Chapter Text
Arabella Figg watches Harry Potter when she’s seven years old when she’s skinny and small enough to be mistaken for much younger. Her eyes, though, Arabella worries, her eyes look older.
There’s not much she can do, not with the Dursleys, Arabella thinks with an unintentional scowl. She sits Harry down in front of daytime television while she works on her sampler. Arabella never had children, never really had the inclination. She thinks if she did have one, she’d be lucky to have one as polite and kind as the little girl sitting in front of her.
That blasted family doesn’t appreciate her.
If Arabella is right, the Dursleys do worse than not appreciate her as much as they should.
“What’s that?” Harry asks and jostles Arabella right out of her thoughts. A particularly finicky cat named Felix yowls for more food.
Arabella blinks owlishly, pausing in her work. “This is… well, have you heard of embroidery, dear?”
Harry shakes her head.
“Well it’s somewhat similar. This is called cross-stitch. You see the little grid the fabric makes? You weave your thread with a needle to make a pattern.”
“Why do you do it?”
“It, well,” Arabella Figg stumbles. No one had ever asked her anything like that before. Especially not… well, no one like Harry has ever really existed, really. Still, she’s never met a child before who cared much for an old woman’s hobby. “It’s to make things pretty. Do you want to try?”
Harry pauses, draws her eyebrows together, and quietly says, “Yes, please.”
Arabella, without having to think, hands over her sampler. Normally she’s picky about her projects, most of them destined to be pillow coverlets or framed for her wall. This one was going to be a little cottage, based off of her late aunt’s in the south of France. Hopefully, once Harry is grown and out of Privet Drive, and Arabella doesn’t have to worry about worried letters to Dumbledore that never get responses and the very real possibility Death Eaters will come murder her in her sleep, she’ll move there.
Yet, Arabella finds herself unable to care much about the desecration of her little cottage when Harry takes over. She’s never seen a child so enamored with the myriad of colors in her collection. She lingers over floss, picking and comparing and discarding colors seemingly at random. But Arabella watches her for the few short hours the Dursleys allow her, watches how Harry turns her project into an explosion of flowers growing out the ruins of an old house, an apple orchard standing stately in the background, and there is nothing random at all. Threads cross and mix and disappear into each other in a way that only someone who a mastery of color can do. (In a way that no seven-year-old should be able to.)
It’s beautiful. Looking at it transports Arabella back to when she was small, before her parents discovered her lack of magic. Alarmed, she realizes she can taste her mother’s heirloom apple pie.
Caramelized sugar and cinnamon and something like nostalgia.
A child should not be able to create something like this.
“Harry, this is…”
Arabella’s fingers hover over Harry’s creation, too hesitant to touch the thread. It’s just muggle embroidery floss, and yet… She can feel the magic laying underneath it. She swallows and looks at the messy-haired child sitting in front of her, nervous like she’s afraid she’ll be yelled at, and mentally curses the Dursleys.
“I’m sorry,” Harry says quickly, “it’s not very good. I didn’t mean to ruin your project. I just…”
“Couldn’t stop?”
Harry nods, quickly and just once.
Arabella Figg sighs, debates with herself, and comes to a decision.
“I have something I think you might like.”
There’s a collection of muggle craft books tucked away one one of her cat-clawed bookcases, a staple of any batty old woman.
Arabella knows she shouldn’t do this, but she can’t stand by and let a talent like this wither and die. Not when Harry seems so starved for anything resembling happiness, and not when there’s something she can do about it. She pulls out what few books she has on embroidery and cross-stitch, pausing when she reaches the small and dilapidated quilting section. What if the Dursley’s find out?
She remembers the apple pie and swallows.
“Dumbledore, what are you making me do,” she mutters under her breath.
She adds the quilt book to the pile.
Harry is sitting cross legged on her couch when she returns. She’s so small, Arabella thinks wistfully. Made smaller by her wretched cousin’s castoffs. Arabella, as she finds herself doing more and more as of late, glosses over her anger.
“Now Harry,” she says as gently as she can, sitting down next to her on the couch, “generally keeping secrets from your guardians is bad, but I think you understand by now that your aunt and uncle are… different.”
Harry nods and Arabella thinks she can see something unfurl, a little more trusting than before. Her heart aches.
“I don’t think they’ll be happy with me giving you these books. No, not happy at all. They may not let you come over again if they find them.”
“I understand, Mrs. Figg.”
Harry’s earnest face looks up at her. Arabella remembers telling a child to keep a secret is generally frowned upon.
“Now,” she says, biting her lip repeatedly, “for future reference, adults telling you to keep secrets is almost always a bad thing. So, don’t do that. But in this case, it’s not so bad.”
Harry seems mildly confused, which is somewhat expected. Arabella doesn’t interact with children much. This is the best she can do.
The most she can do.
“I think you have a gift,” she continues. “I’d like to give you these, if you’d like.”
“Are you sure? I don’t—” Harry falters, “I don’t want to ruin them or anything.”
“They’re yours to keep, dear. Do you have a space to hide things? You can take some supplies home, if you like.”
Six years Arabella’s been on this street so far— six years of watching and doing nothing while an innocent child is mistreated because those above her say it’s okay.
Six years of not taking a stand when she should.
Harry brightens. The incandescent expression makes her heart split even further in two. “I’d love to.”
She sends Harry home with an embroidery hoop, a good fistful of floss, and a few spare fabric scraps to experiment with. She watches from her front steps, cardigan wrapped around her, as Harry Potter trundles back home with a stack of treasures hidden under her shirt. Arabella hopes fervently that she didn’t just make a terrible mistake.
If she can’t keep an eye out for Harry, she doesn’t know who will.