Chapter Text
An ear-splitting scream wrenched itself from her lips as the snake-faced man - no, monster - placed the Cruciatus on her lithe body. Her body twitched uncontrollably and it was like a thousand phantom needles were repeatedly piercing through her.
Please let this end, Hattie thought desperately, or maybe she screamed it, pleaded it, if the shrill, cold laughter from Voldemort and his Death Eaters was any indication. Voldemort was saying something to his Death Eaters but she could hardly hear it over the sound of her own screams.
“-their saviour, reduced to a pitiful mess. Dumbledore truly thought a fourteen year old girl was any match for me-”
The curse finally ended and Hattie wanted to sob from the relief at the phantom pain alleviating. But that relief was short-lived, as the rush of pain returned, the girl still shaking from the after-effects of the Curse.
“Get up,” he ordered the whimpering girl, who was curled up at his feet, her body racked with sobs. Maybe in another life she would have fought back. Maybe in another life she would have tried to get out of that graveyard alive. “We are going to duel, Potter. Has Dumbledore taught you to duel?”
I want my mum, she wanted to cry, but she couldn’t form any coherent words. And perhaps, he finally took pity on her. Two murmured words and a flash of green and that world that had treated her horribly disappeared.
Her head was pounding when she came to her senses and she blinked blearily, a pretty face screwed up with worry hovering over her. Lily Potter gave her daughter a wobbly smile, seeming like she had been crying all day. “Hattie… Sweetheart?”
“Mum?” Hattie mumbled sleepily, her hands grappling to try and sit up - she was in a bed, the dewy graveyard grass no longer beneath her back - but her head felt too heavy.
“Careful, Madam Pomfrey said you have quite a terrible concussion,” a man’s voice spoke from the other side of her, and Hattie was met with James Potter’s handsome face. Lily immediately began fussing over her, propping up her pillows and helping her to sit up.
“Madam Pomfrey?” Hattie echoed, puzzled. She let her mum fuss over her. It felt nice to have someone who cared about her comfort. “But I’m dead.”
Lily and James both exchanged incredibly concerned looks. “No, sweetheart, of course you’re not dead,” Lily began tentatively, her hand reaching out to run a hand through Hattie’s long, light brown hair, before seemingly thinking better of it and retracting her hand. “You just got hurt playing Quidditch and your heart stopped for a little while but-”
“No, mum, I died,” Hattie insisted, her voice loud and strangled. “I died! Voldemort killed me and you’re both dead too-” Lily and James shared another increasingly worried look. “I don’t know what’s going on-” She buried her hands in her face frustratedly.
“Who’s Voldemort?” she heard her father mutter to her mother, and her confusion only multiplied.
“What?” The astonishment on her face was clear as day. “He’s a Dark Lord. He murdered you, he murdered me, he murdered so many people…”
“Hattie, there hasn’t been a Dark Lord in Europe since Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in the forties,” said James, his own bewilderment and frustration clear on his face. Now that she was looking at him closely, he looked older, not by much, but certainly older than the young man who had died at twenty-one.
This revelation only caused her more distress because why didn’t they remember anything? “What-”
“I’ll go get Madam Pomfrey,” another voice offered and Hattie saw Sirius and Remus standing behind James, her having missed them earlier due to her dazed state. Sirius had spoken and he seemed reluctant to be there.
“Sirius, what’s going on? Are we all dead?” Hattie demanded, scrambling off the bed. Her head spun and she stumbled, only to have two strong arms steady her at the waist. At first, she thought it was her mother, but as she turned, she noticed the other person she had failed to notice in the room.
Tom Riddle.
Strikingly beautiful and fifteen years-old, he wore a blank expression on his face. Hattie released a blood-curdling scream, her eyes wide with terror. She shot out of his arms, grasping onto her now very worried mother. “He’s gonna kill me mum!” She hid behind her mother, clinging to her whilst sobbing hysterically. “He’s gonna kill all of us!”
Lily was at a loss of what to say to her, looking to her husband and friends and the teenager helplessly. “I’ll go,” said Tom, his tone clipped. “I didn’t come here voluntarily, anyway.” Tom shot an irritated look at Remus, who inclined his head apologetically.
“I’ll walk you back, son,” said Sirius, eager to leave and uncomfortable with the loud crying from the girl who hated all of them anyway.
“How is she?” Remus asked his best friends a week after the incident. The four of them - Lily, James, Sirius and Remus - all sat huddled on the couches in Remus’ small living room in Hogwarts (he had been the Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher at Hogwarts for the past seven years). Hattie had been transferred to St. Mungo’s after her mental breakdown, during which she had been absolutely inconsolable.
Lily sighed heavily, and James laced his fingers between hers. “She doesn’t remember anything about us or her life. It’s like she’s lived a completely different life up until now. They’ve tried potions and spells but nothing works! They showed her details of her life - pictures of her friends, pictures of her over the years. She thinks she’s in Gryffindor and her best friends are Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger .”
Sirius snorted, “The son of a ‘blood traitor’ and a muggleborn? She loves the pureblood bullshit that her Slytherin mates spout. What’s next - she thinks she deserves to be crowned ‘Daughter of the Year’?”
“That’s the thing!” exclaimed James, leaning slightly forward in his seat. “We’ve been visiting her every evening after work and she’s so polite with us - I don’t think she’s ever been polite to us in her life!”
“That’s not true,” said Lily, reproachfully. “She was the sweetest toddler.”
James and Sirius exchanged sceptical looks, and Remus just nodded placatingly. “When is she coming home?” questioned Remus.
“Well, she’s not a risk to herself or others, so there’s no need to keep her in a psych ward,” said James. “Lily and I are going to collect her tomorrow morning.”
“The healers, they think that it’s best if she stays at home and completes her studies, considering she’s really disoriented at the moment. They’re hoping that her memory will eventually return,” said Lily. “They think her memory issues might be due to some brain damage incurred when her heart-” Lily cut off shakily, still remembering the paralysing fear when she was told that her daughter’s heart had stopped for a few minutes before they resuscitated her.
James tried to lighten the atmosphere. “Which means, it will be me and my darling daughter having some bonding time.” James did not sound pleased at this prospect and Sirius smirked at him. It was no secret that James was absolutely disgusted with his daughter’s blood supremacist friends and how she was an absolute terror to anyone who even breathed too loudly in her presence.
“She’s our daughter, James,” admonished Lily, nudging her elbow into his side gently. James pretended to yelp loudly. “Besides, it's only for two months until the school term ends in June, and then I’ll take care of her.” Lily was the Ancient Runes Professor.
Lily knew that her daughter wasn’t a good person by any measure, and some part of her faulted herself for that too. She, like James, had also been harsh on Hattie for her behaviour, had been strict and stern with her when she was rude to people. But when a mother thought she had nearly lost her child, she no longer cared about any of that. All she could think about was that her daughter had nearly died and all James and Lily ever did was argue with her.
“Here’s hoping she recovers her memory before that,” said James, crossing his fingers and shuddering. Hattie did not get along with her parents even in the slightest, partly because they held different political views to her, but mainly because they were nice to her worst enemy, Tom Riddle.
“You managed to get two months off of work?” asked Sirius, impressed. Their boss, Rufus Scrimgeour the Head Auror, was an absolute pain.
“Took a hell of a lot of bargaining to keep my job,” admitted James. “It’s unpaid leave. Lils will be the breadwinner.” Lily rolled her eyes as her husband wiggled his eyebrows at her.
“Right, because you’d be homeless without her paycheck,” Remus said sarcastically. The Potters were one of the four richest families in Britain, as well as the Blacks, Malfoys and Lestranges.
Hattie had reached a few plausible conclusions to explain her current situation. The first was that she had died and this was some heavenly, ideal life that had been provided to her. But that was bogus, because in no ideal life would she be a Slytherin or best friends with the likes of Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, as the mind Healers who were treating her had claimed. That was absurd.
The second theory she had formulated was that this was all some elaborate mind game or trick that Voldemort had created to keep her trapped, but what would he even gain from that? Voldemort had everything to gain from her death, and nothing to achieve from her being alive. Besides, she remembered the moment when she had died. She was sure of it.
Circling back to her first theory, this didn’t seem to be an ideal life, but it was certainly a different version of her life. The Mind Healers had shown her numerous pictures of people she knew and what they meant to her: her best friends, her teachers, her parents. When she had brought up her friends Ron and Hermione, and her parents had been present during that therapy session, they told her she hated both of them. She was horrible to them.
But then Hattie came up with a third, worse theory: what if this life was the one that had been real? What if she really was a truly awful person? What if the life she thought had been her real life had been the one that she had made up? What if her parents had never actually died? Her brain hurt from just trying to wrap itself around all the possibilities.
Was Hattie actually crazy?
After a week of her entire life story being repeated to her and numerous trials of medical treatment, Hattie was finally being discharged from St. Mungo’s Hospital. The moment the nurses told her that she was being discharged that morning, she had immediately changed out of the horrid hospital gown and into the grey knit jumper and flare jeans that she had been wearing when she was transferred here.
Her hair was a lot tamer, Hattie noted as she examined her reflection in the mirror. There was basically no frizz - she only had to run a brush through her hair once and everything lay perfectly flat!
“Are they here yet?” Hattie popped her head out of the door of her private room to the reception for what felt like the millionth time that morning.
“Yes, actually,” the Matron nurse of the psychiatric floor said from behind the desk, and there stood her parents (and wasn’t that a weird thought? Hattie had never had any parents before). They were talking to Hattie’s primary Mind Healer at the end of the corridor. Hattie suddenly felt shy as they looked at her, heading towards them.
Her mum smiled at her, the expression warm and open and welcoming on the woman’s beautiful face. “Ready to go, sweetheart?”
Hattie nodded quickly and Healer Selwyn laughed, “Eager to leave, Harriet?”
“It’s Hattie,” she reminded the Healer like she had the entire week. The woman was incredibly professional, like a more friendly version of Professor McGonagall. She was also more blonde than Hattie’s Transfiguration teacher. “And no offence Healer Selwyn, but I kind of hate hospitals.”
“Most people do,” Healer Selwyn said, agreeably. “And then some people practically live here.” She pointed to herself. “By the way, we'll be having biweekly appointments for the next several weeks, just to check in.”
“Oh, I don’t need that. I’m completely fine-”
Hattie’s hasty response was cut off by James. “I’ll make sure to bring her.” Hattie got the impression that her Dad didn’t like her very much but that was fine, because Hattie was used to her family disliking her. At least he wasn’t openly hostile like her uncle and aunt had been. His tone was just always short with her and he didn’t speak to her very much.
“Well then, I’ll see you later this week, Hattie,” Healer Selwyn smiled at the teenager, who returned it reluctantly.
“See you…” Hattie trailed behind her parents as they led her to the elevator. It was just the three of them in the elevator. They stood in a line against the far wall, with Hattie situated between her parents.
“How are you feeling, Hattie?” Lily asked.
Hattie startled at being addressed. “I’m good, thank you. How are you?”
Lily and James exchanged a look that she couldn’t quite decipher: they did that a lot around her. Was she really that different without her supposedly “real” memories? “I’m doing good too.”
“That’s good.” There was silence again in the elevator. Hattie wanted to stare at her feet due to the extreme awkwardness, but she couldn’t bring herself to tear her gaze away from her parents. What if this was all just a dream and they would eventually disappear and she would have to spend the rest of her life regretting that she hadn’t gotten to know them?
“What’s your favourite colour?” she shot out hurriedly, wanting to know everything possible about them. Every small detail. All she really knew about her parents was that they were good people, and no one really badmouthed the dead unless they were truly horrific, so that wasn’t really a good indication about their personalities.
They seemed surprised by the trivial question. “Green,” Lily answered easily. “I’m told it brings out my eyes.”
“Green brings out my eyes too. Because we have the same eyes. Because you’re my mum. Obviously…” Hattie giggled nervously, and Lily just smiled at her encouragingly.
Hattie glanced at James tentatively, waiting for his response as they stepped out of the elevator into the throng of people bustling around the hospital entrance. “Oh, uh, I like black, I guess.”
“Boring,” Lily muttered to Hattie, and she shared another smile with her mum. “What’s your favourite colour?”
“Red,” Hattie answered the question just as easily as Lily had. You could take the girl out of Gryffindor, but you couldn’t take Gryffindor out of the girl.
They wove their way through the hustle and bustle towards the Apparition Points where people were popping in and out. The only thing she knew about Apparition was that Ron’s older brothers - Bill, Charlie and Percy - could do it. “Er- I don’t know how to do that,” she told her parents quietly.
“Of course you don’t, you’re fourteen,” James snorted. “Grab onto one of our arms, we’ll Side-Along you.”
“Oh, OK. Sorry.” Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia always hated stupid questions from her. Hattie grasped onto Lily’s forearm, and then she was being squeezed into a phantom tube, and her head hurt, and the next thing she knew was that she wanted to hurl.
“First time’s always uncomfortable,” Lily was saying from next to her. “You always take the Floo but the Hospital’s Floo always has the longest queue-”
“Hey, on the bright side, at least she didn’t vomit!” James exclaimed brightly. Lily shot him an unimpressed look.
The nausea finally alleviated and Hattie steadied herself, looking up at the large cottage where they were standing outside. It was the same cottage that had been in the background of a few of the pictures that Hagrid had given her in her first year. Was this where she would have grown up if her parents hadn’t died?
They’re alive. They’re alive. They’re alive. Stop acting weird and sad or they’re going to hate you-
Pushing down her melancholia, she followed them into the grand cottage, surveying her surroundings with interest. There were quite a few pictures of her that immediately caught her eye in the hallway, from when she was younger. From the ages of zero to eight, if she deduced correctly. Hattie didn’t think any such pictures of her past the age of one existed in her life, considering the Dursleys had never wanted to cherish any memories of her.
She looked happy in the pictures. She looked loved. It was too much to bear so she looked away.
Her parents instantly averted their gaze when she looked at them after looking away from the photographs, probably having been surveying her for any reaction or recognition. Hattie was still sceptical that this had ever been her life; she didn’t think there were any memories to recover.
Following her parents’ lead, she took her shoes off by the door and placed them on the shoe rack, before trailing after them into a cosy living room. James immediately flopped onto a sofa, kicking his feet up, but Lily shoved his feet aside so that she could sit next to him, when there were various other unoccupied seats.
Hattie stood there, feeling terribly out of place. “Why don’t you go up to your room and rest for a little while and then we’ll call you down for lunch?” Lily offered, seemingly taking pity on how uncomfortable the girl appeared.
“OK,” Hattie nodded, glad that she finally had some instructions to follow. Leave them alone, she could do that, she had been doing that for years with the Dursleys. She paused in the doorway. “Er- which one is my bedroom?”
“Oh!” It was like the extent of the situation was finally just hitting Lily. It was like she had expected Hattie to have retained at least this small detail about the house she had lived in her entire life, and she appeared terribly guilty and that in turn made Hattie feel guilty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise-”
“Third door on the left,” answered James, cutting off Lily’s guilty tirade, clearly seeing the turmoil in Hattie’s eyes.
“Thanks.” She rushed up the stairs without looking back.