*000000*

The Cupboard​

I woke up in the dark.

The mattress was hard, the air chilly and the blankets scratchy against my skin. Not home. Of course not. Probably a shelter somewhere, judging by the accommodations. My head hurt. I swear, if I didn't remember last night because some Merchant roofied me I was going to… do something. I scoffed to myself. I really was pathetic. I needed to remember what had happened. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard. Disjointed, surreal but...

Running from the Siberian. Running to the Siberian. Skitter. Riding those dogs and catching up to her and her turning and jumping towards us and- Waking up.

Oh God. Oh Fuck.

Now my eyes were wide open, any traces of sleep gone, swept away by panic. More than justified panic. The last thing I remembered was the Siberian jumping at me, ready to eat more of…

My fingers.

I fumbled in the dark, untangling my hands from the blankets. It didn't hurt that much. Had to be the shock, I was shaking. I could feel them. Phantom limb syndrome, whispered a part of me, coldly, clinically. I couldn't see them but I could feel with them and I could feel them. Something wasn't right here. This was too real. Even in the dark I saw… I saw my fingers intact. I couldn't suppress a whimper, whether or relief of distress I wasn't sure, as I touched them. From fingertip to knuckle, all there.

But the Siberian had… the Siberian had bitten them off. I remembered that all too clearly. Skitter had helped me clean the… missing places. Was I hallucinating? Were phantom limbs this real or were they actually real? Had I got them back somehow? Got healed? How?

How had I have even survived the Siberian going nuclear? I should be dead.

Was I dead?

I thought it with a start and ended up hitting my head on something hard and painful. I managed to bite down a cry but tears sprang to my eyes. If this was death, it was still painful.

"Fuck." The curse echoed in the silence, reminding me of my surroundings, dark and cramped.

I was trapped. The walls seemed to press down on me. There was one possibility, one horrible possibility that explained my state and I didn't want to think it. I felt along the walls instead, carefully discovering shelves, where I'd hit myself on, clothing, books, an umbrella, bits and pieces. The ceiling was angled and low but not enough, I thought, for it to be impossible to stand. There was a door, wooden and worn. It was from those cracks that came the little light I had. Just enough for it to not be pitch black, barely enough to distinguish some contours. My hands, the mattress, other unidentifiable things. The only thing it confirmed was the complete unfamiliarity of this place.

A spider skittered lazily across my arm. I stopped, feeling its legs on my skin. But only the feather-light touch of its legs. Nothing else. I should have recognized the absence earlier. It had only been four, five days since I'd felt this powerless. Literally. My powers were being blocked.

Bonesaw.

She could have done this to me, she'd done it before with Hack Job. I shuddered at the memory, only to hug myself at the idea that she had likely fixed me too. I ran my thumb over where my palm met my fingers. There was no stitch or scar I could feel. The Nine had me. Why was I this calm? I was in the custody of the Slaughterhouse Nine, probably at the request of Bonesaw. I had every reason in the world to be breaking into hysterics but I only felt… empty.

I hugged my arms around myself, digging my nails into my arms. The pain was little, but it was something. I dug them in harder.

My body wasn't right, nothing was right, and I was helpless against it all. That was probably why I couldn't find energy in myself to feel anything but this hopelessness.

It was dark. Victoria loved waking me up by throwing the curtains open. I needed more sunlight, she said, like I was a flower. The noise the blinds in my room made being opened just wasn't enough, that was all. I often had trouble falling asleep so I overslept. Victoria was always up sinfully early, even when she patrolled at night.

I must have drifted off, because the voices startled me. How long had I just been there, sitting with my back against the wall?

There were three voices. I didn't recognize any of them. A woman, shrill; a man, booming, and a boy, probably. They sounded, even with words indistinct through the plaster and wood, like characters straight out of one of those rom-com shows. A perfect, idyllic, ridiculous fake family. Bonesaw had wanted a sister, hadn't she?

When was the laugh track going to play?

"Where is the girl?" I froze, pressed myself harder against the wall. Who could they be talking about but me? "Useless … is ...?" There were footsteps. Going away, then towards me. I held my breath and they passed by the door, just outside. But before I could be relieved they were coming back.

The door opened and a woman looked down at me. I didn't know her. She was blonde and thin, but not healthily like Carol and Aunt Sarah. The woman scowled deeply and shut the door with a bang. "If you're not in the kitchen in five minutes, you don't get dinner!" She screeched.

What?

What was going on? I couldn't breathe. Wet trails, tears, ran down my cheeks and I struggled to be quiet. I didn't dare move from my place. Not when the woman came back and there was the rattling sound of a key turning in the darkness. Not when I started smelling meat roasting or when there was the clinking of silverware. I just tucked the blanket tighter around myself.

I didWrong​

I fell asleep, eventually. Not an easy sleep, but I hadn't had a single full night of shuteye that wasn't fueled by exhaustion since… well, since Leviathan. The woman from before startled me awake, banging on the door, telling me to get up. I didn't want to. What was the point? I was sore all over and my fingers hurt too. Then the smell of bacon frying waffed over and I realized I was really, really hungry. That was another thing. I felt pain, I felt hunger and thirst. This was no paltry illusion. So I got up. There was no point in staying in hiding when they could come and get me at any time.

The doorknob mystified me for a long moment. It was chest height. Most doorknobs came around my waist level. I swallowed my confusion and suspicions and opened the door. A hallway stretched to my left and right. The walls were white, there were happy pictures frames hung at neat intervals and a small table with fresh flowers. And behind me was the stairwell. I'd just come out of a cupboard, the kind that filled in the space under the stairs.

That wasn't really shocking. What made me stop was the scale of everything around me. The doorknob. It wasn't the door that was big, it was me who was small. Smaller.

Out of the dark cupboard, I looked down at myself. I nearly swam inside my clothes, a enormous t-shirt and a pair of shorts that hung over knobby knees. Yet for all my skinniness, my hands and cheeks were slightly chubby. Baby fat, just like when I had been a kid. I didn't think I had ever been this thin when I was young, I'd lost weight only more recently, but otherwise… I needed a mirror to check.

My stomach took that moment to announce how displeased it was with me. I moved to the tiled kitchen I saw to my right. The bacon smelled delicious but it was marred by the sight of the woman standing in front of the pan, a flowery apron around her waist.

"Watch over the bacon and don't let it burn," she snapped at me.

I did. What was I supposed to do? There were so many questions I wanted to ask: who was she, where was I, what was going on? I didn't think she would answer me. It was the way she'd ordered me and how she scowled when she caught me observing her. I turned back to my task. The sight of bacon sizzling on the pan was almost too much. Would anything happen if I grabbed a strip?

Then the owners of the two other voices I had heard came in, a father and son pair. They couldn't be more different from the woman. Fat, obese, jiggling balls of lard. It would have been funny if it wasn't so repugnant. The boy in particular couldn't have been older than thirteen, but he was heading for a heart-attack at twenty. I was suddenly very glad I didn't have my power. That level of lipids was disgusting, no matter how you perceived it.

The boy caught me staring and swung a stick at me with a nasty smile on his face. What the fuck? It hit me on the shin. "Ow!"

"Good one Dudley!" The man laughed, then turned to kiss the woman's cheek. "Good morning Pet."

And just like that, the day continued as normal. Like the boy, Dudley, hadn't hit me with a walking stick of some kind. Pet, which couldn't be her full name, shooed me from where I was as I gaped and started serving breakfast. It took me a moment to realize they actually had a plate for me. They ignored me completely, unless it was to look at me disapprovingly.

Only when a sound was heard from outside did I finally get acknowledged.

"Go get the mail, Dudley," drawled Vernon, not taking his eyes from the newspaper. A newspaper from 1991. Strangely, it fit. The kitchen was old-fashioned. So were the clothes the woman was wearing, and the way she had her hair done. I'd peg it as a fifties style, more or less a decade. Not like I knew anything about fashion myself, that was Vicky's territory...

"Make Amy get it."

"Go get the mail, Amy."

I gladly left the kitchen.

I wasn't religious. Nobody in my family, in New Wave, really was. Except maybe Eric, who'd prayed before the fight against Leviathan... Anyway, I didn't believe in the afterlife. Maybe we were wrong about that, because surely I was in Hell. I had probably died at the hands of the Siberian and been sent here for my sins. No nightmare or illusion could be this real and this painful. This perfectly tailored to me.

Three blondes, a happy family with a happily married couple and a beloved son. Except for one little thing. The adopted kid. Me. A twisted version of my… my family. In looks, in behavior, in the way Vernon was a happy man, and Petunia a good house-wife, and Dudley…. And they hated me. They reviled me. Every look and glower I'd received from Carol this last month, the way they ignored me like Victoria had had to ever since….

A twisted, twisted version of my family, like all my nightmares and insecurities brought to life. Because I had twisted Victoria? It fit. Irony, right?

So yeah, definitely Hell.

I dropped the letters that had been in the mailbox on the table and went back to my bacon. I wasn't going to start crying now. I wasn't…

"Dad! Amy has mail!" Exclaimed Dudley suddenly.

My head snapped up to see him waving a letter over his head. It looked like it was made of heavier paper. Then Vernon's hand shot forth with a speed I didn't think he'd be capable of achieving and ripped it from his hands. He opened it and read a couple of lines at most, face becoming paler and paler. He and Petunia shared a long look, the woman bracing herself on the counter and giving a little whimper at whatever she saw in his face. Their eyes turned to me.

They were afraid.

That hurt. Even from these people, that hurt.

Dudley and I got thrown out of the kitchen. He raged, screamed and cried to no avail, and hit me with his stick as a form of protest. I ran and went to look for a bathroom in this unknown house instead. There turned out to exist one in the first floor.

On the mirror, there I was, but not as I knew myself. Younger. I didn't think I'd ever looked like this before. I was a mess. My hair had reached nightmare-levels of frizziness and my freckles had decided to follow its example and were everywhere. That was before one counted the bags underneath my bloodshot eyes. I sniffed. How had this happened? I really didn't know anything anymore. Dying and being in Hell was always a possibility. Probably better than being at the mercy of the Slaughterhouse Nine. But it had evolved into such a nonsense of too many things that I just didn't care anymore. I had been de-aged. Who, what, how the fuck?

"Wait." On my forehead. That hadn't been there before. A lightning bolt scar. I prodded it carefully. A searing pain shot through my head and I withdrew my fingers with a hiss. A blinding headache pounded beRunning about​

That morning, Vernon kindly took me aside and explained that since I was growing up so fast, I would be getting my own room as an early birthday present. He made it sound like I should be grateful, I knew that tone well enough.

Dudley threw a fit because he used that room to store his stuff. I was expecting something like a big closet, but it was an actual room, with an old bed and everything. After I got over being completely appalled, I felt tempted to punch him. But Dudley had at least fifty pounds and a full foot on me. His parents wouldn't blink if he hit me back. Chances were they'd cheer him on.

So I moved my meager possessions from the cupboard to my new room. And then I spent the next couple of days locked in. Petunia brought me food, always cold, and supervised me on my to and from the bathroom just next door.

I was starting to think this was some sort of ploy. The Dursleys, a name I'd overheard from the window, were doing their very best to stop somebody from contacting me. Who it was that wanted to talk to me, by letter I might add, I had no clue. It just brought more questions to the fore. Who were the Dursley? Captors, guardians, mastered minions? And where was I? From the window I could only see white, picket fence houses with neat front yards.

I would ask for a newspaper, if I thought I had a chance I'd get it. Worse, I might lose some meals if I did and I didn't want to experience that hunger again. That almost bone-deep, physically painful gnawing in my stomach.

I had also considered making an escape. I could wait until Petunia came to feed me and bolt. Leaving the house couldn't be that hard. If I really got desperate, I could always jump through the window. A two-storey drop wasn't that much, most people didn't even break bones from it. Micro-fractures, sprains, bruises? Yes. But no fractures, not if it was done right. The problem was: then what? I didn't know what was out there and I looked like an ten year old kid. Who would take me seriously and help? If there was anybody out there who would. I didn't even know when was out there, or if there really was an 'out there', for god's sake.

Maybe this was all just in my head. A fever dream or something. Either way, and knowing both my dreams and my luck, I didn't think I'd manage to… what? Go back? I didn't even know what to do. So I waited for an opportunity to present itself. I explored my room, read books and tried not to get very bored. Getting bored usually meant I started thinking about how hopeless this all was, or worse things. Like what I had done.

Things weren't idle outside. Dudley came by to make noise, call me names and generally just be an annoyance. But he told me things too. More letters had started arriving. He didn't seem to know why, apparently just as confused as I was. Who'd want to speak with me after all? And why try so hard?

Vernon was losing it. On my third day locked in, Dudley told me he had nailed up the mail slot. The next day letters had apparently been coming in from under the door and Vernon barricaded the doors, preventing anybody from coming in or out of the house. Petunia had started looking scared, gnawing her lip and wringing her hands. Dudley was pissed and spent a lot of time raging at my door, telling me it was my fault before going away to play videogames.

I started regretting not making an escape earlier. With the doors closed, there was nowhere to run if Vernon decided to do something drastic. I didn't even have the window anymore, because of all the windows in the house, mine was the one he'd remembered to board up. I tried getting the planks loose, but none of the junk cluttering around the room gave me enough leverage, not with my skinny arms. Once again, a time in which I wished for a simple straightforward power like Victoria's. So much of my life's problems would be gone if I could only just punch things hard enough. Instead of having my powers. Which I didn't even have right now.

I was trapped.

The fifth day, I didn't get breakfast. There was a commotion downstairs and I heard Vernon yelling before his footsteps thundered up the stairs. He was half covered in sooth, his beady eyes barely visible in a face purple with rage. A familiar letter was crumpled in his fist. I pressed myself against the wall and prepared to dive under his arms.

"You." He took a deep breath and his mustache trembled furiously, but his coloration went from eggplant to tomato. Well, there went the chances of a convenient heart-attack. "Pack your things. In the car in five minutes." And in under five minutes he had everybody in the car. Dudley was crying, since his father hadn't let him bring all of his stuff, but the man had looked so dangerous and big that no arguments were heard.

And then we drove on and on and on.

I stopped thinking that they were going to kill me and dump the body after the fourth or fifth time the maniac on the wheel did a complete one-hundred-and-eighty to shake them off. Whoever it was, but most likely whoever was behind the letters. I didn't ask. Vernon kept muttering under his breath, twitching periodically. Looking out the window, I read the signs, saw the sights, and only got more confused. I didn't get any real confirmation until night fell and we stopped in a dingy hotel at the entrance of Cokeworth. The TV was on during dinner and I caught the news.

The day was the twenty-eighth of July, and the weather was going to be windy tomorrow. Storms were expected by nightfall.

In southern England. That explained the accents. Also: in 1991. Which explained much, but not the lack of any mentions to the King's Men, or capes. Or anything.

That was it. Tomorrow I was going to find a way to escape, no matter what.

*​

The opportunity came mid-afternoon. I would have tried to sneak away just after breakfast but didn't get the chance. Vernon had dragged us all out of the hotel, barely remembering to pay for our stay, when a clerk had come asking about the hundred or so letters at the front desk. They were persistent, I'd give them that, but I'd really rather have the fat-ass calm down so I could run off.

Unable to escape the mysterious letters of green ink of doom, Vernon got even more paranoid. He now avoided urban areas and started to make brief stops in isolated places, taking just enough time to step out of the car and survey the general area. Dudley kept moaning about his misfortune next to me, but even he'd proposed that his father had simply lost his marbles. As for me, I waited until Vernon finally stopped somewhere appropriate.

The forest was perfect. After passing the treeline, it would be easy to hide until the Dursleys gave up, or to follow along the road under the cover of the shrubbery. The nearest village wasn't that far away, I thought. Vernon stopped the car and leveraged himself with difficulty out of his seat. I unclipped my seatbelt as quietly as I could. He examined the trees like a meerkat, grumbling to himself. As soon as he gets in again, I told myself. He shook his head, like he had done the previous dozen times, and opened the driver seat door.

I opened mine and ran. I'd just gotten to the treeline amongst cries of shock, when Vernon finally got his shit together. He roared like a madman, barreling into the vegetation after me. I weaved into the bushes. I had underestimated how fast he could be, the length of his strides and the force of his fury. I'd also overestimated my own fitness, but I knew I could beat him in a contest of endurance. I just needed to keep ahead. Just-

I tripped and face-planted on the dirt. The sharp pain of a cramped muscle pulsed in my calf. No! This couldn't be happening. I tried to stand but my leg gave under me. Fuck it, fuck me!

"You little freak!" The hunter had caught me. I had to get up. Now, Amy, now!

I scrambled, but a meaty hand got me by my shoulder and spun me around. He was going to strike me. I raised my arms and. And a tingling wave swept across my skin. Vernon yelped and let me go.

I took a reflexive step back and looked down on my hands. I didn't need my eyes. I was looking for something far too small to be seen by the naked eye. But I could sense it. I knew this feeling. Constantly in motion, living, a background noise I didn't think I'd ever miss so much. I laughed.

Vernon's second backhand connected sent me to the ground. Ow, fucker. But I wasn't really mad, even as he marched me over to the road again by the neck, half-strangling me. I had it back. I could feel Vernon, predictably unhealthy, fat and muscle and bones and stomach. Wow, was he under a huge amount of stress. But what I liked was being able to feel the staphylococcus on my skin again. The round bacteria going about their life, simple metabolisms just re-treading the same path as they had for millions of years. I'd missed this, just watching as they went about their programmed life, uncaring about the greater world. They replicated, divided, grew…

… disappeared.

Wait.

No. Where were they going? Wait!

One by one the bacteria faded from my perception, Vernon's physiology losing definition until it was just… gone.

And then that asshole threw me. I curled in, covering my head but no other blow came. I looked up just in time to see him close the trunk's lid. With me inside.

"No! Fuck!" I yelled and kicked the trunk's roof. "Fuck you! Fuck! You!"

The car started, rumbling under me. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. He'd left me in the trunk of his fucking car. That was dangerous. This was dangerous. Shit.

No, I had been trained for this. Getting kidnapped 101. What if somebody decides potential parahumans are good enough to piss off the New Wave and, paragraph 3 or something, grab you and shove you in a trunk? I remembered Uncle Neil talking to us in his house, trying to make a bunch of kids understand how serious what they were going to do was. Victoria lapped it up, of course.

The state of mind was surprisingly easy to slip into. This was no Slaughterhouse Nine. I'd been through that. This was just old, fat Vernon Dursley who locked me in a room and slapped me around. He didn't literally cobble people together or practice cannibalism.

I had to keep calm. These things weren't airtight, but hyperventilating was still a danger. Other than regular asphyxiation, the problem was hyperthermia. And it was the middle of summer. In England, but summer. Fuck. I struggled to remember the weather forecast. I hadn't paid attention to the temperatures but I remembered the promise of a storm. It had been overcast and it was past the time of greater heat. No need to panic.

Did cars in the Nineties have safety release mechanisms? I didn't think so, but I still tried to find something, anything.

I could survive this, I justRocks on a stormy Sea

​

The cold sea breeze felt heavenly against my face. Every occasional drop of rain was a welcome balm. The clouds covered the sky from one edge to the other and the grey waves rolled uneasily, hints of foam appearing as they broke against the pier's rocks.

A storm was coming.

Good one. Point for melodrama, me.

Vernon was not here. He'd gone… off, somewhere. I couldn't muster any energy to run. As it was, I was using the little I had left to stay standing. Both of my legs and an arm had fallen asleep, that fucking cramp was still there and my back had innumerable new knots. My cheek stung and everything else felt like jelly. The worse were my fingers. They hurt. I flexed them periodically, checking if everything was alright.

It was strange. Maybe it was the sight of the agitated ocean... sea? Was this the Atlantic, the North Sea or the Channel? It didn't really matter. But it had just dawned on me again how unreal this was. Which was strange, in a way, since there were no capes or powers on anything strange. Besides those letters. The world was so ordinary that it felt… too normal to be real. Surreal.

I was too tired to move but not tired enough to not think. As Vernon returned with an old man in tow, I couldn't but think that he was Mark's complete opposite in both attitude and physique. I'd resented Mark a few times. We both did, but as we grew up it started being clear to us that it wasn't his fault, that he was just ill.

I missed Mark. I hoped I hadn't fucked up with him.

Vernon got us into a dingy rowboat and, while I wondered how it wasn't sinking under the weight, got us out to a little cabin on a rock in the middle of the stormy sea, if the structure could be called a cabin at all. The shack looked for all purposes like a good wave could sweet it off the rock whole. Only Vernon seemed to not realize that, looking in fact very happy with himself. Well, if I died tonight, again or not, I had the consolation that the Dursleys would too. I really was a horrible person. Maybe Dudley's fat would give him enough buoyancy. Petunia could cling to her husband and I'd just swim to the shore before running like hell.

The weather worsened as we ate a miserable dinner. I consoled myself that this time at least, the Dursleys ate the same as me. However, Dudley got the single, old couch, so I was left to find a minimally comfortable position on the slightly wet, hard floor.

The minutes ticked by. Even as lethargic as I felt, the sleep wouldn't come. The storm raged just outside the thin wooden walls. Then,

BOOM

The whole building shook. The crash came again, nearly taking the door off its hinges. A brute was knocking at the door of a hut, on a rock, in the sea, during a storm. Complete nonsense.

It had to be something to do with the letters.

What should I do? Vernon took that choice away, crashing into our room with a fucking rifle, shouting "Go away! I'm armed! And I tell you, I'm-"

BOOOM

The door finally succumbed, crashing to the ground.

A giant of a man peered inside the hut before squeezing himself in. He had to bend over slightly to fit in, being easily nine feet tall and proportionally larger. With a wildman's hair, draped in leathers and furs, he looked like Fenja and Menja's smaller, hairier viking cousin. The Dursleys had dropped into complete silence. Then he picked up the door, somehow still in one piece, and slotted back it in the doorway.

"There yeh go." He passed a hand on his beard, rinsing the water from it, and gave the four of us a glance over. "Yeh coul' have made me some tea. It wasn' an easy trip, yeh know?" His eyes settled on me and I saw him smile. "An' here's Amy!" He took a long stride towards me, sunk down into a crouch that didn't help the height difference that much and smiled warmly. "Yeh're so grown up! Las' time I saw yeh, yeh were a tiny little baby. You look jus' like yer dad... but yeh've got yer mom's nose." He sniffed emotionally, took out a handkerchief from somewhere in his huge coat and blew his nose. Then, somehow looking sheepish despite his stature, he took out a box from another pocket. "Almos' forgot. Got summat for yeh here, Amy. Might be a bit squashed but er…. A very happy birthday to yeh."

My… parents? My birthday? I accepted the package, my nose already telling me what it was. Cake? Yes, it was a chocolate cake with my name on it. "Er. Thank you." My birthday was in October. "You… knew them? My parents?"

"O' course I knew 'em! Knew 'em since they were students at Hogwarts, I did!" He seemed to realize something. "Ah, righ', yeh don' know who I am. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. Jus' call me Hagrid, everybody does." He offered me his hand for a handshake. It was the size of a dinner plate. Or bigger.

"Nice to meet you." I supposed. I accepted the handshake and regretted it as he nearly tore my arm off with his enthusiasm. Still, I didn't think he'd done it maliciously. There was a sort of eagerness, of friendliness in this Hagrid that I hadn't seen for a long time. It was nice. "I don't suppose you could answer me a few questions?"

"O' course I can!" Hagrid nodded. Somewhere to my left, Petunia squeaked like a mouse being stepped on.

"So, what's up with the letters? Are you the one behind them?" Hagrid blinked his beady eyes at me, seemingly at a loss. I pressed on. "What about… Hogwarts?" Should I ask about me just being here? Wherever this whole world was? Would he be able to answer me? Also, something that had been bothering me. "And how did you even get here?"

"Wha'... Yeh… Yeh..." He stood up suddenly, looming over the Dursleys. Hagrid's jaw worked to form words. His head strained against the ceiling, forming an intimidating picture, and his shoulders trembled with rage. Dudley squealed and literally hid behind his mother's skirts. All three of their faces were pale like wax. "Are yeh tellin' me this girl doesn' know about anythin'? Anything!?" He boomed.

So, Vernon shoot him. I'd seen this happen too many times to count. It was just like seeing some two-bit thug with an itchy finger, suddenly faced with the weight of not Victoria Dallon's, but Glory Girl's aura. They pulled the trigger.

Inside the hut, the shot boomed like thunder from the storm outside.

Hagrid reacted eerily similar to Victoria. No, he showed restraint, compared to my sister. He took a hand to his shoulder, slipped his fingers under the fur coat and retrieve a squished piece of lead with a grunt. Just as blank-faced as Victoria was when the bullets fell down to the ground and pinged quietly. Then his face hardened. He reached forward, took the gun from the bastard's hands and then tied it around his wrists like it was made of rubber instead of metal. Good old brute trick when zip-ties aren't available.

Vernon's mouth moved up and down but no sound came out. His eyes moved from his wrists to Hagrid in quick succession. He squeaked. Petunia pulled him and Dudley into the other room and slammed the door.

Hagrid stood silently for a few moments, then sank down on the moldy couch, springs protesting under his weight. "Can' believe it." He ran his hands over his face, scratched the top of his head, muttering to himself. "So yeh don' know. About Hogwarts, yer parents?" I shook my head. "Magic?" He sounded almost hopeful.

I was still trying to figure out why I was ten again. "Sorry?"

"Blimey Amy. Yeh, yeh've nothin' to be sorry about..." He took a deep breath, face turning serious. "Amy, yeh're a witch."

I... was pretty sure he didn't mean it that way. "You mean, I have powers?" I used to, anyway.

"Yep." Hagrid nodded. "Don' things sometimes happen when yeh're scared or angry?"

There was some sort of miscommunication going on here. I didn't think we were talking about the same thing… or maybe we were. Back in the forest, something had happened. "Yeah."

"That's yer magic!"

"And my parents?" I insisted.

Hagrid sobered. "Yer parents… yer parents were the best wizards I ever knew. Head boy an' girl at Hogwarts. And after…." He stopped and stared at me for a moment, looking completely out of his depth. "How can yeh, Amy Potter, not know yer story when every kid in our world knows yer name? They were heroes, Amy... Yeh're… Yeh're a hero."

*​

"Survive?" Skitter frowned. The girl named Taylor.

I hadn't been expecting that. But then again, I'd been holding on to her when it'd happened. So it made a sort of sense. It looked like maybe, just maybe, I wasn't in a coma somewhere, dreaming a world of wizards, witches and their secret society. Or maybe I was, and this was just the way my brain decided to screw me over, by sticking bug-girl with me. And that was a bit unfair. She hadn't done anything yet.

At least I wasn't alone anymore.

"Yeah. It's, hm… Do you know who Grindelwald was?"

She nodded. "I know some. Magic Hitler, basically? He used the second World War's chaos to try and topple the government, and then he wanted to enslave normal people. Like those parahuman supremacists." Well, she knew a lot already. I raised an eyebrow. Skitter shrugged her shoulders. "I was just reading something about that."

"Right. Do you know about Voldemort then?"

"I've seen his name mentioned once or twice. Another Dark Wizard?"

"Yep. A british one." Though the name was clearly french for some reason. "Voldemort was like Allfather or Kaiser to Grindelwald. A neo-nazi to the nazi. He had his own Empire 88, called the Death Eaters." I smiled at the name, even if it wasn't funny at all. "They had something against muggles, but mostly against muggleborns." I noticed Skitter frowning. "Apparently, my mother here was a muggleborn so…"

"Brandish?" She asked.

"No." And thank god for that, for varied reasons. "My… biological mother? I don't know. You're the first person from… well, from home that I've met."

She processed that and patted the black dog by our feet. "Sirius is from home too."

"Really?" One of Hellhound's dogs? Were there other people we knew out there?

"Yeah. You were saying?"

"Right, right. So, anyway, my parents were being hunted." It was still strange, thinking of my parents, my real parents, being hunted by a villain. But they had been heroes, here. "One day he caught them and, well, he killed them."

Skitter twitched slightly. It was easier to read her without the full-face mask. And the cloud of creepy-crawlies, that too. "Sorry."

I shrugged, self-consciously. "It's okay. I never knew them, and it's not like I'm sure they were my real parents anyway." Sometimes I wondered if I'd feel the same about Marquis. If he'd been killed, would I mourn him? I didn't remember him either.

"So… you survived?" That wasn't a particularly skilled topic change.

"Supposedly, Voldemort tried to kill me next. I was one and he was a baby-killing bastard." I couldn't help but frown. Hearing Hagrid talking about him, you'd think he was talking about Jack Slash. He'd certainly been cut from the same cloth. "He… dunno, cast his spell of death," I gestured vaguely, "and when the dust settled the house was destroyed, I was still alive and he'd disappeared."

She leaned forward. "Disappeared?

"Dead. Or at least, close enough. The popular opinion is that he's still roaming around like a ghost, too weak to do anything. People are actually still scared of saying his name. They call him You-Know-Who to avoid saying Voldemort, like… well, like some people avoid mentioning the Endbringers." Hagrid thought he wasn't even human anymore. Something like Crawler or the Blasphemies. I honestly couldn't even begin to compare a man, no matter how powerful, to those monsters. Not even Eidolon. They were just…. "Anyway, the people he had mastered suddenly snapped out of it and the war turned around in a single night. End of story, I got this scar from his last curse and became a national hero." And I'd gotten stranded with the Dursleys, but who cared about that?

Skitter hummed and sat back, observing me. "I see."

She was… not very unlike what I'd expected. Tall, lanky, skittering almost. I'd already known how her hair was from the bank and I'd gotten an idea of her general bone structure from that particular fiasco after Leviathan. I couldn't visualize faces, that wasn't how my powers worked, but I'd gotten the impression of a long face, a wider mouth. Glasses for her myopia. I could see hints of those final traits in this child. I'd probably find her serious countenance cute for a ten year old… if I hadn't known what she was capable of.

The train whistled sharply and the platform burst into frantic movement. We looked out of the window, seeing parents and children hurry before the train left them behind. There was an annoyed hoot behind me and I turned tSeeing the Other Side​

Hagrid spent a lot of time explaining the magical world to me that night. I finally got my letter and we had tea with sausages and chocolate cake. The Dursleys didn't dare bother us. All in all, the best night I had ever since waking up on the other side of the pond. And possibly, of the interdimensional universe.

Hagrid was, I'd found, something of a gentle giant. He kept mice and owls in his pockets, liked tea and, sometimes, was very careful with me. Powerful brutes were like that with normal people. Still, when morning came, I had to stop him from getting to Vernon and doing something he'd regret. I didn't really care about him, but I didn't want Hagrid to get in trouble. Vernon wasn't worth it. I didn't think wizards could be excused from straight up murder. I even managed to convince him that I had tripped in the stairs.

We caught a train to London and, after many strange looks our way, I finally got a good look at my reflection while helping Hagrid with 'muggle money'. Hagrid's fury was understandable, and so were the concerned glances the teller threw at me. An ugly, purple bruise had bloomed from my cheekbone to my jaw. It explained the ache I had when I opened my mouth.

But aside from that, everything was fine and dandy… until we entered the Leaky Cauldron.

Then I discovered that being The-Girl-Who-Lived, hyphenated and capitalized, was actually a lot like being Panacea. Namely, the part in which I got mobbed by… admirers.

"Amy Potter!" "An honour, a true honour to finally meet you…" "Dear me, what happened to you?" "Welcome back Ms. Potter!" "Crockford, Doris Crockford at your service." "Please, Ms. Potter…"

My favored strategy was to go 'no comment' and move on. I'd never been the social one, the media-darling Victoria was. My uniform actually hid my face pretty well, something Carol had always disapproved of. This was much like the first weeks after I'd officially debuted. Back then, I cowered behind Victoria and let her take the lead. Here, I hid behind Hagrid until he finally got the hint and ushered me out of the pub.

I could only hope that, much like what had happened to Panacea, the worship would die out as people got used to see me around.

Hagrid took me straight to an Apothecary, which did look like a pharmacist. From the Middle Ages. Roots, plants and animals parts in sacks, barrels and boxes; shelves lined with potions, ointments and plasters; a witch in a pointy hat at the register. This place, more than anything else in Diagon Alley, looked like something out of a magic book.

Hagrid pushed my reluctant self inside the shop. "Err, 'scuse me. Would yeh have summat fer bruises?"

The woman took one good look at my face, gasped and rushed from behind the counter. "Oh dear, how did this happen?" Her eyes alternated between my forehead and my cheek.

"I fell down the stairs." Yes, that was the excuse I was using. In a hospital, it would have invited a quiet investigation. This witch's eyebrows rose in incredulity. "Could I have something for my leg too? I think I might have sprained it when I fell." But I was a much better liar than a ten or eleven year old child. Seeing as I was seventeen and all.

"Right deary," Urgh. "This will be just an instant." She took out a stick, a wand, from her robes and, while muttering some gibberish, poked me right on the bruise. It didn't hurt. Instead, I felt a cool sensation spread from the point of contact. "There."

That… was kind of amazing. As fast as I was. I prodded and checked her work as Hagrid insisted that he'd pay her back and she rebutted that it had been an honor and it wasn't necessary, etcetera….

Gringotts, the bank, had logically been our next stop. The only shopping that could be done without cash was window-shopping. Hagrid had assured me that my parents, the Potters, had left me their fortune. But...

"Okay…. This is… ah…" I gazed at the piles of gold, silver and bronze coins that littered the vault. My vault. Some of the stacks were taller than me. "...a lot." I turned to the stoic goblin that had driven us here. "How much is this worth? In dollars. Err, pounds?"

"Currently, the exchange rate is five pounds to a galleon, approximately…"

"That's okay." I interrupted him. "Thank you, I think I got the idea…" I was swimming in shit-loads of money. Quite possibly literally too. All I'd have to do was build a pool…. Fortune was severely underselling it.

"... the exchange rate how many pounds to galleon again?"

But the best part of that day hadn't been that. It hadn't been getting my wand and my powers back with it, either. Far from it. The best part was when Hagrid took me to the Owl Emporium.

There were a lot of owls, of a dozen different species and thrice as many colors, but only one for me. A beautiful snowy owl, almost pure white, that had proudly regarded me from her perch. Graceful and dignified, she had reminded me so much of...

"Victoria."

I hadn't meant to say it out loud, but she didn't accept any other name after thato see my owl puff up her feathers at the increasing noise.

I reached to scratch her head and couldn't help but reminisce. had to remain calm. I just… had to remain calm.

My fingers were hurting again.neath my forehead as I squinted at my young reflection.

n't understand. I didn't understand anything at all.

L