Chapter Text
"Do you think," Harriet Potter starts to say - scuffing her heels on the ground - before she cuts herself off. She's ten years old, and it's the summer holidays, so she has some time to herself, for once - some time without chores and without hateful looks from her aunt and uncle and without Dudley poking and prodding at her - tugging her shock of black hair and twisting her glasses until they snap - which has happened more than once. Away from all that - she's swinging on a metal swing in a small playground near Privet Drive tonight - and she's only doing this simply because she has so little free time, she often doesn't know what to do with it when she does have it. She is, to the eye of a casual passerby, quite alone - though, of course, she's obviously not - given she's speaking to someone. And she pauses before she starts talking again - stares out into the boxy neighborhoods around them - the streets lined with houses that all look the same - families that look the same - children who look the same, and mums and dads who look the same. None of them standing out. None of them unique. None of them - at least outwardly - freaks. "Do you think they mean something?"
"They?" the fat little brown field mouse balancing on the top of the swing set says - in this form, his voice is dreadfully squeaky. She has half a mind to ask him to change into something else, if only to make it less grating on her ears - though he always gets so terribly cross whenever she asks him to change to her preference. Harriet can't begin to guess why. It isn't as if it hurts him - he changes too often - sometimes even too rapidly - for it to hurt him - it's just that she's asked, she thinks, and he's dreadfully stubborn about the strangest things. "What're you on about?"
Harriet tips her head up to look at him through the growing shadows. The sun's starting to set quickly now - they'll need to go back to Number Four soon. Not because the Dursleys would be worried - no, they never would be. Or, no - it's that they'd be worried about what people would say if they saw Harriet wandering about alone in the dark. If someone kidnapped and murdered her - that, they most certainly wouldn't care about. If someone kind found her and insisted on escorting her home - where all of the neighbors could see it happening - that, they could never stand.
"The dreams," Harriet snaps up at the field mouse, still - ignoring the creeping darkness. She glares. "Have you been listening to me at all?"
"I always listen to you," the field mouse says - or rather, he lies, as she knows for a fact he doesn't. For one, she's told him dozens of times not to disappear in the middle of class - that she doesn't like it when he does so - and still, she'll sometimes look up and see him out the window flitting between trees in bird form - mocking her, probably, a little, given everyone can see her, and so she has to stay inside the school building and actually attend her classes, and no one can see him, so he's able to roam about as he pleases. Maybe he hears her - but he doesn't always listen to her, especially when it's not something he wants to listen to. And the dreams -
He hates talking about the dreams.
"I asked you," Harriet says through gritted teeth, "if you think the dreams mean something - "
"And, as I've told you dozens of times - the answer is no - "
"But I'm having them so often lately!" Harriet kicks out a foot to catch herself in the gravel, stopping her momentum forward and up. She stands - steps to turn to face the swing set - crosses her arms and lifts her chin at him. Ignores the rubber swing when it knocks against her calves. "I'm having them so much more often the last few weeks, Friend - "
She breaks off. Winces. The field mouse doesn't have a name - something he doesn't like to be reminded of at all. "Friend" is the best thing they've come up with to give her something to call him - but it's never felt right, it's only felt less not-right than all of the other names they've ever tried on for him - names like Robert and Charlie and Doug and, for one memorable day back when she was eight, Apple. He'd hated them all - had complained none of them had felt like him - and when he's in a particularly bad mood - which he seems to be approaching at the moment - he feels the same way about Friend. As it is - he pushes off with his little legs - leaps into the air, transforming into a large, black crow on his way down - flapping his wings to catch himself on the air to slow his descent. When he lands on the gravel in front of her, he turns sharply - clicks his beak impatiently. Glares right back at her.
"Yes, so you've said," he snaps - his tone long-suffering. He ruffles his feathers and adds, his impatience nearly visually swelling: "The forest and the rodents and the snakes."
And - yes. Harriet is well aware of how it sounds. He doesn't need to take that tone. She frowns at him - tightens her arms across her chest. Tries not to look too much like she's hugging herself.
This is part of the reason why she's so sure Aunt Petunia is wrong when she calls Friend - who of course she's never seen or heard, let alone spoken to - Harriet's imaginary friend - her lips twisting into a sneer each time she says it, glaring at Harriet so hard, her eyes are turned to slits in her pinched and pale face. Because - aren't imaginary friends supposed to help you with things like this? Strange dreams - nightmares, even, sometimes, when the rodents are dead and in pieces - blood and guts and bone spread across the ground. Oh, Friend has at times tried - whenever Harriet startles herself awake with one of these dreams in their cupboard, for example, he transforms into something big - or, as big as can fit inside the cupboard alongside Harriet without suffocating them both - and fluffy and warm - he lets Harriet press her face into his fur and even licks her forehead - drags a rough tongue across Harriet's lightning bolt scar. Which - Harriet supposes it does count - and it does help - at least, in the moment, when they're both quiet and listening for Harriet's breathing to finally slow down. But he never wants to talk about the dreams after. Never wants to talk about them at all. Gets prickly and moody and impatient whenever she brings them up in the light of day.
"Sorry," she mumbles. Isn't even sure why. She knows she keeps pushing him, which is probably why he gets so annoyed about it - it's just, she can't help it. It isn't as if she has anyone else to talk to about these things - which he knows full well. Dudley would call her a freak and laugh her out of one of his two bedrooms if she ever tried to talk to him about the dreams - the ones she's had for - well, nearly as long as she's had Friend, surely, and she actually doesn't remember a time she hadn't had Friend. Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon would each also call her a freak - but instead of laughing at her, they'd probably also scream at her and smack her or chuck her in her cupboard, as Harriet is forbidden from being odd, and dreams about gliding along a misty forest floor, chasing rodents and - and bloody murmuring to snakes and listening to them murmuring back - that would most definitely qualify as odd. But, then - of course it would. Most things Harriet does do.
Friend doesn't get it. Them. Her dreams. He has dreams, too, he tells her - but, according to him, his are more normal dreams - dreams to be entirely expected. Most often, he has dreams of flying away from Privet Drive - escaping all of it - the boredom. The chores. The snapping and shouting and swinging of rolling pins at Harriet's shoulders and back and - and the loneliness. He dreams of shifting himself into an eagle, spreading his wings, and taking off - never looking back. Finding some other place. A better place.
A place, probably, without Harriet.
Harriet dreams of this, too, of course. She'd have to be barking mad not to - and it makes her feel a bit ill whenever she does, as while Friend could actually escape if he wanted to - and she really doesn't know why he doesn't, and he never answers that question whenever she asks - Harriet couldn't. What would one little girl do, out in the world alone? The Dursleys would never actively look for her, which could only be a good thing - but she knows full well that she's got no one else in the world who would ever look after her. No - no one else in the world would ever take her in - another mouth to feed and body to house, as Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon always complain? And she's not old enough to - to get a job and make money and take care of herself. She would if she could, honestly. It's just not possible yet.
One of her biggest fears is - has always been, maybe - Friend changing his mind. That she'll wake up one morning alone in the cupboard, and he'll just be gone, having slipped out in the night - as a small animal or an insect - and she'll never see him again. That she'll be left truly alone with the Dursleys - would she survive it, if it came to that? She likes to think so, only - only she's not so sure. Not really. She's too used to having someone else, at this point - and perhaps that's why he stays. Perhaps he knows that she'd - fail. At surviving it. Alone.
Friend sighs heavily. His form ripples - her eyes lose focus for a moment - and then, he's a dog - a hound of some kind, she thinks, with floppy lips and floppy ears and a tail that doesn't move - at least not right away. "C'mon," he mutters - jerks his head at her slightly, gesturing her to the sidewalk. He's right, of course - the sky is glowing the deepest red, and a black is threatening at the outer edges. "We'd best get back before Aunt Petunia decides to get that bloody rolling pin out again."
"Yeah," Harriet replies quietly - can't help but kick at the stones beneath her feet one more time. The little rocks scatter - clatter over each other, too-loud in the quiet park.
They walk back to Privet Drive - to Number Four - in complete silence.