Author's Note: This is just a sketch of a timeline where Harry Potter has a younger sister, and how that affects everything. I have an outline for what happens each year, but I thought I'd just start with this. First story, so honest criticisms would be nice. It's very hard to bite through a computer, so I can safely say I don't bite.
James looks at the little baby, nearly nine months younger than Harry. She has Lily's fiery red hair, and he just knows that her eyes are going to be that spectacular green. He looks into her baby blue eyes, and he makes a silent promise to himself that those eyes will never lose their innocence, that those eyes will never see a war, that little Phoenix Lily Potter will be exactly what the war effort needs; rebirth and new hope. He promises to himself, despite the prophecy and the horror outside of his house, that little Phoenix will grow up carefree, laughing and playing and having fun. He promises to himself that he will do anything to make sure little Phoenix and Harry will have the life he had growing up.
Lily smiles as she looks at her youngest. Little Phoenix is a happy, gurgling child, whose eyes always follow her older brother. Harry has attached himself to her, and everyone can tell that the two of them will be inseparable when they grow older. The war has still not touched her eyes, which have deepened into Lily's green. She sits there, in her chair, laughing with her shinning green eyes, a beacon of brightness in a cold, dark world. Lily pushes a strand of little Phoenix's hair out of her eye, and cups her daughter's face. Lily silently promises that her family will survive, a promise she knows is dangerous to make. She silently promises that no matter the cost to her, she will keep her children safe and bright and innocent. She will keep them from the war. She will.
Petunia Dursley can't look at Phoenix Potter. Her red hair, green eyes are a constant reminder of the loss of her sister. Every time she walks past the little girl, those green eyes follow her with confusion and hurt, and Tuney remembers her little sister, and the years before and she has to hurry on. At least Harry has his father's hair. She can let his hair grow long and cover Lily's green eyes. But Phoenix is Lily. And the only way to protect herself from Lily's accusing eyes, and her aching heart is to ignore the little girl. She ignores how the eyes fade from brilliant emerald to faded jade. She ignores the bruises, blood. She yells at Harry for both of them. She acts as if Phoenix doesn't exist. Because if Phoenix existed, Petunia would have to admit that she was the cause of the look Phoenix carried. Petunia's heart constricts at the sight of Lily's eyes holding contempt, anger, viciousness. Lily's eyes never had that look, and never should.
Little Skazzy Potter thinks she's never been innocent. She's never known love from anyone other than her older brother. She's just been in a fight with her cousin and his gang, trying to protect her brother, who was trying to protect her. She looks at her eyes, holding stolen ice to stop the bruising, and wonders what innocent eyes look like. Her brother doesn't have them; his eyes are tired, even as he smiles and tells her she is such a skaz. She can't remember a time when her eyes didn't tell the world the dark stories she had seen and known. She can't remember a time when her eyes shone. She looks away, wishing she had sparkling eyes instead of the dull, flat ones she has only ever known.
Harry wonders if his sister Skazzy will ever get a break. He comes back from a magical year at Hogwarts, and the first glimpse of his sister he gets is of her with an arm in a sling. She smiles, a smile that never reaches her eyes, and welcomes him back. And he feels guilty, for not coming home, although she swears she doesn't mind, that it won't matter anyway. She's coming next year, and they won't ever have to come back. He sees a spark of something he had never seen in her eyes, or even his, as she says this, and he doesn't have the heart to tell her that they have to return, that they'll be forced to come back.
Ron wonders how someone younger than him can be so old. Skazzy just gets this look sometimes, the look that says that she knows how the world works. She tags along with Harry, Hermione and him, and doesn't have any friends her own age. Ron suggested in the beginning of the year that she become friends with his little sister, and she turned those cold, old eyes on him. "She's too young, too innocent, too distracted by the fairy tales to see the truth in the world. We would never be friends." And Ron felt, and still feels, as though she judges him, and finds him wanting, as though she thinks her brother's criteria for friends is low, and that she will never accept him. He asked Harry about it, frustrated that a girl his sister's age could make him feel incompetent, insufficient. Harry shrugged, and with a little half smile and cold, old eyes of his own explained. "She doesn't understand innocence, can't understand how you still have it, even after last year. She thinks you should be colder, harder. It irks her that you aren't and she is." Even after the explanation, Ron looks at Skazzy, and can only see a cold hard exterior, not the lost little child Harry thinks is beneath.
Vernon Dursley is afraid. Petunia has let him get away with a lot in regards to Phoenix. Petunia can't look at the brat without being reminded of her freak sister. She turns a blind eye, because she can't look. But when Phoenix comes back from freak school, she has a giant scar. It runs down the side of her face. It's swollen, puffy, and new. And in her one good eye, Vernon can see his demise. He went too far, and they both know it. And now, she knows what she can do. Phoenix Potter is not scared of him. Every chore, every punishment he deals out is met with a cold stare, promising painful retribution as soon as she comes of age. Vernon Dursley has just realized that maybe, angering a freak with freak powers was a bad decision. After all, as she whispers as she walks past him carrying a bucket of water to clean the car, while she can't do magic now, that won't last forever. And she has a long memory. Vernon Dursley agreed to keep her alive, until she was of age. He's terrified of what comes after. He's less of an idiot than people believe, and knows that while he has made a promise to keep her living, she has made no such promise to keep him alive, and no reason to make one.
The next time Remus sees her eyes, one of them is swollen shut, clearly on it's way to being healed, but still swollen. She's sitting with her older brother, and staring out a window. Her eye has lost its innocence, there is a scar running down the side of her face, and Remus wants to wince. She has seen the cost of war, she has known the greatest pain a child can know. He failed as a godfather, to protect the young innocent girl. When he calls her name in class, relishing the name Potter, Phoenix, and remembering when those words meant hope and rebirth and renewal and four friends before murder and betrayal, he is devastated when her hard green eye looks up and she speaks "Skazzy. I go by Skazzy." because she's lost it. She not only lost her innocence, but she lost her meaning, her name. She's lost the hope and rebirth, renewal, and all the good things in life. She lost her innocence and her name, and he knows she won't understand enough to get any of it back.
Dudley avoids his cousins. Phoenix more than Harry. He knows that they're freaks, but something in how they act has him scared. Dudley does have instincts. How else would he know when to throw a tantrum and be assured of getting what he wants? How else would he have realized how to make life miserable for his cousins when they were younger and magic didn't exist? What to say to reduce people to crying lumps. He has instincts, and he's calculating and knows people. He's watched his dad do business after all. And all his instincts scream for him to avoid at all costs. Not only are they related to a murderer, but Phoenix has that look. The look on Piers' supplier when they come to buy. The one that reads 'you stupid boys don't know what you're getting into.' The look that screams 'I know more about the real world than you ever will, and if you had seen half the things I had, you'd be dead.' Dudley avoids his cousins as much as possible, because he saw the supplier kill. Of course, he can't lose face with his friends, so if they all run across each other, he'll play his part. But he sees the promise in Phoenix's eye. Phoenix is more dangerous than Harry, and there is nothing Dudley can do anymore. He sealed his fate before he even knew what he was doing.
Whenever Sirius catches sight of that hard green eye, his heart almost stops. That eye shouldn't look like that. It's too old, too cold, too hard. That isn't the eye of a thirteen year old girl, that is the eye of a battle weary soldier. That is his eyes, after Azkaban and murders and betrayals, and living through his childhood. It shouldn't be her eye. She didn't go to Azkaban. But all he can see in that eye is cold determination, and detachment and anger, and he wants to know where her innocence has fled to. He can't even look at her other eye, with it's misty, far off stare. It's a stab at his heart, a reminder that he wasn't there, that she has fought for her life, that she wasn't safe. Of all the things he wanted her to take from him back when she was a smiling babe and he an optimist, his childhood wasn't it. He didn't want her to hurt, or to cry, or to know how to fight for her life, and yet as she sits across from Harry in the Common Room, she has coldly accepted the fact that her brother's life is in danger once again.
Molly doesn't understand. Phoenix Potter won't respond to her name, won't accept the reasons that she should respond, and snaps at her when she tries to help her. How can this little girl be the way she is? She doesn't like anyone but her brother, doesn't trust anyone but her brother. She's all anger, and she's on the verge of doing something, but no one knows what. Except for Harry, and all he does is smile his 'Phoenix' smile, and shrug. She's all energy, and movement, and now now now. She doesn't accept wait, and she's angry oh so angry at the injustice of the world against her brother, and she'll only calm down when her brother places his hand on her arm. They exchange looks and so much seems to pass through their eyes, and occasionally Harry will look away. And then in her eye, people see triumph and anger and hatred and (dementia) other feelings. And Molly doesn't know how she manages to get all those things into one glare of her sole good eye, but she does. And Molly wonders if that is what her little girl, and all her precious boys will look like at the end of the war that hasn't yet begun. Angry and high-strung, and distrustful of anyone. And Molly closes her eyes to the same look in Harry's face, and the look that is beginning to form in Ron's eyes, or even Hermione's tears as she realizes that she must leave her parents behind.
Dolores Umbridge doesn't realize how much one girl could scare her. She started this job with the intent to shut Potter up, and to discredit Dumbledore and to give rise to a generation of people loyal to the government (Fudge). But in her first class, when she called Potter, Phoenix, and looked into that one green eye, she was scared. Because unlike in Potter's eyes, his sister had no restraint. There was anger, and hatred, and a burning desire for revenge. And it was cold, so cold. She was oozing disdain, and her classmates followed her example and Dolores couldn't blame them. When Phoenix spoke "Skazzy, I go by Skazzy" Dolores almost froze. She couldn't believe all the nuances in those five words. She almost decided that she would backdown from a fight about this one thing, until remembering that if she gave up the first battle, she would never win the war. And even though she swept her gaze over the whole class and explained that "nicknames will not be used" and continued to use Phoenix, or Potter, she felt she had lost the battle worse than if she had just moved on. At the end of her time in Hogwarts, as one of her last coherent memories of the year, Dolores can only remember the look in Phoenix's eye as she trained her eye on Dolores after Dolores' failed attempt at the Cruciatus on her brother, and her crazed, whispered words "You thought my brother was the real threat. You were wrong."
When Dumbledore sees her again for her fifth year, he has an irrational urge to hide. He knows how Harry reacted to everything, but Phoenix Potter had been in the Time room when it exploded, and everyone thought she was dead. He hasn't seen her since May, and doesn't know what she knows, or how she'll act. She's fifteen years old, going on fifty, and somehow, over the summer she's changed. Her hair is now a golden, sandy color, with only a hint of the red it used to be. She sparkles in the light, as if she has sand ingrained in her skin. He does not know what happened to her, or how she handled things, but somehow he senses that something about her has changed. Last year she was on the verge, hovering on the line between right and wrong, good and evil, sanity and insanity. This year she's different, controlled. She catches his eye with her one good one, and smiles. But her eye has absolutely no feeling in it, it is almost as dead as her mother's. She is all cool and calm confidence, but under the appearance Dumbledore can sense something churning, fighting to break loose. She is not as high strung as last year this time, so she has clearly let off steam. She's assured, and Dumbledore can only wish that her eye were full of the innocence and cheer that he had planned for her and her brother to enjoy before they became adults.
Hermione can understand Skazzy. She really can. Skazzy has only ever had one person, and that year without him when she was ten and he was eleven broke something in her. Hermione's been breaking since the troll, for all she's put on a brave face to everyone. Skazzy didn't see the need, didn't realize she was broken. Hermione can understand Skazzy, because she feels as if she's been following in her footsteps ever since they met. Her eyes have lost their shine, although she fakes it well enough for her friends, but that isn't hard. Her friends are Harry, Skazzy and Ron. Two who were broken and would never know what the shine should look like, and one who would never look so close. Hermione has realized the actual cost of attending a school in a world of magic. She must leave everything she ever was and ever wanted to be behind her. No one told her the cost when she signed up, they all waxed lyrical about how amazing magic was. She was too blinded by the shiny tricks to notice the truth before it was too late: in a world of magic, there is no room for the mundane. Her parents have been left behind, two strangers she rarely sees. Her life before Hogwarts, nonexistent, unimportant. Every perfect score, every accomplishment, every competition she won, turned to dust as she's labeled. 'Muggleborn'. Eleven years, wasted in a world she can't return to. Her entire world is crumbling, and being reworked in a shape she's not entirely sure she wants. And she's expected to take it with a smile on her face. To become one of them, and stop being her. They call her a witch, separate her from her homeworld, unless they want to discriminate. They call her a witch, and suck her into a world that will not let her go, while laughing at her old world. Hermione envies Skazzy her ability to break and move on, to take each step and not fall completely to pieces. Hermione's begun idolizing a girl almost a year and a half younger than her, because she broke without the tears.
Ginny hates Skazzy Potter. Hates her. Mostly because she's Harry Potter's sister. Skazzy wouldn't befriend her in their first year, preferring to hang out with her brother and Ron and Hermione. Ginny had thought that they would become friends, like Ron and Harry, and that somewhere down the line she and Harry would date because Ginny would have always been there in the background as Skazzy's friend. But Skazzy didn't want a friend, or didn't want Ginny as a friend, and so Ginny was left out. And when Ginny told Hermione during one of the times Harry was off with Ron and Skazzy that she really wanted to date Harry, Hermione sympathetically shook her head. "He won't date anyone that Skazzy doesn't approve, and Skazzy won't approve anyone she doesn't know. Skazzy won't know someone until Harry becomes good friends with them, and Harry won't get to know anyone until Skazzy approves, and now we're stuck in a loop. There are other boys out there for you." Ginny had felt anger at being denied her dream, and snapped back "So how did you and Ron become such good friends with Harry?" "We did and didn't. Harry won't trust us with everything, almost nothing compared to what Skazzy knows, and that's still loads more than Harry trusts anyone else. We got as far as we did because Skazzy wasn't there, and Harry needed someone. And then Skazzy broke in that year away, and Harry focused on Skazzy, because she's a constant, and everyone else will come and go and Skazzy latched onto him because he's all she's ever had" "But that's not true! We've stayed!" "But for all their lives they've been together, and they won't ever change that. Everyone else has been here for less." So Ginny hates Skazzy Potter because she's broken and Harry will always pick her over anyone else, and Ginny will never be given the chance she deserves to try and date Harry.
Neville pities Skazzy. He really does. Before he met her, before seeing her, he thought his life was bad. Two parents tortured to insanity, raised by a grandmother and always a disappointment. Then he met Harry, the only person in the class who might even feel similar to him, and he seemed strong, stable, and confident. And Neville wasn't. But when Neville met Skazzy, he realized how much better off he was. His gran loved him, in her own twisted way, and he wasn't denied anything. Skazzy, she lost everything. A year that made Harry stronger broke her, and she didn't look like she could be fixed. Neville's problems would never break him. He has too much invested in being like his father, and his father never had a breakdown. Skazzy only has Harry and herself, and both of them are so invested in protection to the point of obsession. Harry has a hero's complex, because in that year he had no one else to save but the school and so he did because protecting someone defined him, and Skazzy is devoted to protecting Harry, because she can protect him, and she can't protect herself. Neville doesn't know if anyone else realizes that Skazzy isn't talking about something, but it's true. The year that broke her broke her. He doesn't know what happened, and he doubts anyone ever will. But she's clear evidence that life can be worse, that Neville is fine. Neville isn't scarred like her, and isn't stunted. Skazzy is stuck somewhere between child and fifty, with no means of escape. Somehow, one year made all the difference.
Luna watches Skazzy. Watches as she argues with a hat, desperation on her face the day after the sorting. Luna watches as Skazzy skirts away from people and clings to her brother. She watches as Skazzy throws everything she has into any spell, a feral look in her eyes. She watches as Skazzy watches her classmates with confusion, knowing she's missing something but not knowing what. Luna watches Skazzy because she's different, like Luna. Only Skazzy's difference is dangerous. Luna watches as she bares her teeth when she hears something she dislikes and can't do anything. She's like a wild animal, ready to bite people and unwilling to be tamed. Luna watches Skazzy from the shadows, content to watch. Maybe one day Luna will be brave enough to be the wild animal Skazzy is, but this day, Luna thinks that she doesn't want to sacrifice what Skazzy has. After all, Luna still has her childhood innocence and beliefs, that's what makes her different. But Luna continues to watch Skazzy throughout the years, because she is a Ravenclaw and knowledge is knowledge. She watches as the school accepts that Skazzy and Harry are inseparable. She listens to the whispers, about how Skazzy is the one to fear. She watches as Skazzy bites everyone she can, using cutting words when her spells won't work. Harry might be unapproachable, but Skazzy is single-minded. And, Luna thinks as she watches Skazzy glare at Dumbledore's Army, as she watches Skazzy practice destructive magic years beyond what she should know, that Skazzy is a sad creature. After all, Skazzy's decided her sole purpose in life is to take down everyone threatening her brother. That's hardly a life to live at all.
Skazzy can't believe that she was ever innocent. She's used dark magic, she's been out of time. She went backwards and became a feared dark lady, but somehow, she just can't conceive of the notion that she was ever innocent. There could never have been a time when her eyes weren't deep pits of nothingness, where she laughed and smiled because she was happy, not because she was putting up a facade. She knows that at some point she was better than she is, because she can't honestly remember wanting to kill maim destroy break when she was younger like she does now. She remembers Bellatrix LeStrange, and recognizes herself in her. Skazzy's breaking apart at the seams, and she knows that if she continues on like this she will break into Bellatrix, and she is still sane enough to want to prevent that. She's protected her brother for so long, and hated herself for just as long that somehow in her mind protecting her brother and ending her troubles are the same thing. She's not bound by the temporal laws that everyone else is bound by, because she was in the room when everything went to hell, so she goes to fix everything. And she's staring into innocent green eyes and she knows she's staring at the wrong baby because this innocent child could not possibly be her and she cast the last (first) spell she'll ever cast. And as the words slip between her lips, and she watches the innocent eyes fade to the recognizable empty ones that have stared at her for years, she wonders if next go round will be better. Skazzy Potter may be unhinged, but even she knows that she's just created a paradox. She hopes it will go better, and she silently wonders how many times she's gone back and killed herself, because she can't help thinking that it was always like this.
Time is a funny thing, and the Unspeakables in the British Ministry can't understand why it is that some days there is a Dark Lady Genesis who went on a mad rampage for three years, and on others absolutely nothing interesting happened during her rampage years. They don't understand how Phoenix Potter is alivedeadalivedeadalivedead, or how Riddle and Harry Potter alternate their statuses as well. Occasionally the Ministry is under the control of Death Eaters, and other times Voldemort has been defeated. They can't figure out what timeline is the right one, and which is the wrong one. All they know is that little Phoenix Potter is at the crux of the problem, with her alivedeadalivedeadalivedead status, and that they have to chose which time will be right, because the universe is unraveling. And as their agent goes back in time to fix the problem, there is a sigh of relief from the Time room, as a little girl with red-gold hair dissolves into the sands of time, forever forgotten and given the peace she craved for her entire (non)existence.
And Harry Potter was an only child, who lost his parents and grew up unloved and found a home in a magical castle where he made two good friends and found a new family and the love of his life and defeated the ultimate evil with only a few major setbacks along the road, all without realizing that in the same universe in a different timeline he fell to Voldemort and his sister to insanity and the whole world was bathed in darkness.
And Luna tells her nieces and nephews (of friends and family) the fictional story of the (real) Dark Lady Genesis, from her origins as a "little girl named Skazzy, because she and her brother could not pronounce the word spaz," a lost little girl who wanted to be innocent and couldn't save herself to the time traveling villain who went on a murdering rampage to try and deal with reality because she unable to deal with reality to the martyr who will never be sung of. Luna tells the story of little lost Phoenix Potter, because she looks at the shade of Skazzy Potter who will forever follow her brother, and wants the world to see the little lost girl who saved them all by killing herself.