For once in his life, seven year old Harry Potter felt like a normal boy.
That thought alone was almost enough to make him dizzy with joy.
The sun had barely risen over Number Four, Privet Drive, when he was yanked out of his cupboard and told—miraculously—that he would be coming along to the zoo with the Dursleys. Not because they wanted him there, of course. His presence was merely the result of a series of inconveniences.
Mrs. Figg, the batty old cat woman who usually watched him, had broken her leg on holiday. Every other neighbor the Dursleys tried to call had made some excuse or slammed the phone down as soon as they heard the name "Harry." It was with a sneer and a threat that Uncle Vernon finally said:
"You so much as whisper anything freaky, boy—anything—and it's a month in your cupboard without meals. Got it?"
Harry had nodded, his heart too full to argue.
Because freaky or not, he was going to the zoo.
XXXX
It was even better than he imagined.
He spent the morning watching towering giraffes munch lazily on leaves, stared in awe at prowling tigers, and couldn't stop grinning when a baby elephant sprayed water on a group of screaming schoolchildren. Even Dudley's whining didn't bother him, he was too busy stuffing his face with sweets to notice Harry, which suited him fine.
At lunch, Harry got half a hot dog. It was cold and slightly stale, but he savored every bite.
And then came the reptile house.
Cool and dimly lit, the air inside felt like a jungle. Rows of tanks lined the walls, filled with all manner of lizards, frogs, and snakes. Harry had never been so enthralled. There was something comforting here. Something that felt…familiar.
He wandered ahead of the Dursleys, toward the largest glass tank in the center of the room. A huge king cobra was coiled inside, golden eyes glinting under the heat lamps, tongue flicking lazily through the air.
That was when he saw her.
A girl about his age stood pressed up close to the glass. She wore black from collar to shoe, and her long, dark braids hung down like nooses over her shoulders. She had the posture of a queen at a funeral—still, solemn, and absolutely terrifying. But most alarming was the fact that she was holding a large knife and quietly working it along the seam of the cobra enclosure's lock.
Harry blinked.
He hesitated, then took a cautious step closer.
"Um…" he said softly, twiddling at the hem of his shirt. "I don't think you're supposed to be doing that…"
The girl didn't look at him.
"I'm not doing it for them," she replied, voice cool and eerily calm. "He's lonely. He told me."
Harry glanced at the snake, then back to the girl. "You can hear him too?"
The girl's head snapped toward him so fast Harry swore he heard something crack. She stared at him, eyes narrowing into onyx slits, and her stare could've frozen sunlight. A slow, measured breath passed between them.
"What did you just say?" she asked sharply. "You can hear him speak?"
Harry nodded, uncertain. "I think so. He said the air here stinks and that he misses the jungle."
"You're a Parselmouth," she said, as if declaring a sentence of execution.
Harry blinked. "I'm a what…?"
"A speaker of serpent-tongue," she said, taking a single step closer, the knife hanging limply at her side. "The language of snakes. Very rare. Very dark. Very important."
Harry's mouth opened, then closed again. "But… that's not real. Magic isn't real."
The girl stared at him like he'd just insulted her ancestors. Without warning, she seized his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.
"Come with me," she ordered.
"Wait…. What…?"
She didn't respond. She dragged him across the room with the calm efficiency of a kidnapping professional, weaving between tourists with blade-like grace. Harry stumbled after her, heart pounding, his mind still stuck on Parselmouth? And magic?
They stopped before a tall, elegant woman dressed all in black. Her eyes were pale as pearls, her lips blood red. She exuded grace and danger like a coiled rose.
"Mother," said the girl, releasing Harry's hand, "I've found something interesting in this tomb of mediocrity. He speaks Parseltongue."
The woman's face lit with a smile that should have wilted flowers and curdled milk. She crouched before Harry with the fluidity of a spider, her expression radiant and predatory.
"Oh, how delicious," she purred. "You speak to serpents? How perfectly sinister."
Harry shifted awkwardly. "I didn't mean to. It just sort of… happened. But magic's not real, so…"
The woman's smile froze.
Her daughter's lips pressed into a line.
A long, cold silence followed.
Then, in a voice soft as velvet and cold as a crypt, the woman asked, "Did your parents tell you that, little one?"
Harry's throat tightened. "My parents are dead. I live with my aunt and uncle."
The woman tilted her head. Her eyes—once curious—darkened to something like fury. A slow, slow burn.
"I see."
As Harry shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, his shirt collar slipped slightly, revealing the edge of a purple bruise on his neck. The woman's eyes locked on it like a predator scenting blood.
Wednesday saw it too.
No one said a word.
Morticia Addams slowly stood, eyes scanning the crowd with the composure of a queen and the fury of a storm beneath her skin.
"Wednesday," she said, her voice crystalline with wrath, "where are this boy's caretakers?"
The girl turned, eyes already moving across the room. "Over there. The large pink man screaming at a zookeeper. And the skeletal woman beside him."
Morticia's lip twitched.
"They allowed you to think magic isn't real," she murmured to Harry, as though to herself. "They told that to you. A boy who speaks to serpents."
"I'm not special," Harry said, pitifully, as he looked down at his feet. "They say I'm a burden. A freak. I just… I thought the snake was talking to everyone."
"Poor little darkling," Morticia whispered. "They've tried to bury you in a cage of normalcy."
Harry blinked. "A what?"
"A crime against nature," Wednesday said simply. "Especially for one like us."
"Us...?" Harry asked in complete confusion.
"Magic users, of course..." Wednesday stated, making the boy's eyes widen.
Morticia's gaze softened, but the flame beneath it did not dim. She knelt again and gently touched the side of Harry's face, not in pity, but with something older. Older and darker.
"They will not hurt you again," she said.
Harry's throat tightened for a moment before he regained control of himself. He had heard this same promise before, and every adult who had given it had been a liar. Against this storm of emotions, his brow furrowed. "Why do you care?"
Morticia straightened and gave him a strange smile, one Harry didn't quite understand.
"Because Wednesday has never brought someone she finds interesting to me before, usually just 'playthings,' that break far too easily. And because any boy who speaks to serpents and still believes he is unloved… is already one of us."
"One of…?"
Harry trailed off as Wednesday grabbed Harry's hand and stared at him with an almost possessive look in her eyes. Morticia watched him silently, her expression unreadable as an eerie smile danced across her face.
XXXX
From across the reptile house, Petunia Dursley looked up and frowned.
"Where's the boy?"
Uncle Vernon, red in the face and halfway through a rant at a teenage zookeeper, growled, "Who cares? He's probably hiding in a corner somewhere, talking to dust."
Petunia pursed her lips and went back to watching Dudley try to feed popcorn to a very disinterested chameleon.
Neither of them noticed the way the Addams matriarch turned her pale gaze toward them.
And smiled before slowly stalking toward them.
XXXX
The Addamses did not storm.
They did not shout.
They did not draw attention like vulgar people often did.
No, when they moved, it was with elegance. With purpose. With darkness that bled into every step like ink into velvet.
Morticia Addams glided across the zoo's reptile house, a vision of black lace and effortless menace, trailed by the faint scent of rosewater and grave soil. Her steps were slow and graceful despite the fury coiling inside her like a striking viper. Behind her, Wednesday followed, her hand still latched upon Harry's.
They found them at the turtle exhibit.
The woman—Petunia—stood with her arms folded, lips curled into a permanent sneer of superiority. The man beside her—Vernon—was red-faced and sweating, loudly berating a teenage zookeeper who looked seconds away from fleeing into the meerkat enclosure.
Their son, a porcine boy with ice cream smeared across his shirt, was pounding his fists against the glass, demanding that the "stupid turtles" fight.
Morticia stopped behind them. She did not speak at first.
She let her silence fill the air like rising fog.
Petunia turned, startled by the sudden stillness at her back.
"Can I help y—?" she began, before her eyes fell on Harry, and the strange girl holding his hand who was looking at her like a bug that needed to be squashed.
Morticia inclined her head with a smile that was somehow both radiant and terrifying.
"You must be this boy's... caretakers."
Petunia frowned. "Who are you?"
Morticia's voice was velvet and ice. "A concerned party."
Vernon grunted. "He bothering you, miss?"
Harry winced at the word bothering. Wednesday's grip tightened at that, as though insulted on his behalf.
"He's mine," Petunia said quickly, stepping in. "My nephew."
Morticia tilted her head. "Yours? Strange. You speak as though he were a casserole gone bad. Not a child."
Vernon stepped closer, puffing himself up like a swollen toad. "Look, miss, I don't know who you are, but we don't take kindly to strangers poking their noses in our business."
"Indeed," Morticia murmured. "Then you'll be most displeased to learn I am not merely poking."
She turned to Harry, seeing the fear in the boy's eyes, and her gaze turned as hard as diamond.
"You are not staying with them."
"Certain not, mother." Wednesday agreed, "Can you even imagine such potential being wasted with these things?"
Petunia gasped. "You—! You can't do that!"
Vernon let out a booming laugh. "And who'd want a freak like him anyway?!"
He barely finished the word freak before everything changed.
Morticia's smile remained exactly as it was.
But she moved—so quickly, so fluidly—that not a single bystander noticed a thing.
One moment she was standing with Harry and Wednesday.
The next, she was pressed almost intimately close to Vernon Dursley, her arm snaked around his side, and the curved, gleaming edge of a jagged ceremonial knife rested just below his ribs—right against his kidney.
It was the kind of knife meant not for cutting… but for evisceration.
Vernon's face drained of color. His jowls trembled.
From this angle, no one else could see the blade. Morticia's posture remained as elegant and composed as ever, her voice as calm as the dead.
"Dear sir," she whispered, her lips inches from his ear. "If you ever refer to that child with such disdain again, I will remove your organs in alphabetical order, beginning with the kidney I am currently cradling."
Vernon's knees quivered.
"I've embalmed nobler creatures than you," she added with a soft sigh. "Fleas, for instance."
She turned slightly, addressing Petunia without ever stepping back. The blade never moved.
"And you," she said, eyeing the woman's rigid posture, "look upon him—this boy of serpents and shadow—and see only dirt. Tell me, how does such a dark and powerful wizard share blood with something so… painfully mundane?"
Petunia stared, paralyzed by the mixture of menace and grace.
"I—he's not—he's my sister's boy!" she blurted. "He's just like her! Just like Lily! A freak!"
Morticia's eyes widened faintly.
The name struck something. A distant bell ringing in an old crypt.
"…Lily Potter?" she repeated slowly, savoring the name like a vintage wine. Her eyes drifted back to Harry. "That boy is Harry Potter?"
Petunia nodded.
Morticia's smile returned; no longer mocking, no longer pleasant.
Now it was something divine.
Something ancient.
"Outstanding," she whispered.
She finally stepped away from Vernon, who sagged against the railing, sweat streaming down his forehead. She sheathed the knife in a hidden fold of her dress as if it had never existed, and turned once more to Petunia, her smile as lovely and cold as frost upon a grave.
"You will not be taking him," Petunia said, but the words came out thin and unsure.
"I already have," Morticia replied.
"You can't!" she insisted. "He—he belongs with us—"
"He belongs nowhere near you," Morticia cut in, her tone silk wrapped around steel. "You see a child, and decide he is a burden. You see magic and call it filth. You see greatness, and cower behind your curtains, praying it doesn't stain your beige carpets."
She leaned in just slightly.
"You are mold in human form, Petunia Dursley. And I will not allow you to rot him."
"How… how do you know my name?" Petunia asked in a horrified voice, making Morticia's smile grow.
"You'd be astounded by the things I know…. Things that only those who dance in the dark and embrace the power of the shadows understand. Would you like to see what else I can do…?"
Petunia released a quiet squeak of terror at the oppressive aura that was coming off of the woman and quickly took a step back.
Harry looked down, cheeks red, unsure whether to smile or run while Wednesday watched with a bored expression, as though this was perfectly normal.
"You cannot simply take him!" Petunia snapped again, wild-eyed as the last trace of her courage reared its head in one last act of defiance. "You'll be punished! Dumbledore will—he'll make you pay!"
Morticia's head tilted slowly with predatory grace.
"Will he?"
Petunia stiffened.
Morticia's smile was slow. Precise.
"The headmaster will try. But I'm sure once he hears just who it was that took the boy from you, he will quickly cut his losses. The last encounter he had with our family did not go so well, you see. In fact, I'm quite sure he still has nightmares about it…"
The air went still.
Petunia stumbled back into Vernon, who let out a low wheeze and clutched his side.
"I must thank you, really," Morticia said lightly. "Had you shown him love, or warmth, or anything vaguely resembling humanity, I might have left him behind. But your neglect, your cruelty… it revealed what he truly is. A child of pain. Of power. Of potential."
Her eyes fell again on Harry, and her tone softened.
"He speaks to serpents. And still thinks himself unworthy of kindness."
She bent slightly to his level.
"My sweet, precious viper. Shall we go home?"
And then, without another word, Morticia Addams turned on her heel and walked into the crowd, black skirts trailing behind her like smoke. Harry hesitated for one moment before Wednesday gave his arm a sharp tug as she followed her mother; Harry followed almost in a state of shock, not looking back.
The crowd swallowed them.
A moment later, they were just... gone.
For several long minutes, the Dursleys didn't move.
Petunia was the first to speak, her voice faint.
"What… what just happened?"
Vernon slowly sat down on a bench, still clutching his side. "That woman was mad. Absolutely bloody mad. And her brat was no better!"
"She had a knife, Vernon."
"I know she had a knife, Petunia!"
Dudley waddled up, pouting. "Where's the freak gone? He was supposed to carry my sweets."
Neither answered.
They left the zoo in shaken silence, one fat hand gripping Dudley, the other trembling around a set of keys.
Several minutes later, after helping Harry into the family car, Wednesday sat beside the boy with what one could assume to be a smile on her young face. When her mother had forced her to go to the zoo, Wednesday had fully expected the day to be one of overbearing boredom, marked by, perhaps, some modicum of butchery and enjoyment.
Instead, she had found a rare jewel among the filth of normalcy. A boy with so much potential for the dark that he practically oozed with it. He wasn't aware of his power. Not yet. But with her family, that potential would be lauded, instead of punished. One thing was certain as her hand tightened on the boy's hand, almost possessively.
She liked this one. She liked him very much.