Vernon looked up at Hailey one last time before they left the breakfast table. It was her birthday today- but it also happened to be the day the Masons were coming for that dinner party… and the schedule had been set on one of the days that had started with his glimpsing Harry, meaning he’d been unable to bring himself not to hurt her in any way he could. She understood- but there was very little she could do about it, since his wife still ran to her each night for comfort against her normal night terrors, and nothing that either he or Hailey had been able to say had calmed her fears.
As for the dinner party, the schedule for which he had just gone over with the family, Hailey’s part was simple: She would stay upstairs, out of sight and try not to make any unnecessary noise. They had decided that her personality would clash too strongly with the strict formality and politeness he needed, so it would be better for everyone if the Masons never realized she existed.
Now, though, she had raised her hand, and her facial expression did not look very pretty.
“Yes, Hailey?” he asked, almost dreading what she might say. Was she, perhaps, on her period? It had been over a month, but nobody had noticed any. Even Petunia had commented on her apparent lack of menstrual cycle- and when they’d asked Hailey, she hadn’t even known what they were talking about.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” she told them. “Like something from the other world is going to try and interfere.”
Vernon scowled. “Any idea how?”
She shook her head. “I’ll try to keep it contained, if at all possible, but…” She shrugged. “No promises.”
That evening, when Vernon knocked on and opened Hailey’s bedroom door, on the pretence of turning Dudley’s TV off, the first words to cross his mind were she warned you.
There was… a creature, of some sort, grappling with her- and, it looked like, attempting to do harm to itself- which had been making the noises that had ruined his joke downstairs.
He sighed, then pointed a finger at the creature. “You, creature, uh, thingy,” he began.
“Dobby,” Hailey corrected. “He’s a House-Elf.”
He nodded. “Dobby, then. Make it quick, and keep it quiet and upstairs.” He withdrew from the room.
When Vernon rushed into the kitchen to investigate a sudden noise, like a popping balloon, he did not expect to see Hailey standing in the middle of the room. What he expected even less than that was to see Petunia’s masterpiece of pudding floating in the air in front of her while she pushed it back up on top of the fridge despite being six feet away from it. Her wand, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen… which begged the question of how she was doing it, but he could ask that later.
For the moment, he made absolutely sure that the Masons, who were also curious, didn’t get close enough to see even a hint of what she was doing until after she finished, after which point he- in what he thought was a rather good improvisation, considering the circumstances- explained her away as their niece who got ‘nervous and jumpy when meeting new people’, so they ‘kept her upstairs for parties’ where they wouldn’t have to deal with her accidents and where she wouldn’t have to be so nervous, either. That party, he supposed aloud, must’ve gone on long enough she got too hungry to wait, though he was at a loss as to what she’d broken. He told the Masons that he’d no doubt find out later, and it would probably be something minor anyways. It usually was, after all.
Then Hailey- whose own improvisation and acting skills were also up to the task- got ‘shooed’ back upstairs with some crackers, and the dinner party continued on with some lively conversation about what might have been broken. As a matter of fact, Vernon had to conclude that Hailey’s appearance in the kitchen had been a good thing- it had been far easier than he’d expected to bring the topic around to drills. Especially when Mr. Mason brought it up himself, commenting on how the cracking noise in the kitchen sounded exactly like what his last drill had sounded like just the day before when the gearbox exploded. Which, he said, they seemed to be doing a lot, thanks to incompetent manufacturers using the cheapest materials possible.
Grunnings, Vernon knew, made quality drills. He had made sure of that when he bought the company so long ago, and so knew exactly how to hook the Masons in for the sale.
“What even was that?” Vernon asked Hailey later that night, after the Masons had left. He’d managed an even larger sale than he’d originally thought possible.
“Dobby,” she told him simply. “He was trying to convince me not to go back to Hogwarts this year.”
To his surprise, it was Dudley that let out the first snort of derisive laughter. “Doomed to failure,” he announced.
Hailey chuckled. “Yes. Anyways, he floated the pudding out, then… what do they call it? Disapparated? Teleported out, I guess, and dropped it. I managed to catch it, and avert a disaster; you saw the rest.”
He nodded. “I did,” he agreed. “But how did you do it without your wand?”
“Wandless magic,” she answered simply. “It’s not nearly as powerful, nor as versatile, as wand magic, and I’m not all that good at it, but it did the job I needed it to- and, unlike wand magic or, apparently, house-elf magic, it’s untraceable.” She sighed. “But I’ve figured out why I haven’t been getting any owl mail: Dobby’s been intercepting it all.”
The next morning, however, disaster struck. For the first time, when Vernon entered Hailey’s room to retrieve his wife, she had already reverted to Harry.
He did his best to wake Harry first- partly so he could re-transform before his wife awoke, but partly, he knew somewhat guiltily, just for the fun of it. However, his wife awoke first… and screamed, her night terrors having come true at last.
The resultant waves of rage and terror were so great Vernon found himself paying a man that morning- he had no idea where he got the man’s number from- to fit bars in the boy’s bedroom window. He himself installed a catflap in the door, and reversed the knob so it was locked from the outside rather than the inside.
It took almost two full weeks before the rage ebbed far enough for him to realize that Hailey had stopped eating or needing to use the bathroom after just three days, after which he went in, dreading the corpse he was bound to find- only to find that the bars were missing from the window, and that she had left a note on the desk for him.
She had gone to spend the rest of the summer with some of her friends from the magical world, would be seeing him again next year, and wished him well. ‘No hard feelings’, she wrote- and she’d even mentioned how challenging she expected it to be to hide her male form from her friend’s family!
The Weasley Family, however, was nowhere near so simple. They never had been and, frankly, never would be, either. Ron, Fred, and George had set out on schedule to rescue Ron’s friend, Hailey Potter- and Ron had managed to execute the wake-Hailey part of the plan just right that neither of the twins realized exactly who Hailey really was. Ron had been surprised to find out that all of Hailey’s school things- from her wand to her broomstick- were in her room after they had yanked the bars out of her window, but they were, so the door had stayed tightly closed throughout the operation, which had gone off without a hitch.
Except, of course, when they got home after first light. Mrs. Weasley had gone absolutely nuts on the three boys and sent them straight to the garden for some de-gnome-ing, before dragging Hailey inside to feed her breakfast.
As for Hailey, when dealing with Mrs. Weasley, she had adopted a ‘roll with the punches’ sort of attitude.
At least, at first, she had. It only took fifteen minutes for her to start pushing back.
“Um, Mrs. Weasley?”
“Just Molly is fine,” Mrs. Weasley told her, adding even more food to the plate in front of Hailey.
“Molly, then,” she nodded. “I’m never going to be able to eat that much. It’s just…” She gestured at the plate, which was already mounded almost a foot high.
“... Oh,” Molly said, blinking at the plate like she was only just seeing it. Which, considering how preoccupied she was with her rage at her sons, Hailey didn’t find surprising. “I… I heard they starved you?” she muttered, but it sounded like a question.
Hailey laughed. “For three days,” she chuckled. “And even then, the ‘rations’ weren’t bad.”
Right on time, a red-headed little girl walked into the room- and Hailey recognized her from the station as Ginny, Ron’s younger sister. Ginny’s mouth split into a grin once she saw the plate, and she trotted into the room, stifling giggles. “Mom, you’re trying to feed Gigantosaurus Weasley again,” she said.
Molly sighed, scowling at the plate. “I noticed,” she mumbled, then rolled her eyes and abandoned it. “Ginny, this is Hailey. Hailey, this is Ginny.”
Hailey held out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Ginny accepted it with a giggle. “Same to you,” she answered. “So, are you Gigantosaurus Weasley this week?”
Hailey laughed. “I guess. Does… Does that happen very often?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. There’s so many of us that Mom gets preoccupied, and starts piling everything onto one plate- usually for whoever happened to arrive first. Fred actually tried to eat it all, once.”
“Speaking of preoccupation,” Molly said suddenly, brandishing her spatula at the laden plate for a second before turning to retrieve her wand. “Now that you’re here, Hailey, you’ll need somewhere to sleep. I was thinking that perhaps you could share Ginny’s room?” She looked up at Ginny, as she separated the heaped food into appropriately-sized portions on their own plates.
“W-What?” Hailey asked, a little alarmed.
Ginny, meanwhile, shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“I-!” Hailey began, trying to find a way to avoid a potentially very awkward morning, evening, or really any other time of day; she couldn’t think of a time when she had ever so much as looked into a girl’s room, and here Mrs. Weasley expected her to sleep in one? “I- I was just going to sleep in Ron’s room,” she mumbled. “He said something about joining the twins himself.”
“No, no,” Molly remanded. “You’re a girl, Hailey. You need to sleep in a girl’s room, not a boy’s room. Besides, you’d hate it in Ron’s room.” She paused. “Though probably not as much as Ron would hate sleeping in Fred and George’s.”
Hailey and Ginny both laughed at her comment, then Ginny wrapped Hailey in a friendly hug. “Is there something wrong with my room?” she asked, peering pleadingly up into Hailey’s face. “Or with me?”
For herself, Hailey wasn’t sure why so many people complained about the power of the puppy-dog eyes; Ginny was obviously trying to employ them, but she didn’t find herself all that moved by it. Possibly because they didn’t change what she had to say either way. “No,” she told her. “It’s just… I’m used to sleeping with boys. Er-!” She glanced up fearfully at Molly. She might not have understood what Petunia was talking about when she had asked about her ‘menstrual cycle’, whatever that was, but she did know what people usually meant when they said that a girl was ‘sleeping with’ a boy. “In the same room as boys, sorry.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “I know what you mean. But that’s a very demeaning thing to force on you, so it ends now, okay?”
“Okay,” she muttered. “But for the record, it wasn’t exactly forced.”
Molly snorted. “A likely story,” she mumbled, offering her a re-portioned plate. “Breakfast?”
“That was exhausting,” Ron moaned, entering the room.
Hailey looked up, from where she had been teaching Ginny tic-tac-toe, after finding out- to her amazement- that neither Ginny nor even Molly had a clue what it was. “I bet,” she smiled. “Want to join us?”
Ron shook his head. “Actually, I thought I’d show you my room. You know, for… uh, tonight.”
Hailey smiled. “But I won’t be sleeping in your room tonight,” she told him.
“What-? Then where?”
Ginny giggled. “She’ll be sleeping with me,” she cheered- though Hailey detected a note of worry in her voice.
“Well,” Hailey began, looking back towards Ginny. “In the same room as you.”
“What-!?” Ron yelped. “But-!”
Hailey shrugged. “You’ll have to take it up with your mother,” she said. “She’s the one that decided.”
Ron scowled, and plodded out of the room, presumably hunting for his mother.
“He’s about to get yelled at,” Ginny mused.
Hailey nodded. “He is,” she agreed.
Ginny looked at her. “And ‘with’ is technically accurate, by the way.”
Her head snapped around. “How so?”
She blushed. “I only have one bed.”
She scowled. “That’s going to be a problem.”