The Girl with the Stone

Girl

Chapter One: Girl

He could feel everyone's eyes but hers until the end. After a moment of pause she looked up him with big green eyes, full of love and happiness. "You can let go now, Daddy." She whispered and he was thrown to eight years before.
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Dove Potter woke up with a start at her aunt's insistent rapping. "Up! Get up! Now!" She screeched through the vent. Dove fell back onto her cot with a sigh, trying to remember every detail to her wondrously strange and yet strangely familiar dream she'd had. A motorcycle flying in the night over a raging sea. Now she wanted to paint- see if she could capture the light and the feel. It felt so real she was sure she could taste the salt. She emerged from her cupboard in her nightclothes, consisting of a large, ragged T shirt and baggy pants that swallowed her small frame whole. Around the breakfast table was a mountain of bright and carefully wrapped gifts for her cousin, Dudley's birthday. Maybe, she thought to herself. Maybe one day there'll be one for me.

There was a dark cloud of smoke escaping the kitchen from where her aunt had started breakfast, or tried to anyway, and Dove was brought back with the overwhelming stench of burning bacon. Her heart seized with fear and she rushed to move the pan and turn the spider off, splattering hot grease on her arms and making her yelp. "GIRL!" There was a rumbling as her Uncle Vernon came into the kitchen and yanked her to him painfully. He yelled, spitting with each word. "Look what you've done, you worthless thing! You get no food today. We take you in and this is the thanks I get?"

"Please, Uncle Vernon, I didn't mean to it. It was an accident. Please, I'm sorry." Next, Dove was on the floor holding the already bruising cheek. This was nowhere near the first time they'd been violent toward her, Dudley himself made a game of using her for a punching bag, but it was never somewhere that could be visible. She supposed it was to be expected today. Today was the annual outing where the Dursley's and their monstrous son's friends went somewhere special for his birthday: an adventure park, bowling, roller-skating, or last year's cruise to Norway where she was with Mrs. Figg for an entire Dursley free week. This year was to be the zoo and Mrs. Figg had broken her leg, leaving the Dursley's forced to take her with them. Uncle Vernon picked her up to her feet by her arm, leaving more bruises, and pushed her toward her cupboard.

"Comb your hair," he barked.

Neither were aware of the two pairs of eyes watching the scene with interest; one a twinkling, calculating blue, and the other a furious black. The latter watched the young girl scramble to her "room" and tug a broken brush through her long tangles. She had long black hair that fell in cascades to the small of her back, knobby knees, and big, vibrant green eyes hidden under thick, long lashes the he found hard to look at. She was small for her age, too small, and littered with more bruises than she should have been. He'd wanted to kill that beefy, smelly man when he struck her, but his companion stopped him. Yes, for now they were only to observe. Intervening and torture could come later.

Dove was back in the kitchen frying eggs when Dudley and Aunt Petunia came to the breakfast table. Dudley was counting his presents when she set the eggs and new, unburned bacon in the center of the table top.

"Thirty-six," he said with a red face. "But last year- last year I had thirty-seven!"

"Well some of them are quite a bit bigger than last year," Uncle Vernon supplied.

"I don't care how big they are!"

Aunt Petunia quickly tried to diffuse the situation. "Well what we're going to do is, when we go out we're going to get you two new presents. How's that, popkin?"

The pompous doorbell rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it as Dudley piled an exorbitant amount of food onto his plate, eating bites between unwrapping presents. Sometimes Dove would imagine getting one and it being a dress like she'd see other girls wear. All her clothes were Dudley's that he'd torn or outgrown, and he was a good four times her size. Piers Polkiss, a scrawny fried of Dudley's with a rat face came in then and handed him a crudely wrapped box.

"I'm warning you," Uncle Vernon said lowly as Dudley and Piers got into the back seat, "any funny business and you'll wish you had died with your freaky parents."

"Too late," she couldn't help but whisper rebelliously. His hand flew up and she flinched, but felt nothing. He smirked at her fear and struggled into the driver's seat. The problem was, things just happened around Dove, but no matter how she tried they never listened or believed when she told them it was an accident.

It was a very bright Sunday and the zoo was overrun with screaming children and underappreciated parents who just wanted the day to end as quick and painless as possible. Dove was very careful to walk a few feet away from the Dursley's and call as little attention to herself as she could manage. The animals around her were awe-inspiring and neither the Dursley's nor her scratched and broken glasses could stifle her fun. When Dudley and Piers were given chocolate ice cream and the lady asked her what she would like. Aunt Petunia bitterly got her a lemon pop. She would swear it was the best thing she'd ever tasted. Her favorite animal was the painted dog, whose epitaph said they were social animals and very protective of their pack. It sounded nice, to belong to a pack.

After lunch, where Uncle Vernon let her have Dudley's leftovers, they moved to the reptile house. Dudley and Piers went from tank to tank, pressing their ugly faces in on the poor inhabitants. When they came upon a particularly large chamber, the snake was seemingly asleep, which did not go over well with her cousin.

"Make it move," he whined. Uncle Vernon tapped the glass, and Dudley rattled it violently, but it did not budge. "This is boring!" Dudley moaned before running off to his next victim. Dove slid over to see the sleeping reptile.

"I'm sorry about him," she said. "He doesn't understand what it's like, living only as a convenience to others. You mustn't hold it against him."

The snake, a boa constrictor, lifted his head to her level as though to listen. She smiled at it, "Brazilian, did you like it there?"

He nodded to the sign again; bred in captivity. "Oh, I'm sorry. So, you've never been?" It shook its head.

"DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!" Dudley waddled towards them as fast as he could.

"Out of the way, you." He said as he shoved Dove to the concrete floor where she skinned her palms. Then it happened as she glared at the two boys, so fast she wasn't entirely sure of what she saw; the glass vanished. Behind her she heard a deep, but quiet, chuckle where there was nothing but space. Her snake friend uncoiled and slithered out, snapping at Dudley and Piers teasingly, and scaring everyone in the reptile room into a mad panic. He stopped at her, "Brazil, here I come . . . thanks, amiga."

"Anytime," she breathed.

Dudley and Piers began telling their stories immediately- their narrow escape, how the vicious monster tried to kill them, and how heroically they stood their ground against it. Strangely, they skipped the part where they hid behind Aunt Petunia's skirts. "But you were talking to it weren't you, Dove?" Everyone looked at her when Piers said that, but Uncle Vernon waited until they'd dropped Piers off at home before he dragged her to the cupboard by her hair and threw her in.

"Get your hands on the wall, girl." He growled low. Terrified she complied, hearing the telltale jingle of her whalish uncle undoing his thick, leather belt. She hung her head and tried to brace herself as best she could, unaware of the struggle going on a few feet away under an Invisibility Cloak. The first slap of the belt on her back nearly made her knees buckle, the second nearly made her scream- but she refused to give him the satisfaction. Until the tenth when he succeeded and Dove gave out a sharp cry. She could feel the blood on her back and the tears on her face. She heard a strangled sound from her uncle and turned around to see a very tall, dark haired man holding her uncle by the throat with an expression like grim death. He looked angrier than she'd ever seen anyone, so angry he was shaking. He pulled her uncle's face close to his and whispered dangerously low, "I think not."

And then nothing.