Chapter Text
Godric's Hollow was sold as one of the safest wizarding-communities in Britain. Imagine the neighbour's confusion when they woke up to find a house obliterated.
Hours earlier, in the dark of night, the first indicator of the destruction to come was the splintering of the front door as it was blasted in. The caped man was unfamiliar to James Potter, who had his infant daughter in the living room for a story as his wife put their son to bed. Their son and daughter just over a year old, James and Lily Potter had yet to find that the wonder of their twin children wore off.
"Don't do this." James stalled, keeping his head calm a moment longer. "We haven't-They haven't done anything!"
"They will, given the opportunity." The caped man raised his wand, tilting his head inquisitively as James cowered over Rebecca, trying to give her as much more life as he could.
"LILY, GO! TAKE HARRY AND GO!" James screamed up the stairs where his wife had their son. James' hand cradled the back of Rebecca's head as it had so many times before and as he feared he wouldn't be able to do much longer.
The man threw his head back and laughed as James turned and shielded for the child, as if he could protect her...As if he could stop Lord Voldemort. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" The life left James' body instantly, the body that Voldemort moved to the side with magic. The child, Rebecca, began to cry at the removal of James.
Green eyes tilted up towards the black, heartless eyes of evil as the killing curse was repeated. Voldemort was thrown back, Rebecca letting out a cry before she closed her eyes. Blood dripped down her face from the cut that appeared, a cut in the shape of a lightning bolt.
Voldemort stood uneasily, feeling as if part of him was left behind. Climbing the stairs was easy as it gave him something to focus on instead of the crumbling, loss-like agony echoing in his chest. Killing was not new and there was something reminiscent in these twangs of pain, but Voldemort could not place the familiarity.
The boy, the last threat to Voldemort's reign, was in the crib in pain view. Voldemort hadn't even a moment of recognition before he was attacked. The woman, the mother, fought with everything she had both physically and magically. But in the end, her scream echoed through the house and stayed in Harry's ears.
Downstairs, the scream was what pulled Rebecca out of the darkness she'd descended into. Pure unfiltered fear, rage, and loss all entwined into one earth shattering scream.
Harry wept for his mother, holding his small hands out for her through the bars of his crib.
Lily and James Potter were dead, their children were not.
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Caterham was one of Britain's poorest communities, crime bubbled up over the streets and poverty sank into every home. Janet Irvine lived with her husband, William, in bliss.
It didn't matter that they both worked as many jobs as they could, sometimes three or four at a time. It didn't matter that their house leaked and creaked, dripped and let every draft in--They had each other and that was all they had ever wanted.
But, as she walked home from the graveyard shift, she found that there was a house where she didn't remember there being one on the way to work. What had to have once been a house, she rationalised. The door was kicked in and portions of the roof were missing, it looked like there had been a battle.
Caterham, impoverished as it was, meant that finders-keepers lorded over all. And even if it didn't, Janet had more reasons for wanting than usual: If Janet got a few more pounds into their rainy-day fund, she'd be able to repair William's watch that was purely for decoration at this point.
That was what pushed her into the rubble, the hope of silver she could pawn or, God forbid, something more valuable. She wanted her partner to be as happy as he could. That was who Janet was, a good person who wanted the most for those she loved.
Imagine her surprise when she found a baby.
"What's happened here, sunshine?" Janet cooed, lifting the girl up gently. "Hmm?" Rebecca's whimpering silenced at being picked up though she knew it wasn't her mother, the smell, the hands, all of it was off.
Janet knew in an instant that this baby would be going home with her. She and William had been trying to have a child of their own since they'd been married years before to no avail. The foster system in Caterham was hell in itself, Janet would know. She'd grown up in it. Some homes were so full that there were three children to a bed, some homes so violent children ran over and over and over instead of staying in them.
Janet's thoughts went over the facts, that if this child were to go into Caterham county child care...Well, the prospects were poor. If she were to go home with Janet though, there was a brighter hope.
On the floor was a scrap of paper with burn marks along the side, a joke perhaps as poorly drawn stick figures showed a very small person labelled Rebecca and the bigger one as James. James, Janet assumed, was the body at the side of the room.
Gang violence was nothing new to Janet, even at such minimal distance. Caterham was a rough place. Rebecca's hand had been loosened from the bundle of blankets James had had her in post bath and pre bed, a little hand that reached forward and grabbed the arm Janet had around Rebecca tightly.
The decision was made. Rebecca, as Janet realised had to have been the girl's name, would be going home with her. It was giving her the best chances. That's why Janet scrounged through the damage quickly, looking for any more information. All she'd found before she knew they had to get out of there before the authorities made it there was that Rebecca was in fact her name and that she'd been born July 31st of the year past.
There was nothing left to indicate that there had been a child upstairs. Let alone Rebecca's twin. Let alone the boy who became known as the Boy Who Lived while Rebecca became no more than a rumour, nothing left to confirm that she'd ever even truly existed.
Janet bounced Rebecca as they stepped back out of the damage, whispering soft words and promising that Rebecca would be safe and happy.
Janet had believed that with all her heart.
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William's reaction had not been the relief Janet had thought it would be, and his detachment spanned from months to years. He never once warmed up to the idea of a child, he'd been thwarting Janet's attempts for so long.
He hated children. The questions, the mess, the noise. He hated how Janet's affections, time, and love were now being split with a streetrat that cost him money and his wife.
And, that was only the beginning. Fate seemed to work out for Janet, the move she'd been planning to get them out of Caterham seemed all the more necessary with a child and took place within the month.
In a new town, Rebecca simply became theirs. There was always an excuse in place, should her past come up. When the time had come for school registration, everything had been destroyed in a house fire and had yet to be replaced. When her dark, dark curly hair was questioned compared to William and Janet's fair, pin straight hair, genetic anomaly.
Janet loved Rebecca, loved that she was able to be a mother to anyone. William never saw how Janet blossomed into motherhood, he was to hateful, to busy keeping away from the child Janet refused to believe wasn't good.
William had watched the lights flicker when Rebecca threw a tantrum, though Janet said there was no correlation. William was the one who took away the toys from her that inexplicably always ended back up in her crib as she napped, refusing to believe that it wasn't Janet who was spoiling her.
When Janet finally listened to reason, the lamp behind the rocking chair she sat in to read to Rebecca every single night exploding without cause and no sign of electrical origination, as well as frightening designs left in the soot of the shade, William called the church.
William was a devout church attender, going every Sunday without Janet as he insisted the words of God were not to be interrupted by a wailing infant.
The priest, who listened to William's concerns honestly, went out and cleansed the house. William walked around with him as the priest blessed the doors and windows, burning sage on their way through.
William was convinced that the cleansing had failed as strange occurrences continued, but as Rebecca grew, they diminished.
The first crack between Janet and William came with one of the most momentous parenting moments there should have been: First steps. Rebecca had been crawling for ages although never walking. At nearing a year and a half old, Janet knew it would have been any day.
Janet had been across the room, seated on the floor while Rebecca crawled about. That day though, with the sun shining in through the window and reflecting against Rebecca's bright green eyes, Janet watched as Rebecca pulled herself to her feet with the couch.
"Rebecca? Come over here, sunshine. Show me those big girl steps!" Janet called gently, waving for Rebecca's attention. She never seemed to respond to solely visual cues, something Janet had not only noticed but already made an appointment for.
Rebecca moved forward with one chubby leg and then the other, letting go of the couch when she had run out of grabbable seat and toddling to Janet unsteadily.
"Will! Will, come quick!"
He answered his wife's call, expecting another 'look at how cute she is' or 'can you believe she's ours,' certainly not Janet blowing a raspberry on Rebecca's belly and turning her towards William.
"Look who's decided to get mobile!" Janet said proudly, though her pride was tapered with hurt as William ignored Rebecca's stumbling steps towards him. As William ignored Rebecca entirely.
Janet had excused William's distaste for child-related things for every reason under the sky: He was tired, he wasn't feeling well, he had a headache, etc. But to see him so blatantly act so coldly to the one thing that made Janet feel like she'd actually done something good, hurt her beyond repair.
That very week, Janet moved into the smallest, usually unused bedroom without William. She couldn't share a bed with someone who didn't seem to love who she did. She couldn't share a bed with someone who could turn off the compassion and empathy she'd fallen in love with as William did so easily.
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The years passed so, so quickly to Janet. She could have spent every second of the day with Rebecca and still not had enough time to watch as she so inquisitively studied whatever was in front of her. The books covered every facet of the world: From dinosaurs to flowers and Rebecca couldn't ever get enough of them.
For William, though, the years seemed as slow as sand. He watched his wife pick Rebecca over him time and time again. In response, he turned to drinking. What started as a relaxing, worry-forgetting Friday ritual turned to Friday and Saturday. He went about as he pleased.
As birthdays passed one after the other and the distance between Janet and William seemed nearing repair, Rebecca was soon five years old. William found it easier to ignore the child now that she was older, she didn't take up as much of Janet's time and he found that amicable. Besides the fact that her favourite word was why, however.
Why-s were the best question, in Rebecca's mind. They brought about not only an answer, but a light in Janet's eyes that she didn't need to understand to love. Janet, or mummy as Rebecca called her, loved to answer questions.
"Mummy, why do I have to go to bed?"
"Because, Rebecca, children do lots of growing and bodies need sleep to do that."
"Mummy, why do I have to pick up?"
"Because, Rebecca, you don't want to step on a toy and break it just as I don't want to step on one and trip."
"Mummy, why do I have specs?"
"Because, Rebecca, you need them to see."
"Mummy, why do I have to buckle?"
The last question brought about tragedy. Tragedy Rebecca would never be allowed to forget.
Janet brought Rebecca to the park as often as possible, driving the distance rain or shine to act out more 'stories.' Janet simply took the tales of literature and made them games. They'd traveled to the land with tiny people, like in Gulliver's Travels. They'd gone on expeditions on the island with animal mixtures only there, like in Treasure Island. They'd ventured over the sea to the land where dinosaurs still roamed, like in The Lost World. That had been Rebecca's favourite by far.
But, in the winter after the first heavy snow, they'd planned on going on an adventure through the Winter Woods of Narnia. Janet had been reading from the series for weeks now and Rebecca was very excited. She talked endlessly through the car ride, talking about everything they would see on their trek.
Rebecca had reached down and undone her buckle, she having watched how Janet undid her car seat and following the steps. Janet turned around at the movement immediately, telling Rebecca to get back into her seat.
A final why passed Rebecca's lips just as Janet hit the patch of ice she'd been too preoccupied with getting Rebecca seated to see. The tires followed the wheel, Janet quickly losing all control as she'd accelerated by instinct.
The car went into a spin.
A spin only stopped by a tree.
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Rebecca opened her eyes and held her hand to her chest, confused as to why it hung crookedly. The pain had yet to register through the ringing of her ears and the blaring sirens outside the car.
"Mummy?" Rebecca asked, tears growing as her arm began to twinge and slowly transformed into agony. Movement didn't help, but Janet wasn't answering and Rebecca needed to know why.
She moved over the crushed passenger seat to try and wake Janet, calling for her mummy all the while. The officers outside, seeing movement in what they had already deemed a double-fatality, sprung into action.
"Mummy, wake up." Rebecca, with the arm not limp and broken, shook Janet's shoulder. "Why, mummy? Why aren't you-"
"Hey! I'll be that smarts a bit, little lady." The man had a hat on, as he reached through the shattered window and brushed away the shards that were left. "Can you tell me your name?"
"Why won't mummy wake up?" Rebecca asked, pulling her arm from the man's grasp despite the wave of pain it brought.
"Did you cut your head?" The man asked, ignoring the question. There was a cut on her head, that or a scar. How could a kid get a scar in the shape of lightning bolt? "No, no, don't move that way. We're going to get you out of here."
Rebecca wanted to be obstinate, she wanted to be defiant. Rebecca wanted her mummy.
But, more than anything at that moment, Rebecca wanted her arm to stop grinding with every movement.
"Are you able to move?" The man waited patiently, ignoring the whispers for him to hurry. The entire crash stank of petrol and there was fear of an explosion growing stronger each second. "That's a good girl, innit? Alright, yeah. Step onto that bit there and wedge your way on out through here."
Sitting on the back of the ambulance, Rebecca was taken to the hospital for a cast as the crash was dealt with. All questions about when Janet would be joining them or where Janet was going were subverted and Rebecca quickly found herself waiting.
"Why hasn't anyone-What do you mean? He can't do that...can he?" The nurses whispered outside her door as if she couldn't hear. Rebecca had been given a dose of pain medicine, a hard cast put on her arm and bandages on a her scrapes and cuts. "He must pick her up, doesn't he realise that?"
"Mummy?" Rebecca asked tiredly, moving to get out of bed. "Mummy, where are you?"
The two nurses hurried in the room, soothing her calls and tucking her back into bed gently, kindly. Not one of the three, the two nurses or Rebecca, knew that would be the last handful of instances of kindness shown to her for nearly seven years.
William was finally found at work, the house phone never having been checked because he hadn't returned. A dark feeling filled him the day before, one that needed to be chased away with a drink and he'd ended up bouncing from pub to pub through the night and returning to work a fright in the same clothes as the day before.
The news brought him to his knees.
He'd been fixing things with Janet. He was on the path to getting his wife back, the girl so close to school-age where she'd be gone most of the day. The officer in charge of bringing the word of his wife's passing thought that William's body-shaking sobs were purely fueled by loss.
The officer had no idea they were tears of rage, too.
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They would return to Caterham the second Janet had been put in the ground.
Without exaggeration.
From the funeral they would return to the very house William had spent the first years of his marriage with Janet in, the house in which the parasite he was now saddled with had been brought to him in.
Rebecca understood that Janet wasn't there, but she didn't understand why exactly she hadn't come home yet. Even if home was no longer the house she could remember but instead, the dark, dank, run down house-like-a-shack in an unfamiliar area.
"Dad-"
"Don't call me that." William snapped as he opened the door to his old home. "Go to your room."
"I don't-"
"GO TO YOUR ROOM!" William shouted, pushing her down the hall. All she wanted to say was that she didn't know where that was, her room. Rebecca, although still just a young child, would learn to not push when William's eyes were lit as they had been that night.
Doing so only resulted in hurting.
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A routine quickly fell in place. William woke up from wherever he'd passed out the night before, usually reeking of whatever he'd been able to get his hands on and always hungover. If Rebecca ended up in his path on his way out the door, he'd berate and box around the ears until the lights flickered and he'd retreat to the bathroom.
From there, Rebecca pulled on her school uniform and left the house before he was done. School was a long walk, but the walk to and from were one of the most peaceful times of her day. Even now, years later, that remained true.
The first truth she learned in that first week after Janet had left: Expect nothing.
William fed her at first, but the amount dwindled as the time passed. By the time she was seven, he bought a loaf of bread at the beginning of the week. By the time she was seven, even that had ended.
Seven had been a hard year. The economy had taken a downturn and Caterham felt the brunt of it. The poor only became poorer and with money troubles, William became resentful that he now had to work twice as hard since he lost Janet and her income.
Missing Janet, to William, was impossible. He told himself he was unable to mourn with the reason she was dead constantly under his feet. Granted, this was the opinion of a man who spent more hours of his life in a drunken rage than he did sober.
Through the compassion of a singular neighbour known to Rebecca only as Mrs Figg and resourcefulness through plucking out of rubbish bins, Rebecca lived on. Seven turned to eight and eight to nine when tragedy struck once more.
Mrs Figg had had the girl she watched limp past her window every morning since she'd moved to Caterham months earlier 'work' for her. Primarily cat care that Mrs Figg told her she was too old to do, but the occasional odd job. It was the only way Rebecca would eat, if Mrs Figg made her work for it. But, in return for work, there was always a story.
Made up worlds and characters and stories that Mrs Figg would make last for days as she spun tales for the girl. Each story involved a hero who had to leave on a quest, each story had danger and fights, but each story ended happily because that's all Mrs Figg wanted for her: A happy ending.
But, on the evening when Rebecca had been full for the first time in days and warm in the house where the heat worked, Rebecca asked quietly if she could stay. "I'll be gone in the morning, Mrs Figg. I swear it. Only one night, please."
Mrs Figg was old, that was true. But, she also had lasting heart issues. In a cruel stroke of fate, that was the moment she had a cardiac episode. It was like Rebecca was right back in the car she still had dreams about as she crouched next to the physical embodiment of kindness in her life and tried to wake her.
She called for an ambulance and went out the back door, waiting down the block until Mrs Figg was picked up. That was the last time Rebecca saw her, Mrs Figg did not return to her home in Caterham. Instead, a young woman packed up her belongings and her cats and her house sat empty.
With Mrs Figg and her stories gone, Rebecca needed a new escape. It was the only way life would be liveable. Starting at church drives, Rebecca would go early in the mornings and go through donation boxes.
Old, new, modern, ancient. It didn't matter. The written word passed by Rebecca's glasses all hours of the night. It distracted her from the cold that was constant, the hunger which never seemed to fully cease, and the aches, too.
As soon as they'd returned to Caterham, William openly blamed Rebecca for Janet's death. But, it wasn't until she was seven when she'd brought home a letter from school when William had first hit her and truly meant it.
The letter had been from the school nurse. They wanted to schedule an appointment for a growth intervention.
On the phone the next day, there was no way to tell the rage William had tapped into as he explained to the school that he was very concerned and would be bringing Rebecca to their physician that very day.
Of course he didn't. He went off to wherever he spent his days as he'd been out of work for months and left Rebecca to struggle out of bed. It had been the first time she had to hide her bruises, but it was nowhere near the last.
Mrs Figg had always seen her limping because it was like William had opened a door he couldn't fully shut. Every inconvenience in his life was now blamed on her from the weather to the fact that she dare outgrow her trainers.
His animosity towards her grew as she did and by the time she was ten it was hatred. Pure and simple hatred. School was nearly out for summer and Rebecca dreaded that more than anything. School was only minutely better than home as both Caterham's poorest and richest found it especially easy to pick on the quietest, smallest student who would fight back and get blamed, but at least the school had class.
But, all is noticed eventually. The Bureau for Child Safety knocked on William's door for a wellness check after a teacher reported a particularly dark black eye of Rebecca's. William--never one to back down from a good show--played his part perfectly. Widowed husband who was disliked by his neighbours and, as a result, was subject to such absurd accusations.
The social worker, a young woman fresh to the job, fell for it as most women did. William may have been a monster, but he was damn good at hiding it.
The blame, of course, landed on Rebecca. His shouting stayed with her for hours as she lay next to her bed, too sore to even get into it.
"You think this is mistreatment? You think this is abuse? This is better than murderers get and that's all you are, a murderer."
Murderer.
Rebecca had been called that since she was five years old and she couldn't wrap her head around how William could honestly think she'd called the authorities.
As far as she was concerned, she was guilty. In her own eyes, she was a murderer.
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The last day of school brought with it a change in the routine. William held a letter in his hand, a letter he didn't let her open.
"We'll speak once more after school, don't delay your return." That was it. After that he went off in one direction out the door and Rebecca the other.
The school day should have been a day of celebration. The students were in the highest of spirits and made it so Rebecca's even more so than usual closed-offness was unnoted. Through every class, through every minute of the school day, she agonised over what William could possibly want to speak with her about.
Had she done something wrong? Was that it? Punishment?
There was something about his tone though, something that made it so Rebecca couldn't accept the reasons she thought of.
He wasn't home when she arrived, the house as empty as a freshly dug grave. That's what it felt like to Rebecca, an end looming over her and the house as a whole. She wouldn't realise how correct she was for quite a while.
He didn't get back to the house until well after the sun had set. Rebecca's stomach growled miserably and she gave in as the hours passed, taking some of 'his' food. When the car's headlights turned up the driveway and left the shadow of her tautly perched body on the couch on the wall behind her, she sat up even straighter.
William didn't even look at her as he opened the door and walked to his room, barking a direct order without faltering. "Get your coat and get in the car."
Rebecca swallowed the lump in her throat, still feeling entirely off about the situation. She did as she was told though, hurrying down the hall and getting her coat. On a whim, she also grabbed the singular photo left of Janet. William, years before when they'd first gone back to Caterham, had collected every single one of them and made Rebecca watch as he burnt them.
He didn't know about the one left in the book they'd never finished though and Rebecca tucked it securely into the pocket of the coat she'd outgrown the year prior but still wore.
Rebecca didn't look up as she left her room, only following his hand as he pointed it out the door. "The car, now."
She hadn't been in a car since he'd driven them to the rundown house that had become a hell and, as a result, she paused at the door.
"Don't be fucking stupid and do what you're told." William spat, pushing the back of her head roughly.
She clambered into the backseat and buckled her seatbelt tightly, noting the way William's hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles were white at the sound.
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