Chapter Text
Hallie Potter resided at number 4 Privet Drive. It was no home to her. Her world was confined to the Dursleys, school, and the cabbage-scented inevitability that was Mrs. Figg’s house. That was all she’d known since she was a year old.
What little sense of home she had was born from the storybooks she borrowed from the school library. She had found a secret refuge in the voices of each tale. That avenue of escape had been closed to her a year before. Dudley had once again found her reading. He’d ripped the book from her grasp and proceeded, to her horror, to destroy it quite thoroughly. Her track record with the librarian had already been fraying. Two previous books had limped back to the library damaged and yet readable. This last book was beyond saving. She had meekly presented it to the librarian and was now banned from setting foot in the library.
Still, she’d read enough to understand that “home” wasn’t just a place. It was something else, something gentle and warm. Something worn around you like a thick quilt on cold nights. She had no memory of such a thing, not truly, but she felt it. Somewhere deep down, like the echo of a melody she used to know. As if someone had once loved her deeply, fiercely and this perceived memory hung around her like a shield.
Teachers noticed something was off. Trouble seemed to follow Hallie, and so they quietly decided she was the trouble. Dudley’s gang had made her a target and the other students didn’t like to disagree with Dudley‘s gang. Any kindness shown to Hallie earned swift retribution. Safer, then, to keep away. After all, she was the trouble and brought it all upon herself.
If Hallie was provoking Dudley into attacking her, she didn’t know how. If she was, she had no idea how to stop.
The truth didn’t matter.
It rarely did.
Within the walls of number four, fear was the language of the house. It hummed beneath the floorboards, curled in the corners like dust no one ever swept away, a constant presence that shaped every thought and every step she dared to take.
Hallie spoke it fluently.
She’d learned it long before she had words, back when Dudley was still waddling in diapers. He had always been stronger than her. He was a child who hit first and learned nothing later. If Hallie cried, she was scolded. If she fought back, she was punished. If she was silent, the bruises spoke for her.
Dudley liked having someone below him. Someone smaller. Someone who ran. Hallie couldn’t run fast enough or scream loud enough to matter.
He liked to chase her like a dog who scented a rabbit. He liked to corner her. To own her fear.
Uncle Vernon was a thunderstorm. Loud. Sudden. Inescapable. His rage never simmered. It’s struck like a slammed door. Hallie never knew what would set him off. A muttered word. Catching or avoiding his eye. A dish not scrubbed right. He didn’t hit often - but when he did, it was fast, and full of words that echoed in her mind long after the bruises faded.
“Ungrateful girl.”
“Undeserving wretch.”
“Worthless little freak.”
The worst part? He seemed to derive pleasure from pretending she’d done something to deserve it.
Aunt Petunia didn’t yell or hit. She didn’t need to. Her weapon was her gaze, sharp, cold and clinical. Petunia watched Hallie like a hawk watches a mouse, waiting for it to twitch the wrong way. She could find disobedience in the blink of an eye. In the way Hallie‘s mouth moved when she swallowed. In the way she lingered too long near a window.
“You think you’re better than?” Petunia's voice would snap the silence. “Wipe that look off your face, girl.”
Hallie hadn’t made a face. She was certain. And that was the trap of it. With Aunt Petunia, it was never what Hallie did. It was what she must have meant .
And Hallie?
She learned to disappear.
She mapped every corner of the house, of her school, and of her neighborhood in her mind, turning ordinary hallways into potential escape routes. She memorized each creaking stair and loose floorboard until she could tell which Dursley was approaching just by the rhythm of their footsteps. She became an expert at invisibility, learning to slip through rooms like a shadow, to breathe without sound, to fold herself into corners so thoroughly that even her own presence began to feel like an intrusion.
She had mastered how to be small. Fast. Quiet. No opinions. No expressions.
She learned the art of stillness—not to be good, but to go unnoticed.
Each day, she rehearsed the choreography of survival: how to duck a glance, how to step lightly, how to leave no trace of herself behind—not because she was taught, but because her very safety depended on it. Even in sleep, she remained half-alert, her mind trained to wake at the faintest creak of a door or the harsh snap of Petunia’s slippers against tile, as though her body had long since accepted that rest was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
To survive meant anticipating needs she was never told, bracing for punishments she didn’t understand, and swallowing down every question, every protest, until silence became as natural to her as breathing.
She didn’t need to be told she wasn’t wanted; she felt it in the chill of her cupboard, in the measured silences at dinner, in the way even her name seemed to catch like a thorn in their throats.
That was survival.
It was never enough.
They hunted like wild dogs on a rabbit’s trail.
Hallie ran.
The pounding of Dudley’s feet thundered behind her, heavier than the rest, closer too. His gang was a mess of laughing snarls, and barked insults, the sound of trainers slamming pavement like snapping jaws. Hallie didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. She could feel them. Smell the sweat and heat of them closing in.
Her lungs burned along with the rhythm of her heart. Her legs screamed in protest as she urged them to go faster. Panic came in waves, but she let them wash over her, she didn’t have time for anything else. No space for thinking. Only run .
She was the rabbit. She had always been the rabbit.
Dudley had started his tyranny of the day at lunch. Knocking her tray into her lap leaving ketchup staining her shirt like blood. He’d laughed, called her a piggy in slop. The teachers pretended not to hear. They always did. Now they were out in the open, and he had declared the hunt.
“Go on, Hallie,” he’d grinned. “Let’s see if you can still squeal .”
She’d cut across the schoolyard, through a narrow break in the fence she could just squeeze through. That should buy her precious seconds while the bigger boys scrambled around and climbed over the fence. She needed every second, she was fast but they had longer legs.
They’d split to follow, like wolves spreading to flank their prey.
She veered down an alley and around some dumpsters half buried in bags of trash, her feet slipping on some rank garbage she didn’t stop to identify. She kept momentum barely holding her balance as she darted around the corner behind some corporate building.
Something sharp hit her shoulder - probably a rock. She stumbles and swallows the pain. She didn’t scream. Screaming only fed the dogs.
Her palms scraped against bricks as she hurtled around another corner and skidded to a halt.
No .
It was a dead end.
A crumbling wall blocked the alley. Too high to scale. Too wide to squeeze past.
She turned just as Dudley came barreling into view, red-faced, wild-eyed, triumphant.
“No running now,” He panted, an indecent tremble in his voice as his eyes alighted on her.
Hallie back up until her spine hit the stone. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Her hands shook like a leaf caught in a high wind.
Somewhere in her, below thought, below fear, something cracked.
No.
She didn’t want this.
She didn’t deserve this.
She wanted out !
Dudley lunged.
And then-
Wind.
Light.
A strange sucking sound like the world had hiccuped.
Cold, open air kissed her skin.
Hallie opened her eyes.
She was on the roof.
She blinked. Once. Twice. Her chest heaved. The air up here was thinner, colder, impossibly real. Her feet were steady but her world wasn’t.
High above the alley. Wind pulling at her shirt. Pebbles crunching beneath her shoes. Her heart thundered like a drumbeat in her ears. She spun in place, hands out for balance, disbelief crashing over her like a wave.
Below, Dudley skidded to a halt, staring up at her with his jaw hanging like a loose hinge.
“What the -?!”
Hallie didn’t wait. She dropped to her knees on the rooftop and crawled to the nearest fire escape. Clambering down the ladder as fast as her shaking arms would allow.
She didn’t care where she was going.
Only that it was away.
Away from Dudley.
Away from the alley.
Away from the beast-heat of being hunted.
Hallie walked until her legs stopped shaking. She didn’t know where she was. Some patch of half-wild field near the edge of town, long grass brushing her ankles as the sky overhead stretched wide and pale. A few birds wheeled lazily above indifferent. There was nothing around but wind and the sound of her breath.
She sank into the grass and let herself disappear into it. Her heart had finally quieted. Her hands still trembled.
The roof. She’d been on the roof . She closed her eyes, replaying it - not the chase, not Dudley’s shouting, but the moment just before . That split second when everything inside her had turned sharp and still and clear. Like the world had taken a breath with her. Held it. Let go.
She didn’t jump. She didn’t climb. She wasn’t lifted. She had just - been there. It made no sense. None at all. And yet… it had felt real. More real than the ground she was now sitting on. She pressed her palm into the dirt, just to be sure.
Her thoughts skittered like leaves in the wind.
Maybe she’d gone mad. Maybe it had been a dream, or a trick of adrenaline, or her mind snapping under the weight of fear. No, she couldn’t lie to herself, not about this. Hallie had spent too long in the business of surviving to mistake fear for fantasy.
Whatever it was… it hadn’t come from outside her. It had come from in . And it had answered her when she had most needed it.
Hallie didn’t smile - not quite - but there was something in her face that hadn’t been there before. A quiet, wondering thing.
She leaned back on her elbows, staring up at the sky.
For the first time she could remember, she wasn’t thinking about what the Durseleys would say. Not yet. She wasn’t worrying about Aunt Petunia’s sharp eyes or Uncle Vernon’s roaring voice. She didn’t have the space for fear right now.
All she could think was: I got away. I got away and don’t know how, but I did.
The wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of honeysuckle. Hallie closed her eyes again. She imagined herself running—not from, but toward something.
She didn’t know what.
But maybe it was out there.
And maybe it had been waiting.