there is humour to be found here - sipping champagne from a slender glass, stood next to her date, a muggle, in the very same house she once met to discuss killing them. but heather can’t bring herself to find it, past the clenched teeth and tremoring hands. not once, since she left hogwarts, has she been back to this manor. what changed ? she isn’t alone. merlin knows without someone ( a distraction ) there would be no christmas masquerade for heather pettigrew. “ thank you again for coming with me to this... ” her eyes dance across the room - elaborate décor, masked figures and a flash of flowing blonde ( mr. malfoy perhaps ? ) - before settling on the man beside her. “ event. especially with, um, recent - well, your mother, y’know ” she smiles cringes awkwardly, already cursing herself for even bringing it up ( stupid, stupid, stupid ). “ i know we aren’t close friends or anything but, i mean, uh, what i’m saying is if you need to talk or something, i’m here ”
“and what would your definition of fun be, miss pettigrew?” she wasn’t asking for trouble : out of respect, she kept her voice to a conversational but somewhat lower-than-need-be volume, having considered how emotionally charged the surname ‘pettigrew’ could be in the current day and age. martyr turned traitor, narcissa was willing to wager that being the offspring of wormtail put a certain kind of taint on an individual that surpassed that of even a MALFOY. she knew how she felt about him, but perhaps it was a testament to her character that she didn’t have as much opinion on the girl before her - their days of sharing her manor were over, and they had all had to be SOMEONE else. if anything, she was just curious to know who that ‘someone else’ was when it came to the other. “perhaps i’ve gotten old, and a tie isn’t a worthy gift for my husband at all. i’m open to suggestion.”
heather knew the formalities were expected, a social convention she shouldn’t have expected the malfoy matriach to shirk, but who could blame her for the way her shoulders tensed, smile tightened ? what’s in a name ? “please, call me heather”. not that narcissa probably wanted to be on first name basis with her, but it wasn’t really a request, more of a plea she’d never admit to. “not at all, i mean, i’m sure you know your husband more than i do, i won’t pretend otherwise” what’s in a name ? lucius malfoy - shadowy, snaking robes, seats filled with silver masks, trademark malfoy locks ( distinctively mr. malfoy ). heather swallowed the memories in her throat, banishing them with a smirk. “merlin, he could do with a hair tye” the light in her eyes softened her dry comment, but it couldn’t loosen the coil of anxiety in her chest. it was a joke. she just told narcissa malfoy a joke about her husband. who was coming back from azkaban. the rest of heather’s line tumbled out before she could stop it. "some golden clip seems suitably.... THEATRICAL"
𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚛 : open !
𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 : diagon alley .
𝚍𝚊𝚝𝚎 : december 10th .
jaw a bitter line & december rain blooming icy and dispiriting through denim , hermione cuts a desperate figure ; pale and drawn , she’ll 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒖𝒆 pressing flyers into the hands of anyone who dares to glance her way , brows a pinched line / 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 , there’s a familiar ache in the pit of her gut : the bruised sky , heavy with clouds , feels something like foreshadowing , like there’s a storm beyond comprehension just 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 on the horizon . gust of glacial wind will send a full - body shiver through a wavering frame ( side effect of another figure gliding past ) . like a broken record , 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝗋𝗒 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖿𝖾𝖺𝗋 colouring her tone : “ have you seen this wizard ? ”
the flyer pinned to her chest is a point of momentary warmth that drags heather out of the cold depths of her thoughts and to the witch in front of her, recognisable even through the desolation, the desperation painted across her every move. hands reach up to clutch at the crumpled slip of paper and heather tears her eyes away from hermione granger in front of her, to slide across the picture printed on the flyer. he is vaguely familiar in the way all weasleys are, red hair against pale skin. “sorry-” lips forming around an apology before she can even realise why, heather holds the flyer tighter before looking up again. “i... i can’t say i have seen him, hermione.” the word missing flashes across her mind as her instincts kick in. “when was he last seen and where? i’m assuming the aurors are on this, but frankly, they’re a useless lot”
first, she cleared her throat with the sort of cough that would inspire ptsd in anyone that remembered a certain pink clad professor. then, she raised her voice by a handful of octaves. “tell me-” shopkeep or fellow customer, it didn’t matter : narcissa’s air was of a woman who had never been denied anything in life, and what she required NOW was an opinion. only once she was happy she had someone’s attentive eyes on her did she hold up one tie after the other, the first a sleek black & silver, the second an expensive looking emerald & black. “which one do you think makes a better ‘welcome home’ gift?”
at the sound of a cough, heather’s head snapped to attention, before remembering this wasn’t her store and she wasn’t responsible for customers. she was tempted to simply walk away, but the familiar voice of one narcissa malfoy peaked her interest. heather turned around fully now, shoving her hands in her blazer pockets. “i can’t say i know shit about ties, but surely there’s something a little more... i don’t know, fun you could get? is this for mr. malfoy?” her face remained largely impassive, struggling to separate the memories of dark hallways from the larger-than-life woman standing before her now. “i mean, if you have to get one, the green stripey one is my personal favourite”
“ the thing about HALLOWEEN is - “ the pile of parchment he was holding thudded down onto the wooden table muffling the end of his sentence which was something about how he still had to do invoices on his day off, “ i used to dress up as a wizard when i was little, y’know, before i knew i actually was one that is - but also a police officer, a fireman, i think i was a pot plant one year, aren’t the costumes meant to be scary ? “ a grin graced his face, which wasn’t uncommon, his face didn’t suit anything else.
THE LOUD THUMP next to heather almost had her flinching. almost. her eyes flicked to her new company. the easy grin dancing across his face had heather’s shoulders relaxing. “all your costumes sounds far better than mine ever were” she leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms above her before resting them back on the table. “i distinctly remember raiding my mothers closet to dress up as an adult. so, i’d say my costume was actually quite scary anyways” heather returned his smile with a small smirk of her own. no need to mention that mother dearest never had any spare money for costumes and was often too far gone to even notice the missing clothes. past experience told her it tended to kill a conversation. “why, what would you dress up as now if you wanted to be really terrifying? and don’t say you-know-who, that’s a cop out”
oliver allowed his eyebrows to furrow together as his eyes practically bore holes into the page in front of him, he’d read the page once, and then he’d read it again, and just to be safe he’d read it another time. it wasn’t exactly a complicated book, but he wanted to make sure he got every thing right, stopping short of taking his own notes. that didn’t stop him from twirling a pencil between his fingers, just in case he wanted to jot something down.
he didn’t have the opportunity to write anything down, however, as he was soon joined by a girl. eyebrows furrowed together, he lifted his head to look at his companion. he recognized the girl, but he couldn’t place her. however, certain that he would soon enough he allowed a smile to appear across his face as he pulled his book closer. “not at all,” he assured her with a grin, “if you don’t mind me asking- what made you chose this table?” he asked, hoping to gauge why she chose to sit with him.
heather didn’t quite know how to feel about the obvious lack of recognition she was receiving - after all, it’s not like she remembered his name either. she tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear as her eyes swept pointedly around the room. “well, i’m not sure if you noticed but this was practically the only seat available. i wasn’t too keen on takeway this morning” heather deadpanned, composure broken by a small yawn before she glanced back at the man across from her.
“i gather you don’t remember me.” it was a statement, not a question, spoken with an air of curiosity as heather looked him up at down. “don’t worry, i can’t seem to recall your name either, so shall we just start afresh?” she took a breath in before holding her hand out across the table with the slightest smile. “heather. you may, or may not, remember me from events such as those that took place in that small bar off diagon alley two weeks ago and, well, everything after. you are?”
“Well, that was wild,” said Kodi as she exited the Ministry alongside Heather., that private investigator that she just couldn’t seem to be able to shake. She hadn’t actually meant to leave with her–they weren’t so much the side-by-side types, even if they managed to run into each other on case after case. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” she deadpanned.
Stowing her wand, she tucked her hands into her pockets and stopped on the corner of the street. Kodi studied her for a moment and was about to say something halfway complimentary to the effect of, well, I guess maybe you’re not the worst or see you next time I definitely wish I wasn’t seeing you. Heavy internal debate between them. That was, until she saw the blood on her arm.
“Whoa! Did that bastard get you?” she asked, grabbing for Heather’s arm. Her other hand was already diving for the little vial of Essence of Dittany she kept in her shoulder-bag. Felt like a good thing to have around, as someone whose shtick–not her whole shtick, now, she was many things, not just a vampire–was biting into people. “I’ve got some Dittany, no need to stand there and bleed all over the place or deal with the headache of Mungo’s,” she said. She wasn’t even giving her a proper chance to respond before she was attempting to shove up her sleeve.
“well, you could just leave my cases alone?” heather tilted her head to look at kodi, her tone just shy of biting. “oh! sorry - forgot you can’t make your own decisions without a warrant” a few weeks ago and those words would have been laced with venom. now, a grudging sense of respect for the auror had crept up on her over the course of their repeated interactions and heather found herself... not hating the other woman. merlin, that was something she’d take to the grave. heather inhaled before turning to face kodi. whatever stale farewell she had brewing on her lips died at the woman’s sudden focus on heather’s perfectly fine (ok maybe slightly sore) arm.
“no - don’t!” heather managed to choke out past the strangling panic that climbed up her throat but her frantic outburst was a fraction too late. her sleeve (long sleeves, always long sleeves) was pushed past her forearm, revealing the cut (it really wasn’t that bad) and more. despite the blood, the stain tattoo dashed across her skin was unmistakable in its appearance. the dark mark.
full. no chairs. full. full again. heather’s eye’s flicked around the cafe, desperately seeking a table for one, somewhere, anywhere. the whirlwind of noise wrapped around her as she lingered in the gap between tables.
“sorry, so sorry-” heather babbled, bending awkwardly to the left as a plate-laden waiter hurried past. her vision locked on the only familiar face in the room, sitting with a spare chair across from him. no. she couldn’t. she didn’t even recall his name! what if he didn’t recognise her? tapping her hand against her leg, she clutched her table number tightly before dropping her shoulders with a sigh. heather picked her way over to the corner in which he was sat.
“mind if i sit?” without waiting for a response, she dropped into the seat across from him, sliding her number into the middle of the table.
the ministry gala had so far been equal parts interesting and exhausting; a gathering of individuals heather had a tendency to steer clear of, if not out of genuine dislike than to avoid the inevitable awkwardness of an interaction. talks tonight had (luckily) been bland civil, but it had come to a point where the general niceties she received were making her jaw clench. it was time for a temporary and tactical retreat. down a long corridor, full of some back-end offices, through the second door on the left and-
straight into whichever unfortunate soul was seeking silence in the room she wanted to do the very same thing in. at least, that’s what heather assumed they were doing. it was far too low-level a section of the ministry for any meaningful crimes or such.
“watch it!” heather spat out an almost automated response before her brain caught up with her mouth. “i mean- i’m sorry, i shouldn’t have- well i was the one who ran into you so you don’t need to say-” she paused, took a breath. “are you okay?”
living situation: lives alone | lives with parent(s) / guardian | lives with significant other | lives with a friend | lives with sibling | lives with roommate | drifter | homeless | other
done before: had alcohol | smoked | stolen | done drugs | self-harmed | starved | had sex | had a threesome | had a one-night stand | gotten into a fist fight | gone to hospital | gone to jail | used a fake ID | played hooky | gone to a rave | killed someone | had someone try to kill them
⧼ saoirse ronan, cis female, she/her / kitchen fork by jack conte + & once you were the wildfire, eager to devour, leaping from branch to bush, but then the rainstorm came and now, now you are the cold, abandoned hearth, empty flames snapping at those who get to close, afraid they’ll realise what isn’t there, & the click of the door as it shuts behind you is the only greeting you receive as you wonder how anyone ever knows what to call “home”, & as you sit in your old patchwork armchair, perpetually cold fingers clutched too tightly around a slightly chipped mug of tea you can’t help but think maybe only you are the answer to the question you have been asking your whole life – where do I belong? ⧽ ━━ hey, isn’t that HEATHER PETTIGREW? i read a daily prophet article on them, once ; the TWENTY THREE year old half blood WITCH is a SLYTHERIN alumnus who has gone on to be a PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR AND PART-TIME FLOURISH AND BLOTTS ASSISTANT. i’ve heard they can be quite INGENIOUS & PUNCTILIOUS, but i don’t know… they came off very CALLOUS & MERCURIAL in that interview. it really is hard to know what to believe these days though, isn’t it?
[ PERSONALITY ]
heather is not a very open person. she tends to keep to herself and hold everyone at an arms length
to anyone who knew her at hogwarts - this is a complete switch around from how she acted back then. she used to be loud and in your face, refusing to be ignored
if heather has retained one trait from her childhood it is her penchant for unintentional cruelty. her distancing can come off as cold and her social self-defense mechanism tends to aim at hurting others before they can hurt her
speaking of a social self-defense system, heather, despite outward appearances, has a tendency to snap without warning when under emotional duress or when others try to get closer than she wants them too. a proximity alarm if you will
but if you manage to make it past this, you will find heather is actually very clingy and a very loyal friend (almost gryffindor-ish)
she loves puzzles and solving problems (hence, private investigator) and strives to become extremely successful at her investigation job but people do tend to think twice before hiring her (being a pettigrew and ex-death eater and all)
books! reading is one of her favourite pastimes and that has nothing to do with the sense of relief escaping into a fictional world brings
the friend you can sit in companionable silence with but also the friend who will talk to you for hours about an obscure concept she stumbled across and also the friend who will whisper slightly mean jokes in your ear so you laugh and get all the weird looks while she escapes unscathed
doesn’t buy into the blood purity bullshit and if she’s being honest with herself, she never did
crippling fear of abandonment / never finding a place to “belong”
tl;dr: not coping with what happened during the war
[ THE LOVERS ]
The year was 1996 and Peter Pettigrew was a traitor, a cheat and a liar. In the midst of the first wizarding world war, he had betrayed his friends and switched sides. He would eventually go on to be the catalyst for the death of countless friends of his, the orphaning of a child and the rebirth of the dark lord, however, in the moment such misdeeds were merely shadows of the future.Right now in fact, Peter was simply at a bar. A muggle bar. Talking to a muggle girl. And her name was Angela Coates.
And such is the story of how Heather’s parents met. It was never a relationship,per say, more of a friends-with-benefits, minus the “friends” part. For Peter,this was a break from the wizarding world and its war, and it posed no risk of awkward questions concerning allegiance. For Angela, it was a way to blow off some steam. No strings and certainly no commitments. That is, until January of 1997 and Angela found herself knocking on Peter’s door with, sick to her stomach with nerves. The door opened and after a relatively quick argument, it shut again. Peter had made it clear – he didn’t want a child and he refused to play any part in the baby’s life. Angela was all of 20 years old, single and pregnant.
[ THE EMPRESS ]
TW – MENTIONS OF DRUGS, AND ALLUDES TO NEGLECT
On the 27th of October of that very year, Heather Debbie Pettigrew was born.Heather because Angela had read the name in a magazine and like the sound ofit, Debbie after the lead singer of Blondie, Angela’s favourite band and Pettigrew because Angela thought in some odd way this was making Heather a part of Peter’s life, something he clearly didn’t want. A revenge move that only ever served to hurt Heather, but Angela was not to know this.
Circumstances aside, Angela was not cut out to be a mother. She was the quintessential twenty-year-old, living life hard and fast and Heather was an unexpected speed bump that didn’t do much to slow her down.As soon as Heather was old enough, she was sent off to daycare, while her mother worked full-time to put money in the bank and the pockets of local drug dealers. Angela wasn’t entirely incompetent. She knew to keep most of her illicit activities hidden from her child (as far as Angela knew, Heather had no idea – Heather would tell you otherwise). The longest time Heather would spend with her mother was while sat on the couch watching television, her mother out cold beside her. Desperate for the attention of others, Heather was by no means a well-behaved child. This, combined with the assortment of strange incidents and accidents that Heather seemed to get herself into that had no plausible explanation was too much for Angela. When Heather was eight years old, Angela realised she couldn’t keep living the life she was living and care for Heather. And so Heather was dropped on the steps of a foster home, with a note that gave a few details about her and she never saw Angela again.
TWOVER
[ THE MAGICIAN ]
By the time Heather joined her first foster family, she had long since accepted that Mummy didn’t want her and, despite what she had said – she wasn’t coming back. The adults had told her that she didn’t need to lash out all the time and that she should try sit quite, behave properly, but none of them understood. When she said she didn’t know how Emilia’s doll had ended up in pieces, she meant she hadn’t even touched it! Heather tried to fit in with these people, she really did, but this was a muggle family fostering a magical child. After a particular incident involving a broken window and a trip to the hospital (magic was, ironically,not involved in this), the family decided that Heather just wasn’t for them. Feelingl eft behind once more, Heather was quickly matched with another couple eager to foster. But the branch had already been burnt and she was not to be reaching out to these people any time soon. A welcome reprieve soon came in the form of a lady wearing robes and a pointy hat knocking on the doorof the couple’s flat in Birmingham. The explanation for previously unexplainable scenarios calmed the couple considerably and Heather felt a small flame of hope spark in her chest. A magical world? It all made sense now. Of course, she didn’t belong here, she was a witch.
Heather’s first step into Diagon Alley will forever hold a place in her most cherished memories. The sounds, the sights,the smells – everything felt right. She was whisked through the usual first year trip around stores, buying robes and cauldrons and books and a wand! Hogwarts couldn’t come quick enough. And the sorting ceremony? It all sounded fascinating. Personally, Heather was hoping for Ravenclaw, but she knew not to have any solid expectations.
Which was lucky, for although the hat certainly considered the blue and the bronze, in the end it decided that silver and green would suit Miss Heather more. A choice that Heather would later come to question. For in Slytherin house Heather came face to face with her first taste of blood purity. And she didn’t like it one bit. Who were these older students, to question her “blood status”? And how was she to know? Determined to uncover any knowledge of her family, Heather poured over the student records in the library until – there. Peter Pettigrew, graduated 1978. It fit! Heather was more than a little relieved. At least one magical parent. She had been worried she would be one of those, what did that older boy call them? Oh yes, mudbloods.
But the discovery of her father’s name opened another can of worms – where was he? Ever the independent child, Heather was determined to find out on her own. And she did, stumbling upon an old article in the Daily Prophet. He was dead. Murdered. By his own best friend. She truly had no proper family left ( her mother stopped counting long ago). Hogwarts,while a chance to be in the world she belonged to, did not help build a strong relationship with her foster family. Heather rarely saw them, choosing to spend her days in summer exploring wizarding London or, when she was older, spending the nights with the muggle teenagers who partied too loudly down the street.Home was simply a stop-over. She belonged at Hogwarts now.
In her second year, Sirius Black, notorious mass murderer and the man who killed her father escaped from Azkaban. Heather was terrified. And angry. But mostly terrified. She hated that man, hated seeing his stupid face in the Daily Prophet,hated hearing his awful name whispered in the halls. How dare he rip the only family member who would have loved her away from her, how dare he rob her of the chance of a proper home? For surely, if her father had survived that horrific attack, he would have raised her, her would have taken her in. Instead,she was left alone and Black now roamed free, free after escaping Azkaban and free after slipping through the ministry’s fingers once more.
And the very next year, Cedric died. It was the first of many darker stains on Heather’s memories of Hogwarts. Despite what the Ministry said, what everyone seemed to say, she could sense a tense current winding its way through the halls of her school. Voldemort or not, something dark had returned from that graveyard.
[ THE EMPEROR ]
Heather was 16 years old when she discovered her father was in fact, alive. Standing in the Slytherin common room at the start of her fifth year, the murmured conversation of two older students reaching her ears. Heather was 16 years old when she discovered her father was alive and he was a Death Eater. The force of such a revelation left Heather reeling. She couldn’t pay attention in class, she couldn’t finish her meals, she couldn’t sleep. He had been alive this entire time. Did he not wan- no.No of course he would have wanted her he, he just must not have known! Yes, he was unaware of Heathers existence and it would be up to her to go to him. Heather grabbed all her doubts and questions about her father’s secret (lie?) and shoved into a deep, dark corner of her mind where she could hopefully ignore them. She had a purpose now. She needed to see her father. And to do that – she would join the Death Eaters. The stories Heather spun to convince herself were many and varied. This was a chance to belong to something bigger than just Hogwarts, she needed to pick the right side in this war anyway, this would keep her safe. But above all – this would make her father proud. Never mind the bitter weight in her chest that burned with something suspiciously like guilt, never mind the whisper-quite voice in the back of her mind that pleaded with her to do better, be better. This was the right choice. (Spoiler: it wasn’t).
[ THE TOWER ]
Heather was 17 when she killed a muggle. She was 17, shaking hands barely holding onto her wand at her side as her body went cold along with the one on the floor in front of her. It wasn’t meant to end like this, it had been a simple enough task, capture a muggle for the Dark Lord, something she could, she should have been able to undertake on her winter break. But then he had a knife and objects were being thrown and...and now someone was dead. The mark flared to life, the burning a welcome reprieve from the numbness that had spread from her hand, across her whole body. She was to meet the Dark Lord himself.
Heather was 17 when she first saw her father. The Dark Lord was speaking, addressing those before him but Heather heard none of it. All she could see was that thing, all but crouched at the feet of the man in front of him. He was a starving dog begging for scraps. And he never even looked at her. Not when she entered the room, not when Voldemort started to speak and not when she was called by her name. The world Heather had painstakingly built in her mind, each brick filled with another lie to get her out of bed in the morning, was crashing down around her head. Peter Pettigrew didn’t want her.
Heather was left with nought but the rubble of her life and the mark chaining her to all she hated splashed across her arm. She drifted through her sixth year,hoping and praying for the first time in her life to be left alone. And then came the Battle of Hogwarts.
Watching your school turn into a battleground, watching your peers lie dead in the hallways, watching children fighting for their lives – Heather didn’t feel like a child anymore. She felt like a soldier, reluctantly shoved into a fight she didn’t start. But it was amongst the chaos and the death that Heather could finally attempt at what her conscience had been screaming for her to do. Disguised by rubble and school robes, Heather fired spell after spell at the very Death Eaters she could have been standing beside. And then Voldemort lost.
[ THE PRESENT ]
The war and everything leading up to it doused the fire that used to roar in Heather’s chest. She was pardoned, for fighting for the “right side”, (and no one ever knew about the muggle) but it doesn’t feel like it. Some days it feels like she is hated more for her last name than the dark mark on her arm, especially after the truth about Sirius Black came to light. She feels torn in two - on one hand it feels like a worthy punishment for her misdeeds, on the other - she just wants to live her life and she can assure you no one hates Peter Pettigrew more than she does. But Heather is tired of fighting. So she simply does whatever job someone will hire a PI with two social strikes against their name for and she works part-time shifts at Flourish and Blotts and when she comes home to an apartment emptier and colder than her bones feel, she does. not. cry.
it’s a curse, you know, to feel both everything and nothing. there’s a gaping hole in your chest, tunneling down between the iron bars of your ribs, protecting (imprisoning) the one thing that matters most to you, the most fragile part of the machine; the piece of a puzzle, the main gear, the source of power; and you don’t let anyone through that blackhole, unwilling to risk the chance of pulling someone into your gravitational field; you say you’re trying to spare them of the darkness, but perhaps you’re trying to spare yourself, instead.
— when will you learn that your body is not a prison? ( c.w ) // poetry commissions.
tangentwithtanner
dededos
romaincrisis
kianamaiart
