New Eyes, New Perspective
By Nee339

Summary: This is an experimental quasi self-insert/Harry replacement story. The story won't religiously adhere to canon and there will be deviations. You have been warned. Further warnings for Harsh Language, Sexual Situations, Violence, Original Character, and Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality.

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Harry Potter.

Introduction: A New Harry Potter

My first life ended suddenly. My name was Erica Thompson and I was 43 years old when I died. My horse had stumbled on something and, before I knew it, we were tumbling end-over-end down a hill, with me being crushed beneath my horse's considerable weight. I do not remember much after that, but I do know that I died quickly.

Now, in a normal story, here is the part where I'd tell you my beliefs on God and what Heaven looked like. But, I truthfully have nothing to say about that. If I had met God and spoke with Him, I do not remember it. The same goes for if I saw Heaven and spent any time there with my deceased family members. All I know is that, after I closed my eyes on one life, I opened them on another.

My new name is Harry Potter and I was 5 years old when I awoke to my new existence. Suffice it to say, I was not happy with the new arrangement.

When I was Erica, I had read the Harry Potter books and had watched the Harry Potter movies with my two children. Although my kids had liked the story and had especially liked Harry, himself, I had never had any sense of fondness for Harry Potter's character. I had always thought Harry was too unmotivated and too incurious to be a good hero of the book series, because there was more to life than Quidditch and being the eternal Voldemort-victim, but not according to Harry Potter, it seemed.

Now, had Harry Potter been my brainchild, I would have written him differently so that the reader would see that there was more to the magical world than just corrupt politicians, rampant racism, pointless Quidditch games, endless homework essays, and the struggle between good versus evil. In my version, the magical world would have been larger than just the schoolyard and Diagon Alley, but that was not meant to be, because, in my first life, I had not been an author nor had I ever desired to be one.

As Erica Thompson, I was a Game Warden with the American Fish and Wildlife Service. I had been the stepmother to a teenage girl named Brittany and the biological mother of a 10-year-old-boy named Brandon. I had been the wife to a soft-spoken man named Darren, and I had been happy. I had had many more years left in that life and I was disappointed and heartbroken to have my time cut short because of an accident.

Not once in that past life had I ever been J. K. Rowling or even met the woman. But, I'd read her books and, like them or not, I now found myself standing in front of a woman named Petunia, listening as she told Harry Potter's Kindergarten teacher – correction, my Kindergarten teacher – that I was a bad boy, prone to rudeness and burgeoning homicidal tendencies.

While listening to this introduction, all I could think about was that I was right to dislike Mrs. J. K. Rowling's books, because her idea of the abused boy-hero was so cliché that I was torn between laughing at the ridiculousness of my situation and attacking my new aunt, which would have given credence to all her claims of me being evil incarnate.

Chapter One: The Beginning

How does one explain the experience of waking up in a new life?

I don't know how to answer that question because I do not have the words to properly explain. The reality of my situation was so bizarre that I do not have an appropriate comparison, because there isn't one. I now find myself living in a popular young-adult fiction book, walking in the steps of the main character's early childhood, while also being a grown woman wearing the body of a five-year-old-boy. How can anyone relate to that?

I don't think anyone can, but I will try to explain anyway, otherwise, what's the point of writing this at all. So, let's start at the beginning and I'll answer the question that everyone is most interested in reading about, because if I was an outside observer, it would be the first question foremost on my brain as well. How do I feel about switching from female to male?

To answer that, first the reader needs to understand that, upon awakening as Harry Potter, in the cupboard under the stairs, I was very confused about what had happened to me and I was very disconnected from my new reality, let alone from my new body. In my mind, I had been dead not two seconds ago, and then suddenly, I was lying in a dimly lit space with a blanket wrapped around me. Before I was even able to process where I was, Petunia had swung open the cupboard door and had dragged me out into the hallway.

She was angry with me because I was having trouble standing and maintaining my balance with her grip on my arm and forcing it high above my head. Also, my mind was reeling and the floor seemed to sway back and forth beneath my feet, like the deck of a boat rolling with the waves. My eyes told my brain that I was in a house that I had never been in before and, for the life of me, I couldn't conceive of a situation wherein any of these facts made any sense.

Furthermore, the furniture and decorations were severely out of date. The television in the family room was large and blocky, with two wire antennas and a rotary-dial to turn the channels. The walls had floral-print wallpaper and I could see Victorian lamps resting on blocky glass-topped end tables, and a peach-colored couch with a knitted mustard-yellow and burnt-orange afghan neatly folded over the backrest. I felt like I was in an old-person's house.

My confusion frustrated my aunt, because she shook my arm and she urgently said, "Harry Potter, you will listen to me, this instant."

Now, the name "Harry Potter" is instantly recognizable for me. In America, there was so much Harry Potter merchandise floating around that it was nearly impossible to escape the iconic Harry Potter image. So, when my aunt said "Harry Potter" I looked up at her.

Even then, I did not associate the name Harry Potter with myself. I was just looking at this tall plain woman, who was roughly holding my forearm high above my head, and waited for her to complete her opinion about Harry Potter, because it seemed like everyone in the western world had one and, in a weird way, everyone was expected to be conversant about the plot.

However, Petunia did not continue with her thought, she just looked at me as I drunkenly swayed in front of her. With a disgusted curl to her lips, she shook my arm again and angrily said, "What is wrong with you? I will not take you to a doctor, do you hear? I will not. I am not going to waste good money on a bellyache, so stop behaving like this."

At this point in my new life, I could barely understand a word that Petunia was saying. She was speaking too fast and her accent was too thick for me to easily follow her point; not to mention, she was talking to me like she knew me, which didn't make any sense, because I had never seen this woman before in my life. In other words, she looked nothing like the actress from the Harry Potter movies and "Harry Potter" was such an often kicked around conversation where I come from that her directing those words at me made me think that it was some weird English curse or exclamation, not that she was calling me by name.

Consequently, for the first ten or so minutes after I woke up, Petunia and I stood in the hallway, slightly to the left of the archway into the family room, and had this weird confrontation that made her angry and me confused. Slowly, it dawned on me that Petunia was extremely tall and I was extremely small.

I looked down at myself then, seeing the blue plaid pajama pants, the baggy brown T-shirt, and two naked feet with dirty toenails. Petunia wore house-slippers, white socks, high-wasted yellow pleated pants, a tucked-in white blouse, and her hair still done up in curlers.

My mind whirled in confusion. Everything was too weird and it felt like I had been shoved into a costume and expected to play a part in some major motion picture, without first knowing my lines. Petunia was talking again, but I couldn't understand the rhythm of her speech, so whatever she said, flew right over my head and, then suddenly, I wetting my pants.

I suppose it was here, at this moment, that I became aware that my body had other differences than just being smaller than my previous adult height of 5 foot and 7 inches. I looked down at my crotch and watched as my pajamas became wet with my urine. I consciously tried to stop the flow, but I couldn't. Whatever message I was sending from my brain to my bladder wasn't working, and in an abstract state of mind, I took note that the pattern of wetness in the front of my pajamas was different from what it had been in the past.

Petunia was furious at my accident. She slapped me across the face, dragged me to the hallway bathroom, and threw me inside, screaming that I was a "filthy, disgusting boy."

That's when I finally snapped to 100% wakefulness, and felt the deep seeded embarrassment of an adult wetting their pants in front of a witness. The embarrassment was so strong, that I started to cry as I pealed my wet clothes down my legs, only to suck in a shocked breath upon first seeing my body's immature penis.

My attention was pulled away from my unbelievable new predicament to the sound of Petunia stomping around outside the bathroom, ranting about something – probably me - and I remembered the reason why I was standing half-naked in the bathroom. That sense of extreme embarrassment returned but it was mixed now with surprise, wonder, and even panic, like I had done something wrong in waking up as a little boy, though, I do not know how I could have avoided this situation to begin with. Not die, I suppose.

Anyway, I quickly tore off my T-shirt, turned on the shower, and stepped beneath the spray. With the shower as my excuse, I looked again at my new penis and could only marvel that this was happening to me at all, and that this was not a weird dream I'd wake up from.

So reader, here is my answer to the question of how I felt once I realized I had gone from being an adult female to an immature male: I felt surprised.

There was no sense of disgust or dismay or loss of identity in what I felt, just an overriding sense of surprise and bewilderment at my new situation. There was also the smallest hint of thankfulness too, that I was male and not female, which stings my pride as a woman to admit.

You see, even in the time of 2014 in the United States of America, women are slightly less prized than men and I felt that rejection all my life. When I was a child, my father behaved awkwardly around me, but would readily wrestle with my two brothers and talk about school and girls. During my school days, the boys would receive the new sports uniforms and the girls were left with the old handy-down jerseys. As an adult, men were promoted faster than I was, which was the same in most governmental organizations, and they were also paid a higher salary. I also saw that people were more likely to follow a man's leadership than a woman's, and the list just goes on and on.

In conclusion, to find myself suddenly in the body of a Caucasian male, young though the body was, I felt surprised, confused, and thankful. Now there's an honest answer you won't hear often, so appreciate it for what it is.

However, the shock of the change from adult to child, from female to male, from American to English, was severe, and so, standing in that shower, with the hot water beating down upon my head, I began to shake in reaction.

Still cognizant of the reason why a shower was warranted, I reached for the white bottle of shampoo and squirted some into my hand to wash my hair and suds up the rest of my body. I had been a mother of a little boy for ten years and the wife of an adult man for thirteen, so I knew to make sure to carefully clean the inside of my penis' foreskin. This simple act of hygiene was enough for my brain to fully accept that the penis belonged to my new body, ergo it was my penis and I was now male.

I don't know if I should have fought this realization or strived to maintain a sense of femininity in my new identity. Truthfully, though, those are things that I never once thought about before or sense. It is only with the writing about my experiences and the trying to answer a reader's questions before they have to ask them that these thoughts have come up. But, at the time of that shower, I was just too shocked to really care about the rest of the unnecessary societal expectations of a recently experienced female to male switch.

When my shower was complete, I turned off the water, grabbed a towel and went to stand in front of the sink. I was too short to see myself in the mirror, so I climbed up on the toilet and leaned cross-wise over the sink and saw the face of my new reflection.

My first thought was that I was very young and the color of my eyes was very pretty. They were a pure shade of green, with no hints of hazel or brown within the iris.

My hair was a shaggy batch of dark-brown and black curls. I had distinct black eyebrows and black eyelashes, which contrasted nicely with the green color of my eyes. I smiled at my reflection, and saw that I had a full complement of baby teeth, none of which were missing yet. All in all, I had the striking coloring that a girl would kill for, and I had the little-boy cuteness that could make millions in the movies.

That was a startling thought and it was one I donated a few minutes to actually think about further, despite the newness of my situation. You see, almost every American hoarded the secret desire to become a movie star, and I was now a cute little boy with pretty eyes and an adult's sense of self-discipline. All that equaled to the possibility of me becoming a very successful child-actor, a career path that hadn't really been open to Erica Thompson, although, I had not been ugly in my past life either.

I was still looking in the mirror when Petunia stormed into the bathroom and shouted, "Harry Potter, get down off that sink immediately and get dressed."

The surprise of Petunia's sudden entrance and loud voice caused me to push away from the sink and crouch on the lid of the toilet. This had the unintended side effect of knocking my towel loose, resulting in me accidently flashing my aunt.

If Petunia had been a normal decent woman, she would have ignored my nakedness and would have continued on with her business. But Petunia was not normal or decent and I had urinated in her hallway not even a half-hour ago, so she was looking for an excuse to strike me again and here was the perfect opportunity.

Petunia swung at my face, but I was watching her this time so I moved out of the way of her hand. However, Petunia was insistent, so she grabbed my shoulder to hold me still, and slapped me three times about the face and head. The last slap landed on the crown of my head, after I had ducked my face away from her hands.

"Get dressed you disgusting boy, and I never want to see that thing again. Am I clear?" Petunia said, her nails digging into the flesh of my shoulder. I nodded that I understood, but that was not the correct response, and she shook me hard and asked, "Are you an animal or are you a person? Use your words."

Now there were two questions floating between us, and I was at a loss on how to answer. Never before had I met with such overt violence and antagonism, so the fact that I was being struck and shook was just as shocking as the fact that I was now a boy-child and not an adult woman.

"I'm not an animal. I understand," I finally said, but I forgot that I thought as an American and, therefore, I spoke as an American.

Petunia, immediately noticed my American accent and this annoyed her enough that she grabbed my ear and twisted it, and said, "I don't like smart mouths, Harry. Do you need me to wash your mouth out, so you learn to speak like a proper Englishman?"

"No," I said as I tried to wrench her hand away from my ear, her nails were sharp and they felt like they were cutting into the cartilage.

Apparently my "no" was English-sounding enough so that she released my ear and said, "Fine then. Get dressed and then come find me. You have chores to do and I want them done right, this time, or else I'll have Vernon deal with you."

When Petunia left the bathroom, I sat down on the toilet lid, my hands shaking in my lap. In my past life, I had not been a violent person and confrontation of any kind had taken a lot of courage for me. So the fact that this woman was so aggressive towards me, a tiny little boy, was baffling and very sad.

Before I moved out of the bathroom, I leaned across the sink again to see my reflection one more time, to cement this new face into my mind as belonging to me. I stared at myself, seeing the potential within the lines of my face that promised I would grow into an attractive adult, if given the opportunity. I pushed up my floppy bangs to see my hairline, and that's when I finally saw the lightning bolt shaped scar on the left side of my forehead, with the very tip of the scar just barely breaching the plane of my left eyebrow.

"Holy shit," I said in astonishment, as I stared at myself with new understanding. I wasn't just a random little boy with black hair and green eyes living in an abusive household somewhere in England. I was Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the most mundane magical hero I had ever had the misfortune to read about, and I was fated to die so that Voldemort could be killed and the magical world could live.

This was not good. This was not good at all.

Author's Note: Here ends the introduction and the first chapter. I hope that the fact that I included them together isn't too confusing. I hope you all enjoyed this, and I would dearly like to hear your reviews. Please give an honest critique. If you find a problem with my story, I would like to hear about it.

Thank you for reading,
Nee339