Author's Note: Here is the plan.
I am going to write four Fem Harrys. Each one, for me, fits the perfect profile of a different Hogwarts house. Each will also have a different name, so readers can differentiate better. Based on their house profiling, they will each also have different wand woods and Patronuses. In all other respects, however, they will just be Harry. I will take that starting canvas and create further differences with it within the text itself. These girls will be similar yet dissimilar to the Harry that you know, and also similar yet dissimilar to each other.
I will make four different stories and rotate through chapters for each girl, telling her full story with her at the helm. I call this the Four Fem Harrys Project.
This document you're reading right now is the Hufflepuff Fem Harry.
Please note that this is a full canon rewrite. All canon information and unchanged aspects will be included. I will also be attempting to make the story as relatable and floating timeline as possible.
The final pairing for each girl will be Tom Riddle, different from Voldemort, partly because one of the only things all four girls will have in common is a connection to the same person - but in his younger human self, before some of the corruption and most of the crimes, I think the interest and potential changes would be far more pronounced.
Alice One
Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their niece on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all.
The sun rose over soft, neat English front gardens and flowers, over the dove-grey suburban house with its neat hedges and vines on the long street full of others just like it, a private gated homeowner's community. It crept over the front door with its bronze number four, through the lacy curtained windows and into living room, with its gentle colors of cream and mint green, its sofa, armchairs, little end tables, and big fireplace.
Everything almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantle piece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different colored bonnets. But Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a video game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother.
The room did hold certain signs of a small, dark-haired girl. She looked somber and unhappy in fancy clothes in one formal family dinner party portrait on one living room wall, playing the part of the perfect daughter next to Dudley The Perfect Son. She was also in a few pictures riding bikes or playing games with Dudley himself.
Otherwise, she was near invisible - a ghost present in no other photograph the family owned.
The small, dark-haired girl was Alice Potter, the Dursleys' niece, and she was asleep at the moment but not for long. Her Aunt Petunia was awake, and she immediately began pounding on the door, calling sharply.
"Up! Get up! Now!"
Alice woke with a start. Her aunt rapped on the door again.
"Up!" she screeched.
"I'm getting up," said Alice immediately and sleepily, sitting upright with frazzled hair and big eyes. She heard the clacking of Aunt Petunia's heels walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. She stared at the far wall sleepily and tried to remember the dream she had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. She had a funny feeling she'd had the same dream before.
Her aunt was back outside the door. "Are you up yet?" she demanded.
"Nearly," said Alice honestly.
"Well get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday."
"Right," said Alice simply, sliding out of bed. She heard Aunt Petunia clack up the stairs again. Alice was not looking forward to Dudley's eleventh birthday - he hadn't been able to swing letting her come along, so it probably meant a day at Mrs Figg's - but this was not terribly important to the matter at hand.
Alice got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. She found a pair under her bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Alice was used to spiders because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where she slept. She'd been sent to this closet by her aunt and uncle immediately upon arriving in their house as a baby orphan, and she'd been living here ever since.
The Dursleys were strict, repressive, and chore-heavy. They didn't give her money or nice clothes or things; in fact, they sometimes bullied her. No, everything nice that Alice had, she felt gratefulness to her cousin for. Dudley was... well, a bit spoiled and he got into fights in school a lot. But he took good care of his surrogate sister. Since they were in the same class, he protected her from being bullied, made sure she had room for school friends and hobbies, and he used his endless supply of money from his parents to buy nice things she chose for her. Alice had a love for nice things and being pampered, a somewhat irrational one, so she especially enjoyed this.
She loved Dudley very much. In fact, he was the only family member she could say that about.
The cupboard was very small, and could be scary when it was dark. But it had its good points. She got to decorate the narrow, slanting space the way she liked, thanks to Dudley. Postcards received from friends and photographs of herself with friends and Dudley, both framed and not, decorated the walls in a great collage. A great pouf in the corner was surrounded by some of her favorite childhood storybooks, purchased by Dudley, and by writing implements like pens and journals.
Alice was a writer; she adored writing. There were also lots of little leaves and flowers around her space, because she loved nature and felt a general tenderness for everything living and foresty, loved all nature but especially nature walks, hikes, and gardening. Some nature photographs also took up spare space on her walls. Clothes, a ruefully embarrassing mess, littered the spare floor space.
She got dressed there in her cupboard. Alice naturally had thick and wild shiny black hair, almond-shaped bright green eyes, a thin friendly face, a tiny pixie-like body, dimpled knees, and glasses. Her forehead also carried a thin, lightning bolt shaped scar. She'd had it for as long as she could remember, it made her rather self conscious, and the first question she could ever remember asking her Aunt Petunia was how she had gotten it.
"In the car crash when your parents died," her aunt had said, "and don't ask questions."
Don't ask questions - the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
In fashion, some of Alice's highlights, chosen by her and paid for by Dudley, were loose threads, heavy sweaters with warm autumn hues, shoes so worn they no longer had tread, hair ribbons, wool scarves that tickled the neck, and complementary colors and patterned motifs.
Her hair was usually either put in low pigtails or put in a half-up boho. Her glasses were round black horn-rimmed glasses.
So, with glasses always included, one of her outfits could be a loose thread baggy asymmetrical shirt, a wool scarf, worn shoes, and a half-up boho. Another of her outfits could be a heavy sweater in warm autumn hues with a leaf pattern motif, and low pigtails tied with ribbons.
When she was ready for the day, she went down the stairs and down the hall, into the kitchen. A long gleaming combined kitchen-dining room white space with a plain and warm wood table at one end of it, that table was today almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Alice was turning over the bacon. As usual, he was disapproving, but blessedly today he said nothing and kept his thoughts to himself. Just as determinedly, Alice ignored him as well. He heaved himself down into a seat at the kitchen table and opened his morning newspaper.
Uncle Vernon was a big, red-faced man with a mustache and a frown, a sort of reverse Santa Claus with a housewife and a two story suburban home, an expensive car and a corporate suit and black hair instead of white.
Aunt Petunia was a thin, gossipy, bony and snobbish blonde woman with carefully sprayed perfume and carefully put-together, gleaming hair. She did a great deal of cooking, baking, and gardening.
Alice was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Dudley was a pudgy, pink-faced boy with big sweaters, smooth blond hair, and tiny blue eyes. He looked innocent enough, but he wasn't - he loved video games, got into fights a lot, and could wrestle and box with the best of them.
Alice put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, calmly and uncomplainingly. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.
"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."
"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, it's here, under this big one from Mummy and Daddy."
"All right, thirty seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Alice, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, quickly pulled her plate into her lap in case Dudley turned the table over.
Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?"
Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work.
"That would make thirty-nine," Alice offered, trying to be helpful. But Dudley stormed to his feet, face flushed, and she leaned back quickly -
He closed his eyes and made a visible effort to calm down.
"Duddy likes to figure things out for himself!" Aunt Petunia hissed at Alice, who looked down, her face reddening painfully.
"Thirty-nine." Dudley sat down brusquely and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right, then."
Uncle Vernon chuckled.
"Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. 'Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair.
At that moment, the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Alice and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote controlled aeroplane, sixteen new video games, and a movie player. He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone, looking both angry and worried.
"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs Figg's broken her leg. She can't take her." She jerked her head in Alice's direction.
Everything now water under the bridge between them, Alice and Dudley shared a hopeful glance. Unless he could swing Alice coming along, every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Almost every year, Alice was left behind with Mrs Figg, a little old lady that lived two streets away who Alice would have felt sorry for if she were not so terribly unnerving. She had a dark, dusty, cluttered house that smelled like medicine and was covered in loud, bad-tempered cats and dead cat photographs.
It was horrible. It was also very lonely, and Alice most hated feeling sad and lonely. Mrs Figg never seemed to like her or open herself up to her, and this made Alice feel distanced and self conscious.
"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Alice as though she'd planned this.
"Sorry," said Alice, head bowing and shoulders hunching a little.
"Hmph," said Aunt Petunia, and she turned to Uncle Vernon. "What are we going to do?"
"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.
"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the girl."
The Dursleys often spoke about Alice like this, as though she wasn't there - or rather, as though she was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug. She gave an exasperated little sigh, sat there patiently and waited for it to be over.
"What about what's-her-name, your friend - Yvonne?"
"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.
"You could just leave me here," Alice said softly - she'd be able to write out in the open, curled up in the warm dormer window looking out at the street's trees. But she immediately regretted having spoken, for Aunt Petunia looked as though she'd just swallowed a lemon.
"And come back and find the house in ruins?" she snarled.
"I won't blow up the house," said Alice, bewildered, but they weren't listening.
"I suppose we could take her to the zoo," said Aunt Petunia slowly, "and leave her in the car..."
"That car's new, she's not sitting in it alone..."
Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he wasn't really crying - it had been years since he'd really cried - but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted. This method of getting things had always made Alice uncomfortable.
"Mummy, I... want... her... to... come," he yelled between huge, pretend sobs.
"Oh, my sweet, darling, sensitive little boy!" Aunt Petunia cried, flinging her arms around him. Dudley shot Alice a secretive, mischievous grin through the gap in his mother's arms.
Just then, the doorbell rang - "Oh, good Lord, they're here!" said Aunt Petunia frantically - and a moment later Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was the scrawny boy who usually held people's arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Alice always had to remind herself that in other matters he was still usually a nice person. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.
Half an hour later, Alice was sitting in the back of the Dursleys' silvery-bluish, gleaming car, talking with a calm, warm smile and much dignity to Piers and Dudley. She was officially on the way to the zoo for the first time in her life. Her aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with her, and anyway Dudley had asked.
But before they'd left, Uncle Vernon had taken Alice aside into the living room.
"I'm warning you," he said, putting his large purple face right up close to Alice's as Alice leaned back, her eyes wide with genuine alarm, "I'm warning you now, girl - any funny business, anything at all - and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas."
"I'm not going to do anything," said Alice in a slightly shaken voice. "Really," she added, when Uncle Vernon looked unconvinced.
But Uncle Vernon didn't believe her. No one ever did.
The problem was, strange things often happened around Alice, and it was just no good telling the Dursleys she didn't make them happen.
Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Alice coming from the barber's looking as though she hadn't been at all, equally tired of hearing Uncle Vernon complain about it, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut Alice's hair so short she was almost bald, except for her bangs, which her aunt left "to hide that horrible scar." Even Dudley had teased Alice, who had gone to sleep very disheartened and dreading being laughed at in school the next day. The only thing she feared worse was being alienated by Dudley and her friends. Next morning, however, she had gotten up to find her hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. She had been given a week in her cupboard for this, even though she had tried to explain that she couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.
Another time, back before Dudley and her friends began buying her clothes, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force Alice into a particularly ugly greying secondhand dress. The harder she't tried to pull it over Alice's head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet but certainly wouldn't fit Alice. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to her great relief, Alice wasn't punished.
On the other hand, she'd gotten into terrible trouble for that bullying incident two years ago. A bigger, older bully had cornered Alice on the playground, and even as Dudley had run over he'd tried to push her - and suddenly, hundreds of colorful butterflies had flown in front of his face. This had given Alice enough time to get on the defense and run away. As she'd run away, the butterflies had revealed themselves to be mirages, disappearing in puffs of smoke. A very bewildered letter had been sent home from Alice's headmistress, but her aunt and uncle had been furious. And all she'd been able to do was shout loudly to Uncle Vernon through the locked door of her cupboard.
But today, nothing was going to go wrong. When she was having fun with Dudley and Piers, as it was with her own school friends and her own hobbies, life was perfect.
While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things. People at work, Alice, the council, Alice, the bank, and Alice were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.
"... roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said as a motorcycle overtook them.
Alice decided to cautiously test the waters, remembering her dream from this morning. "Lucky thing they don't fly," she said, carefully casual, breaking away temporarily from talking with Dudley and Piers.
Uncle Vernon paused for a second, his face purpling - then he forced himself to nod, faux calm. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it is."
So that was an off-limits thing. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than Alice asking questions, it was Alice talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn't, no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon - they seemed to think she might get dangerous ideas. Even writing was barely allowed under Dudley protection.
It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families; they swarmed toward the big gate entrance decorated with carved animal statues. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance, and then when Dudley broke out his wallet to pay for Alice and the smiling ice cream van lady frowned, they reluctantly bought her a small lemon sherbet twist ice cream.
Alice, Dudley, and Piers had fun walking the twisting, clay-like roads and the bridges of the zoo, looking at all the animals on display, smiling. It was a very nice morning. Dudley and Piers were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, though Alice was nowhere near close to feeling done with the zoo. They ate in the zoo restaurant, which was full of fake plastic trees with monkeys swinging from them and jungle noises from hidden speakers, and aside from Dudley having a tantrum that worried Alice quite frankly because his Knickerbocker Glory didn't have enough ice cream on top, everything went fine there too.
After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. The reptile house arced around in a C shape, all dark cold bricks inlaid with golden glowing glass tanks. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Alice wrapped her sweater tighter around herself; it was a bit chilly for her tastes in here, though the snakes didn't bother her anymore than the spiders had.
Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Their boyish excitement made Alice smile and shake her head a little.
Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can, but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.
"Make it move," he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.
"Do it again," Dudley ordered. The poor snake, Alice thought in exasperation, was just trying to sleep. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but in an impressive display of willpower the snake refused to acknowledge him.
"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.
Alice moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. She wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself, no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass, trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least she had plenty of other places to visit.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Alice's.
It winked.
Alice stared. Then she looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. She looked back at the snake and winked, too.
The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Alice a look that said quite plainly:
"I get that all the time."
"I know," Alice murmured through the glass, though she wasn't sure the snake could hear her. "It must be really annoying."
The snake nodded vigorously.
"Where do you come from, anyway?" Alice asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Alice peered at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
"Was it nice there?"
The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Alice read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. "Oh, I see - so you've never been to Brazil?"
As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Alice made both of them jump. "DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"
Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.
"Out of the way, you," he told Alice aggressively. A survivor till the end, she neatly stepped aside. Piers and Dudley leaned right up close to the glass and began oohing and aahing.
The poor snake hissed at them irritably before sinking slowly down into its former torpor.
Alice thought she was in the clear. But then as they were all piling back into Uncle Vernon's car at the end of the day, Piers calmed down enough to say, "Alice was talking to it, weren't you, Alice?"
Alice gave him a cold, furious, simpering smile and Piers actually recoiled at the sudden, subtle change. "Is your mental health perfectly all right, Piers?" she asked in a dangerous, soft voice. "Now why would you go imagining up a silly thing like that?"
This was mostly vindictive. It was too late. Uncle Vernon had heard.
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting in on Alice. But Dudley quickly stepped between them. "She was helping me," he said in a tough guy's voice that hid fear. "She was talking to the snake, hoping it move for me."
Alice felt a sudden rush of warmth for her cousin.
"... Fine," Uncle Vernon snapped, holding himself back with a great, obvious effort. "She gets tonight and tomorrow in the cupboard. No meals. She's let out the following morning."
"But Dad -!"
"It was going to be two weeks in the cupboard with only one meal a day! Would you like me to make it so?" Uncle Vernon thundered in the black and creepy living room full of hunched black furniture shadows. Shadows crawled, too, across his face.
Dudley fell silent.
Uncle Vernon's eyes flashed in Alice's direction. "Go!"
Then he collapsed into an armchair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.
Alice lay in her dark cupboard much later, staring at her watch. Her most practical request and gift from Dudley, more important even than her little food and gift luxuries, she used this every time she had a cupboard punishment. She would wait until a time she was sure everybody would be in bed, then she snuck out into the kitchen to steal food.
This was not any manifestation of Alice's true nature. This was survival instinct. She kept plastic bags full of food from nighttime thievery hidden underneath her bed during cupboard punishments.
She had other things like this. A bucket in the corner in case she had to pee outside her two allotted times a day out of the cupboard. A light bulb that always worked so that she could write during long afternoons in the cupboard. Bug spray for the particularly nasty spiders. The worst were the ones that got in her hair while she was sleeping.
Survival mechanisms.
Alice had lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as she could remember, ever since she'd been a baby and her parents had died in that car crash. She couldn't remember being in the car when her parents had died. Sometimes, when she strained her memory during long hours in her cupboard, she came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on her forehead. This, she supposed, was the car crash, though she couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. She couldn't remember her parents at all. Her aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course she was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.
When she had been younger, Alice had wandered countless streets just trying to stay away from home, had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take her away, but none of it was any use and it never happened; the Dursleys were her only family. Yet sometimes she thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know her. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny old man in a violet top hat had bowed to her once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Alice furiously if she knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at her once on a bus. A bald man in a very long, purple coat had actually taken her hand and kissed it in the street the other day, like she was a princess, and then walked away without a word.
The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Alice tried to get a closer look.