The silence of Godric's Hallow was almost agonising to Harrietta Shelby, better known as Harry to her closest friends. There was simply something… unnatural about it. It was if, sixteen years ago, nearly seventeen, the very land itself had been cursed on that fateful night, as dead as the two graves she knew stood just behind her in the remote graveyard. There was no tweet or bird song. No rustling of the wind. No hum or buzz of a street lamp. There was only nothing.

Possibly, that was why she loathed it so much, this place, let it unsettle her so, because, really, underneath it all, that was all she had too. Nothing. This ruined home, decayed and rotting, was just like her and that echo of her inner detachment terrified her. Standing there in the early morning sun, in the middle of the road, staring at the slowly crumbling carcase of what would have been her family home in another life, Harry was reminded, cruelly reiterated, of everything she never got to have. A soft hand, snug in a knitted glove, lapped around her own loose one dangling down at her side.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to Harry. I know I've been… well, pushing you to look into it, but it is your choice. Not mine. We can turn around right now if you want to."

Harry glanced to her side, taking in Hermione's gentle features, her warm caramel eyes and tender smile. Even now, after months of goading Harry, edging her, stoking her own curiosity to fiery life, at the end, Hermione, ever curious and knowledge thirsty, left it to be Harry's choice whether she delved into this pit of veiled enigmas.

Really, that was why Harry loved her friend so much. From Dursley to Albus, from Snape to Voldemort, Harry had never really had a choice in anything. But here, with Hermione, now, she had all of them and, in full, naked, unbearable honesty, it made her feel a bit queasy. Along with choices came conclusions and those endings, especially for Harry and her life thus far, proved to be repercussion rather than reward.

Harry tried to smile back, to comfort Hermione, but she was sure all she managed was some malformed grimace. The truth was she didn't have to do anything, not now that Voldemort was finally dead, but she wanted to. There were so many answers to find, so many questions she had never let herself think to ask. Yet, now seemed to be the time of unveiling, of bearing her sins, to investigate the shadows and phantoms that haunted her past. Harry, after all, was a Gryffindor and they, their loudmouthed, hot-tempered lot, did not shy away from tough questions. Squaring off her shoulders in a rather false sense of bravado that did nothing to settle the inner turmoil she was facing, squeezing Hermione's hand, Harry grinned as best as she could.

"Then how am I supposed to know where I got my uncanny ability to find trouble from?"

Harry dropped Hermione's hand and began to trek over the road, digging out the key to the front door from her coat pocket. Harry had always known she had been adopted. In fact, Petunia and Vernon loved reminding her of that little detail. Repeatedly. Often through yells or fists or, as was her aunt's favourite, hair yanking and slapping when she misbehaved. Although, that was all they would tell her, that she was an outsider, a Shelby, not a Dursley or Potter, just an adopted freak. Maybe they didn't know who her real parents were. Maybe they got a kick out of never telling her and leaving her to the festering unknown. It was hard to tell with the Dursley's, but the fact remained they stayed mulishly silent and Harry stopped asking after the third time. It was an odd thing, indeed, to admit that Harry had never really cared about it before, had never been concerned enough to push further, to ask a fourth, fifth or sixth time. She hadn't thought of it much, in truth, for many years.

Well, that wasn't quite true, was it? Survival had taken up much of her childhood and teenage years. Between the beatings, starvation and neglect from her aunt and uncle, to being a child soldier and trying to outthink, outrun and outmanoeuvre men twice, triple her age and experience, merely endeavouring to live to see the next sunrise had taken up much, if not all, her mental and emotional energy. To be better said, it would be more honest if she were to say that she hadn't had the time to think or question her adoption. It had just been a foot note in her life, a memo at the preface.

However, the war was over. Her relatives were gone. Tom Riddle was dead and all of a sudden, it meant everything. It consumed her. Flooded her dreams. Taunted her thoughts. It was everywhere she looked and nowhere. She saw the question of her birth, her beginning, in young Teddy and the questions he would eventually ask Andromeda about Remus and Tonks. She saw the what-ifs and could have been's at every Weasley dinner. She saw the hidden questions she was dying to ask in her photo-album, the single one she had, when she flicked through them, staring at James and Lily Potter smiling back at her from aged paper.

Facing infertility troubles, like a lot of purebloods, James had broached the subject of adoption to Lily one stormy night. Remus had told Harry that much. Lily, with her heart so full and bright, had not hesitated to give one, a babe, in need the love she thought it deserved and so, had adopted Harrietta Shelby from a rundown wizarding orphanage in the midlands. Lily and James had cuddled and fed her, bathed and kissed her, rocked and loved her.

They had loved her so deeply, so truly, they had laid down their lives to protect her. For Merlin's sake, Lily's love had been so pure, so heartfelt, it had protected Harry fifteen years after her death. It was their faces, James's and Lily's, that Harry saw when she picked up the resurrection stone, it was their reflection she saw in the mirror of Erised, it was them who were with her when she died. They may not share the same blood, their time together may have been bitterly short, but they were her parents, her mother and father and nothing, no one, could ever change that. They were her parents. Anyone who said they weren't really family, well, they were a cold-hearted shallow bastard.

Nonetheless, that didn't stop the question of where exactly she came from, from plaguing her. And, funny enough, the answer was right there, in that house, on her original birth certificate. On a little slip of paper, there would be two names, just two and she would finally know exactly where her roots spread from. Perhaps her parents wanted her to know her birth ones all along. Perhaps that is why they never legally changed her name. Perhaps that was why she was a Shelby and not a Potter. Perhaps… Or, maybe, they had been mercilessly slain before they could do much of anything by a creature that could never understand love or affection or fondness.

Somedays, Harry pitied Tom Riddle. When she was feeling low, after awakening from faceless nightmares. When her hand trembled as she poured herself another fire whiskey to help burn away the fear. When, in the twilight, thought and feelings meshed into one shapeless beast and really, she knew, she and him were not so different, she pitied him with a vengeance. Yet, most days, she was vindictively happy. She was ecstatic, viciously elated that her adoption had been kept close to the orders chest, her errant last name explained away by a last-ditch attempt taken by Lily and James to save her from Tom Riddles grasp, to hide her from his followers. She was delighted that it was she, just before she fired the last shot that dusted him into the void he deserved, who told him that she wasn't even a Potter. She was adopted.

She would never forget Riddle's face when she told him, when his own spell began to fail, the realisation on his face just before he disintegrated. Harry knew, in that one moment, he knew. He had chosen the wrong child. There was no prophecy. Born to a couple who thrice defied… Bullshit. It had all been bullshit. Self-fulfilling lies. Tom had, by trying to avoid it, created the very monster he so thought he could evade. Poetic. Ironic. Tragic. Perhaps that made her a bad person, the enjoyment she felt and still feels about that moment. Perhaps that was purely the least Voldemort could give her, that satisfaction at his own undulated failing and fear, after the hell he had put her through. Perhaps, as with all things, it was somewhere between in a shade of grey.

Who knew? Harry didn't and, well, that was why she was here, wasn't it? Did her malicious streak come from her father or mother? Where did her onyx, uncontrollable curls come from? Where did her green eyes? Her pale skin? Who had her sharp tongue and dry wit? Was her mother as short as her? Could her father scrap as good as she could? Was she muggleborn or pureblood? Were they dead? Did Harry even want to know any of these questions? She didn't know. She knew nothing. And, just maybe, she was more like Tom Riddle than anyone wanted to admit because that unknown, that doubt, it left her feeling boneless, cut off at the stem, only half formed. She had a middle, her end would come one day but her beginning was nothing but smoke and mirrors and that, like Tom Riddle without his body, gorging on unicorn blood, left her with only a half-life.

First, she would find their names on her birth certificate, and then, well, she would decide from there. No rush. No fear. Baby steps. Maybe she would find their names, see them for herself and that would be enough to gratify her interest. Perhaps not. However, there was only one way to find that out and that was to do. To leap. To take that step of faith into the indefinite. Still, as the rusty key slid into the door with a clink and clank as it turned and unlocked, Harry couldn't help but feel like she was setting down a road there was no coming back from.

For the first time in her life, Harry hesitated with her hand clenched tight and white on the door handle. It was only for a moment, a beat of a heart, but it came, a wave of unfiltered dread, crashing over her, devouring her. It was just two names. Two. Words written on paper couldn't and wouldn't change who she was. Not at her core. Not her soul. She was Harrietta Shelby, friend to house-elves and wizards alike, the girl who wouldn't die. She knew who she was. She did.

She did.

Huffing in a deep breath through her flared nostrils, Harry straightened her spine and pulled strength from her gut that she didn't know she had. She could do this. It was just two names. Or, so she kept telling herself. Twisting the handle, Harry pushed the door open and slipped into the shadowed hallway, glancing at Hermione from over her shoulder.

"You take downstairs and I take up?"

Hermione gave a nod as she went left, into the living room, as Harry wondered up the hallway, to the stairs that led to the bedrooms on the top floor. And so, the search began. They started off with the obvious places. Desks, tables, nightstands, cupboards, draws, anywhere that normally housed documents. However, all came up naught. Bills, photo's, letters to friends, they were all there, pleasantly still crisp, but Harry's birth certificate was no where to be found. After the two-hour mark passed, Harry was beginning to feel that pebble of dread in her gut churn to a sinking boulder that twisted her intestines. Had it been lost? Had there never been a birth certificate? No…

Sirius, in one of his lost memories he would relive when he dabbled into the fire whiskey a bit too much, told her that he had once walked in on Lily and James arguing over her birth certificate, red in the face and blazing, a brutal fight if he ever did see one, though they hushed up pretty quickly when they saw they had a visitor. Once, they had even told him to go to Godric's Hallow, to retrieve the damn thing, if anything should ever happen to them. Yet, of course, fate had played another hand and well, Sirius had been arrested before he could get to either Harry or the certificate.

It must have been there, somewhere. Anywhere. So, why would her parents hide it? Why make such a big fuss over a bloody piece of paper? Did they… Did they regret adopting her? Harry savagely pushed that thought away. They loved her dearly, she knew that much at least. Just as Harry slithered out from underneath a bed, checking to see if there were any boxes underneath, she heard Hermione's voice bellowing from down below.

"Harry, I think I've found something!"

Harry brushed the dirt off her knees as she jogged out of the room, down the stairs, hopping down three steps at a time. Harry chuckled. It could be she was more anxious about this whole thing than even she had previously known. Ducking her head into the living room, she found nothing but half drawn curtains and dust. Slipping through to the dining room, there was only plates half set, as if dinner had been moments from being served, and an old tea-pot. Creeping into the kitchen, she finally found her friend.

Hermione was kneeling on the floor, in the corner by the fridge, floorboards yanked up and piled at the side of her. Harry frowned as she edged closer. Her scowl only deepened when, on the very top floorboard, she saw etched upon its face, so small she nearly missed it, three initials. H. A. S. Coming to a stop besides an equally muddled Hermione, Harry crouched down on her haunches and peered into the little hole Hermione had excavated in the kitchen. If it had been later at night, earlier in the morning, without the bright sun pilfering through the large kitchen bay windows, Harry would have missed the little green tin box covered in grime and dust of sixteen years' worth of neglect.

There was no hiding the trembling of her hand as she reached into the ditch and picked up the box, pulling it free as she came to a stand with it clutched in her hands. Almost on autopilot, Harry blew a hot breath against its flat top, swiping at its face with a hand to remove the collected dust. There it was again. Carved across tin, in cursive writing, was those three initials. H. A. S. Harrietta Shelby? What did the A stand for? As far as she knew, she didn't have a middle name.

Not one known for her patience, quite the opposite actually, Harry tried to yank the lid up but the tin held solid and true. Glaring at the damned thing, she wandered over to the kitchen table, none too gently chucked it down, used one hand to brace it and keep it steady, and the other tried to yank the lid once more. The fucking thing remained shut.

"Perhaps there's a key around here somewhere? I'll go look in the living room and-"

"Ah, shit! Ow! Fuck!"

Harry cursed over Hermione as her hand slid, the lip of the lid of the tin box slicing through the pad of her thumb. Yanking her hands away from the damned menace, she flicked her thumb in the air before plopping it into her mouth, suckling at the stinging cut. There was just enough time for Hermione to give an exasperated wait! Before a drop of Harry's blood splattered onto the box. The box glowed a sharp golden colour, bright, hot with a flash, before it popped open harmlessly, the shine fading.

For a second, nobody moved, nobody breathed, and everything fell still. Harry, with her history of Horcruxes, knew even the most innocent looking of things could prove to be disastrously contradictory. One needed only to look at Harry herself to come to that supposition. Both girls, slowly, cautiously, reached for their wands. It was only after Hermione's fifth scan of the box that Harry saw Hermione's shoulders sag in relief, and her own poised wand fell lifelessly to her side, the yell of a curse at the tip of her tongue slipping back down her throat like thick oil. Idly, she wondered if the taste of copper came from her own blood or the erosive feeling of Avada Kedavra moments from passing her lips.

"Blood wards. It seems Lily and James only wanted you to open this. You and…"

Hermione flicked her wand around some more, little tendrils of blue smoke twirling into runes before waning with a dying puff into the air.

"Remus and Sirius. Whatever's inside, they wanted it protected. These are some nasty wards."

Harry stared at the box. And stared. And stared. And stared. Her heart thundered in her ears, beating all thoughts from her mind, making her breath jagged and harsh. Finally, as if she wasn't in control of her own body, Harry reached over and flipped the lid fully open. She didn't know what she expected, black smoke, Tom Riddles voice, a dementors bony hand, but what she got was infinitely less visually grotesque but extraordinarily more ominous. On the top sat a little pile of yellowed, clipped newspaper articles.

Pulling in close to the box, Harry plucked up the little stack and thumbed through the articles. The titles only made her confusion condense into utter bewilderment that seized every cell in her body.

Pureblood infertility issues increasing, Wizarding world facing extinction?... Adoption rises as birth-rates fall… Wizarding Orphanage, Mrs Bloomers home for gifted children, under ministry investigation after allegations of temporal law-breaking swamps institution… Spike in historic muggleborn abductions uncovered by ministry officials as adoption agencies scramble to present official documents… Fifty-three wizards arrested and sentence to imprisonment at Azkaban for illegal time-turner use, impersonation of muggle social workers and over thirty counts of muggleborn kidnapping and selling to adoption agencies… Mrs Bloomer missing as Wizengamot comes to a guilty charge… Adopted children sequestered back into ministry care, but not all children found…

Blindly, almost in a rush to search the box deeper, for what, Harry didn't know, she could hardly clasp onto one coherent thought, she handed over the articles for Hermione to take. As her friend began to diligently search through the articles word for word, Harry delved back into the box, ruffling through. There were two photographs, a chain of gold, half hidden at the bottom by two envelopes, wrinkled and yellowed by the sun.

Of course, the first thing to draw her eye was the photos. They were old looking things, edges curled and peeling, gloss long gone. The largest one was a group photo, black and white, almost overly exposed. A group of men stood together, dressed in some kind of uniform, smiling and laughing as they huddled. They were all in slacks and shirts, buttoned high on their necks, flat caps perched in varying degrees upon their heads. Three women stood off to the side, two younger and one obviously the matriarch of their group, close but in their own little grouping to the side. They looked to be a merry bunch.

"Blimey Harry, you look just like him!"

Hermione said in disbelief as she reached over her shoulder and gently tapped upon one figure right in the middle of the group, standing proudly in the forefront, news articles still gripped in one hand. Harry pushed her glasses up her nose and peered in closer. Hermione wasn't wrong. The man, though dressed like those around him, oddly stood out. From under his cap, she couldn't tell his hair colour, nor whether it was straight or curly, but Merlin, everything else rang too close to home. Those were her slicing cheekbones. Her jawline. Her upturned nose and keen arching brows. Even his hooded, cattish eyes felt reflective of her own, despite Harry being unable to tell the colour from their monochrome cast.

Flicking it over, she found the back empty. No names. No date. Nothing. Just more fucking questions. Gently, as if she expected the photo to crumble, she laid it upon the table and turned her attention to the last picture, black and white like the other. This one was more… Personal. Intimate. That man was back again, dressed precisely the same, standing next to one of the younger women from the preceding photo, something cradled in his arms. They looked younger here, so young, barely her own age, seventeen at the most. The woman's hair was untamed, dark and with an achingly familiar wild curl. The resemblance didn't stop there. Those were Harry's bowed lips, thin and long neck, willowy figure and pale skin. Then she caught sight of the bundle, really saw it, saw the chubby little hand that had wrangled itself free, saw a little bright eye peeking out, saw the lone onyx curl that had popped out of the wrapping and she knew.

That was her. Those… These… They were her biological parents. This… It was a family photo. In a frenzy, Harry searched the photo but found nothing again. Dropping it onto the table, Harry took to searching the envelopes. This time, lady luck did smile down upon her, for once. The first small one proved to be a letter, written in an unfamiliar script, sharp and pointed like her own.

Dear Harrietta, my precious little girl,

I hope this letter finds you well, happy and healthy. There is so much to say, too little paper to write it down, and too many tears to stain the ink, so please, forgive me. We never meant for it to come to this, I could never dream of this malady befalling me. But times are tough, food is scarse and money even more rare. The social workers assure me this is the best option for you, and though it breaks my heart every second this will go on for, I would gladly bleed a thousand more times if it only meant for you to have a happy and healthy home.

You see, me and your father, we had you young. Too young. Too naive. Too green. Your father's aunt, Polly, says this is for the best, though, I am sure she only says so because her heart is breaking too. I see her tears just as clearly as I see my own in the mirror. They, the social workers, say it will only be for a short time, just until we find work and a stable home, but I feel as if I am about to lose you forever. Still, I pray our time apart is so short that you never have to read this letter. Even so, if you are reading this, then my worst fears have come true. If they have, know that you are loved. Dearly. So very, very much. Know that we are counting down each hour until you are returned. Know that, even years from now, you will always have a home with us. If you have come of age, I pray it isn't so and you are home with us soon, but if, then please, darling, come home.

32, Watery Lane, Small Heath, Birmingham.

We'll be here waiting for you, for however long it takes. We miss you. We love you.

Always yours, your mother and father,

Lizzie Starke, Tommy Shelby.

Sick. She felt sick. Violently sick. The articles, the letter, gradually, confidently, they were piecing themselves together, but Harry couldn't stomach it. It just couldn't be. Not her. No. Harshly, as if the letter burned her skin, branded her, Harry chucked it away from her, at Hermione, who took it and read it as quietly as she had the news articles. Then she was tearing into the last envelope, finding what she had set out to discover. Her birth certificate.

There was her name, Harrietta Ada Shelby… H. A. S. She had a middle name, another name, right there, that she never knew about. Harry didn't know whether the laugh that broke free from her chest was more chuckle or cry, or, again, something offensively caught between. Above that was the names of her parents, names that seemed so insignificant now. Elizabeth Starke, Lizzie, and Thomas Shelby. There was her birthday too, 31st July 198-…

"Fake… This is fucking fake. We've found the wrong box or this is a mistake. A horrible mistake. I'm sixteen Hermione. Sixteen. Why-… How-… They got my birthday wrong. I wasn't born on the 31st of July 1906. I was born in 1980… 1980!"

Harry fell back a step, unbalanced, mind swirling. Wrong. It was all horribly wrong. It was a prank. An obnoxious joke. Someone thought it would be funny, to what? Convince her that she had been taken from a different time, sold into adoption? Why? Because the purebloods population was falling? No.

"Harry, the clippings, they aren't fake. It's documented. I think-"

Harry shook her head aggressively, curls zipping around her head.

"It's a stupid prank! I mean, how could-"

Hermione sharply cut her off.

"Harry."

Harry glanced up and saw Hermione's pale face. Yet, it wasn't her Hermione was looking at, no, she was looking down, over at the retched little box, ashen and wide-eyed and utterly sober. Harry followed her trail of sight and it was then, right then, that her heart lept right into her throat and choked the very life out of her. There, nestled into the bottom of the box, hidden by the photo's and envelopes, was the golden chain, but it wasn't just a golden chain. The wheels around the pendant were shiny and glinting. The curved glass polished and clean. The sands inside golden and fine. There, staring up at her innocently from the bottom of the tin box was a time-turner. The birth certificate fell from her hand, sweeping to the floor like a leaf blown free from a tree branch as everything Harry thought she knew smashed around her.

WARNING: This fic is going to contain an intimate relationship between cousins (Second cousins? Huh, I'm not good at genealogy XD). If this squicks you, feel free to ditch before things get going. In the time this is going to be mostly set in, 1920's, 1930s, cousin relationships and marriages was a thing not seen as taboo as it is today. In fact, it was quite common. Even now, in Britain, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth are third cousins, Charles Darwin married his own first cousin and Queen Vic and Albert were cousins. Either way, this fic contains that and if it grosses you out (I don't really blame you XD), jump overboard now! (Never mind all the inbreeding going on in the wizarding world lol)

If you're one of the ones with a stronger stomach, who likes to dabble into the more grey shades of life, and like blood, criminal activity, a darker Harry and mafia-esque families, welcome aboard this totally insane ship. Buckle up passengers, we're hitting rocky waters!

I hope you all enjoyed at least a little bit of this… Whatever this is lol. As always, if you liked this, have a few words to say, a question, or simply wish to see more, please drop a review.