Chapter I: Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

I'm not sure where to begin. I've never had a diary before, though I have read many diaries of famous and infamous people. I suppose I could tell you my name. It's Harriet. Just Harriet. I'm an orphan and as Ms. Bridgehart has told me many times my last name was lost when I was introduced to the system, and nobody bothered to give me a new one. I'm sad to say that I don't even remember it, which is terrible because of how far back in my life I can distinctly remember. The Sisters at my last orphanage called me irregular. Of course, there have been many names. Freak. Monster. Demon. Irregular was the least derogative of them. I'm not sure why I feel the need to write down my past. It feels more like a personal pity party and I promised myself when I was seven I would never look back and wish I saw something else. I promised myself I would deal with it as I always had.

Still, I feel the need to put my feelings in writing since I hardly display them in public. I admit that I'm the quiet, dark-haired weird girl in the corner, never wanting to talk to others. I'm done with socializing. It's never brought anything good to me, and I find that I just prefer my lonesome privacy. But this is now. I have a lot of emotions to make up for in my past. Let me begin there.

My earliest memory is from when I was three. I have such a distinct memory of this time. It left a scar in my memory. I remember that I had a family. We weren't close, so they couldn't be my parent… I hope. They had left me outside in the backyard because I was being fussy at dinner and wouldn't eat my mashed turnips. I remember the moon being bright and full that night. The night was warm and I laid on my back looking at it. It entranced me. Suddenly, a howl broke through the night. A beast threw himself over the fence. Not quite wolf, not quite human. He was a fearsome beast, tight with quivering muscles and heaving chest. His eyes were wild yet were recognizing everything around. He sniffed me, turning me over with his snout once. I giggled. I was a child and I thought he was playing with me. I raised my hand to pat his snout and that is when he bit me. It wasn't deep or life threatening, but it made me cry out in pain. The man-wolf recoiled and jumped over the fence again. But before he left, he looked back at me once more, staring me straight in the eyes. I heard a voice in my head…or not really a voice. Just a thought, but still, it left an impression. I remember his eyes staring into mine and the foreign thought coming to me in that instant: You will see me again. When they shun you and throw you out, you will seek me, Fenrir Greyback. I will take care of you then.

That memory stays. I always feel as if I could, anytime I really wanted to, just focus on that name and be led to that man again. I say man because I realize it was a werewolf that bit me as a toddler. And yes, the legends are true: those who are bitten by werewolves on the full moon become werewolves themselves. By all rights, I am all of those names I have always been called. However, I am not like the rest, and I will prove it to the world.

My next real memory came a month later, the next full moon. It is a distinctly painful memory. I remember the breaking of my bones as they changed shape and purpose and the lengthening of my nose and mouth into a snout, my hands into claws, and my legs and feet into powerful appendages that could 

take me far – for both running and jumping. But it was painful in many other ways. That was the night that I first murdered, stole a life from another.

I remember my humanity – my entity, my being, my soul that made me Harriet –being sucked into my mind, forced down by a suddenly more powerful creature. It was the wolf inside of me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can still feel his touch, a touch that burned, pushing my soul back. I was forced to wander through my own mind, unable to get out.

My mind took on the appearance of a field of wildflowers surrounded by a forest. Each wildflower held a memory in its center, but together they formed a blanket of sparkling flowers in a meadow that rolled like the ocean in the breeze I deemed belonged there. The forest was coated in a dark mist and I knew instinctively that it was evil. I dared not to approach it. I knew that was where the wolf inside of me resided when he was not the forceful personality. The sky of my mind is what scared and fascinated me the most. It was like a giant projector of the outside world. I watched myself kill my own family in that pseudo-sky.

I woke up the next morning on the back streets of London. An elderly couple eagerly took me into their home. At first they thought I was a boy. I had always worn boys' clothes at my family's house. I seem to remember that they were hand-me-downs, but I do not remember who would have handed them down. The elderly couple – I do not remember their names – took me in, washed me, dressed me in girls' clothes, brushed my hair, and found my scar.

My scar --, a singular defining feature on my person. It was such a hideous little thing, right on my forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt that always looked as if had just been carved with the tip of a knife but didn't bleed. I had always had it and loved it. But apparently, it was a blemish. It stood out more than the bite mark on my arm from the werewolf. I was taught by that elderly couple how to use concealer to cover it. It was also that elderly couple that cut my hair for the first time – a very fitting style with a swoop of bangs that covered my "blemish" even further. I've kept that style even now, though my hair is much longer now and the haircut is actually in style.

I stayed with that elderly couple for a month. The next full moon, I watched myself kill them.

I must have cared more for that elderly couple than my own family because the feeling of regret still burns in my soul. They gave me so much, even if it seemed like so little. This terrible event had positive results too however. I started understanding my…furry little problem as I began calling it in my own mind. I could start feeling the stages of the moon. I knew when the full moon was coming like an extra sense. That was not the only thing I gained from my parasite wolf. Increased hearing, smell, and strength came along with it, along with speedy healing, a silver allergy, and a want to chase fast-moving objects. I can fortunately control the last of these.

After I killed the elderly couple, I remember waking up in what I would later recognize as the London Underground. A constable woke me, figured I was a street urchin , and brought me to an orphanage. I suppose this is where I truly lost my last name, because I only knew my first name was Harriet. I didn't 

know the rest, so I was re-filed into the British system as Harriet. To this day, I still doubt this is legal, but tell that to the strict woman from the convent orphanage in which I was placed.

The next full moon, I escaped the city to transform and didn't kill anyone. I woke up in a dell, hungry and tired. I made my way back to the convent. This is where the names began, though these were from kids. Freak was their name for me.

I remember one incident in particular. A snake had gotten into the room ten of us slept in and slithered behind one of the dressers. The other girls that stayed in that room screamed and went to get the boys, but I was different, as always. I felt no fear. Rather, I felt myself drawn to this snake. I got down on my hands and knees beside the dresser as some of the girls yelled for me to get back, but I tuned them out. I was listening to the snake hissing, or at least that was what I thought. But as I listened closer, it wasn't hissing at all, but words.

"Soo cold…," it was saying, "The floor is so cold."

I'm still not exactly sure what made me talk back, but I did. I asked it if it would prefer to crawl on my arm where there was warmth.

The hisses immediately stopped and the snake raised its head to look me in the eyes.

"How peculiar…" I remember it saying. "A little human cub that can speak like a snake. I like you and will take you up on your offer. Do not be afraid. I will never hurt a being that can speak our language unless that being hurt me first."

A nodded, a little unsure of what I was doing or why I was doing it. I held out my arm and the snake slithered up it, coiling around my lower arm.

"Much better," it hissed in its sibilant voice.

It was about that time that the boys got there with the rest of the girls. They saw me standing there with a snake coiled around my hand. They said that when I asked them what they were doing, no words came out, rather only hisses and spitting.

After that, the orphanage became a bad place for me. Between slipping out on the nights of the full moon, the teasing of the children, and the adoptive families that tried to take me in, my life was full of chaos.

Another memory comes to mind. It was the last time I ever felt helpless in this world. I was the day I truly realized how different I was from everyone around me. The snake that I had previously rescued from the cold became a pet of sorts. She stayed on my arm most of the time except for the night of the full moon. It was on that night that the boys snuck in and stole her from my bed. They grabbed her in an old cloth bag and stuck her in the kitchen freezer.

I found my way back mid-morning to find her gone. I asked the girls, but they wouldn't look at me. They had always been afraid of me. One of the girls, one of the meaner ones told me I should ask the boys.

The boys laughed when I asked, like it was some big joke. They told me I had a package waiting for me in the freezer. I knew what to expect already, but that didn't stop me from getting angry when I found her little black body frozen rigid. She was dead. My only friend was dead. The boys broke out laughing again at the tears in my eyes.

"You think this is funny?" I asked them. Their snickers continued. "Do you think murder is something to laugh about?"

The boys' smiles dimmed a bit, but they grew bolder in each other's presence. A big guy, already 15 years old, named Todd became their spokesperson. "It's just a snake. And you don't need to be worrying about that little thing. You should be more worried about what we're going to do to you." He cracked his knuckles like any school-yard bully.

"I'm not afraid of you," I told them calmly. And I wasn't. I could feel the power within me, coiling around me just like my snake used too, only much more and all around my body. It was waiting to do whatever I asked it to. I knew all I had to do was concentrate on what I wanted.

The boys at the orphanage had no regrets about beating up a little girl. The first one to touch me was thrown back with a great shock that sent visible energy through the air in a flash of light. The rest backed away. I was weirder than they thought.

"You such a freak!" Todd yelled at me. "No one will ever want you!"

I fear he was right.

That was the last time I saw Todd. I was sent to another orphanage across the city. By this time I was seven, but I was treated the same way there, and the name "cursed", or unlucky, became attached to my name, for good reason. Four families had tried to adopt me between the ages four and six. They all died the same terrible fate. Killed by wild dogs that had somehow gotten into the house, or at least that is what the police report said. I witnessed my werewolf-self killing them. The new families kept a closer watch on me and I was not able to sneak out of the city to transform. I regret their deaths as well and I decided to overcome my own evil.

But in the new orphanage, I was Harriet the Cursed Girl. Everyone around me died. Therefore, the new orphanage tried to keep me away from everyone, even advising families not to adopt me. They even gave me my own little room, barely bigger than a closet with just a bed and wardrobe, but it had a window, a hexagonal thing that looked down on the street in front of the orphanage. The only thing I liked about this orphanage is that it was right down the street from a library. Here, I was able to escape the torment and everything bad in my life behind the pages of books. My favorite, by far, were in the fantasy section. I fit in there. I didn't start out reading very well. I had to start small, but the more I read the more I understood. The more I read, the better I got. I finished the fantasy section by the time I was eight. The rest of the library came under my sights. I went through the mystery section next. By nine(or what the state called nine, since I didn't know my birthday. They called my found date my 

birthday. At least I knew how old I was, even if I could only stick up the appropriate amount of fingers) I was halfway through the biographies section.

It was about this time that I was adopted again. But I've gotten ahead of myself already. I've left out a major event in my life, the event that made me unlike every other werewolf in the world. I tamed the beast.

After I fought with the boys, I could always feel my power. It was always right beneath my skin, like a pleasant warm tingling sensation. All I had to do was concentrate on what I wanted it to do, and it would make it happen. At first, this took time, but soon it became second nature, like an extra limb. A thought and it happened. It was wonderful and thrilling.

I fought the wolf for control on the next full moon. I didn't win that time, but the next time I did, and the time after that it was easier, and the month after that I defeated him for good, imprisoning him within my own mind. He had to stay in his forest for good. No longer could he gain the power of the full moon. I captured that and saved it for myself. My skin crackles with energy on the full moon. So much energy. The power made me high and sent me into giggling fits in one moment and fits of rage in the next. I learned to transfer this energy into stones, which seem to hold the power, transforming the average gravel into transparent black crystal. I keep them on a bracelet, adding one each month. I've made earrings too, two for each ear, and I'm going to start a necklace next. I haven't found a purpose for them yet, but I can feel the energy in each stone as it rests against my skin.

But back to what I was saying before, at the age of nine, someone tried to adopt me again. It was a middle aged man. Usually they want give children to single parents, but the man seemed sincere and had the rest of the qualifications and no one else wanted me, so what was the harm?

He had a house on the outskirts of London. He told me he was lonely and wanted some company. I helped him with the chores and cooked for us both because he didn't know how. It wasn't a bad place, but I did miss my library down the road. He had books too, but they were on chemistry, something I couldn't learn on my own from his advanced books. A worker from the orphanage checked in on me a month later to see if I had settled down. The next month is when he started to be strange. He liked to play with my hair and touch my hand, sometimes my arm. The looks he gave me sent chills down my spine, and not the good kind. I began to avoid him, but I couldn't always. I was cooking supper when he came up behind me, pinning my arms to my sides. He kissed the back of my neck. My reading in the library was not censored. I had read about things like this. When his hands started trying to undo my pants, I knew that he was trying to rape me. My magic came to my bidding and blasted him away from me. He yelled at me. I do not remember what. I was so caught up in anger at the situation I had found myself in. The only person who wanted me was a man who just wanted to rape me! I let my wolf out, transforming into a werewolf. Strangely, I was able to keep my mind, probably because I had locked the wolf's away. I tore that despicable man apart. I was so angry. Strangely, my anger was not placated by this action… I became even angrier...this time at myself. It was my first real murder, a murder I allowed to happen even though I could've easily stopped it.

I transformed back into my human form and walked back to the orphanage over night. When I showed up on the steps, no one said anything, but they all guessed. My curse had struck again. I slept that day and night restlessly, but the next morning I was back in the library.

I read everything in that library. It was a personal goal, something to keep me looking forward to the next day. I hardly slept and barely ate. That library was my lifeline in a world that otherwise was swallowed by a stormy ocean. Behind those pages, I felt normal.

I woke the day of my eleventh birthday later than normal. I got dressed in my frayed clothes and looked out at the dreary morning. There was a strange man out that morning. He was dressed in a pale blue suit with a starry blue tie. He wore flip flops on his feet. Above his fashion, the man himself was strange. He had long white hair and an equally long white beard, and I could see the twinkle off of half-moon glasses, so different from my own full-circle rims. He was walking towards the entrance of the orphanage. I didn't care. I knew he wasn't going to adopt me already. I snuck out and headed to the library down the street. I had already read the books there, but I liked to reread my favorites.

A half-hour into my reading and I was interrupted by the same strange man. I felt him as he approached upon my little private reading space. I glared at him suspiciously. He smiled at me. I could now take in his twinkling blue eyes. He was such a grandfatherly figure. I wondered briefly on how old he was.

"Harriet?" he asked with a quality of happiness in his voice I could never reach. I nodded. He took a seat across from me on the other side of my reading table. "My name is Professor Dumbledore. I am the Headmaster of a school that I think you'll find you'll like very much. Would you like to hear more about it?"

I was already thinking that this was some kind of quack that was here to ship me off to a hospital to fix me. I didn't answer. It seemed it didn't matter to this Dumbledore-figure.

"Harriet, my girl, I am the Headmaster to Hogwarts, school of witchcraft and wizardy."

I just blinked once at him. Was he trying to trick me into going into a crazy-person hosipital?

"I can see you don't believe me. But before you tune me out, I want you to think about your life. Has anything peculiar, strange, or magical ever happened when you were angry or upset?" My eyes must have grown larger because he looked happier. "That is called magic, and you, Harriet, are a witch."

We sat in silence as I comprehended everything. A witch? That is what my freakishness was called? Should I believe him? I could smell no lie on his person with my enhanced smell, but it was still too much to believe of this man.

"Prove it," I told the man. There was some sliver of sad recognition in this man's eyes at those words, nevertheless, he took a look around to make sure no one was watching before flicking his wand. The piles of books on the desk flew off and sorted themselves onto their shelves.

"What is that, sir?" I asked, gesturing to his wand. "What is it for?"

"This is my wand. You will get one very soon. It focuses magical energy so that a witch or wizard can use spells."

"Does everyone need one? I mean, couldn't there be someone who could focus their magic already and not need it?" I asked. Dumbledore measured me with his eyes.

"Someone like that has not been seen in centuries, Harriet. Why do you ask?" he inquired.

I saw no point in telling him. I liked my secrets. "No reason, sir. I was just curious."

He nodded, still eyeing me like he had seen a ghost in me. "So, Harriet, will you come to Hogwarts? Semester starts in a month on September 1, and you must still go shopping for your school supplies."

"Sir, I do not have any money for shopping," I said looking down, ashamed.

"Hogwarts has a fund for orphans. You may have to buy some of your clothes and books second-hand, but you will have enough to get everything. I can take you to wizarding London today if you want me too."

"No thanks, sir." I said, picking a book about Merlin off the shelf to reread. "I would prefer it much better if you could just tell me how to get there."

The gleam of remembrance was back in his blue eyes, but he gave me the directions to the Leaky Cauldron anyway. I couldn't help but wonder who I reminded him of.

"One more question, sir," I asked before he left. "Does Hogwarts have a library?"

He smiled, "One four times the size of this one."

And for the first time in many, many years, I smiled too. No matter how bad Hogwarts could be, I could always still have my hiding place again. I already felt as if I could be safe at Hogwarts.

"Thank you, sir."

That was three days ago, Diary. A day a go, I bought you. You were in a store of questionable objects, even a person new to the wizarding world could tell that. I came to find a fake wand, which I found later at a joke shop: I wanted to keep up the appearance of working magic like everyone else, even if I really didn't even need to wave a wand, or as I found out later, say a spell. However, you, Diary, were my first gift, given by me to me. I used the money left over from buying the fake wand (a lot less expensive than buying a real wand) and purchased you and two other used books: Hogwarts: A History, and Advanced Spell Theory by Little Biggleton.

I've read half-way through the first, but I'll save the second for a little later. I think I'll understand it better with a little schooling. I'm excited for once in my life and so nervous too. In a little less than a month, I'll be going to school for the first time in my life. I think that is where I'll leave you tonight, Diary. As always, there's much reading to do.

Harriet put down her ballpoint pen and was about ready to close the book, but even as she watched, her many pages of text faded into the paper and were soon replaced by another text, this text not in her handwriting.

Dear Harriet,

You may call me Tom Riddle. We have a lot in common. Let me tell you my story…