❝𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚊 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐
𝚋𝚘𝚝𝚑 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕
𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚒𝚋𝚕𝚎,
𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎
𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚎
𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞
𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚘𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎
𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚕 𝚝𝚘𝚘.❞
— 𝙽𝚒𝚔𝚒𝚝𝚊 𝙶𝚒𝚕𝚕

Jessamine Potter, or as she preferred, Jessy, was a freak of nature. At least, that's what she took away from her aunt and uncle's actions; after all they spoke louder than words. That's what her aunt and uncle's actions told her loud and clear. Her clothes were second-hand, she lived in a cupboard under the stairs that might as well be a broom closet, with a cot as a bed, and she was made to do a lot of house-hold chores while her cousin, Dudley, gets to do nothing but make the chores harder for her.

She would wash the dishes and Dudley would put them back in the sink after he used it to eat. She would sweep and Dudley would track in more dirt. Mopping the floor had the same treatment but it was mud. She would dust the pictures on the fireplace mantle; Dudley would spit and smear boogies on them so she can clean them again. She would weed the garden and Dudley would pelt her with pebbles.

Her aunt and uncle would glare at her, and tell her to fetch whatever they wanted. Her presence was unwanted, because she was dropped unceremoniously on their doorstep as a baby, with nothing but a lightning-bolt brand on her neck.

The scar started at the top of her neck and zigzagged all the way down to her collarbone. Her aunt said Jessy got the scar in a car crash that orphaned her and she was told not to ask questions, which was a rule to get a semi-easy life with the Dursleys. Jessy didn't believe it, because she remembered green light, and there was no way green light was from a car crash, especially when it left a scar on her neck.

Dudley tells her that she's a freak when he chases her, pinches her, and pulls on her medium length black hair that sometimes was in braids or a pony-tail. Her skinny appearance didn't help when he made everyone at school call her 'Twig'. Her big lips were one source of mockery, when everyone called her 'Fish Lips' and the other source was her long name Jessamine. People called her 'Coal Mine' as well, because of her greasy black hair. Her hair problem wasn't exactly her fault because she wasn't allowed hair-care products or a brush. It was why her hair was short, so it wouldn't be a hassle.

"'We buy you clothes and uniforms, why should we waste even more money on you?'" her uncle had sneered at her when Jessy asked for a hair brush. Besides, the clothes and uniforms were second-hand. Aunt Petunia would bring rubbish bags with clothes that Jessy had to dig through. The uniforms were something that she had to go to London for to make sure that they fit so she would stop getting dress-code violations.

There were a few times that Jessy found Dudley's overly large boy clothes in her broom closet. Those she gave to her best friend, October Hansley, who lived on Magnolia Crescent.

October was an interesting creature...He would show up to school with black eyes, cut lips, and bruises on his body from his parents. He, too, wore second-hand uniforms, but on days when he didn't, he wore all black. He had a blended accent because his father was American and his mother was Yorkshire.

Dudley bullied him relentlessly because October dared to befriend Dudley's freakish cousin, but October never wavered, shrugging and saying, "Oh no, a beating, such terror."

Jessy couldn't be sure if October was that brave or stupid, but it thawed her frozen heart slightly that October didn't give a damn and wasn't scared of Dudley.

Uncle Vernon didn't want that horrid boy around, but October was relentless. He would show up, and take Jessy to his house on Magnolia Crescent, or even hang out in the broom closet reading the books Jessy managed to knick from the school library and Dudley's storage room since Dudley didn't read. Jessy wouldn't be surprised if Dudley didn't know how to.

It wasn't a strange sight anymore to find October sitting on an upside down bucket reading while spiders crawled over him. Aunt Petunia would make her lips form a thin line and give him a little bit of food so his parents wouldn't call and complain about how he came home hungry.

Jessy wanted to laugh at that because she knew that his parents didn't give a crap about their freaky son; but she was glad that October was at least fed. So she stayed silent and let Petunia give him food. Uncle Vernon didn't know what to do about the strange boy that shows up to hang out with their freakish niece. He had called to complain, written a letter, showed up to talk about him, host a dinner party with the Hansleys, but they didn't care as long as their freak of a son was out of the house. Uncle Vernon had no choice but to leave the freaks alone.

Sometimes Jessy and October would lay outside and talk about whatever, October would talk about America, and Jessy would talk about the neighbours, who she did chores for to get out of the house. There were a few times that Jessy was sure she spotted her aunt looking through the window with a ghost of a smile, before she realized she got caught, before scowling.

So, in short, Jessy was a freak and so was October.

October had told her that he would make strange things happen. He would get mad and something would shatter, he was sure that he overheard his parents talking about how he 'floated' when he was a baby. He had gotten in trouble for breaking a school window when he was nowhere near it.

Jessy told him about the strange things that happened to her. Once her aunt was trying to force her into a hideous pink jumper that shrunk with every tug 'til it was the size of a hand puppet, another was when she was running from Dudley's gang and she ended up in the library and she got in trouble for climbing buildings. Another thing was a pipe bursting in the girls' toilets when she going to get her head shoved in a toilet, which she got in trouble for that. There were others things that seemed to break whenever she was mad so her aunt and uncle made sure that she wouldn't feel anything by punishing her.

They were just two freaks that somehow found each other.