Chapter Text
⬶ I ⤅
“Mate, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.” Ron Weasley starts, breaking the silence in the room.
Green eyes, hidden behind thick frames and dishevelled hair, shift to acknowledge his words briefly before it turns back to the fireplace again, seemingly mesmerised by the flickering flames.
12 Grimmauld Place is as quiet as its owner by Right of Inheritance, is as silent as a grave.
Life appears to have fled The-Woman-Who-Conquered as she remains slumped in an overly large chair, her knees drawn to her chest, as though she wanted to curl into herself, shrink and disappear.
Oh, they see the shadows hidden in those jaded depths, the purple bruises underlying her eyes. Her chapped lips parted ever-so-slightly as if she was caught mid-scream, yet unable to utter nary a word.
She’s still bone-thin, ravaged by childhood malnutrition and being the prey of a long hunt, having to ration and starve, having to feed on bark wood and insects, if only it means she can stave off the inevitable hunger and thirst that eats into her body.
Her knitted cardigan slips off her skeletal shoulders and shows a slip of her collarbones. Against the low lighting, the shadows sinking into the gaunt frame darkens further, highlighting her pale complexion to contour her sharp, jutting bones, at her neck, at her elbows, at her wrists, at the ankles peeking out of the loose fabric.
Calluses have formed all over her hands. Her body is a canvas of scars, pain, and loss.
And the War.
How the toll had dug into her bones like claws, like the roots of Elder Wood, sinking its jagged edges into her marrows and hollowing her out. It feels like the dirt had wormed under her skin.
Heather James Potter feels like a barren wasteland of upturned soil and marked graves, of endless death and destruction and crumbling stone, of buried bodies with familiar faces, of untold and forgotten sacrifices that is etched but broken and damaged because of the betrayals, because—
“ I was never supposed to walk out of the Forbidden Forest alive,” the words ghosts past her lips, too soft, but her best friends catch her turn of phrase anyway.
She was moulded as an unknowing martyr, just a sheep raised for slaughter, a sepulchre reborn as the tenth month dies.
Hermione and Ron’s eyes redden. Hands that once trembled after she was tortured into near insensibility, hands that gripped onto metal bars and begged for the ones he loved to be spared, reach out to her and catch hold.
Heather flinches away from their grip, but not completely. She lets the tactile sensation anchor her, and for a moment, it almost feels like she can breathe. With them by her side, she felt like she could do anything.
“Out of everyone else, after everything you’ve been put through, you deserve to live.” Hermione tells her, conviction strengthening her trembling voice. “And if the world thinks otherwise, then it’s wrong.”
That startles a laugh out of the dark-haired witch, the sound of it brittle.
“You’ve done enough,” Ron continues, “More than, in fact.”
Is it though? Her jade green eyes ask as it meets brown and pale blue.
She thinks about the broken towers and crumbling walls of Hogwarts. The mad scramble as the Ministry struggled to differentiate between friend and foe while attempting to right itself and plug the holes. The long list of funeral venues that she had shuffled in and out of, the wish for peaceful silence like death to mourn, except she was blinded and deafened by the flashing colours, questions, and sobs.
The long-standing biases stemming from blood, the misconceptions that had been perpetuated for centuries, all laid bare at their feet, to criticise, to mock, but with helplessness and without change.
Most of all, she thinks about the orphans, the parentless children born out of the recent war, whose haggard and fearful faces remind her, painfully, of herself.
Wetly, Hermione says, “I’ve always thought that it was ridiculous that children had to be ones to make the final stand in the war.” The brightest witch of their generation still sounded smart as ever, but there was something distinctively broken in the acknowledgement. “That we had to be ones to clean up the messes of those who have always insisted to us that they knew better.
“But they didn’t, did they? They ignored your warnings and made you a liar; you were cursed like Cassandra to never have your true prophecies believed, even though you were in the centre of one.”
“I thought you hated divination, Mione,” Ron mutters.
“I do,” Hermione ripostes, tilting her chin up slightly. “Usually when Professor Trelawney teaches it. She has a sickle of Sight, but she was quite mad. The history, though, is fascinating.”
“If I can go about the rest of my life without hearing the words ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ or whatever bloody synonyms there are, I’d take it gratefully.” Heather said, “Either that, or I hex everyone’s noggin off.”
The Chosen One thought she deserved that much at least.
“Ah, and so she finally speaks.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Ron,” Heather snips back.
Ron squeezes her hand, whether in warning or assurance, she didn’t know. “You were never one to stay quiet. Too much sarcasm and sass bottled up in your tiny frame.”
“It must be worth something, given that you’ve hardly won an argument when it comes to a battle of wits.”
The Weasley sighed in exasperation while his better half giggled. “Because Merlin forbids you from getting the last word.”
“You’re talking to the girl who told the worst Dark Lord to try some remorse for himself after they fought to the death,” Hermione retorts. “It’s practically her modus operandi.”
Heather shrugs, digging her bony shoulders back into the couch. “He should’ve,” she remarks quietly, “Perhaps it would have done the world some good.”
The other witch huffs, her bushy hair almost bristling with her annoyance. “Your endless capacity for forgiveness, whilst astounding, can be incredibly frustrating at times, Ather.”
She blinked owlishly in response.
“This.” Hermione gestures at her oblivious best friend to punctuate her point. “The fact that you’re clueless, the fact that you don’t understand what I’m talking about, makes me loathe all the adult influences in your life.”
Their heads lean on her frail shoulders, letting the fire crackle fill the sombre silence for a moment.
“You owe the world nothing, do you hear me, Ather?” Hermione says, fiercely. “You deserve to live for yourself, not by anyone’s rules or games.”
“But who am I, besides the player and the played?” She asks rhetorically, if a little sad.
Because who was Heather James Potter outside of the narratives made by other people, who was she when undefined by the rule of another?
The Freak didn’t know anything when she was younger and was battered under the Dursleys’ iron fist, the-girl-who-lived was confused as she fought to live and learn in the mad world twisted by prejudice, The-Woman-Who-Conquered is the survivor that death refused to claim, simply left in the odd limbo of existence without direction.
“Hey, don’t go all philosophical on me, that’s Mione’s job,” Ron teases halfheartedly. “Maybe… Maybe you should take some time and find yourself. Without anyone tying you down or saying otherwise.”
“It doesn’t matter how long it takes,” Hermione adds, “A day, months, a year… Take all the time you need. We just desperately wish that someday, you will look back at this conversation and comprehend what we’ve been trying to convey.”
⬶ II ⤅
“You should leave.”
Heather remembers Luna Lovegood telling her, the soft dreamlike quality of her voice, bespoken like an inevitable truth.
They were on top of 12 Grimmauld Place’s roof then, staring at the moving constellations on that dim night, the moon a waning crescent that barely outshone the other celestial bodies.
Luna had always known things, usually the first to reach the uncanny truths like she had already parsed out the meanings of the world and merely gravitated towards them, then imparting them whenever she deemed it necessary.
It was wild and unfettered, seemingly nonsensical without preamble, nothing and yet everything at once.
The crepuscular witch never needed the stories, justifications, or context. She knew what she Saw; her Sight unique, she believed in what she Knew; unfaltering in her faith.
When Luna Lovegood told Heather James Potter to go, to leave this gilded cage that compounded her in hyphenated names and tried to wrangle her into what she never truly was, it made Heather feel as though the invisible chains were slipping off her small body, thus freeing her.
It felt like she finally had the room to unfurl and rustle her once-bound wings, letting the breeze card through the mess of feathers and thorny bones. It was akin to a key fitting into the lock of her shackles, or one that cut into the imaginary noose winding around her neck.
She was never meant to be chained, oh no, Heather was a Cloud in the Sky, drifting along in white and greyish tints, undeniable with her looming presence and widely casted shadows, sometimes akin to a warning of a gathering storm.
She could be electric and dazzling, she could be devastating and poised, she could be described with many adjectives and be among the elements, but she was always bereft of choice.
So when she heard those three words, that’s all it took, before she fled into the night with the dawn chasing after her back.
For once she was directionless, but that was fine.
She wasn’t needed anywhere, not urgently anyway.
The world was her oyster and she could go everywhere.
⬶ III ⤅
Magical enclaves would never not be weird.
Heather chalked their eccentrics to ‘Wizarding Logic’ — yes, the subject matter deserved the capitalisation — because nothing could better explain the odd sensibilities that the enclaves had, besides the existence of magic totally skewing their perception of what was normal and possible.
The enclaves were so ridiculously insular in culture that Heather felt like it should be an elective to elucidate half of the things that puzzled her when she first stepped into the Wizarding World. It probably would have saved her from the many faux pas she committed over the years, but was now too above the traditions and laws to care.
Non-magicals may have moved onto easier fittings of jeans and sweaters, but Wizarding Britain was firmly stuck in the Middle Ages with robes and pointed hats . It was like they ceased to progress after they hid themselves under the Statute of Secrecy was established, and never saw the need to.
Hence, it didn’t even surprise her to find that Japan’s magical enclave was clad in kimonos and yukatas with flowing sleeves (since their kind always had the flair for sweeping dramatics), though the painted faces and rainbow-coloured hair made her pause for a minute.
By which Heather meant that she sat on an unoccupied bench in one of the busiest streets of the Mahouka district and stared into the middle distance like she was observing some kind of exotic creature.
Without her best friends to be her voice of reason, Heather ducked into the first cosmetic store she stumbled upon and proceeded to make more questionable life choices.
Don’t ask her why she chose a dark purple that looked almost violet underneath the sunlight, because all that ran through her mind during the colour selection was ‘no house colours’ and ‘something that wasn’t too bright’.
Except being the practical learner she was, she completely missed the fine print which stated that the colour she saw on the label and in the bottle might not be a direct reflection of what it would be once it was applied, and that it was best to get their own colour customisation and/or specification from the counter.
When the dark purple shade settled into her rat nest hair and green irises, the shock of colour she saw in the mirror in contrast to her pasty skin made her double over and laugh until the store owner peeked out from her station and stared at her like she had gone insane.
Alas, the verdict wasn’t out on that last bit yet.
After getting over her hyena laughter, the store owner came over and took in the array of scars dotting her features, before kindly introduced her to the wonders of different paints — like eyeshadows, blushes, foundation, and concealers — which Heather graciously hoarded after she was taught how to correctly apply them.
“習うより慣れろ,” the store owner advised in soothing Japanese. (Practice makes perfect.)
Makeup was, quite literally, magic of its own form, with the way it smoothed over lifelong and/or new scars.
Also, did she mention that the coloured contacts magically corrected her vision impairment as well?
Sure, she could easily fix her glasses with a simple reparo, but it would have been nice to have an alternative.
The British witch had never felt more disappointed by the fact that she hadn’t thought to visit the Asian enclaves earlier, or that Mahoutokoro hadn’t been invited to the Triwizard Tournament. She would have killed to know about these fantastic inventions sooner.
When she faced the mirror again after an hour of makeup lessons, the person in the reflection looked like a different person.
Her untameable and now purple hair was artfully tousled to the side and away from her eyes, leaving a part of her forehead consciously bare. Instead of scarred skin, her complexion was smooth and slightly paler, reinvigorated by soft blush on her cheeks and the darker contours that rounded her facial features.
What used to be signs of her insomnia were turned into an underline of dark purple that made her purplish-brown eyes bigger, the edges of the eyeshadow blurred out to give it a smoky and heavy effect. Her lips were poutier too, like it had been dashed with mulberry and wine.
The store owner clicked her tongue in approval and called her uniquely beautiful.
She then added a purple teardrop under her left eye.
When Heather asked her why, the store owner’s crimson lips curled into a gentle smile, “Pretty smile, beautiful laughter, yet wise and sad eyes. But what differentiates a cry from a laugh? It’s always good to have a reminder that you can express your emotions, child.”
“It’s a statement piece too,” the store owner added as an afterthought, hiding her smile behind a long sleeve.
Heather turned back to the mirror, eyebrows raised, to greet the familiar stranger again.
Statement piece indeed.
⬶ IV ⤅
It made sense to linger around Japan after that.
The country’s capital is a metropolis like London, and its countryside filled with rolling green hills, rice fields, and water bodies, but that’s roughly where the similarities end.
Unlike the smog bleakness and sameness that was developed from the golden age of the Victorian era, stretches of brick-and-mortar buildings with arched bay windows and carved balustrades, Tokyo was a vision in technicolour and large billboard signs, exteriors split between glass and decorative slitted wood.
She would occasionally find Torii gates and hung-up lanterns under and between rectangular buildings, electric lines along roads, interconnected railways systems digging underground that shake her boots when trains passed. Bright arcades and rows of gachapon machines were tucked in the strangest places, brimming with cheers and artificial noise, oftentimes so loud and blinding she preferred the refuge quiet cafes and strong black teas to calm her nerves.
It doesn’t taste like how they make it back at home, but the Briton makes up for quality with quantity.
There were whole new genres of books and moving animation too, made in broad strokes of pen and splashes of pale colours, brought to life on screen with voiceovers and drawn pages.
Despite being a strange duckling with her dyed hair, stuttering words, and foreign accent, it’s easier for Heather Potter to find herself amongst the crowd in this prettily packaged place. No expectations for the odd one out, no death threats pressing on her head, no titles and responsibilities to bog her down.
Funnily enough, it’s her questionable fashion choices — the random commitment to purple, dramatic makeup, oversized sweaters, ripped jeans, buckled boots, plus the motorcycle — that give people the impression that she’s part of the Bōsōzoku (biker culture).
She will forever insist that it was her Potter luck acting up when she gets adopted by a smaller biker gang, who had taken one look at her lost expression and her diminutive frame before they decided to claim her as their own.
It was fun though.
Heather learns that the motorbike that Sirius gave her was a literal antique and had it not been running on and kept together by magic, many parts would have failed on itself a long time ago.
(Which really begs the question: do magic and technology really contradict each other, or was it the way the energy sources were put together that caused the malfunctioning? The witch shelved the question for later to ask Hermione.)
Of course, it gives her all the reason to splurge on a new and modernised bike, a Suzuki DR650 to be exact, fully kitted out with a modified exhaust, adjustable suspensions, and custom tires. She ditched the oversized fairings suggestion that her leader insisted upon, more inclined towards a streamlined shape to help the sheer speed that the beast of modern machinery could reach instead.
It couldn’t accelerate as fast as her Firebolt because of how it simply wasn’t built for such speeds and it would burn out her engine quickly if she tried, but it was still pretty damn impressive.
Her new motorbike was a thing of beauty after the paint job, and she stuck with the colour scheme of white, purple and black. There were fading flames along the gas and oil tank, with a scattering of Latin rimming the edges, perhaps she could add runic sequences someday when she finally had them figured out.
If Heather Potter picked up some books about automotives and ancient runes, and traded in some time at the carshop for lessons on how to fix up vehicles and engines, well, that was only for her to know.
It was then where she met her second love too.
Stunt biking.