Ivory skin stretched over the bones of his face looking like the skin on a decomposing corpse. Black robes flowed eerily behind him in the wind, wand clutched in his long, bony fingers. On his lip-less mouth, he bared his teeth in something that vaguely resembled a smile as he slowly raised the wand at the figure of a skinny seventeen year old boy walking boldly towards him. In a flash of green, the boy was on the floor. Dead. All hope lost.

The monster that was once a man turned around, his red eyes meeting hers. His pupils were slits, like snake eyes. She could feel it looking at her; looking into her mind and soul. The most overwhelming pain surged through her. She couldn't tell whether it was real or emotional, but it didn't matter anyway. The war was over.

It had won.

Waking up with a jolt, Pepper stared around the dark room desperately trying to force her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The panic that had taken hold in her soul slowly disappeared as she realised it was just a dream. Taking several deep breaths, she gently stroked the soft, silk sheets to calm her down.

It had been a long time since she'd had that nightmare. Normally, she'd sink into a dreamless sleep, exhausted from the relentless workouts, business meetings and stress of being the girlfriend and babysitter to a billionaire, playboy genius.

On the other hand, the aforementioned billionaire often suffered from nightmares. Nightmares where alien space ships shaped like giant metal worms crawled out of the sky. Nightmares where robots he'd created aspired to wipe out all life on earth. Nightmares about terrorists using his weapons for their own gain. If they won, he believed it would be because he failed.

Clearly he'd had a nightmare earlier that night, otherwise she would have woken up next to him. Although she was glad he wasn't there to see her in such a state, it took longer for her to calm herself down when it was dark and she was alone. She needed a wee but was too nervous to get out of bed; frightened the carpet might have become devils snare while she slept. Her mouth was dry and her hands felt clammy. It was a long time before she was able to drift off again into an uncomfortable sleep.

"Up." Her aunt rapped furiously on the door of the cupboard under the stairs. "Get up." She repeated, still knocking inanely. Even in the kitchen, the noise was irritating; she couldn't imagine how her brother must feel. Virginia hid her face with her shoulder length, strawberry blond hair as she fried the breakfast to try and avoid attention, good or otherwise. "NOW!" Her aunt screeched.

Her brother emerged sleepily from the cupboard, stifling a yawn. As always, his hair was in disarray. His glasses were lopsided from all the times their cousin had broken them with well aimed punches and their uncle taped them back together. There was something about her brother that they despised, more than his 'common' name and skinny frame... she'd recently found out it wasn't just normal for families to have a child sleep under the stairs when they didn't have enough bedrooms.

Too afraid to speak out at school about his abuse, in case she would be separated from her brother in the foster care system, she tried to turn a blind eye to the cruelty. Very few people liked her brother; teachers had him branded as a trouble maker for the time he climbed onto the roof and other children either bullied him or risked being bullied by her cousin.

"Just cook the breakfast and try not to burn anything." Her aunt hissed to her brother. Another child would have rolled his eyes, but her brother didn't dare. He just nodded, taking the spatula gently from Virginia, smiling at her kindly. Warily, she smiled back, organising the five plates for the fried breakfast. "I want everything to be perfect, for my Duddy's special day." Her aunt cooed, embracing her fat son and showering him with kisses. Her cousin endured the exuberant display of affection, his piggy eyes zoning in on the pile of presents.

"How many are there?" He asked eagerly.

"Thirty six. Counted them myself." Their uncle told him proudly, shuffling on the uncomfortable wooden chairs. Virginia thought she heard it creak under his large frame.

"Thirty six?" Her cousin shouted in indignantly. "But last year I had thirty seven!" Virginia looked down so they wouldn't see her purse her lips in distaste. Last year she'd had three and her brother's birthday had gone forgotten by everyone except her.

She brooded quietly on this all the way to the zoo, where her aunt had promised her darling boy they'd buy him two more presents. Her cousin was still deciding what he actually wanted as they wondered around the reptile section. Virginia sat merrily watching two multicoloured poisonous tree frogs play, while her cousin and uncle knocked rudely on the glass tank of a python, trying to get it to move.

After they'd gotten bored, her brother did something she didn't expect. He spoke to it; not in English, but in some weird made up language that sounded almost like a hiss. Curious, she turned to see what he was doing. The snake was looking him in the eye, nodding it's head in response to whatever her brother was saying. Eyes widening in shock, she took a step towards him... but not before her cousin knocked them both to the floor.

"Mum! Dad! Come here! You won't believe what this snake is doing!" He shouted, face and hands pressed against the glass, eyes wide. As quickly as he had ploughed them both down, the glass disappeared. He fell into the artificial forest that lay within with a loud splash. The snake slithered out of the tank. Virginia screamed, leaping to her feet.

"Gin, it's ok!" Her brother assured her as she backed away, panicking, from the snake. He turned to the python, a shocked expression on his face and hissed once more at it. The snake winked at him... it actually winked at him (Virginia didn't even know snakes could wink) before slithering away.

She heard another rap-tap-tap and turned to the tank to see the glass had returned, their cousin was crying on one side, their aunt screaming on the other side. She had to admit, the sight was comical... until their uncle turned, his eyes fixing on her brother as if he had something to do with it. He couldn't have... could he?

The knocking on the glass only became more urgent as Pepper drifted out of a dream of a day that seemed like it happened a lifetime ago. Light was flooding in through the drapes, and, this time, she could see the carpet was just carpet. Still half asleep, she realised the knocking in her head had only gotten louder.

She blinked several times, slowly waking herself up and soon realised that it wasn't in her head... the knocking was coming from the glass. Frowning in confusion, she pulled the matching silk robe over her pale pink pyjamas and walked over the soft, thick cream carpet to the window. Could it be the window cleaner? She wondered. No. He wasn't due for another week. Another unwelcome memory hit her unexpectedly, making her fall backwards, landing uncomfortably on the springy floor.

In what appeared to be a mental breakdown caused by her aunt and uncle's house being literally flooded with letters addressed to her brother, they had run away... far away... where 'they' can't find us. Virginia had no idea who 'they' were and thoroughly agreed with her cousin that her uncle had gone completely barmy. This hypothesis was proven when the Dursleys and Potters arrived at a rotting shack, only accessible by a small rowing boat that somehow managed to take the weight of all five of them as they crossed over the stormy sea.

The smell of damp filled her lungs as well as mould spores that made it difficult to breathe. Spray from the waves forced its way though the cracks in the walls, making the enormous old shirt that she slept in slightly damp. It had previously belonged to her brother (and her cousin before that) as did most of her belongings. Luckily, her aunt enjoyed buying girls clothes and dressing her up like a Barbie, so she didn't have to wear her cousins hand me downs every day.

Determined not to let the melancholy setting ruin her brother's eleventh birthday, she lay next to him under a thin, moth eaten blanket that barely covered both of them on the cold, damp floor. Enormous grins were forced onto their faces as Virginia traced a cake with eleven candles in the dust on the floor. She finished the drawing just as the digital watch their cousin had been given for his birthday beeped to alert them it was midnight. On the sofa, their cousin let out an almighty snore, but didn't wake.

"Make a wish, Harry." She whispered. Her brother closed her eyes for a moment, trying to think of something. Then he blew out the pretend candles

Just as the cake drawing disintegrated from the floor, there was a thud on the door. Virginia and her brother gasped, staring up. Another thud, then a third. Her brother grabbed her skinny waist and pulled her into the corner, standing protectively in front of her. Her aunt and uncle sprinted from the adjoining room, her uncle brandished a short gun. Where had he got a shot gun from? Surely he didn't have a licence! Their cousin backed into the window, unable to force his away into the crevice Virginia and her brother were hiding in.

The door fell open just as lightning stuck, illuminating the figure of a giant. He was twice as all as the average man and about five times as wide. She'd read stories of monsters coming to eat up little children that had misbehaved; was this him? Was he here to grind their bones to make his bread?

"Sorry 'bout that." He said, his accent sounding Bristolian. He didn't sound like an evil giant. In the dim light of the hut, she saw him pick up the door and fit it neatly back into place. He didn't seem so scary. Taking her hand, her brother lead her out of their hiding place, just as the man broke their uncle's shot gun. "I 'aven't see yeh since yeh were a baby 'Arry, but yer a bit more along than I would've expected... particularly 'round the middle." The giant said to their cousin, tapping his large belly to indicate what he meant.

"I-I'm not Harry." Their cousin stuttered.

"I am." Harry admitted, stepping forward nervously, accidentally pulling her with him.

"Well a'course yeh are." The giant said, grinning. "An' yeh must be V'ginia." He nodded to Virginia, who's knuckles had turned white with fear as she clutched her brothers hand with strength she didn't know she had.

"How do you do, sir?" She squeaked, giving him a little curtsy, not knowing what else to do.

"Got summat fer yeh 'ere... bare in mind I mighta sat on it at some point - but it'll taste alright!" He said to her brother, rifling around in his coat that had what must have been hundreds of pockets, and eventually pulling out a white box containing a chocolate cake. The words; Happy Birthday Harry were scrawled in barely legible green writing on top of bright pink icing. It was her brother's first ever birthday cake. He stared at it speechlessly, until Virginia elbowed him, trying to force him to remember his manners.

"Thank you!" Her brother exclaimed. That was good; if they were polite maybe this giant wouldn't eat them.

"Not every day a young man turns eleven, is it?" He grinned sitting on the sofa that had previously been her cousins bed.

Almost absentmindedly, he pointed his pink umbrella at the fireplace. Virginia wondered if he wanted them to light a fire - heaven knows they'd tried a multitude of times. With the rain, wind and spray from the waves coming in from every crack in the shack (and there were a lot of cracks), the firewood was too damp to catch. The empty crisp packets her uncle attempted to use as kindling had just been an embarrassing disaster.

The giant didn't order them to light a fire though, because as soon as the pink umbrella was in line with the fireplace a fire appeared in the grate, burning away merrily as if it had been doing so for hours. Her mouth fell open in shock. Was this a hallucination? She could feel the warmth, smell the smoke and hear the crackling of the logs and see the crisp packets shrivelling up. It was incredible.

She stared at her brother, willing him to say something. Moving slowly, he placed the cake on the side of the sofa and approached the giant. Virginia saw her cousins greedy eyes fix on he cake, but he didn't grab it as he usually would. Clearly he was weighing the pros and cons of stealing it.

"Who are you?" Harry asked shyly.

"Rubius Hagrid. Keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts." He said proudly. Completely disregarding the blank expressions on their faces when he mentioned Hogwarts, he carried on talking. "Yeh'll know all 'bout Hogwarts."

"Sorry. No." her brother admitted sadly.

"Blimey 'Arry! Didn't you ever wonder where yer mum and dad learnt it all?" Virginia was pleased to see her brother looked just as confused as she was at the giants words. As before, he didn't seem to notice they weren't following.

"Learnt what?" Her brother asked.

"You're a wizard, 'Arry."

Four words. Four simple words that hit them like a bombshell destined to turn their lives upside down and inside out. The giant... Hagrid... had explained all about the hidden wizarding world they had no idea existed. Their aunt and uncle knew however. They had kept it from them; lied to them about their parents murder and even tried to beat the magic out of her brother.

Virginia wondered why they hadn't tried the same tactics with her. Perhaps it was because she'd never displayed an aptitude for magic. The giant had asked Harry whether he'd ever made anything happen when he was angry or scared... yes was the answer. She'd seen it a thousand times; from the bad hair cuts their aunt had given him that had mysteriously grown back to the jumper he didn't want to wear that magically shrank as their aunt tried to force it over his head. She had never made anything happen.

"What about me?" She whispered to her brother that night, when they curled under Hagrid's enormous coat to sleep. The feeling of the field mice moving in one of the pockets was strangely relaxing, like they were massaging her back. "Do you think I'm a wizard?"

"I guess." Her brother had told her. "Well you're a girl so you wouldn't be a wizard, silly. You'd be a witch." Those words had stung her to a degree that her brother couldn't comprehend. A witch. Like the wicked witch in the wizard of oz, like Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, the Evil Queen in Snow White, Dame Gothel in Rapunzel. All evil.

They'd been woken the next morning, by a small owl tapping on the window of the shack. That was the exact sound coming from behind the drapes. Taking a deep breath, Pepper opened the drapes just a fraction to see a large, brown out knocking at the window. When it spotted her, it hooted indignantly, as if annoyed to be waiting on the window ledge for hours.

Hands shaking, she opened the window to try and shoo it away. She wanted nothing more to do with that world. However, it took the open window as an invitation, souring in and dropping something into her long, strawberry blond hair making her gasp in surprise. The owl settled on Tony's night stand, happily helping itself to some dried nuts the billionaire always kept by the side of the bed in case he got snacky in the middle of the night.

Reaching into her hair, Pepper delicately pulled the envelope the owl had dropped out of her tangles, reading and rereading the weirdly specific address on the front that wizarding mail always had.

Ms. Virginia 'Pepper' Potts,

Largest Room,

Stark Suite,

Avengers Facility,

Upstate New York

United States of America.

How had they found her? It had been eighteen years, in that time she had moved to a new continent, changed her name and her accent. She had a job, a social security number a life in the normal non-magic world. She hadn't used magic in years. She wasn't even in her own apartment! Sighing, she turned the letter over in her hands to see the wax seal, emblazoned with the Potter crest from an old signet ring of her father's they'd found.

Her fingers felt as if they were five times the size, too clumsy to peel back the wax. She didn't even know if she wanted to see the words lurking inside. Her time with the letter was cut short, however, as a loud alarm started blaring and a red light shone in the room. FRIDAY's scan must have identified the unregulated owl in her room. She just had time to shove the envelope in her dressing table drawer, before Sam Wilson, wearing his goggles and falcon wings over his bare chest and pale grey tracksuit bottoms he wore to bed, burst through the door.

"I got you now you little sucker!" He exclaimed, staring around the room, apparently not spotting the large owl who was now ruffling it's feathers, irritated by the alarms.

"Excuse me." Pepper said, claiming Wilson's attention. He looked at her... well towards her in any case; it was so damn hard to see his eyes with those goggles on. In reality, he was probably doing a three hundred and sixty degree sweep for whatever, or whoever he thought the intruder was. "The owl set the alarm off."

"Oh..." He looked at it, expression filled with disappointment as he noticed the owl for the first time. "I just kinda thought Stark had started investing in taxidermy." He shrugged.

"So what did you think set the alarm off?" She asked, curious at the sudden sheepish expression at consumed the falcon's face. Folding her arms, Pepper gave him the sternest look she could. The severity of her look was probably mellowed by her pink pyjamas, but it was still enough to squeeze the truth out of him.

"Well... a little guy around the size of a large ant." He shrugged. "He's not here?"

"I've been too busy focusing on the bloody owl to look for men the size of ants!" She exclaimed, noticing the British tinge her voice picked up when her frustration grew. That didn't normally happen. Perhaps it was the influx of memories that caused it. Either way, the falcon didn't seem to notice.

"What's going on?" A pair of red heads followed him into her room. Natasha Romanoff looked at Pepper's suspicious stance by the dresser, hand on the draw to keep it jammed shut. The Russian assassin never missed much. Wracking her brains, she tried to think of a justifiable reason as to why the window was open in a room that was air conditioned to the perfect temperature. She came up with nothing.

"False alarm. Just an owl." Luckily, it was Wilson who shrugged and answered before Natasha forced Pepper to explain. Wanda Maximoff, who Pepper still didn't trust a hundred percent, walked towards the bird slowly, trying not to spook it. The owl, who was probably used to being handled daily by wizards, tiptoed happily onto her wrist.

"It's so cute!" She exclaimed, stroking its feathers. Happy with the attention, the owl nibbled her fingers affectionately.

"That is a health and safety violation." Tony told them, striding in dressed in his full Iron Man suit, expecting a fight. He sounded a little like a five year old having a tantrum. "It could have rabies or aids."

"I don't think owls carry aids, Tony." Maximoff chuckled. "Flees yes, STDs no."

"Depends on what he was planning to do with the bird." Romanoff asked, one eyebrow raised suggestively, a small smirk on her face.

"Ha ha." Tony snapped sarcastically. "Get that thing out of my compound. This is supposed to be a sterile area!" Maximoff ignored him, picking a nut out of the bag on Tony's nightstand for the owl. Tony pointed at her furiously. "Stop feeding that thing my nuts!" Romanoff's smirk widened and even Pepper cracked a smile, despite confusion and shock she felt about her past coming back to haunt her.

As if on cue, the owl spread its wings and soured out of the open window. The five people stood in an uncomfortable in silence, the whole incident feeling a bit anti-climatic. It almost felt as if they were weighting for an explosion or some other sort of disaster. Not for the first time, Pepper reflected on how messed up all their lives were.

"Well that was a bit of excitement for the morning." The Vision announced rising up gracefully through the floorboards. Pepper screamed in shock at the sight the the disembodied head, her hand flying to her chest as if she was having an atrial fibrillation. She was reminded of the way the Hogwarts ghosts moved around the castle... these memories were no longer welcome in her life.

"Vision, we talked about this." Maximoff scolded him. "Walk through doors, not floors."

"Terribly sorry to alarm you, Ms. Potts." He rose completely out of the floor boards, his red cloak waving gracefully behind him despite the lack of wind. "The Captain Rogers is making pancakes if anyone's interested." Slowly the avengers filed out of Pepper's bedroom, leaving her and Romanoff.

"Is there anything you wanna tell me?" She asked, after staring at Pepper for a long time. Pepper straightened her shoulders, a small smile on her otherwise completely neutral face.

"No." She shook her head, as if she had no idea what Romanoff was talking about. "Nothing."

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading!

This was inspired by reading loads of Harry Potter fanfiction. It made me remember day dreams I used to have when the films first came out about being Harry Potter's little sister and Pepper Pott's name just seemed to play into this idea quite nicely. I'm cherry picking sections from the Harry Potter books and films for flashbacks to Pepper's childhood. This is set eighteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts after Age of Ultron and before / during Civil War. This is one explanation as to why Pepper wasn't in Civil war.

Please let me know if you like the idea and I'd welcome any constructive criticism! :)