Disclaimer: Harry Potter, its copyright, trademarks, characters, and everything else part of it fictionally and legally are all owned by J.K. Rowling. This fanfiction gives me no monetary gain of any kind and in no way reflects the views, thoughts, or anything else of Ms. Rowling. It's just something I'm doing for fun.
AN: Hello! This is my very first fic. Do please enjoy and, if you feel strongly, write a review. Also, I'm aware of my weird issue with accidentally slipping into neutral pronouns (they/them.) I'm going to go through and fix all of them when I get the chance.
Chapter 1
Pain wasn't something Harry Potter was unfamiliar with. In fact, one could easily make the argument that Harry Potter was quite intimate with pain. Growing up with abusive, neglectful relatives, the Dursleys, Harry knew many different kinds of pain. The pain of hunger and of having to sleep on little more than an old baby blanket on a hardwood floor. The pain of sunburn on the back of his neck from working all day in the garden or of Vernon's belt for a poorly or slowly done chore. The pain of 'Harry Hunting' or of having no friends. Yes, Harry Potter knew many kinds of pain very well.
The pain Harry was currently feeling, however, was quite new to him. For a moment he thought Dudley had fallen off the couch in the tiny little building on the island his relatives dragged him to in order to escape all those letters. That all of this with magic and Hagrid taking him to Diagon Alley was just a dream. It was only for a moment though, as he already knew what it felt like to have Dudley crushing him like a beached baby whale.
If not Dudley though, then what could cause such a pain all over his body? It even felt like his hair hurt it was such an all-over kind of pain. Just as soon as it happened though, it started to fade. The world slowly faded back into view from the inky blackness that it had been for those few moments that felt like hours. Lifting his head, Harry looked around to get a bearing on his surroundings. Everything was far too blurry to make out though. A quick check with his hand informed him that Harry was, indeed, wearing his glasses. They seemed to be having a detrimental effect on his eyes for some reason though. Perhaps it was related to all the pain he just felt?
Removing his glasses Harry looked around once again. He quickly took note of the white marble of the bank, Gringotts, that Hagrid had taken him to. He sat at a large, elegant table made of a dark wood with somewhat fearsome carvings of ornate weapons for the legs. Sitting at the table with him was a goblin, Riphook? No, Griphook. That would mean he was still in the room that they asked Hagrid to wait outside of. What happened?
Griphook made a small grunt before asking "Shall we continue then?"
To which Harry could only reply "Continue with what?"
"With the second request of the late Lord and Lady Potter for you when you became 11," the answer came.
That was right, Harry was led into this room on his way to get money for his Hogwarts supplies from his vault. He didn't know he had a vault, but until recently he also didn't know he was also apparently magical. The pain must have been from that first request Griphook implied. What was it again? Oh right, lifting some kind of spell that his parents apparently did shortly before they were killed. At least they had the forethought to pay the goblins to undo it if they weren't around to do so themselves.
"Yes, sir, please go ahead with whatever is next."
Griphook raised an eyebrow at being called 'sir' but made no comment about it. Instead, he simply pressed a small rune on the table. Another goblin quickly entered the room with a small box only to place it on the table in front of Harry, then leave just as quickly as he came.
"Normally you are only given access to your family vault upon gaining your majority," Griphook explained slightly impatiently. "However, due to a request by the late Lord and Lady Potter you are to be given this item from the family vaults."
Harry hesitantly reached out to open the box that had been placed before him after Griphook's explanation. As soon as Harry touched it, however, the box swung open as if it were spring loaded. Peering inside Harry took note that the box, which was a rather simple wooden thing stained almost black, was rather simple in design. The inside was lined with what he was pretty sure was crushed velvet, only black instead of the red color he only half expected. Inside lay what looked exceedingly similar to a claw in the form of a knife. Laying next to it was a small roll of parchment that Harry gently lifted out of the box to read.
Dear Holly,
If you're reading this it means our plans failed and we aren't here for you any longer. We're so, so sorry, honey. Depending on the timing of things you might be extremely confused right about now. In case that's true, let me explain something. You were born Holly Jasmine Potter. Your father and I used a ritual to hide your name and gender. Technically we're just about to, so hopefully we didn't die doing so and you're not even more confused now.
If you think you're name is Harry James Potter, then you're in luck, our plans half worked. If they completely worked we'd be there with you, but sadly it would seem that isn't the case. Just know that your father and I still love you, honey, and we always will no matter what. Always remember that.
I've placed this letter in a box that will also contain a dagger. It was to be given to whomever your father married from your grandmother, Dorea Potter nee Black. Apparently, it's a black family thing that their women all carry and are skilled with daggers. I figured I would pass it on to you, my daughter, and hope you never need to find a use for it, but if you do that it will help protect you in some way. It's enchanted to change shape to suit the personality of the owner, with me dead simply let a couple of drops of your blood fall on the pommel, that's the opposite end of the blade, and it will change. Mine was a karambit of some kind.
Remember, we love you, Holly. Please enjoy your life as best you know how.
Always,
Lily Potter
Harry was crying by the time he finished reading the letter from their mother. A million questions were brought up from this, but all Harry could do was let out a choked sob. To finally be able to read something written by at least one of his parents and to be given something that they used to own made Harry the happiest he could ever remember being. It was a bittersweet happiness, but even still.
Not wanting to remain there with Griphook staring at him for much longer Harry reached out and plucked the knife from the box. Cutting their thumb just enough to cause it to bleed Harry gently pressed his bleeding digit against the very bottom of the knife where a small onyx was. The gem almost seemed to drink the tiny amount of blood in before it gave a meager pulse. With a brief flash of light, the karambit became a somewhat longer, very straight and very thin dagger that came to a sharp point.
As if sensing what Harry was going to ask Griphook responded: "It's a stiletto dagger." Harry nodded his thanks and examined the dagger a bit more closely. The blade was a light greyish color and had a series of tiny red runes running along the center of it. The handle was made of some kind of black material that was oddly soft but was as firm as wood. It was almost twisted looking and the same onyx was at the end of it as the form it took for Harry's mom. There was also a pair of rubies resting where the blade and handle met, seemingly fused into the metal itself.
Looking up from the dagger Harry wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "What does it mean I was born as Holly?"
Griphook grew slightly more uncomfortable with that question. "The spell cast on you before that box was given to you, the one that made you faint, undid a ritual. The ritual made you physically male. The change back will be gradual, though I am unaware of how long it will take to fully happen."
Harry- Holly now apparently, gave a nod. He asked for a sheath for their dagger and Griphook supplied them one, for a small fee. Getting to their feet on shaky legs Holly wandered over to the door and exited. He glanced around only to find Hagrid a few paces away.
"'Arry!" Hagrid called. "What 'appened ter yer 'air?" Holly tilted their head slightly in confusion before reaching up to pull his fringe down to be able to see the tips of his hair. To his surprise, it was no longer the jet black that it was previously, but a dark wine-red. It didn't jump out, but if the light hit it just so it was quite noticeable.
"Uh... Nothing, it's always been that way," Holly didn't feel like he sold that as well as he could have, but Hagrid seemed to buy it. Giving Holly a nod he accompanied them down to their vault. Holly was floored by the amount of money in this trust vault (and he still had more vaults for when he got older!?) He was busy trying to make heads or tails of the fact that he was apparently actually a girl while Hagrid was getting something from another vault.
Holly didn't really feel like a girl, but then again Griphook did say the change would be gradual. It felt a little strange to suddenly find out you weren't what you thought you were, but at the same time, Holly didn't feel all that attached to being a boy. He was already calling themselves Holly in their head. He supposed that meant their relatives couldn't keep calling them 'Boy' all the time.
Holly froze. He had completely forgotten about their relatives. How could he go back to the Dursleys like this? Just the change in hair color would be bad enough but if he were to slowly change into a girl... Holly highly doubted he would actually live to reach Hogwarts.
Hagrid suddenly giving Holly a small shake brought them out of their gloom and he found themselves standing outside of a store with various robes on display. The name 'Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions' adorned the front of the store. Holly entered alone upon Hagrid's statement of needing a drink to calm down after the minecarts in the bank.
Stepping into the robe shop Holly glanced around for only a few moments before being dragged over to be fitted beside a boy with platinum blonde hair and an expression on his face that made Holly think he thought himself exceedingly important. She doubted he really was and decided to try to just ignore him. She was so focused on that she didn't even notice the subtle change in her thoughts in regards to herself.
The boy, looking over at her, gave her a quick up and down before looking at her like she was dirt. "Red hair and clothes like a beggar," his sneer needed work. "You must be a Weasley."
"A what?" Holly wasn't entirely sure that was some kind of slur but the boy sure made it sound like it was with the venom that he said it with.
"A Weasley. What, you lot so poor you can't even pay attention?"
'Okay, wow, this kid is needlessly antagonistic,' thought Holly. 'Maybe he was traumatized by someone with red hair or something.' The strange blonde didn't say much else to Holly after that and she was pretty okay with that arrangement. She managed to finish getting fitted before the boy, even after whispering to the woman doing the fitting that she needed extra robes in a female cut. She didn't know how long this 'gradual change' would take, so better to be safe than sorry and get both. Not like she was wanting for money anymore, after all.
Upon exiting the robe shop Hagrid was waiting with ice cream, only the second time Holly had ever had it. After finishing it, thanking Hagrid more than once for the treat, the two of them proceeded to hunt down everything. The last thing Holly needed was a wand, so with Hagrid going off on his own again, Holly ventured into Ollivander's alone.
"Quite the situation you seem to find yourself in, Ms. Potter."
Holly nearly jumped out of her own skin as the old man appeared seemingly from thin air right next to her. After letting her heart slow down to healthy levels again Holly processed what who she assumed Mr. Ollivander was said.
"A situation, sir?"
"Yes. Caught in between two places, an unfortunate position to be in, to be sure." Holly really wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she just gave a small nod. There was a tense and somewhat awkward pause before Ollivander moved deeper into the shop and began the process of finding a wand for Holly.
Holly fell down onto the bed of the rented room of the Leaky Cauldron. She stared up at the ceiling before drawing their hand up to look at the wand that finally, finally chose them after nearly two hours of trying out wand after wand. 11 inches, Holly wood with a core of phoenix feather. Holly felt a particular interest because the wood was their namesake. There was that hitch with it being the brother to the wand of the man who murdered her entire family, though. Taking a few minutes of staring at their wand Holly let her gaze slide to the side to fall on the beautiful snowy owl that Hagrid got her as her first birthday present ever. She hadn't thought of a name for the creature yet, but maybe she'd find something in one of her school books.
Letting her arm drop back down Holly stared back up at the ceiling. Here she was in a rented room because she could never go back to her cozy little cupboard under the stairs. It was an interesting feeling, both being unable to return to a place she hated, but also being entirely with anywhere to go. To be honest, Holly didn't really know how to feel about it. On top of that, she was a girl now. A girl. What even was different so far?
Rolling out of bed Holly made her way to the bathroom and pulled off her shirt. The first thing that jumped out at her was her hair. It was a wine-red color that for some reason made her think of flashes of green light. Pushing that out of her thoughts though she scanned the rest of her body. Ignoring the scars that littered her torso, mostly her back, she didn't really notice all that much different. Maybe she wasn't even really old enough for her torso to have changed yet anyway? Everything lower than that felt generally the same. Maybe the goblins were just playing a trick on her? Then again, she'd been calling herself 'her' in her head longer than she'd even realized she had been. Maybe this gradual thing meant it started with her mind?
With a sigh, Holly wandered back over to her bed, put her shirt back on and sat down. She looked down at the shirt and pants. Dudley's shirt and pants, actually. Holly didn't really have any clothes all her own until now, and it was just her Hogwarts uniform. She could afford clothes now though, and she was right next to a major shopping center both muggle and magical.
If she went out to shop for clothes though, would she buy male or female clothes? She had lived as a boy all her life and it didn't make sense to her why she should suddenly be so okay with becoming a girl. Even if she was still mostly a boy, physically speaking, she already felt different than she had when she last woke up, living with the Dursleys.
Her mind suddenly made up Holly jumped to her feet and collected her bag with the galleons she had remaining. She wouldn't worry about it. Maybe that was basically like being in denial, but she would just buy what looked good and to hell with it. With a smile, she gave her currently unnamed owl a quick goodbye and a pat on the head and made her way out the door, down the stairs and through the barrier to Diagon Alley.
It was August 30th, two days before Holly needed to be at King's Cross to board the Hogwarts Express. She'd read through a good bit of their school books and had even ventured back to Flourish and Blotts for a few other books for more detailed information about certain things. She'd gotten a bit bored though, to be honest. She had never huge into reading so she decided that today after dinner she would explore Diagon Alley at night.
Holly was starting to look a bit more girly recently as well. Their hopelessly messy hair had calmed down, if only slightly, and had lightened even more into a shade of wine-red color that she got more than a couple compliments on. It was extremely weird for Holly to get such a thing and she still wasn't entirely sure the people giving them weren't actually making fun of her somehow.
She'd noticed a few other small things, but nothing overly substantial. The biggest changes were mostly just having to get used to people treating her like a girl after introducing herself as Holly. If she was being honest she was extremely nervous to give her real name to anyone, but nothing untoward had happened so far. She'd also grown her hair out some with a hair growth potion she'd purchased. It now fell just shy of her shoulders in a sort of messy bob. Holly quite liked her hair, it was the most obviously different part of her so far and it reminded her the least of being a freak like her relatives always called her.
Walking down Diagon Alley a few minutes after the sun had set was an entirely different feeling than during the day. There was a store here or there that was open but for the most part, they all seemed closed. It wasn't long during their nocturnal exploration that she came upon a place marked with a sign that had them chuckling.
"Nocturn Alley? Well with a name like that I have to go in during my nocturnally timed exploring now don't I?" Maybe Holly was spending a little too much time alone with only Hedwig (she finally got around to naming their lovely owl) and should try to make a friend or something. "Then again, who'd want to be friends with me?"
Self-deprecating monologue aside Holly wandered into the dingy looking alley that cut off in a different direction than most of Diagon Alley. Was this place just as big as Diagon Alley was? Were there other alleys around? With a name like Nocturn Alley maybe it was a place that was magically sealed except at night? No, she could have sworn she'd seen the entrance here during the day.
With the warning of a short-fused bomb, Holly's silent musings and idle browsing of shop windows of macabre things came to an abrupt end. Very strong arms roughly pinned Holly to the wall hard enough to cause her head to smack it. Dazed and alarmed Holly did her best to try to kick at her assailant but could only manage to scuff up their shoes at best. Calling for help didn't seem to be doing any good either, there wasn't anybody else around except a few cloaked figures down a distance that was apparently too far for them to care to clear. Unknown to Holly nobody would hear them scream even two meters away, as just before she were pushed against the wall a silencing ward had been put up.
"Shh, this will only hurt for a minute, then you'll be able to sleep," the voice immediately gave away that her assailant was a man but that did little to comfort Holly. She soon found herself far too terrified to scream as the man pressed her even more into the wall with most of his body. She'd overheard things on the news from her cupboard what strange men did to girls, and her fears only compounded as she felt a sharp pain in her neck. Was he injecting her with some kind of drug?
Suddenly Holly found her hand gripping something. Her knife! How did it get into her hand, she could have sworn it was in her boot? It didn't matter, she needed to do something before this creep made off with her unconscious body. Doing little more than sharply raising her hand she aimed for what she assumed was her assailant's hand at her neck injecting Merlin knew what into her. She was somewhat surprised to find that her mark was distinctly head shaped and was soon swearing up a storm.
Acting quickly on her grasp of the initiative Holly spun around and thrust her dagger as hard as she could into her assailant's stomach, since it was a large target nearer to her height than his heart, and bolted as fast as she could. She ran and ran, ignoring the searing pain in her neck and the burning ache in her legs and the stitch in her side. Holly ran until she made it to the Leaky Cauldron. Once inside she collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath as Tom the barman rounded the bar to check on her.
"What in Merlin's name..." was all she heard him say. A hand on her neck let her know she was bleeding badly and some of it was probably that man's, so there was even more than there should be just from her. She felt cold from the blood loss and the edges of her vision were darkening.
Holly muttered out an "I hope that guy didn't have any diseases," before everything went black.
