One

It had been an ordinary day when it happened. In all honesty twenty-seven-year-old Charlotte Louise Potter hadn't expected anything to happen out of the ordinary. In fact, she had been exciting and expecting this day. She didn't know why exactly since she seemed to attract bad luck like the plague.

But that day had been different. She had felt lucky she supposed. Just days before at the young age of 27 Charlotte Louise Potter had been promoted to Head of the Auror Office which was unheard off for someone so young.

Charlotte had been surprised, but pleased after all the title hadn't been given to her by her famous last name and the events associated with it. She had worked her butt off ever since Voldemort's death.

True working for the Auror Office hadn't always been pleasant, but it was a good job and an important job and she was saving the lives of both Muggles and wizards by being one. Charlotte had thousands of ideas that she wanted to implement into the program, but she had no idea where to start. Perhaps she would go over them with Ron or maybe even Hermione.

Since Hermione worked for the Magical Law Enforcement office, she would have a better idea of what would work and what wouldn't work in the wizarding world.

Despite her excitement and nervousness about her new job, Charlotte had a feeling that it was going to be a good day. Charlotte should have known that she should have kept her expectations as low as possible. Because from what she could tell Lady Luck was not on her side.

The owl post had come at half past ten, Charlotte had been sipping her second cup of coffee while moving her things lazily into her new office. When she had read the letter that the tiny owl had brought for her she hadn't thought much about it. It was probably some scoundrel making trouble again and trying to make everyone miserable.

Still Charlotte couldn't just ignore it, she had assembled a small team with Ron included and had gone herself since they were short staffed now (everyone seemed to be asking for vacation days lately).

Ron and the rest of them hadn't been impressed by what they had seen. A man, half buried by a long, thick coat. The only thing you could see was a mustache and beady black eyes.

Charlotte had stepped out towards the man first, wand gripped tightly in her hand. She could sense the others behind her doing the same thing. They had gone through enough crap to know that even though they looked innocent that wasn't always the case. As it turned out the innocent ones were the ones that caused the most problems.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

Charlotte didn't know what happened next, all she remembered was a ringing in her ears as if something big had exploded next to her. Charlotte felt as her head hit the concrete. She felt as if her whole body turned to jelly.

Her mouth felt dry and her lips felt swollen. She could barely see through the broken shards of her glasses and she tasted blood. Charlotte heard screaming, she tried to move but her body didn't seem to want to cooperate.

Her mind was screaming too, but this time it wasn't the screaming of the townspeople. It was the screaming of Molly Weasley, of Bellatrix's crackling laugh, of the way that Dumbledore's body cracked as it had hit the floor.

Charlotte tried to see, she tried to remove the broken glasses from her face, but her hands didn't seem to want to move. She was trembling she could feel it even if every inch of her body was screaming for her to move.

Everything was turning black. The dementors they were coming. . .they were close. . .they were so close. She wanted to scream, but the only thing that she did was bit her tongue causing more blood.

She didn't realize that Ron was shaking her and even though she was awake, she didn't seem to hear him. "Charlotte," the tone in his voice grew desperate as he looked over his shoulder. The rest of their teammates seemed to be handling the situation, but he couldn't just leave Charlotte huddled on the floor. "Charlotte, can you hear me? Charlotte!"

At one point Ron, had slapped her even though he didn't want to, to see if she would snap out of it. She didn't. Her frozen state remained and she only seemed to be getting worse.

They transferred her to St. Mungo's and even her old school nurse, Madam Pomfrey had come in to look. But at the end they told Hermione, Ron, and the Weasley family who were clucking around her like mother hens the results. The healers told her that there was nothing physically wrong with her, that she was going through exhaustion and the PTSD that never seemed to go away and instead seemed to get worse each year instead of better. She had gone through what Muggles called, a mental breakdown.

They didn't have a cure for PTSD, depression, or exhaustion except a couple of cheering charms that wouldn't last for more than a few days and a memory charm would be too risky for her position. There were a couple of treatments they had said, but Hermione had though them too ghastly and medieval for Charlotte.

Madam Pomfrey, having known Charlotte all her life had been more sympathetic and had told her that maybe she should consider a career change since she had always been a "sensitive girl" and that maybe she could ask for a career change.

Mrs. Weasley seemed to be a nervous wreck half the time and wouldn't leave Charlotte's side telling anyone that would hear that someone should pay for this. Ron assured his mother that they had gotten the wizard that had caused this and thankfully he hadn't caused permanent damage.

Charlotte however was numb she was awake, but she seemed to be living in her own world inside her head. A world full of regret and pain, she was numb like a living doll and despite Hermione's teary threats that she needed to snap out of it, if she didn't want to be locked up in here Charlotte didn't react.

She didn't wash her hair or changed her clothes. She didn't laugh when George tried to make her laugh and wasn't interested in Ginny's Quidditch stories. Thanks to Hermione's high position in the Ministry they could get her out of St. Mungo's without too much fuss and Hermione promised Mrs. Weasley that she would stay with Charlotte for a few days in her tiny apartment while Mrs. Weasley took care of little Rose and baby Hugo.

Charlotte however was dismissed from her Auror position and encouraged to take "a few months off" which was like being fired and just like that Charlotte's world continued to grow numb.

-End of Chapter One-

Thank you for reading! Like most of my other Harry Potter/Avengers Crossover stories I am not following the books' timeline so that's why Charlotte (Fem! Harry) is twenty-seven instead of being in her thirties.