and static.
Then, the smoke thinned.
And the dementor was still there.
Jinx's arms dropped.
Not much—just a fraction, just a single inch, but Harry saw it. The briefest crack in the manic confidence. The moment where nothing made sense anymore to her anymore. This was the moment. This was when he had to get himself moving and tell her about the dementor's magical—
She started laughing.
"You…" She gripped her knees, giggles bubbling up between breaths. "You're really pushing your luck, aren't you?"
Harry stepped forward. "Wait—"
"Alright, then." She straightened and rolled her shoulders. "Plan Z."
She ripped a marble from her pocket.
No, not a marble. A gemstone. Nothing like the lifeless jewels Harry had seen on Aunt Petunia.
This thing breathed.
Fist-sized, yet impossibly dense. It pulsed with an inner fire. A storm of liquid sapphire and electricity stormed in its core. Bolts of cerulean lightning arced across its crystalline surface, flickering in erratic patterns, like trapped thunderclouds fighting for release. The glow surged and pulsed, each wave radiating energy that made the air shiver.
She threw it.
It spun through the air in a lazy arc, flickering blue against the frozen dark.
The dementor lunged, its skeletal fingers stretching outward, reaching—
The moment the gemstone touched its void, the night detonated.
An unnatural brilliance carved through the darkness, illuminating the trees, the dead grass, the ice-rimed ground. The energy surged outward in pulsing waves, a crackle of raw, unchecked power that lifted Harry off his feet and hurled him backward. He hit something—wood, a bench maybe—before crashing to the frozen ground, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs.
The dementor writhed.
Its body, once an endless abyss, flickered—briefly, horrifyingly—revealing glimpses of something underneath. Rotting flesh, stretched too thin. A mouth, jagged and endless, frozen in a silent scream. Its void collapsed inward, folding in on itself like a dying star.
Then, in a final, wrenching pulse, it disappeared.
That's a wrap for Chapter 1!
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 2: A Step Sideways
Chapter 3: The Art of Bad Timing
Chapter 4: Red Stains on Privet Drive
See you in Chapter 2!