Chapter Text
Maybe if she were a boy she'd have been willing to go out of the house at any cost to escape the Dursleys, but she wasn't. It seemed even in this Heather had been deprived of any privilege, because she refused to show her face in public wearing any of the ugly castoffs Aunt Petunia was determined to force unto her.
No matter, she mused stiffly, at least she was left alone for the most part. Alone with the ghost of Cedric Diggory, not knowing if she should be mourning, scared or angry. So, so, so angry.
She couldn't sleep. The Dursleys never fed her anyway, so that didn't matter, but now sleep was entirely off-limits too.
It was a little funny how every autumn she went back to Hogwarts with so little nutrition that it took a month or two for her period to start back up again, but not only did no one notice, she was sent back every single year too. She was entirely used to it.
But she couldn't sleep and she had no idea for how long because she’d been laying on her shoddy bed since she had been forced to come back.
Heather's body was, not so figuratively, falling apart.
Ever since Voldemort, the bastard, had resurrected himself using her blood, Heather's body was falling apart. Her skin was strange, a dull pallid colour, devoid of its usual brownish coloring, and dry, so dry, falling apart painfully. Sometimes she noticed dully that she couldn't even get up and off her bed, and she'd noticed with mounting horror that her own chest was barely moving to draw in air, her pulse almost stopping. Her vision was worse too. The glasses didn't help anymore.
In a desperate moment of anger, she’d crushed the useless things in her hand, drawing so much blood that she'd gone cross-eyed and probably passed out. She'd never know. Time moved weirdly when you never did anything.
No one was contacting her. Not Ron, not Hermione, and not the Headmaster for sure. Hedwig sat in her cage, disgruntled, sometimes making strange noises that sounded vaguely concerned, but Heather never knew she might have been hallucinating.
The thing was, Heather Venus Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived, was possibly dying.
Okay, maybe she was exaggerating. If she were to die it would probably have occurred already, what with the way her heart had almost stopped. But the near-death state was enough to have triggered some weird shit because one of the countless summer days she opened her eyes to find herself laying on some cold, wet sand.
"Harry Potter? What are you doing here?" she heard in that frightfully familiar voice and couldn't help but laugh. Her head lolled to the side so she could look at- at Tom Riddle, apparently, not Voldemort.
He looked disgruntled and surprised, as if he was encountering a bug somewhere he'd trusted to be clean.
"Dying, I suppose," she answered, truthfully, turning her head again to look up at the sky, murky and grey like her Godfather's eyes. A Godfather she hadn't heard from since summer had started.
He snorted. "I wish. Wouldn't that make my job much easier?"
"Ever the gentleman, Riddle.” she found herself joking, thinking to hell with it, it was her dream anyway. I'd rather you kill me fast and clean, at this point than whatever the hell is happening to me."
With no surprise at all Heather found she was telling the truth to this weird confidant her mind had conjured up. Technically, she knew, it made sense. All of her friends and family had failed her this summer, and Riddle had provided adequate company back in her second year, so Heather had no problem talking to this dream version of him, not associating him with the snake-faced monster of a man that had resurrected himself very recently.
He snorted- very un-Voldemort of him- giving her a once over that she ignored adamantly. Then, somehow, he seemed to notice something was actually wrong with her and his expression sobered.
"Now that I look at you, your skin does seem to be in abysmal condition. Been laying around all summer, hm, Chosen One?" It didn't seem like he really thought Heather had been lazing around all summer. His words were tinged with bitter resignation and had the same tone as an 'I told you so' would. "Why would you subject yourself to this when I've offered cooperation so many times?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Riddle, you don't want me to join you, you want to make an example of me. You'd probably give me a public execution and laugh at how stupid I was for believing you. Now let me die in peace, I'm almost there."
"Harry," Tom Riddle said, lowering himself to lay beside her on his side, "is it your suicide attempt I'm interrupting?"
Suddenly she was so irritated with that name instead of thinking about what Riddle was saying.
Harry.
On her damned deathbed people still called her that ridiculous pet name that Dumbledore thought up to give her that stupid kiddy image.
She had a strong, good name, the name of her ancestor, and they all bastardized it or didn't acknowledge it at all.
"It's Heather," she said to him, her glare meeting his blood-red eyes, "my name is Heather."
His lips stretched into a manic grin slowly, as if he was catching onto something, his hand coming up to cup her cheek and brush his thumb against her cheekbone almost tenderly. Terror gripped her heart as she slowly but surely started to realize that he wasn't quite the Tom from the diary. He looked a bit older, his eyes were red, he had this danger to him that teenage Tom didn't possess. His grin was sharp and terrifying and not at all what the diary had been like.
And there she was, half dead and at his mercy, all because nobody cared.
"My dear Heather," he hummed, saying her name as if he was tasting it for the first time, eyes searching her face for something and seeming to find it soon enough, "you can't take the pleasure of killing you with my bare hands away from me. Stop whatever foolishness you're up to, hm?"
She sneered at him, tempted to spit in his face now that she was half-convinced Voldemort himself was in her fucking dreams. "Must feel like shit, right? Muggles are doing a better job than you ever could."
His grin didn't falter at all, instead, the bastard laughed and gripped her face, his large hand covering her whole jawline as his thumb dug into her cheek. It wasn't painful, per se, but it was extremely uncomfortable, especially because he kept analysing her face, for an expression, or possibly for her affliction, until his eyes widened a fraction and his chilling grin turned gleeful.
"Oh, Morgana, Heather Potter, I think this is actually my fault, dearest."
"Huh?" she answered him, making a motion to move, grip his hand and rip it off, but her fingers merely twitched.
His face relaxed but a small smile remained on his lips, scaring Heather even more than before.
"Heather," he said her name again in that strange manner where you’re sure it has more meaning but you can't possibly grasp it yet, "have you ever… killed somebody?"
Heather sat up in her bed, panting, both warm and cold at the same time. She shot out of bed fast enough to make herself dizzy but she didn't care much. Grasping at the walls in the darkness of a night with no moon or stars, Heather stumbled out of her room and down the stairs, into the Dursleys’ kitchen. Somehow she now had a glass of water in one hand and a banana in the other, seemingly having been jolted out of her dying stupor. Her stomach ached with the unfamiliarity of the food and water, but she powered on.
At some point, she noticed she was violently sobbing, face drowned in salty tears, and Aunt Petunia had come down, wearing her usual pinched expression but not complaining about Heather eating.
The harpy even offered her a few more old fruits before sodding off back to sleep.
Game plan.
First Heather needed to find out if it was really Voldemort infiltrating her dreams. It wasn’t a big possibility. She doubted he’d bother even if he could, but the possibility of it made her shudder.
Second, Heather needed to understand what in hell was wrong with her because eating had not helped her appetite, she even felt more hungry.
Third, she needed to find out what the fuck was wrong with all her loved ones because she wouldn’t accept any excuse short of death for the way they’d been ignoring her entire existence. Again.
The calendar said it was already July 25th, which Heather refused to acknowledge because the last time she remembered leaving her room was June 24th. If reality was as Heather remembered then she’d been without food, water, or sunlight for a month now. No wonder the harpy was so generous.
Circle, how was she even alive?
And… Why did Voldemort ask that? What did any of that mean? Why had the dream been so stark and realistic?
In any case, even if Voldemort wasn't haunting her dreams, that particular dream, the first one in a month, apparently, had awakened her somehow.
What in fresh hell?
She went to sleep that day and didn’t wake up until July 27th. She didn’t dream.
No matter how much she ate her stomach didn’t feel any fuller.
The Dursleys, looking scared for their own lives, fed her more and more, fueled by some misguided fear she’d eat Dudley or something. Eventually, the fridge was almost empty and on the night of the 30th Heather came to when she was squeezing the blood out of some raw beef onto her own face and then rubbing it into her skin.
Petunia had packed her bags and taken her family away, Heather assumed, on a holiday. Well, the sight of your deranged niece covered in blood would most probably do that to a woman.
It was an hour before her birthday that Heather’s mind snapped into a single-minded state of compulsion, and she, looking at the world as if through a veil, called the home of Piers Polkiss.
“Hello?” she heard his voice and remembered vividly the last time the piece of shit had beat her half to death with her cousin.
“Oh, hello, this is Piers, right?”
“Yeah. Is this the freak? What do you want?”
“Um,” she started, cursing her inexperience with boys, “You- Um, you know, the Dursleys are out of town and… I’m all alone on my birthday, you know?” She remembered clearly the time she’d been ten when Piers had pinned her down for her cousin to beat her again, and how he’d bent down and pressed his gross lips on her cheek. “Was wondering if you wanted to...keep me...warm tonight.”
When she came back to herself, the strange sheen lifting from her consciousness, she had a hand in Piers’s almost hollow gut and a metallic taste of blood in her mouth.
She retched, but nothing came up.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she repeated feverishly as the boy lay in front of her, missing half of his face, all of his scalp, and a shitton of organs, including a heart. Flashes of the still-beating mound of flesh in her hands as she bit into it and it splashed her with blood ran through her head and she screamed.
“Game plan,” she said to herself after she was done crying, wailing, dry heaving, and screaming. “Shit, the body.”
There he was, a boy her own age, dead. She’d killed him...and eaten him! Yes, he’d beaten the shit out of her almost daily when she had been a kid, he’d helped Dudley bully her...had kissed her cheek, giving her such terribly gross goosebumps… but he didn’t deserve to be killed...did he?
What was she thinking? Of course, he didn't deserve to die!
Nobody did…
“Fuck,” she said to herself, as she realized she’d been conscious enough to lay out cellophane on the floor before gutting her cousin’s childhood friend on the kitchen floor. “Fuck!”
It was disgustingly easy to wrap the remains up in the bloody cellophane and leave the carcass in the kitchen to go to the bathroom. It took Heather quite a minute before she could face herself in the mirror, but when she did, she gasped.
Even covered in blood she could see clearly that instead of her wild curly black hair there was an alarmingly blonde mess on her head.
“That’s where the scalp went,” she sobbed and dry heaved for another ten minutes.
She took a shower after that, unable to look at herself or go down and do something about the body yet. When she was done she took her sweet time drying her alien hair and then she paced the length of the small washroom until she could psych herself up enough to look in the mirror again.
“Huh,” Heather breathed out. She was...different somehow. Her hair for once lay obediently atop her bare shoulders, slightly curled at the ends, her bangs perfectly framing her face. Blonde as it was, it was also thick and luscious and as shiny as Malfoy’s ever was.
Her skin also...glowed. It was the healthiest she’d ever seen, although not as dark as before. No, it was more slightly sunkissed now, freckled in some places. Her eyes were the same luminous green, as always, but the rest of her seemed different.
Alarmed, she let her towel drop and gazed at her own body pensively.
Had her...Had she always had boobs this nice? Cautiously she went to squeeze them and hummed in satisfaction.
Huh.
Her hands, small, delicate, with pretty nail beds, slid lower and lower, moving behind her when they met her waist and going to grip her own arse. She found herself humming in satisfaction, reluctant to let go of her own soft firm flesh.
Gone was her gauntness from a month of starvation, instead she looked toned and firm and just as she usually did in the middle of the school year when she’d had enough Quidditch practice to gain all her muscles back. Did that mean she’d always been this pretty? This...sexy?
Shaking her head to break herself out of her weird trance she got started.
First things first, she got into her cleaning attire, braided her hair on top of her head to get it out of the way, and wore her worst clothes. She also stole some rubber gloves from Petunia and went ham on the scrubbing. She’d left quite the bloody trail after herself, but any self-respecting person who menstruates knew how to deal with that.
No, the blood was never the issue. The fucking body was.
Grimacing a bit callously she started cleaning out other stuff, making sure there’d be no traces of his hair or fingertips from him anywhere in the house.
Then she thought long and hard for about twenty minutes before ringing the Polkiss household again and asking Mrs. Polkiss if she knew where Piers was, because, she told the woman, he never came to see her. The woman was understandably peeved at the notion that her boy would visit her so late but she calmed the woman down telling her he was supposed to congratulate her for her birthday because the Dursleys had left and she was all alone. That placated Mrs. Polkiss enough to reassure Heather that she’d ring back if she got any news.
The last part of her plan was very very very risky. If she didn’t manage it would be hell.
Opening the door that led to the backyard Heather started dragging the body out, both her and the awkward lump shrouded in her invisibility cloak and cursing herself for being such a small, weak chit.
Now, vanishing spells were usually OWL year material and she shouldn’t hypothetically know them. Yes, she’d practiced them in preparation for the Triwizard Tournament, but only Hermione knew about that, and Hermione, even if she worshipped authority, would never tattle.
Yes, she’d never vanished a whole fucking human before, and McGonagall was going to start them on snails, but, well, what the fuck else could she do? So, she gathered all her Gryffindor courage and all her apparent Slytherin ambition to pleasenotbecaughtplease and did it.
“Evanesco,” she said with the right wand movement and the whole human/cellophane bundle vanished. Then came the hardest part. Visualizing the damned Dark Mark that plagued most of her nightmares she said that incantation. “Morsmordre!” she exclaimed and it bloody worked!
Dropping her wand exactly there she then carefully made her way back in, making sure to not leave any trace she’d ever been there, and went to sleep in her bedroom.
So far, mission accomplished.
Never mind that she wasn’t nearly bothered enough about killing and eating somebody.
That night she saw Voldemort in her dream again.
She remembered his question from the last dream vividly. "Heather, have you ever… killed somebody?"
She’d avoided thinking about it, and she was not about to start on it now when she was faced with an unfairly handsome older Tom Riddle.
“Miss Potter,” he inclined his head in greeting, sounding absolutely delighted. It was quite the contrast compared to the last few times they’d met.
“Are you my spirit guide now?” she grimaced, noticing they were on the same dreary beach again. Heather herself had never been anywhere like this before so she didn’t know where the scenery had come from, but Riddle seemed pretty comfortable here.
“I am decidedly not,” he answered, seemingly unbothered. He had a book on his lap and reading glasses on. This time he wasn’t sitting on wet sand but on a wooden beach chair while she was lounging half in the sea wearing a bikini for some reason.
“Jiminy Cricket,” she addressed him solemnly and he sighed, putting down his book. She’d never noticed how similar Hermione was to Tom Riddle.
“Does that make you Pinocchio, my dear? Because I do not recall having any business in Surrey.” Heather pouted at the Dark Lord. “You dyed your hair?”
Her eyes widened a fraction as she looked at Voldemort, thinking what in hell she should tell him. How do you tell someone you think you stole a person’s blonde gene by eating them? Do you even tell anyone that? No. The answer is no.
“Why?” she asked, twirling a strand around one finger, “do you like it?”
“Well, that’s improper,” he sighed, going back to his book as if she wasn’t right there. Heather Potter was being ignored by Voldemort in her own dreams. Great!
“You can’t just ignore me,” she demanded, utterly offended, “This is my dream!”
Handsome Voldemort proceeded to do just that, ignoring her utterly. Aggravated and taking way too much offense, Heather took a handful of wet sand and threw it at the man.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, girl! Even in dreams, you’re exhausting.”
“This isn’t your dream, Voldemort!”
The bastard rolled his crimson eyes and Heather made that specific kind of sound teenagers make when their parents ground them in American films. A mix between a grunt and a scream.
“Whatever,” she growled, gritting her teeth and turning away to look at the sea, arms crossed on her chest petulantly.
There was a lengthy patch of pregnant silence before Riddle sighed and she heard the rustle of him putting down his damned book.
“Sometimes I forget you’re just a child,” he said, making Heather snap her glare back onto him. “Is this my subconscious judging me for trying to kill a little girl?”
She didn’t know what made her say it. Later she’d look back at this very moment and wonder if it fucked everything up or made her life monumentally easier, but her impulsive personality couldn’t suffer the insult so she blurted something out.
“Do little girls usually kill and eat boys for their birthdays?”
Now, Heather was not proud of being so blase about murder and cannibalism. She found the whole thing absolutely gross and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why she didn’t feel even an ounce of guilt. Maybe it was because he’d been so mean to her, or because she was just a horrible monster who sucked the life out of innocent Muggles, who knew. But Voldemort’s reaction was quite worth the stupidity of disclosing this information to him.
“You what?” he demanded, trying and failing to school his face into nonchalance. Yeah, eat that, bastard!
“I said,” she crooned, turning around to sit on her knees and putting her hands closer to his chair to lean in while she scared the hell out of him with her huge unnerving eyes, “that I killed a boy, put a knife in his tummy and dragged it up, up, up before eating all his insides, bathing in his blood and stealing his pretty blonde hair.”
Voldemort disappeared and Heather woke up with a startled laugh. But then her laugh died down and she scowled again.
Fuck, she had a Ministry notice. And the fuckers were threatening to snap her wand of all things!
Fuck. No. She knew this would happen. Yes. This was why she’d planned everything so meticulously. Yes.
Game plan.
Heather had a letter penned already about how she couldn’t find her wand and had no clue how and why it had been used. That she was supposed to meet a boy for her birthday and that the boy had never shown up.
Yes, no panic needed. She just took the letter and sent it back to the Ministry, right back to Mafalda fucking Hopkirk.
There! Done!
Cheered up with a job well done, Heather skipped down the stairs and felt no need to eat so she grabbed a water bottle and plopped down on the sofa in the living room. Crossing her ankles on top of the coffee table for the first time in her miserable life she turned on the TV and started watching some braindead show Dudley usually watched. She’d peeked enough of the episodes while scrubbing the floors to actually grasp the plot so she got comfy and waited.
In about three hours there was knocking on the door and Heather was completely ready for the Aurors. Clad in a truly huge and disfigured t-shirt and a pair of shorts she’d cut out of Dudley’s childhood jeans she opened the door, doe-eyed and appropriately teary.
“Miss Potter,” a large dark-skinned man in stylish robes greeted her, “I’m Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt, this is Auror Tonks. We have received a missive from you about losing your wand that was used to cast magic by someone else.” She nodded, lower lip trembling just a little bit and the man’s face predictably softened. “Could we come in?”
“Oh,” she laughed wetly, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand and standing away from the doorway so the two could come in. ”Of course, please, come in!”
The duo sat down on the sofa while Heather brought them tea and sat down on the carpet in front of them, looking at them with genuine curiosity.
“We’ve found your wand, Miss Potter,” Shacklebolt said, putting her wand on the table. She made no movement to take it. “It was found a few miles away from your backyard and a Priori Incantato showed it has only been used to cast two spells since summer started.”
“Yes, Auror, I haven’t used it at all,” she confirmed with a vehement nod.
“Where are your relatives, Miss Potter?” the man asked and she bit her lip looking down sheepishly.
“They...They don’t like me much, you see,” she started explaining, eyes darting between the two Aurors, lower lip protruding in a pout. “They left for a holiday without me. And it was my birthday yesterday so I...I didn’t want to be alone, you see. So I called one of our former classmates, my cousin’s friend over. I rang his house on the telephone and asked him to come because I was alone but he never showed. I called his Mum to ask her if he was home but she said no and said she’d call me if there was news. Then I just went to sleep and when I woke up I saw the Ministry notice. I looked everywhere for my wand and I couldn’t find it so I sent the letter.”
To Heather’s immense shock not only did the Aurors believe her, but they also said she was absolved of the charges against her and that she was free to go back to Hogwarts come September. They graciously advised her to keep her wand locked somewhere and without a word about the Dark Mark she’d made sure to cast, they fucked right off.
When she was sure they’d Disapparated Heather made a loud cheery woop and danced her way to the kitchen to steal popcorn from her stupid relatives.
For once in her life, she was left all alone and completely free to do whatever the hell she wanted and she had the sudden urge to do something absolutely terrible for her. Like...She didn’t know. Maybe smoke?
Ooh, yes, she wondered if she could dupe some poor store clerk into selling a fifteen-year-old girl cigarettes. She was reasonably sure she wouldn’t go off the rails and murder the first Muggle in sight so she decided to do just that.
From the floorboard in her room that she kept stuff under she got her savings and only changing her shirt into something tighter and less formless she went to get her first damn cigarettes.
The store clerk looked at her dubiously as she asked for ‘the minty ones’ but she decided to do something she’d seen Lavender do when something was needed from boys. Crossing her arms under her chest she squeezed her arms closer and gave the man a pout and some Bambi eyes. Needless to say, the cigarettes had been bought.
Heather: 1, World : 0.
Back at the Dursleys’ she went to her room to quell her strange anxiety about getting caught, locked her door from the inside, bolted it, and only then opened the window to light up the cigarette.
Obviously, she choked from the first drag, but she persisted. It was sort of tingly on her tongue and barely minty, but she felt cool and sexy while doing it so she decided these were coming with her to Hogwarts.
Come to think of it…
Heather, apparently on a roll, went to the master bedroom as confidently as a thief at night. Going to Petunia’s vanity she sat gingerly on the puffy little chair in front of it before pursing her lips in determination.
Fuck it, she thought and yanked a drawer open. This was where Petunia kept her unused makeup, still packaged prettily and untouched by harpy hands.
Heather had always wanted makeup. Petunia kept telling her she was too ugly for it, Hermione mocked anyone who used it and Ron thought it was useless but...Heather loved the look of glossy, glittery lips and pretty pink eyelids. She was pretty now, she could… she could indulge, couldn’t she?
So she stole. She took a pretty pink lip gloss with glitter, a clear lip gloss without glitter, a palette of eyeshadows in soft pink and purple tones, with glitter and without, a tube of mascara that advertised itself as ‘extra volume’ and liquid eyeliner.
Done, she nodded to herself and went to hide her treasures in her trunk. Then she started collecting all of her stuff, convincing herself she was doing it for Hogwarts although deep in her mind she knew she was planning to run away.