Chapter One: The Shifter's Changes
Last Hours of Halloween
A pause. The wand pointed carefully at Harry Potter's head from the shadows of the black cloak. Only two figures standing, staring at one another. Baby Harry was crying from his cot.
"… Avada Kedavra!"
The jet of green light hit Harry Potter's forehead and bounced off of it in a great explosion of power.
His forehead bleeding and his one year old body having just forcibly ejected a killing curse, Harry Potter started screaming wails, falling over in his cot. In a great explosion of green light and fire that quickly and magically went out, Voldemort's body disintegrated and a heap of cloaks fell to the floor.
But Voldemort's soul - Voldemort's soul ran somewhere else. Already broken and fragmented, it unknowingly and accidentally left a piece of itself behind. The piece floated around the room - and landed in the forehead scar of one Harry James Potter.
Harry's scar burned and he started screaming louder. Suddenly, all around him and his cot was nothing but charred cottage, a heap of black cloak, and dead bodies.
But Harry's body was changing - a great and painful tingling, then a kind of bubbling, rushing through his skin. Even as his forehead burned, the moment the curse had made contact - one year old Harry's body had begun contorting and shifting.
Changing. Changing. Alone amid a haze of smoke and the smell of death.
Hagrid and Sirius charged through the rubble searching for the source of the infant wailing. "Harry! Harry!" Hagrid called.
Sirius stopped dead as he saw James Potter's body lying spread-eagled on the front entryway floor. He put a hand to his mouth, his legs shaking, but only a choke came out.
Hagrid charged forward in search of the crying baby. He sprinted up the stairs in great, thundering shakes - saw Lily Potter and stopped.
Then, tears in his sad eyes, Hagrid leaned over and quietly closed her open, glassy green eyes where she had been lying protectively before her son's cot.
Hagrid went over to the cot to lift Harry up - and then paused.
He saw the forehead scar. But that wasn't what stopped him.
"Sirius!"
Sirius was standing outside the cottage in the night air, trembling hand over his eyes, his face working between grief and rage. But he looked around quickly when Hagrid ran up in the darkened village street with the form of his godson.
"Is he all right?" Sirius asked quickly.
"Well… alive and healthy… curse scar on the forehead where the curse rebounded and hit You-Know-Who…"
"And?" Sirius asked impatiently.
"… Look," said Hagrid, leaning over to show the baby in his arms.
"He… he looks almost…" Sirius's eyes widened.
"Like a girl?" said Hagrid.
Harry Potter no longer had the face of a little boy, but of a little girl. Something about the shaping and the eyes was different, even the body structure was slightly off.
"Are we sure it's him?" Sirius barked. "That those people haven't taken my godson somewhere? That this supposed defeat isn't all a trick?"
"Oh, check the eyes. Lily's bright green eyes, the same distinctive almond shape. And James's black hair. That's him," Hagrid confirmed, looking pale, frightened, and uncertain. "I -" Hagrid looked around in reflexive embarrassment. "I had to check," he whispered. "It's Harry. But he's definitely… a she. So she did used to be… a he?" Even Hagrid looked confused by what he was saying.
"… Yes," said Sirius slowly, after a slight pause deciphering the words. "I… I remember hearing about this growing up. There are certain witches and wizards whose magic, if they're very young children and they go through enormous stress… their magic sometimes changes their sex." Sirius swallowed. "Permanently," he admitted, looking down at what was now his goddaughter. "Everything - face and body structure, child-making ability, neurology and mind and… everything.
"Everything changes," Sirius emphasized, now pale himself. "Otherwise… they remain the same person. People call them Shifters."
"And you think… the attack…?" Hagrid realized. "I mean, it fits. It is stress. And she was only a year old, poor thing."
"… Take him - her - to Dumbledore," Sirius decided. "Take my motorbike. I won't need it at this point anyway." He nodded to the floating motorbike on the darkened village street. Icy determination came over his features. "I have something else I have to do."
One Day Later - Evening of November 1st
When Hagrid landed the flying motorbike down in the silent and empty nighttime suburban Muggle street, he nearly tripped and knocked the motorbike over rushing off of it. "Professor Dumbledore! Professor Dumbledore!"
Dumbledore and McGonagall, the only two on the street, rushed over to quiet him.
"Hush, Hagrid!" said Professor McGonagall sternly. "No one is supposed to know we're here. This is Muggle territory, you'll wake the whole street up."
"But Professor -!" said Hagrid urgently.
"What is it, Hagrid? What happened?" Dumbledore asked, quietly but seriously.
"Everything is as you said, sir - Sirius even lent me his motorbike - except… We had to come to you, sir. Harry - he was a Shifter.
"Harry Potter isn't Harry Potter anymore, sir."
Hagrid leaned the bundle of blankets over to reveal a baby girl instead of a baby boy. The lightning bolt curse scar shone clear on her forehead.
"He survived the attack just the way you said, sir," said Hagrid, his face concerned. "But… the stress was too much, too young… and he's not Harry anymore. Now he's a girl…"
Hagrid trailed off uncertainly. Professor McGonagall had gasped and put a hand to her mouth.
Dumbledore took Harry in his arms, his face very grave. "… This changes everything," he said.
"Why, sir?" Hagrid asked.
"Well," said Dumbledore, "first, because the wizarding community has to know, and they're going to want to see her again. Which means we can't leave her here with her non-magical relatives - at least, not yet.
"Second… because the Prophecy specifically referred to a boy." Dumbledore looked up, deep in thought. "Which means the Prophecy no longer applies. No matter how much he may continue to act like it does… not having heard the whole thing…"
Dumbledore looked forward unseeingly, cogs turning in his head, eyes working.
"It's almost like… this wasn't supposed to happen," he whispered to himself.
"Sir?" Hagrid and McGonagall both looked mystified. Neither of them had any idea what Dumbledore was talking about when he mentioned a mysterious man or a Prophecy.
"… We have to take her to the Ministry of Magic," said Dumbledore with deadly seriousness, straightening. "Now! I'll Side-Along Apparate with her. Minerva, you take Hagrid. They'll want to question him closely."
"Of course," said McGonagall stoically. Hagrid grabbed the motorbike, McGonagall grabbed Hagrid, Dumbledore had the baby girl in his arms. McGonagall and Dumbledore both turned with a swish of cloaks -
And in a second, everything was gone. Like nothing had ever been on that quiet Muggle suburban street at all. A slight breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky.
Harry Potter had not been left there. The first divergence had been set.
The doorstep of number four was empty.
In a great, echoing courtroom in the Ministry of Magic, a very select few council members sat around the great tiers looking down at the checkered marble center of the floor. All of the chairs in the courtroom carried a forbidding black abode, the marble grey.
Dumbledore stood concerned behind Sybil Trelawney, a tiny woman with bug-eyed bejeweled glasses in endless shawls and bangles. She trembled as the council members all shouted questions at her.
"You prophecy a boy and now she's a girl! What is the meaning of this?!"
"What did the Prophecy that You-Know-Who was acting on say?!"
"I - I don't know, I don't remember -!" Trelawney begged in a trembling voice.
"You don't remember your own Predictions?!"
"The part of Sybil Trelawney that is a harsh and talented Seer is repressed deep inside of herself!" Dumbledore boomed. "They are two different people! She cannot consciously access this person! By day, she is just an airy and eccentric tea leaf and tarot card reader -!"
"You're telling me," said one councilor disbelievingly, "that the fate of the wizarding world has been left in the hands of a hack Seer with multiple personality disorder -?!"
But suddenly everything in the room halted. It looked almost as if Trelawney were having a seizure. Her eyes rolled, her mouth sagged, she shook.
"… She's coming," said Dumbledore, eyes sharp, backing up. "The Seer. This… is completely unscripted. Not even I know what's coming next."
And then something happened that never had before. The eyes stopped rolling - and a harsh and stoical woman, nothing like the timid big-eyed girl of before, took Sybil Trelawney's place. Her eyes turned forward. A silent snarl came over her features.
If a quill had dropped, anyone would have heard it.
Then Sybil Trelawney turned and fled the courtroom.
"Stop her! Stop her!" Wands came out - jets of light were flown at Sybil Trelawney -
But she was already long gone.
Outside the courtroom doors, she grabbed the infant out of a startled McGonagall's hands and sprinted away with her. "Wait! Stop!" McGonagall called, taking out her own wand.
Sybil turned a corner and was gone.
"I can sense her! She's in the deepest recesses of the Department of Mysteries!" Dumbledore barked as he and the others sprinted after Sybil Trelawney.
"How did she even get in there, with all the protections?" one councilor asked in disbelief.
"She probably saw her obstacles ahead of time. This woman is a Seer. She can do anything she wants," said Dumbledore flatly. "And she's changing the timeline again…"
He cursed, and everyone sprinted after Sybil.
They found her inside the hall of time and stopped.
Great golden hourglasses filled with strange, magical gold mist of all shapes and sizes filled the time hall. Everyone was refracted in a million glittering lenses of glass.
Sybil had knelt - and had the baby tucked deep inside a massive hourglass. It was broken, and the baby girl was burrowed deep in its magical gold mist.
Dumbledore got there first. He saw the baby girl's lightning bolt scar glowing weirdly crimson - and he stopped, his eyes widening.
He snatched the baby out of the golden mist, but the glowing was already gone. He put his hand over the scar. "… It's still in there," he realized quietly to himself in confusion.
The Horcrux was still in the scar. So what had changed?
The councilors had reached and apprehended Sybil Trelawney - her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed into unconsciousness amid the broken time hourglass. Her body sprawled out around the shards of glass and broken mist. Everyone crowded her -
Except for Dumbledore, holding the baby girl in his arms.
Woole's Orphanage, London
One of the maids opened the front door - and stopped short. A tiny dark-haired baby boy sat on her doorstep.
"Well, you wouldn't be the first left here like this," she said sadly but matter of factly, kneeling down to his level. "You look about a year old. What's your name? Can you tell me?"
"… Tom… Riddle…" the little boy said, staring up at her with big dark eyes. "… Tom… Riddle…"
"Tom?" she mused. "Can you tell me anything about yourself?"
The boy just stared up at her, looking hopelessly lost.
"What is it?" The matron had come to the doorway - saw Tom and frowned.
The maid looked up from her place kneeling. "He says his name's Tom Riddle, ma'am. He looks about a year old and I just found him abandoned out here.
"He don't seem to remember anything except his name."
"… Well," said the matron squarely, "let's take him inside and have a look." She bustled back inside. The maid took up baby Tom and the door to the orphanage shut behind them.
Dumbledore's Office, Hogwarts
Dumbledore stared down in consternation at the new name on the long parchment roll list: Tom Riddle.
"Only appearing at a year old," he murmured. "A late bloomer… I hope.
"Voldemort's son. He has to be Voldemort's son.
"The alternative… that the time magic used the magical code from the girl's Horcrux to form an exact copy of Tom Riddle tied to her, full body and full soul and all… a clone of his younger self tied to the Potter girl… that's too horrifying to contemplate.
"It has to be his son.
"But if the Seer side of Sybil insists this was supposed to happen…"
Dumbledore continued frowning down at the sheet of parchment.
"He'll be in her year, too. The Malfoys just got off, and their son will be in the same year. I see two rival Slytherin gangs forming, against one Gryffindor girl and her group of friends. And Garrick Ollivander just wrote to tell me of the new wands made from Fawkes's third and fourth tail feather…"
The door burst open and Dumbledore whirled around, putting down the sheet of parchment on his desk.
"… What's wrong?" said McGonagall, stopping short at Dumbledore's expression.
Dumbledore smiled thinly. "A late bloomer," he said. "It appears Voldemort has an illegitimate son that carries his name. An orphan in the Muggle world, ironically like his father. He'll be in the Potter girl's and the Malfoy boy's year at Hogwarts."
McGonagall paled. "What do we do?" she wondered.
"Nothing," said Dumbledore crisply, stoical. "No matter how it happened, this boy hasn't actually done anything. He's a full human being with a soul and no back history, just like you and me. Hogwarts will eventually have to become accustomed, once more, to the name Tom Riddle," Dumbledore added cryptically, giving another long stare. "Let's hope the same things don't happen again…
"In any case, Minerva, what is it?" He looked up.
"Sybil Trelawney, sir. She has awakened at St Mungo's Hospital."
Dumbledore stiffened, looked up - and rushed out of the office past an uncertain Minerva McGonagall.
After a pause, she also walked over to stare down at the list on the desk.
When Dumbledore walked into the hospital room, Sybil Trelawney was sitting upright in the hospital bed, airy but oddly calm.
"Before you ask, Dumbledore," she said dryly, "they are ironically the only thirty minutes I still don't remember. The Ministry has kindly decided not to press charges against a Seer who seems to be actively working against You-Know-Who's memory."
Dumbledore paused and looked her over cautiously. "Sybil, you seem… different," he admitted.
"My two sides have integrated - my conscious side and my Seer side. I do not have what they so colorfully called 'multiple personality disorder' in the courtroom any longer. I know a great many true secrets about Seeing that I did not understand before…" Sybil gave a tiny, icy smile, her voice purposefully light and airy but her face behind the bejeweled, bug-eyed glasses strangely calm. "Stress changed me as much as it has changed the Potter girl.
"When I am better," she added, "they are going to make the decision for where she is placed as a child."
"I thought I was deciding that," said Dumbledore immediately.
"Oh, you will have some say as a Wizengamot council member, Dumbledore," said Sybil, smiling thinly. "Perhaps more than most.
"But the Ministry has now officially taken over. Ultimate decision placement resides with them."
Dumbledore's eyes widened as his face creased in something remarkably like panic.
Everything, it seemed, was falling out of his control. Albus Dumbledore was not having a good week.
He had left the hospital room - just rounded the corner - when three sets of footsteps came around the other corner and into Sybil Trelawney's room.
"Ah, excellent." She smirked at the three people from her white bed. "I gathered all four of us together today because we have one thing in common - a fascination with the Potter girl not only as a war hero, but as a Shifter. We were each going to separately offer the Ministry the chance to take her in.
"I have a proposal."
A great thunder. "This council is now in session!"
The same chattering council members were sitting around the courtroom. Dumbledore sat among them, looking around cautiously.
"We are here to decide the placement of the Potter girl as a child," said the head councillor, a square-jowled woman who was the current Minister for Magic. "We all know the media and the newspapers have been keeping very close tabs on this case, even given that they were never told about the failed Prophecy.
"So let's not give them too much to talk about," she added dryly, looking around. There were a few half-hearted chuckles. "With Sirius Black arrested for killing his friend after leaving his motorbike with Rubeus Hagrid, there is enough of that going around as it is.
"The Muggles have been investigated without their knowledge and found to be not an option. The Potter girl's last living relatives are not suitable. Sirius Black is now in Azkaban Prison. The Potters left no will. Other arrangements will have to be made."
"Protest -!" Dumbledore began.
"Overruled, Albus. With all due respect for what you have done for the war effort," said the Minister simply. "I have a letter here from an unexpected source:
"Nicolas Flamel, the famous alchemist and creator of the Philosopher's Stone. He wrote us from his chateaux in the countryside South."
Everyone sat forward in a great rushing of clothes, Dumbledore included.
"He and his French wife Perenelle agree to take in the Potter girl, as private alchemists with extreme wealth. They have one curious addition: the Seer Sybil Trelawney and the great wand maker Garrick Ollivander plan to move in with them. Ollivander would continue his wand shop. Sybil Trelawney would Floo back and forth to Hogwarts through Hogsmeade as a Divination professor with newfound abilities during the school-year.
"The girl would therefore have great wealth and no less than four powerful parents."
A great buzz of chatter erupted in the courtroom. Dumbledore sat there, his mind working -
"I support this whole-heartedly!" he said suddenly, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise. "If enough magical power is concentrated in one loving home, as I believe my friends will provide, it can equal protections around that home similar to those of blood protections. No one will be able to penetrate any abode that family inhabits."
"Paranoid, Dumbledore? The war is over," said the Minister, raising a curious eyebrow.
"Call it whatever you like," said Dumbledore, smiling thinly. "But these are the grounds under which I agree. I have one final request: I would like to shield this girl for as long as possible not only from the stresses surrounding child celebrity, but from any obscene arrogance it might produce.
"Therefore, I request that this girl - between the Flamel alchemical fortune and the Potter medicinal potion fortune - be kept a privately tutored recluse among her new family during her childhood.
"She will have plenty of space to spread out. The Potters own a rustic manor, and there is the Flamel southern chateaux. She will have everything she needs. She will be loved and supported by four people close to her. But I request that she be dissuaded from interacting with outer society until she safely arrives as an older and more set person under the protections of Hogwarts.
"I am already making a great concession," he added sharply, displeased, "so please consider it."
And with this, he sat back quietly.
An explosion of excited talking erupted in the courtroom. "Silence!" the Minister called. Another thundering crash. Slowly, silence fell. "We'll put it to a vote. All in favor of this new plan?"
Every single hand went up.
"Done! The Potter girl will be given formally over in adoption to these four adults: Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel, Sybil Trelawney, and Garrick Ollivander, all existing under the same home! Her Potter surname will be kept! The childhood recluse clause shall go through!
"This meeting is adjourned!"
Flamel Chateaux, Southern England
The four adults sat around the sitting room, discussing.
"She'll be here soon," said Perenelle, a delicate fragile and pale wisp of a thin old woman, with unusual warm enthusiasm breaking through her reserve.
"Yes, we will have her at last," said Nicolas brightly, beaming and putting his hand in Perenelle's. "Raising a child like this? How could we refuse?"
"I agree," said Garrick curiously. "I am fascinated. She'll need a new name…"
"And it will need to be baptized," said Sybil, airy but proud. "She will of course be raised the traditional wizarding Pagan Wiccan way - including gay and multi marriages."
"We will make a will leaving everything to her, on top of her Potter fortune," said Nicolas crisply, for a moment surprisingly serious. Then he smiled. "I cannot wait to meet her - show her theatre and the arts!"
"Take her on our favorite ancient magical places trips, show her alchemy," said Perenelle warmly, smiling dreamily. She had a French accent, smooth white hair, and a glass of wine in her quiet, graceful hand. Nicolas, on the other hand, just as ancient and delicate a wisp as she, was surprisingly bright, colorful, and cheerful.
Garrick Ollivander was a wide-eyed, wild-haired old man in shabby clothes, his eyes like pale moons. Sybil Trelawney, younger, still wore her bejeweled bug-eyed glasses, bangles, and shawls.
"I love Potions, Dream-healing, and star studies - in addition to Seeing. Dream-healing is a new field of study, an experimental one involving using Penseives to sell memories of soft words and sounds that trigger relaxing magical sensations. I will have to show her," said Sybil, pleased.
"I want to take her on my travels and adventures to find magical creature wand parts," said Ollivander eagerly. "And I must admit to a fascination with mind magic… It helps me with my wand matching…"
"Yes," he said, pleased. "This reclusive, famous, wealthy girl will know of a great many theoretical magical things."
"Now, for a name," said Perenelle, sitting forward. "Something romantic, I think. That is one thing this entire group can agree on.
"Delphine is an elegant French mermaid name. Elvina means 'elf-friend' and Faye means 'fairy'."
"Faye is too simple and confusing a meaning - we don't need people thinking she's part fairy. Elf-friend would be a rather controversial weight to be carrying around as a name," said Garrick. "And Delphine just reminds me of dolphin, not mermaid.
"I'm rather partial to the name Dariyah. It is a brave-sounding mermaid name meaning 'sea'," he said crisply. "Aine is the famous Irish Queen of the Fairies -"
"But she's not Irish," said Sybil. "What about Kaia? A mermaid name meaning 'the sea' or 'pure.' There's also Naida - it means 'water nymph'."
"And yet she is not a water nymph either," said Nicolas crisply, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise. "We are all coming up with such odd names. But we also keep coming back to ideas of mermaids and water.
"We know mermaid song is famous. What about a common mermaid-themed name that references that? Something not as out-there by English standards?
"What about the name Melody?"
"A tiny, pixie-like for her age, black-haired girl with bright green almond-shaped eyes named Melody Potter… A girl said to have wild curls growing around her head, filling out her thin face, with the name Melody… I like that," said Sybil approvingly. "It fits her new background, too."
"Melody is a wonderful name," Garrick admitted warmly.
"Hm. Then it is decided," said Perenelle, nodding approvingly. She smiled, half a smirk, her eyes flashing. "Melody Potter and her new life are here to stay.
"We might want to do Petunia Evans a basic courtesy and mail her a letter telling her of her late sister and her newfound niece. Since she won't be required to raise the child."
"A traditionalist Muggle?" Sybil grinned. "I'm sure she'll be just delighted by the idea of a natural sex change and a coming witch for a niece…"
There were some unkind, mischievous snickers in the chateaux sitting room.
Suddenly, a knock came at the door. The four stood, rushed over into the entry hall, and threw the door wide open.
Dumbledore was standing there, holding the baby girl, frowning cautiously.
"Here she is…" he said slowly, handing her over. "She's yours now," he added softly but sternly. "Remember the rules."
"Of course," said Perenelle, taking the little girl adoringly in her white, paper-like, thin old arms. "We have just decided her name will be Melody - Melody Potter. We are baptizing her, in the Old Way."
Dumbledore smiled. "It is a lovely name," he admitted. "And I am almost certain that it will get into the papers very soon without you or I having to do anything," he added cheerfully.
"Now off to put her in her nursery…" Perenelle receded, reserved and odd, into the depths of the house. "It is a colorful wizarding Parisian theme, with a gold gauze canopy cot…"
"We have it from here, Albus," said Nicolas, and the door was shut on the turbulent first year and a half of Melody Potter's life - Nicolas, Sybil, and Garrick still standing mysteriously in the shadowy doorway of the chateaux.