CHAPTER TWO:

Despondency

Hattie Potter's P.O.V

Grimmauld Place wasn't a home. It wasa house, as magnificent as any could come, with tapestries and velvet cushions and crystal ware, and all the marble bathrooms one could ever need or want, dreadfully decayed with age and torpors. But a home? Hattie didn't think so. A home was something more than brick and grout and mortar. A home was…

Well, Hattie didn't think she ever had a home, and rightly couldn't quite surmise what exactly it was that constituted one. However, she did believe if she ever managed to make one, for she was sure the abstract home was something someone made and not built, she would know, in a way a babe instinctually knew when it was being held, despite being practically blind for the first months of its life. That was a home. An intuitive care. A tenderness and warmth. An embrace.

Hattie Potter didn't have a home, but she did have Grimmauld Place, left to her by her beloved Godfather, and it was the closest thing she had, not only to the man, but to something she so utterly needed right then.

Family.

Family and seclusion.

Feverish, hurt, scared, though she would never admit to being the latter, she had to maintain some shred of her Gryffindor integrity after all, Hattie ran to the only place she had, and bolted the doors. She disconnected the floo network, raised the wards, and sealed herself away. Grimmauld Place might not be a home, but it was an inscrutable fortress when one needed it to be, and that's what Hattie needed. Time away. Time alone. Time to think and breath away from all the white noise.

Time.

Hattie desperately needed time.

In more ways than one.

In the beginning, Hattie had only meant to stay away for a day or two. Enough time to wrap her head around this abrupt expiry date she had unintentionally gained. Sincerely, she did. Nevertheless, by three days, she just… Didn't reopen the floo, nor raise the wards, or answer any of the hoard of owls sent pecking at her windows.

Indeed, she closed the curtains on them.

Closed the curtains and didn't look back.

What did it matter?

What did any of it matter?

Hattie knew what was in the letters without ever breaking a wax seal. I'm sorry, if you need anything, if you want to talk, I'm here's. It was all perfunctory banalities. Most of them wouldn't even turn up to her funeral, and those who did would likely only do so for a chance at featuring in the Daily Prophet.

How many would say they knew her?

That they were best friends?

Would they whittle her down to some tragic hero, one with all her gritty realness erased? Would they remove her brashness for valour? Her obstinacy for fortitude? Her anger for righteousness? Because that's what happened after you died, wasn't it? Hattie had done it herself.

To James. To Lily. To Sirius. She put them on a pedestal. Expunged all their faults until they were parodies of themselves. It was easier to remember only the good. It made the hurt of losing them reasonable. It gave rhythm to the pain. Yet, that terrified Hattie. To be transformed so completely into something decidedly not her.

She was arrogant. She was dogged. She did have a temper. She didn't make her bed after she slept in it. She was always leaving dishes in the sink. She ran her mouth more than she should have. She was always the first to throw a punch, and always the last to apologize. Would all that be lost?

How much of the real Hattie would live on when she, herself, didn't?

Would any remnant of her remain?

Would she just be… Gone?

Who would make sure Hermione tore herself from her books if Hattie wasn't there to drag her from the library for food and drink? Who would remember to remind Ron of his siblings birthdays? Where would Kreacher go? Who would make sure Molly had a cup of tea waiting for her in the morning when-

No.

She couldn't do this.

She couldn't-

Three days turned to a week, as a week rolled to two, and two headed for three. No matter how she awoke in the morning, determined to lift the wards, by night-time they were still locked. Hattie wasn't running away. Or, at least, she told herself she wasn't. Running away, in the end, was doing something. Hattie did nothing.

Nothing at all.

In a strange way, a way she couldn't fully verbalize, it felt like she was already dead. A ghost in her own life just waiting for the final tick of the grandfather clock. Perhaps it was for the best. Amputate the limb before the septicaemia could spread. If she vanished now, evaporated like steam, faded in seclusion, she wasn't only saving herself from pain, but those she loved. Those she loved who would be forced, over the coming months, to watch her has she weakened and shrivelled to a mockery of a human being.

A husk.

Of course, Hattie didn't count on the ingenuity and total intransigence of one Hermione Granger. Three weeks and five days after fleeing Saint Mungo's, Hattie awoke to a cushion being thrown at her slumbering head none too gently. The veil of dust that escaped the hoary cushion choked her out of her hazy dream, sending her into a spluttering, coughing mess.

"Get up, Hattie. There's a coffee on the table for you."

Hermione stood before her, arms folded behind her back, towering over her slouched form strewn on the sofa of the green parlour, where Hattie had fallen asleep last night staring at the peeling wallpaper. She was going to redecorate this room, carpet the floor and paint the walls a happy colour, like yellow or blue, and-

No time.

Hattie didn't have that anymore.

Seven months.

Wheezing a jagged, heaving inhale that burned a little deep in her lungs, Hattie struggled to a sit, feet thudding on the cold hardwood floor, running a weary hand down her freckled face, scrubbing. She didn't look up to Hermione, she couldn't meet her eye.

Hattie was afraid of what she would find waiting there.

"How did you get in here? I have the wards up."

Hermione scoffed at her.

"Bold of you to assume something like wards could keep me out if I really wanted in. I thought you would know that by now, of all people, considering all the places we've broken into together."

Hattie glanced up just in time to see Hermione produce a crowbar, of all things, from behind her back. The rusted metal inscribed with etched runes that faintly glowed in the low, grey morning light of another overcast day in London. It clattered on the table between them, right by her steaming mug of coffee. Hattie's brow cocked high, as Hermione's sniffed, nose lifting in the air defensively.

"You need to call a locksmith for the bathroom window downstairs."

Groggy from sleep, and perhaps the firewhisky she had downed last night, Hattie reached for the table and snatched for the bent packet of cigarettes she left perched on the corner. With a flick to the bottom, one popped free from its tinfoil prison. Blindly patting at the cushion at her hip, she plucked up her wand from where it had rolled into a crease, and lit the smoke. The burn was smooth in her throat, but clogged in her wilting lung.

Hermione positively scowled at her, mouth wobbling with the restraint it took for the smaller girl to stop from repeating a lecture Hattie had heard a thousand times before.

"What? It's not like I can get double cancer now, is it? My lungs are already fucked. One more cigarette isn't going to change that."

Taking a long drag, and running a hand through her tangled, red hair, Hattie let her next words float away in the smoke.

"I think you should leave. I don't-"

"No."

Hermione's tone was biting, stinging like a winter wind that chaffed Hattie's skin. She shook her head, frazzled hair puffing, crackling with her magic and anger.

"No. You are not doing this to me, Hattie. You are not going to lock yourself away and…"

Wither and die.

Hermione, nevertheless, couldn't bring herself to say it. As Hattie couldn't bring herself to meet her eye, no matter how hard Hermione's caramel gaze searched for her own, begging to be seen-

Begging to be heard.

But that was all it was, wasn't it? Hearing and speaking and listening and talking. It was just white noise. It was all just white noise. Hattie was a girl with her aerial bent, picking up the wrong signal, out of loop and sync.

Hermione violently shook her head, grappling to get a hold of herself.

"I know you. You can brood better than anyone I've ever met, and we both knew Snape. I won't let you do this. Not to me. I know what you think you're doing. Pushing me away to save me from the hurt in the long run. What you don't understand, Hattie, is no matter how hard you push, I'm not budging."

Carelessly, Hattie flicked the ash of her smoke on the floor beneath her, a tiny ember drifting to her barefoot, scorching.

She didn't feel it.

Hattie didn't feel much of anything, in truth.

The numbness had set in like frostbite in the hospital bed, and now all she had was a blackened, lifeless crust. Even when she spoke then, to a wide eyed, flushed cheeked Hermione, something that would normally invoke something in her chest, her voice was hollow.

"Then what am I meant to do, 'Mione? You heard the healer. I have seven months at best. And those later months… They aren't going to be pretty. I don't want any of you to see me like that."

She didn't want them to see her like this either. Empty. Barren. For so long, Hattie had to be the brave one. The one who always held their head up high, despite how dim the odds looked. She had to lead, take that step, jump that leap, no matter how scared or worried she felt inside.

It was what was expected of her.

What everyone around her had needed.

The good little soldier.

The good little soldier who got his leg blown off by a landmine.

Hermione sighed, strolling over to sit at Hattie's side on the coach. She went to place her hand on Hattie's shoulder, but hesitated and let it fell limply between them.

"What you do is fight. You fight with everything you have. I can't help you if you've already laid down and given up. Despondency doesn't suit your complexion. The Hattie I know would never take a blow without punching back."

Where did it end for the good little soldier?

Hattie had been fighting her entire life. For the scraps of food from her aunt and uncle. To survive out from under the looming shadow of Tom Riddle. Now this? When did it end? When could Hattie lay her wand down and rest?

"And then what? I keep punching until I'm knocked out? Until I'm skin and bones and can't breathe without a spell that's going to merely delay the inevitable? I'm tired, Hermione. I'm so fucking tired of fighting all the time. I just… I just want to rest."

And wasn't that the truth.

Hattie was tired.

So fucking tired.

Seventeen years was a long bloody war to rage. Especially against the world. Woefully, Hattie couldn't recall a time she wasn't fighting for something or other. And, foulest of all, the fucking salt in the wound, had been that year, that one long, glorious year, after Tom, before the hospital, when Hattie finally thought she had found peace.

Found her life was finally, finally, her own to do with as she pleased.

Found she could finally live.

Found it just to have it snatched from her pleading hands by her own body.

Fate must detest her, to give her hope only to take it away again.

This time, Hermione's warm hand did make it to her shoulder, where it squeezed gently, coaxingly, desperate.

"You can rest when we've beaten this thing. Beaten it together, as we have everything else life has thrown at us. You never, not once, gave up on me, Hattie. I refuse to give up on you. You have a lot more friends than you think you do."

Something wet and warm crested on her lashes, threatening to fall.

Hilarious, really. Hattie had thought she had cried all her tears dry in the first week.

"I can't fight my own body if it's going as haywire as it is, no matter how many friends I have."

At last, Hattie met Hermione's gaze, and the girl smiled at her broadly. Her eyes were shining wetly too.

"No, but you can fight long enough for us to get this potion working."

Hattie's hand came up, right to her collarbone, fingers flexing over warmed gold, curling. Her thumb brushed the back of the locket, a tick of hers since childhood, an act that had always brought her comfort and courage before.

As it did then.

"And how do we do that? I don't even have a birth certificate. All I have is this locket, and it's got nothing but a few photos."

Pulling away, Hermione dipped a hand into her jeans pocket, wiggling out a handful she dashed onto the table before them. A lock of Weasley ginger hair, short with a strand or two of grey mixed within, and a catch of hay blonde, trolled between two slips of spelled parchment.

"We use these."

Hattie's brows shot up high.

"Are those what I think they are?"

Hermione nodded.

"Yes. Arthur gave me his security pass for the Ministry two days ago, and a lock of his hair for the Polyjuice Potion I started two weeks before. The other, Gertrude, is the aunt of Fredrick, the first year you saved from the rubble in the final battle. It's enough to get us into the common levels, and this-"

This time, Hermione delved a hand into the pocket of her pink blouse, slipping free another, longer, lock of hair and a black bordered parchment pass. Hattie knew the long carroty hair, prior to seeing his moving photo grinning from the pass.

Bill Weasley.

"Will get us down into the bowels where the Curse Breakers work. From there, Shacklebolt will cause a distraction so we can use the employee lifts to get to the top, where, as you know, the Unspeakables do whatever it is they do day to day."

Hattie laughed.

Hard.

"This is insane. Do you really believe we can just walk into the Unspeakables office and demand to know what happened seventeen years ago? They'll kill us. Quicker than the cancer is, at any rate. They don't keep paperwork, Hermione. They don't leave tracks at all. There's a reason they're nicknamed Ghosts in the Ministry."

Hermione shrugged.

"Maybe they don't, but babies don't just appear without leaving some sort of trace. Something happened in the Ministry seventeen years ago, and whatever it was, it had to have left something more than you and the locket behind. A note. A record. Something we can use to track your biological family. All we need is one clue. Just one, and it's there, in the Ministry. I know it."

Slowly, Hermione reached for Hattie's hand, the one clutching desperately at her necklace, and gently pulled it away, slinking her fingers through Hattie's. Shamefully, at least to Hattie, her hand trembled.

"We can beat this, but I can't do it without you."

Silence.

White noise.

Then, gradually, Hattie nodded.

She had never seen Hermione smile so brightly before, like sunbeams breaking through rainclouds.

She could do this.

Hattie would do this.

Tom hadn't manage to kill her, and this disease wouldn't either.

She was a fucking fighter.

A survivor.

It was time to jump back into the ring and do what she did best.

Start swinging.

"When do we leave?"

Hermione glanced down to her watch, whistling lowly.

"Oh, in exactly four hours. Gear up, buttercup. We're going to infiltrate the impenetrable."

Forks Washington: The Cullen House.

No one's P.O.V

"Alice, if you don't get out here right now, we're leaving you behind! It's been thirty minutes already! Find the shoes or come barefoot!"

Rosalie's silky voice echoed from outside, where she stood with her coven, waiting for the last member to join them for the hunt. Alice Cullen, having swapped her shoes for her new boots, strolled out the front door, grinning at the faces before her.

"Keep your wig on and-"

Alice opened the front door. The rain poured outside, a sheet of gloom. A girl stood before her, drenched, sodden, shockingly green eyes blinking the raindrops from lashes. Alice knew her immediately. How could she not? The jaw, the arching brows, the pale, freckled flesh, the curly copper hair plastered to her chilled skin, only softened by femininity.

She knew that face because she knew Edward.

Her gaze dropped down to the necklace peeking out between the lapels of her peacoat.

A golden locket glistening.

"I'm Hattie. I'm looking for Edward Masen? I was told he lived here."

Alice snapped to with a dizzying drop, gaze immediately flying to Edward, who stood as still as stone down the path.

"Edward… Who's Hattie?"

He, as he always did, saw exactly what she had. Nevertheless, he didn't look to her. Didn't so much as blink, and if it wasn't such a ludicrous thought, Alice might have believed he was in shock. Concerned, Carlisle edged closest to his eldest son, and braced a hand on his shoulder.

It brought Edward out of his mind with a twitch to his clenched jaw.

He looked pained.

Tortured.

"That's my mother's locket, and Hattie's my little sister… My little sister who should be dead."

Thoughts?

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