Just a crossover idea that occurred to me. Hope you enjoy! It'll be more of a series of one-shots, not an entire story.

Just a note: this does take place in modern day, just because certain issues that are brought up are easier to deal with in a modern context since I know more about them then.

I should probably stop giving myself more stories to update when I've still got the Accidental Vessel, Before, and Universal Constants to finish [and in the case of the latter two, actually start on the main plot] but inspiration struck and I will not apologize. I will probably regret it, though.

Disclaimer: I do not own Good Omens or Harry Potter

When Harry was seven years old, the Dursleys moved to a small town called Lower Tadfield.

The Dursleys had decided that a smaller community would be better for Dudley to grow up in - something her Aunt Petunia had no doubt read in one of her magazines - and Harry had come along with them, since they were her guardians after all.

Harry was currently wandering the streets of the tiny little town, as she'd been kicked out of the house so she wouldn't get in the way while the movers were bringing things in. It was nothing like Privet Drive - or even Little Whinging. For one thing, the houses were all different in at least one or two little ways. Also, there seemed to be a lot of noise - someone, or several someones, were shouting and talking rapidly over a strange background noise.

The source of this became apparent when four bikes shot around the corner. The boy on the lead bike, whose head was a mop of gold curls, noticed Harry and skidded to a stop, making the other three quickly follow his lead.

"Who're you?" The boy asked, sounding curious.

"I'm Harry." She answered.

"I've never seen you 'round here before," One of the other boys said. Like the first boy, he didn't sound suspicious - just curious. His bike was also filthy, and Harry imagined that his Aunt Petunia would probably scream if she saw it.

"I'm new here," she explained. "My aunt and uncle just moved here."

"Why're you living with your aunt instead of your parents?" The only girl of the group questioned, a fiery redhead with, for some reason, a sheet of cardboard pinned to her bike with pins like the one Aunt Petunia usually used when she was hanging up laundry on the line - or when she was showing Harry how to do it, at least.

Harry looked down and scuffed her feet in the dirt of the road. "They're dead."

There was an awkward pause, but it lasted for only a second as the boy who also sported a pair of glasses - much thicker than Harry's - glared at the girl. "Pepper, you can't just ask about things like that."

"I didn't know!" 'Pepper' retorted defensively.

"It's all right," Harry said quickly. "I don't mind."

The first boy was still watching her. "I'm Adam," he announced. "So you're stayin' here, then?"

"Aunt Petunia thinks it's better to grow up in a smaller town," Harry repeated. "So I think so."

"Well, I think you're alright," Adam said cheerfully. "That's Pepper," He pointed out the girl, "An' Brian, an' Wensley." The dirty boy first, and then the one who had tried to tell off Pepper grinned at Harry.

"Hi," Harry said awkwardly, unused to interacting with very many people her age who didn't either dislike him or were too terrified of Dudley to go near him.

"You can get your bike, if you want, an' come with us," Adam suggested. "We're going down to the Pit."

Harry was unsure what 'the Pit' was, but it sounded vaguely ominous. "I don't have a bike."

That made them all stare at her. "You don't have a bike?" Pepper repeated incredulously. "How've you gotten anywhere if you don't have a bike?"

Harry shrugged.

"You should ask for one," Adam said imperiously. "'S not right, someone not havin' a bike. Everybody should have a bike."

"My aunt and uncle wouldn't get one for me even if I did," Harry said, slightly disheartened. "They don't like me very much."

"You can share a bike with one of us for now," Pepper offered hesitantly, once the four of them had gotten done looking at each other and wondering how to respond to something like that. "You should see the quarry, anyway - it's all ours, and Greasy Johnson never got nowhere near it!"

Harry had no idea who Greasy Johnson was, but she was beginning to see that this was the first opportunity to make friends she'd had in a long time. "Alright."

There was a lot of awkward scrambling involved in getting on the back of Piper's bike, since she was the only one who had anything resembling a seat on the back, but eventually Harry was sitting sidesaddle on the bike rack and clutching at Pepper so she didn't fall off.

She went very fast.

The Pit, as it turned out, was actually an abandoned chalk quarry, and the best hideout Harry had ever seen. She jumped off just as Pepper screeched to a halt, letting her bike fall over instead of using the kickstand [which had fallen off some years previously, either from disuse or rough handling, and no one could agree on which. Her mother wasn't bothered].

"This is awesome," Harry declared, staring around, and the four Them exchanged pleased looks.

Harry, to her aunt and uncle's disapproval, continued hanging out with Adam and the rest of Them, to the point where one day Them showed up at the front gate of the Dursley's new house.

"Harry!"

Harry looked up from her work in the garden - which still had yet to grow, to Aunt Petinua's ire and, apparently, due to her fault - and was both surprised and pleased to see the four of Them standing there, bikes propped against the fence and leaning over it, as best as a few not-so-tall eight year olds could.

"C'mon, we're goin' down to the quarry again! Adam's got an idea." Pepper said impatiently. "Also, we've got a new name."

"What is it?" Harry asked, putting down the trowel for a moment.

"We're the Legion of Really Secret Super-Heroes now," Brian informed her. "Adam read a book about a bunch of kids who got to be super-heroes, so we've got powers too now. It'll be brilliant."

Harry would have replied, if Aunt Petunia had not chosen that moment to poke her head out the door.

"Boy, what are you doing?" Her eagle eyes immediately narrowed in on the four at the gate, and she gave a small noise of indignant discontent. "You! Get off my gate, I've just cleaned it and I will not have you getting it all dirty!"

Brian jerked back in surprise. He had, indeed, left dirty handprints on the gate. Harry knew with a sinking feeling that it was going to be her job to wash it off. She'd probably be forced to repaint the whole fence.

"We just came to talk to Harry," Pepper said. "We were goin' to go an' play."

Aunt Petunia glared at the four of Them - sorry, glared at the four members of the Legion or Really Secret Super-Heroes. Only Adam didn't shrink back when pinned with that look. She then turned to Harry.

"If you think you're going out, you've got another thing coming, boy," She said severely. "You've still got to finish this garden - and mind you don't mess up this time - and then the dishes need doing and-"

"It's not right, makin' one person do all that," Objected a young voice.

Aunt Petunia turned around again.

Adam was staring at her. Not particularly maliciously, but it was a pretty strong gaze to be trapped under, and she faltered as any human being would have. "He needs to help out," She managed to sputter.

"Why?" Adam wrinkled his nose. "My dad says everyone has to pitch in but he says that I don't need t' to anything 'till I'm old enough to actu'lly learn somethin' from it, an' he says it would just be wasted on me now. Way I see it, no one should be forced to do somethin' they don't enjoy doin' unless it's really important, an' gardenin' isn't as important as super-heroes anyway."

Aunt Petunia stared for a few moments. She seemed unsure how to respond to that.

"So we're just goin' to go now, then," Adam said, as if he'd just concluded a long and successful negotiation - which, in a sense, he had. "An' I bet you've got a bike by now, so you can go an' get that too."

"Dudley got a new bike," Harry offered hesitantly, glancing at the still-frozen Aunt Petunia. "He doesn't use his old one anymore."

"Then you can use that one." Adam was still staring at Aunt Petunia. "It's not fair," He said speculatively, "For one person to get two bikes an' the other one to not be able to use either of 'em."

Jerkily, Aunt Petunia nodded, turning sharply and slamming the door behind her as she retreated inside. Harry was glowing as she shed his work gear, hastily stowing it all in the box that it was usually kept in and racing out to the garage to retrieve Dudley's old-but-apparently-now-useless-now-that-he'd-got-a-new-one bike.

It was silver with blue accents, and the rest of them were very impressed with it.

"Let's go, then!"

"Er-" Something had suddenly occurred to Harry. She stared at the bike. "I don't know how to ride one."

The Really Secret League of Super-Heroes stopped, stared, and came to a mutual consensus almost immediately.

Harry was one of Them, now, after all.

"Here, we'll show you how it's done. It's really not that hard, but if you go down High Street you've got to watch out for Ms. Olsen's bushes at the end, they're wicked sharp, but over there's a good street to do it one since it's on a hill an' you don't really have to pedal at all."

Moving to Tadfield, Harry thought, was the best thing her aunt and uncle had ever done for her.

Them stayed Them, however many names Adam thought up for the five of them [which mostly depended on what books he'd been reading prior to when they met up] and some of the best days of Harry's life were spent in their company.

"I don't see why I have to do it, though!"

Pepper's mother had recently decided that Pepper needed more of an artsy education, and had signed her up for drawing lessons at the local high school, without consulting Pepper first.

In the eyes of Them, this was a transgression of the highest order.

"She could've at least asked you first," Wensley agreed, pushing his glasses up his nose again.

Pepper sniffed in what she thought was a sadly regal way. "It's because I'm a girl," She said scornfully. "Mum thinks that girls should like art an' that stuff, but I don't."

"I like art," Harry offered. "I'm not that good, though."

"You don't count," Pepper said dismissively. "You're a boy."

Harry bristled. "No, I'm not."

All of Them stared at him. Well, most of them. Adam just said "Oh, I knew that already."

"You did?" Harry asked hopefully. "You can tell?"

"Well, yeah." Adam replied, like it should have been obvious.

"I can't tell," Brian announced. "You look like a boy. An' your aunt calls you that."

"Harry's aunt doesn't count," Pepper said scornfully. "She's stupid. Harry wouldn't have told her."

"She wouldn't listen even if I did," Harry muttered, gaining a small pat on the shoulder from Pepper.

"I got one of my comics," Wensley said slowly, "An' it had a part that my mom tore out 'cause she wanted to read it but she forgot to give it back but I read a bit of it before that an' it talked about biolocal sex an' gender an' stuff."

"I've heard a bit about that," Pepper said, sitting up straight, pleased to be the most knowledgeable about something for once. "My mum talks about it a lot, an' apparently it's a really big problem 'cause there are some people who've got problems 'cause who they are doesn't match up with who their body says they are but it's not the body's de-cis-ion, it's the person's, an' she said no one will talk about it 'cause they don't want to ac - ackno - say that they were wrong about people or anythin'."

Harry had sat upright. "That sounds like me," She said, faintly astonished.

Brian shrugged. "So, there's still only three boys?" He sounded faintly disappointed.

Pepper stuck out her tongue. "Shut up, Brian."

Harry was still in shock that they'd accepted her so easily.

"I think there was something about people being able to change their body, too," Pepper said, staring into space and squinting slightly, which meant that she was trying to remember something.

"Really?" Harry stared at her, openmouthed.

"Yeah. Maybe we should talk to her."

"I always wondered," Adam said, making them all immediately shut up, "Why your name was Harry if you're a girl."

There was a moment of silence.

"Harry can be a girl's name," Harry said defensively.

"It's more like a nickname for a girl," Brian put in. "Like if it were short for Harriet or something."

"Harriet's a stupid name," Pepper snorted. "If Harry's goin' to have a girl's name h- she should get a cool one."

"I don't mind being called Harry," Harry lied, shifting on the stone floor of the quarry.

"You should get a girl's name," Adam decided. "Callin' someone by the wrong name's rude, especially if it's the wrong gender too."

"My mum said names don't have a gender," Pepper said.

"Yes, they do," Wensley disagreed. "Girl's don't have names like, like Brian. An' boys don't have names like Rachel an' that."

"That's just because of-" Pepper paused. "'Cause people decided that these names were for girls an' these names were for boys. It doesn't actually matter whether a name's supposed to be for a boy or a girl."

"What do you think?" Collective attention swiveled to Harry as Brian asked the question, who fidgeted uncomfortably again.

"I get what Pepper means," she said quietly, "But I don't want to be called Harry, really."

"Rachel?" Wensley said again, but Harry shook her head.

"Not a name like Pepper's," Brian said, grinning, and then yelped when Pepper tackled him into the ground and did her best to trap him in a headlock, but they were both only eight and not very strong.

The other three Them ignored this. It was a fairly regular occurrence, whenever Brian happened to say something that could be construed as sexist or any other -ist. Pepper was very fine-tuned to identifying to these sort of things, as her mother was an enthusiastic feminist.

"Ada?" Wensley suggested. "There was someone called Ada Lovelace in my last comic. She was a really brilliant scientist. Computers an' stuff even though the dint even exist yet."

Harry considered it. "Maybe," She said slowly.

"We should pick an 'h' name." Adam said. "So it's sort of like Harry. But not."

"That sounds good." Wensley paused. "Do you like Harriet?"

"Not really," Harry admitted. "Pepper's right. It's stupid."

"Of course I'm right." Pepper's head popped up, and she seemed to decide that Brian had been thoroughly defeated, getting off of him and taking a seat next to Harry again. Brian didn't make an attempt to wipe the chalk dust off the back of his shirt, and even if he had the attempt probably would have been wasted.

"Hazel?" Pepper tried after thinking about it for a moment. "There was a girl named Hazel in Percy Jackson."

Harry considered that one too, before rejecting it.

"We'll think of something," Adam said confidently. "We've got all day."

A newly-christened Hayley got back to the Dursley's house, took one look at her aunt and uncle loudly complaining over that night's news that the man who was apparently a famous actor should be sacked for daring to marry someone of the same gender, and reaffirmed her decision not to say anything.

When she was ten years old, Hayley was playing in the quarry with the rest of Them and fell.

It wasn't far, but she landed face-first and scraped her forehead - right near where her scar was.

"Hayley!" Several alarmed voices yelled out at once, and Hayley blinked muzzily at the suddenly shiny stone in front of her face. She was pretty sure that red stuff hadn't been there previously.

Adam got there first - no one was quite sure how - and was staring at her, looking the most panicked any of Them had ever seen him. He warily touched Hayley's forehead and Hayley winced, letting out a sharp aahh of pain. It did hurt when he poked it, and even when he stopped touching it.

Adam was staring at her with an unusual intensity, and Hayley was surprised to see that her vision had already cleared. "There's something weird on your forehead," Adam said.

"Is it the blood?" Hayley managed to say clearly, but Adam didn't laugh.

He reached out and very carefully touched her forehead again, not the cut this time - her scar. Them had been very impressed with it when Hayley had first shown them, since it looked just like real lightning - jagged and pale. Wensley, who sometimes got medical knowledge from his comics, had said it looked like there was something in her forehead that it had healed over.

Hayley had told him that it hadn't healed over anything except her skull, which led to a long rambling discussion on muscles and then bodies which ended with most of them pulling their shirts up so they could compare stomachs to see who had the most muscle, but now with Adam poking at the scar it did feel like something was trapped under there.

Something 'weird'.

Adam was almost scowling, and Hayley would deny that she quailed under having that look directed at her.

His finger pressed down harder, and then the sensation vanished and the rest of Them were crowding around her, asking anxiously if she was alright and did she need stitches because she really was bleeding a lot but she would be fine as long as they got someone to help quick.

She needed three stitches and Aunt Petunia was stiffly outraged about the cost of the treatment and the medicine she had to take for the next few weeks, but the presence of Them and a few other worried parents made sure that the kept a lid on it.

That, and the fact that she still seemed to be put off-kilter by Adam, who while not saying anything stared at Aunt Petunia so that when they got home she just sent Hayley up to her room with the pill bottle and instructions for taking them without saying a word.

Adam, Hayley thought, was brilliant.

When Hayley turned eleven, so did Adam.

Neither of them had any idea of what was coming.

Several miles away and very close to what they were seeking, an angel and a demon were driving out of Tadfield, and someone had just rented Jasmine cottage.

When she was eleven, Hayley got a letter in the mail.

Her uncle ripped it up before she could read it.

Another letter came the next day, and Hayley had snatched it up and was flying down the road on the same bike she'd gotten three years ago towards the Pit, where Them would no doubt show up soon - and they did, and Hayley excitedly showed them the letter she'd read while waiting for them to get there, because holy crap.

"You've really got magic?" Adam demanded, something lit up inside him that made him different than usual. Dog, who was only a day in Adam's ownership, sniffed around at the quarry and growled at anything other than Them that moved. Hayley thought he was a very odd dog, but Adam had assured her that he just needed training.

"Apparently." Hayley read over the letter again. "There's a supplies list an' it says a wand an' everything. It's too complicated to just be a joke, and anyway Dudley isn't this creative."

"Does it say cauldron?" Pepper demanded. "Maybe you'll get to chant and make potions."

Hayley scanned the letter. "It does!"

"Hey, look." Wensley had picked up the discarded envelope. "Look! It says to Hayley, not Harry. Whoever sent this really knows you."

"It's got your bedroom on it," Brian noted. "Maybe they've been spyin' on you."

"That'd mean they know about us, too," Pepper said, "An' none of us have letters."

"Maybe we're not magic." All of them cast looks at Adam, who was examining the shorter letter with a chilly expression that usually only appeared when someone else had thought of something he wished he'd thought up.

"Maybe," He said after what felt like an eternity, and Them relaxed as one. "Are you goin' to say yes?"

"I don't know." Hayley pulled her knees to her chest, then remembered that she was wearing a skirt and stopped herself. She had taken to wearing Pepper's hand-me-downs instead of Dudley's, since Them had collectively decided that Dudley, who at this point was a contender with Greasy Johnson in terms of Them's enemies, were entirely unsuitable for Hayley's and they were pretty close to the same size, anwyay. "I don't know anything about magic, and my relatives won't help me figure it out."

Them were well aware what the Dursleys were like, so no one commented on that. "D'you think they'll send someone from the school?" Pepper asked hopefully. "A real live witch!"

"What about our Inquisition?" Hayley asked, remembering their fake Spanish Inquisition from yesterday.

"Oh, witches are alright," Adam said, sitting upright. "Did I tell you that the woman in Jasmine cottage really is a witch?"

"I said so!" Pepper said triumphantly. "Didn't I say she was a witch?"

"But she's alright," Adam said again eagerly. "She showed me all these magazines an' stuff, an' there was this man called Charles Fort, an' he could make it rain fish. An' frogs and other stuff."

"They'd die," said Hayley from a certainty gained from science class at the local - and only - primary school. "Fish an' frogs can't live outside of water. If it started raining them they'd get stranded on the sidewalk."

"Was Charles Fort a witch?" Brian asked in interest. Fish and frogs made up a much more interesting rain than plain old water.

"Hold on," Pepper said, "You never said they were alive frogs."

"They were," Adam boasted. "People'd pay him to go away, an' - an' he sailed off in the Mary Celeste an' founded the Bermuda Triangle."

"He can't've," Hayley and Wensley said at the same time.

"The Bermuda Triangle wasn't founded, it's just a name for a bit of ocean."

"The Mary Celeste didn't have any people on it," Wensley said louder. "It got famous for havin' no people on it. It was floatin' around all by itself."

"He could have been on it an' gotten off before they found it," Hayley suggested.

"I dint say he was on it when they found it," Adam interrupted, and Hayley and Wensley quieted. "It's 'cos of the UFOs landin' and takin' him away."

UFOs were much firmer ground. "If I was an alien," Pepper said, "I'd get a laser blaster an' go around tellin' people what to do so I could threaten 'em with it. Not tellin' 'em about cosmic harmony or stuff like that."

Hayley mimed holding a lightsaber and making the noise that lightsabers made when they lit up, and for a moment there was a furious mock battle in front of the milk crate where Adam sat between two people holding invisible lightsabers, and Pepper almost leaped up to join in when Adam cleared his throat pointedly and they both stopped, looking contrite.

"Like I was sayin'," Adam continued, "I 'spect that's what they used to do, only now the rebellion's over an' they want to stop fighting so they're goin' 'round making sure no one stirs anything up. All outlined in bright blue light. Sort of like g'lactic policemen."

The Them thought this over. "Why're they called Unidentified Flying Objects, anyway?" Wensley asked. "They're identified, all right, they're aliens, so why're they still called unidentified?"

"'Cos we don't know what planet they're from." Hayley guessed.

"No," Adam said with a certainty that only he possessed. "It's 'cos the government hushes it up. Like they're s'posed to. All governments hush stuff up, an' they've got a great big library full of books of stuff that they've hushed up."

"But then anyone could go in an' read it," Brian said, frowning.

"It's not a public library. I didn't say anyone could go in. You've got to already know about all of it," Adam explained, sounding aggrieved. "Anyway, there's millions of 'em landing every year an' the government just hushes it up."

"Why?"

Wensley's question made Adam pause. Hayley watched him as they waited for an answer, knowing that one would be forthcoming, because it was Adam.

"Cos they're the government," was the answer. "The Prime Minister reads it all over an' then he stamps it 'top secret'."

"I bet he has a cup of tea first," Wensley said, "An' reads the paper."

They all agreed, since Wensley had once gone into his father's office while he was in there, and since Wensley's father actually worked for the government that must be what all of them are like.

"But after that he gets out the stamp and the secret documents," Adam reluctantly said. "An' if you do see a UFO, then government men come in a big black car an' tell you not to tell anybody. It happens in America all the time."

Brian brightened. "My cousin just got back from America," He said, "An' he said they've got shops with thirty-nine flavors of ice cream."

There was a pause as they all tried to process this.

"There aren't thirty-nine flavors of ice cream," Hayley said doubtfully. "Dudley would've yelled until someone bought 'em for him. He has eight in the fridge at home, but they're all chocolate an' vanilla. An' strawberry."

"There are more flavors in America, then." Brian stood firm.

"There aren't thirty-nine flavors in the whole world," Pepper scoffed, "So there can't be that many in America."

"Well, there was an' he said so," Brian said, stung that they didn't believe him. "He wouldn't lie about it."

"And then," Adam said loudly, sensing that it was time to change the topic, "There's Atlantis."

That got them all interested again, since things like sunken cities were right up Them's avenue of interest. They listened in fascination to a jumbled account of lost civilizations, disasters, and temples full of ancient priesthoods with forgotten secrets.

A long afternoon was spent discussing Atlantis, and playing Charles Fort Discovering Things, until the frog [which was the only one the Them could find and made for a disappointing rain] hopped off and they couldn't find it again, at which point they all went home.

Hayley spent the afternoon poring over the letter and trying to make up her mind over whether or not it was real, and if it was, how she was going to be able to reply asking someone to come down to Tadfield and explain things to her properly.

Hayley hadn't managed to find an answer to her letter problem by the next day – which was Saturday - but she had other things to think about by then.

For one thing, the Dursleys had discovered that she'd read one of the letters, and her Uncle Vernon had promptly gone ballistic and dragged them all out of the house on an impromptu 'vacation'.

The quotation marks are important, because the trip mainly consisted of him driving around crazily and muttering things like "Shake them off" under his breath a lot. Hayley didn't dare say anything about magic, because she thought he might crash the car if she did.

They ended up in a small motel on the outskirts of a city nowhere near Tadfield, which seemed to satisfy Uncle Vernon's need to get far away from whatever he thought was coming.

They spent the whole day in a very odd state, or at least Hayley did and the Durselys, putting it down to her odd attitude, ignored her.

Hayley could tell that something was wrong. The problem was, she didn't know what it was. Late in the day, when she couldn't stand being around the Dursleys another second while they were acting like nothing was wrong [except for the fact that they weren't in Tadfield] she went out into the empty lot behind the motel.

About half an hour later, something very odd happened, and Hayley was abruptly not alone in her own head.

"Pardon me," She said, surprised and panicked to find her mouth moving and producing an older voice that wasn't hers, "But do you know where I am? No, please don't panic, I'll be on my way soon, but I have to be somewhere urgently."

Hayley swallowed, tested her mouth, and discovered that she could use her mouth again. "Are you a witch? Certainly not. Oh." It was a very odd feeling, to interrupt yourself without doing it yourself. "This is London. Darn it. I was aiming for Tadfield. What d'you want in Tadfield? Wh – oh. I see."

Just as abruptly, the presence was gone, and Hayley was alone, not sure whether she'd imagined the posh voice or anything that had just happened, and desperately wishing she knew what was going on.

Across the country, or at least as much of it that Uncle Vernon had crossed in an attempt to get away from an imagined threat, a very real threat was indeed descending.

It was descending exactly on Lower Tadfield, where three children and one not-so human child sat in the calm of a storm, and made a decision.

Or at least.

The non-human one changed his mind.

In another area of town, an angel, a fake psychic, and a witchfinder general set off for Lower Tadfield in slightly embarrassing scooter helmets.

A demon is doing one hundred and ten miles down Oxford street, car flaming, in an attempt to get to where he knows he needs to be for a friend he fears the worst for [or at least the worst minus being killed].

And just ahead of the demon and the angel [and co.] there are four figures whose presence boded no good riding motorbikes down the highway, followed by four more figures who one of the former would shortly collect.

It was all part of the Plan, or so everyone believed.

Hayley knew none of this.

What she did know was that, an hour or so later, all the electricity went out.

While Uncle Vernon swore and Dudley whined about loosing the only decent connection he'd found on the motel television, Hayley sat in the bathroom [as she'd done for the past hour to avoid her relatives] and clutched her knees tighter to her chest.

Something was very, very wrong.

Hayley Potter, witch, had no way of knowing exactly what had gone down that Saturday night when the Dursleys returned to Tadfield Sunday afternoon.

She knew that the rest of Them had done something, but none of them except Adam seemed very sure what had happened, and he wasn't willing to share. From pieced-together details, though, Hayley put together a very odd picture she wasn't sure she believed.

But, well, it did explain a lot, including the man who opened the door of Jasmine cottage.

He blinked in surprise at Hayley. "Er, who are you?"

"I'm Hayley." Hayley replied, trying to push back her nervousness and confusion at why someone had built a fire in the middle of August. "I was lookin' for Anathema. Y'know. The witch who lives here." She had to pronounce the name very carefully, but luckily the man seemed to know who she was talking about.

"Oh, well – Anathema!" He leaned around the door to yell.

"What?" Anathema, when she came to the door, looked pretty in an indescribable sort of way. "Oh, hello. Hayley, wasn't it? You're one of Adam's friends. I didn't see you yesterday."

"I was away," Hayley said.

"Lucky you," The man muttered, and Hayley got the feeling she wasn't meant to hear it.

"So what do you want me for?" Anathema asked, looking amused in the way that adults sometimes do around younger children.

"Well, Adam says you're a witch," Hayley explained, holding out her letter, "So I thought you might be able to help."

The man's smile had faded slightly. Anathema reached out and took the letter, her eyebrows shooting up.

"You'd better come inside."

"There's an entire society of just wizards?" The man - whose name, Hayley had learned, was Newt - was incredulous. "And no one knows about it?"

"Well, they're not really allowed." Anathema said calmly, pouring out three cups of tea and pushing one over to Hayley and Newt each. "It's kept secret from nonmagicals ever since the witch hunts, but Agnes knew about it, so all of us did too. It took a few generations to figure it out, though, until one married into the family and someone finally realized what she meant."

Newt shook his head and looked at Hayley. "So you're a witch, too?"

"I guess so," Hayley replied. "I dint know about it 'til the letter came, an' Uncle Vernon ripped up the first one."

That seemed to shock them both. "Your uncle ripped up your letter?" Anathema asked.

Hayley nodded. "Aunt Petunia an' him don't like stuff like magic even if it's only on the telly. They won't let Dudley watch any of it. He was really mad when they dint buy 'im some videogame 'cos there was wizards in it."

Anathema was frowning. "Hayley," She said carefully, "Are your aunt and uncle often mean to you?"

"Not really anymore, 'cos they don't like Adam an' Aunt Petunia always lets me go out if he asks." For some reason, that made Newt and Anathema look at each other meaningfully, probably because they'd been there too for whatever had happened yesterday. It seemed like everyone else had been involved.

"What about before Adam?" Anathema pressed, and Hayley glanced down and fiddled with the hem of her shirt while she tried to think of an answer that wouldn't sound bad.

That, apparently, in of itself was bad enough for Anathema.

"Newt," She said in a very tight voice, "Stay here with Hayley. I'm going over to have a talk with her aunt and uncle."

"Oh. Alright." Newt watched with a strange sort of panicky look as Anathema strode out and slammed the door behind her. Hayley looked at him.

"Is she mad?" She asked quietly.

Newt looked at her, and something in his expression softened. "Not at you, Hayley. We'll just - er - sit tight and wait for her to get back. Would you like some more of this tea?"

When Anathema came back, she was holding a box of children's things. Mostly worn, oversized clothes.

Newt regarded it with surprise. "You took awhile," he said, not accusingly. "It's late. I let her sleep on the sofa, since she seemed rather tired."

"That's fine," Anathema said, still looking steaming mad. "She's not going back there, anyway."

"What?"

Anathema slammed the box down on the table and yanked out some of the clothes. "Look at this," She hissed. "It's her cousin's clothes. That's all they gave her. And the only thing resembling toys I could find were a few broken army models and a used paint set with no paper in sight."

Newt swallowed, glancing over at the girl on the sofa. "She seems alright."

Anathema snorted. "She's probably just good at faking it. God, from what I could tell when I confronted the aunt over it, we're lucky she got fed well enough day to day. Apparently they used to make her do the cooking."

"Used to?"

"From what I can tell, they started treating her a lot nicer when they moved to Tadfield."

Adam hung between them silently. Anathema continued once the pause for the name had moved on. "In fact," Her voice was practically a hiss. "They started treating her so well that they gave her her own bedroom."

Pause.

"No," Newt said, hung on the edge of disbelief that no one could be that mean to a child. "You're not-"

"She's staying here."

Newt didn't argue. If he'd been braver, he might have been tempted to go over to the Dursley's as well and yell just as much as Anathema had.

Hayley, being asleep, had no idea how much her life had just changed.