get up now, you're not alone at all, a harry potter fanfic

a/n: This is how I'm dealing with the post-election stress, y'all—writing transgender characters out of spite.

This fic was inspired by ink-splotch's fic 'the girl who lived (again)', which can be read on ao3 and tumblr. I highly recommend reading her fics. They're all wonderful.

The title is from the song Comes and Goes (in waves) by Greg Laswell.

If anyone needs me, I'm burned out from writing so many essays.

Disclaimer: Listen; I lack the motivation and many other things to be a professional writer.

Title: get up now, you're not alone at all

Words: 4K

Summary: Harry Potter's letter addresses her as 'Miss H Potter'. Trans Characters.

Hermione accepted it wholeheartedly because it seemed reasonable with her entrance to the Wizarding World. Ron, having been raised by a family that was treated as second class and a mother who did her best to instill manners in her children, nodded and asked if Harry liked the Harpies then.

Harry was able to walk up the steps to the Girls' Dormitory without any problems. No one noticed her deep sigh of relief.

As the weeks moved on, Hermione gave her books and the words that she could use to describe herself. Ron taught her the best way to jinx and kick the shin of anyone who misgendered her (usually Malfoy and his ilk). With this, they carved their own space into Hogwarts.

Madame Pomfrey gave Harry the information on the transition process with the potions ("I'm so sorry, dear," she said. "But you'll need your guardians' permission to start them."), the support groups in and out of the school, and the process to legally change her name.

"Have you given it any thought?"

"I like my name," said Harry. Her parents had given her that name, it was one of the few ties she still had other than her eyes, hair, and last name.

She started having tea every other Saturday afternoon with Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall. Ron and Hermione would join, as well on the days Harry joined the small group that played Gobstones together in the Astronomy Tower. Hagrid was a frequent guest to those events, and was always welcomed with opened arms and large hearts.

The Transfiguration professor was familiar with the process, as she had gone through it herself several years back. She wasn't the only one, and kept an eye on her students that she always treated as her own. Nymphadora Tonks, Blaise Zabini, Terry Boot, Luna Lovegood, the future Albus Potter-Weasley and more.

Hogwarts was a home to all, and McGonagall made her mission for it to always be so. Stern lectures were given to Snape numerous times, Binns would forget everything in a matter of minutes, and detentions were handed out without impunity.

Christmas came in a flurry of blizzards and the smell of pine. Harry was gifted a pink jumper soft to the touch from Mrs Weasley ('Mate, you don't have to like it." "Why not?" "Because it's so pink!"), a carved flute and a set of combs from Hagrid, and some lovely books from Madam Pomfrey. The Cloak that she was given brought a strange hunger to her heart, a curiosity that burned bright about her parents.

The girl in the Mirror was surrounded by family. They crowded around her, faces teaming over with love. She was small with long hair, a shy smile, but loved. She was so clearly loved. Loved. Loved. Loved. Harry thought that her heart was going to burn from feeling it all.

"Do you think…" The words felt dry on her tongue. Harry shifted her weight on the cold stone floor, sitting cross-legged and watching her reflection with a brooding expression.

"Why wouldn't they?" said Ron. To him, familial love was unconditional and as strong as Goblin-forged metal. To Harry, it was a choice. The Dursleys gave her no love, and she returned those feelings. It was blood and old magic that bound them, and she would one day be free of it.

Dumbledore understood this when she brought it up on a winter night.

Eyes distance, he said that there was nothing more terrifying and wonderful than the power of love. "But remember," he said, "Families are more than just blood." He appeared older in those moments, and Harry knew that he didn't see socks in the Mirror.

But that year felt like a dream.

The Dursleys grew in their nastiness. They locked her wand and broom away, shut Hedwig in a cage, and cut her long hair to a jagged, short length. At night, Harry recited letters that she would wish to write to Ron and Hermione.

But they came. The car was flown to her window straight out of a modern fairytale. Fred and George sang their own praises. Ron held his hand out for her to grab onto, laughing and wishing that Hermione were also there to join their escape. (But the letters afterwards full of her admonishments made it just as good.)

Mrs Weasley fussed over Harry, giving her Ginny's old clothes and helped her grow out her hair again. Mr Weasley told her stories about his children when they were younger, and was excited to show her his inventions in his shed, grateful that there was finally someone who could understand him.

The rest of the family was like this. Percy stuffily introduced himself, and told her that she could come to him anytime if she needed help understanding bureaucracy. The twins teased her and treated her as another sister. Ron was always steadfast with his friendship, showing her a childhood that she never knew she could have. Harry stayed up with Ginny at night, talking about everything from Quiddiitch to the latest episode in a popular wireless drama.

At times, a mistake would be made. Mrs Weasley use the wrong words, immediately become frazzled, and served Harry an extra heaping of pudding as an apology. It was little things, but she always made the extra effort to make Harry feel welcomed and loved in the family. Before the train would leave each year, Mrs Weasley would pull her aside and told her to be brave, be strong—and that if anyone dared to harm her, then Mrs Weasley would be more than thrilled to send a Howler.

There were other nights, of course, when Ginny asked questions that left Harry wondering.

"I guess I knew gradually?" she said, arms folded behind her head. She looked up at the charmed stars that were painted on Ginny's ceiling. "Hogwarts helps. There's all of those books and people. I dunno. Things make more sense now."

A pause. "Oh," said Ginny. "Just like that then?"

"It's different for everyone else." Harry paused and raised her head, but Ginny appeared to have fallen asleep.

Lockhart fumbled, only getting Harry's pronouns right when there was an audience. She complained about this and everything else about him in the evenings she shared with Ron and Hermione in the Common, Room, playing chess and listening to the wireless.

Hermione tried to justify his actions with flushed cheeks and reminding everyone about his heroism. This only made Ron grumpier. Harry rolled her eyes. The group that she played Gobstones with related to her. They mimicked Lockhart's posh accent, needling him at every chance they got. On every other Saturday afternoon, Pomfrey and McGonagall poured Harry more tea, reminding her a touch too gleefully that the job was jinxed.

"What an insufferable man," sniffed Pomfrey. "How could the hero in the books be so different?"

Hagrid was the best to go to. He laughed merrily, sending ashes and embers scattering from his fireplace when she asked him about the accuracy of the books. (Because if Harry knew anything, it was that Hagrid knew so much more about magical creatures than any wizard who gave out homework about his favorite hobbies.)

"I'va meet Flobberworms that can 'andle ghouls better!" Hagrid laughed again. "This prove that anyone can get a job 'ere."

A day after Hermione was prettified, Ron had achieved a new record of detentions. The majority was for sticking up to Harry when Snape, and Malfoy sneered and called her by the wrong pronouns, and then the next set was because he tried to fight the entire Slytherin Quidditch team because they jeered and joked about Hermione's cursed state.

"You don't have to do this," Harry told him. They walked down the corridor, Ron limping because he refused to let anyone treat his bruises that he wore as badges of honor.

"You two are my best friends," he said. "'Course I'll always fight for you. It's the Gryffindor way." He stubbornly held his head high and didn't see the suit of armor that he walked straight into.

A brief interlude about Ron Weasley, a boy who dreamt of being a knight, and he ended up becoming one.

Simple acts of kindness what was sowed the seeds of the friendship that he and Harry had. They ate sweets and talked about many things, hungry for friendship and dreadfully curious about each other.

The boy he saw in the mirror was brave and extraordinary, and that image haunted him for years.

"I don't think I'm good enough to be your friend," he admitted glumly to Harry once over a game of chess. It had been a bad week full of low marks, a glaring Snape, and more terrible stories in the news. He sighed and watched over his shoulder to see Fred and George show off with their new product line. A small crowd had formed around them, eagerly anticipating what more fireworks were coming next.

He was never going to be like them.

One of Harry's rooks got mercifully bashed to pieces. "You're always good enough."

"You're just saying that because –"

"Because you tore up Percy's letter," Harry finished. "Look at what you've done. You protected Hagrid about the dragon stuff. You stole a flying car to save me from the Dursleys, and then you faced your mum's wrath. And that's only two year's worth of stuff." Her smile became cheeky. ""And 'sides, I saved you from mermaids last year. I think we're good."

"What if I mess up again?"

"Then you get better. You've done that so far."

Tom Riddle dealt heavily with secrets and death. Down in the Chamber, he gloated over a child close to death. His words were poison and he had Harry's wand; but she had the arrogance of youth and her mother's love. She already knew the power of it, how Quirrel burned to dust and ashes under her touch. She had also witnessed other forms of love, Hagrid treating her with rock cakes and pictures of her family, the Weasleys taking her in, Ron going into the Forbidden Forest…

It was love, pure and simple, and Tom Riddle could never touch it.

In the end, with her sword stained and tears on her robes, Harry had a new secret to hold.

"I told him everything," whispered Ginny, voice getting smaller. "What happens to me now?"

'..and Ginny's Galahad now, he prefers Gal,' Ron's letter went. 'Because that Dad've won that prize, we can start paying for those potions and get me a new wand I have a wand again! And Gal says he can't wait to be taller than you.'

Harry started writing, her tongue sticking out in frustration about the annoyance of everyone growing taller than her. She also wrote to Gal. They talked more about Quidditch and what was happening during their summer holidays. The Chamber was only hinted at with Gal's vague mentions of his nightmares.

'Why Galahad?' she wrote.

'We're all named after people from King Arthur,' he wrote back. 'Dad used to read those stories to us when we were all younger. I like them, and Mum's gets all weepy when I brought up using one of her brothers' names. Why Harry?'

'Because it's my name. It's mine and it can't be taken away,' wrote Harry.

'That's fair,' Gal said in his letter. 'You're also hairy enough to be a Harry.'

'Prat.'

A brief interlude about Galahad Weasley: the youngest of seven, the one who grew up on stories on how he was the first in seven generations.

He told all of his secrets and dreams to a cursed book that wrote back, but instead of encouragements and friendly ramblings, Tom Riddle spoke in poisons. He tore at the boy's soul bit by bit, filling it full of nightmares.

And, like all nightmare, it ended, but not without the lingering fear. He still had to wake up.

Gal woke up and slipped out of bed. He found Harry sitting on the porch, watching their wind chimes that Luna had made dangle in the early morning sunlight with a pensive expression on her face. The sunlight sparkled through the colored bits of glass, glinting off her glasses, and scattered bright colors everywhere.

It was such a peaceful image to look at: her sitting in the wicker chair with a cup of tea in her hands. Sometimes seeing sights like this made the Chamber and the war more like a far-off dream to Gal.

Silently, he approached her and dropped a kiss on the back of her neck.

Their fingers interlocked, wedding bands sun-warmed, and they sat together in the silence.

Letters flew much to the Dursleys' distraught. Harry wrote about Dudley's agony over his summer diet, Hermione about the old-school glamor of Paris, Ron about the hot sands of Egypt with various commentary by his brothers.

'I wish you were both here with me,' Hermione wrote.

'I wish you were both here with me because the spiders are everywhere,' Ron said in his letter.

'You're both getting sentimental on me,' Harry said.

'I'm not being sentimental,' Ron's scrawl became heavier and messier, 'THERE ARE SPIDERS THE SIZE OF MY FACE. SAVE ME. I FOUND ONE IN MY COT LAST NIGHT, AND NOW I'M AFRAID TO SLEEP IN IT. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LIVE IN CONSTANT FEAR?'

'Can't seem to imagine it,' was Harry's dry reply.

It's in Harry's summer before her Third Year when they all met up again.

They'd all changed, Hermione was taller, her dark skin glowing from her time in Paris. Ron had grown to an alarming height, gleeful to use his brothers and friends as armrests. Harry had been freed enough to go shopping for the first time by herself, happy to wear a white dress that had a pattern of red flowers printed on it. Her hair was longer and just as messy as before. And Gal, as Ron had reported in the letters, had also grown. It was a matter of debate if it were the potions or genetics to blame.

"Too tall," Harry said. She took in the image of the youngest Weasley boy, happy in his old jumper and short hair. He was several inches taller now. Nowhere near Ron's incredible height, but he was on his way. This would eventually be the excuse for her to buy heels.

She roomed in with Hermione after they came, wanting to reconnect with her friends as soon as possible. Hermione taught her better ways to plait Harry's hair, and they talked about their respective holidays as Crookshanks sniffed at Hermione's school supplies.

Harry was mightily sick of tea by her Third Year.

She was sick of drinking it, of seeing it and being told her future was going to be damn short.

"I'm not going to let bunch of leaves dictate my future," she loudly whispered in their Divination class, but it appeared that no amount of words could stop the dread she felt when their professor would give her those looks full of pity.

"I'm not going to die," Harry said again, and then she saw the shadow of a large dog in the Forbidden Forest.

"I'm not…" And the Dementors; there were so many of them.

"What do I do?" she asked Professor Lupin. Her hands were shaking, and she was constantly pale and trembling from her nightmares that the creatures encouraged.

His smile was warm. "This is when you create more happy memories."

The Gobstones Club clamored over Harry, asking her about her private lessons, all of them curious to know how to ward off the Dementors.

"It's a bit like—and this—" Harry pushed her sleeves up, and showed them the wand movements. "Then you think of something happy—"

She passed along more information: books about Dark Creatures, blends of tea that promised warm dreams, mantras to mentally ward off the chill, and it wasn't long until she had students from all houses stopping by to ask her for help. It was a bewildering difference from the previous year when everyone thought she was the Heir of Slytherin.

"You'll make a great professor," Gal told her, his cheeks pink when they walked back together from a club meeting.

Harry felt her face heat up. "It's Professor Lupin everyone should thank."

Dazed with shaking hands, Sirius emerged from the shadows and moonlight. "Harry?" He couldn't stop looking at her the entire time they left the Shrieking Shack. "I can't believe it's you." He blinked. "You go by Harry, right?"

"It's my name," she said. It was like walking into a dream, but the reality was that a mass murderer was her godfather, Ron's rat was evil, werewolves could teach, and she even had a chance to hit Snape with a spell.

"Your mother would be so proud of you." Tears were falling down his face. "She would think you're so brave to be yourself."

"And what about my dad?" Her voice was almost lost, so small and full of hope.

"Kid, you're their entire world." The rest was said in silence about she was her godfather's entire world, too.

Harry's fourteen when she's allowed to start taking the potions.

Having a murderer for a godfather helped her relatives to agree. The Dursleys never called her by the right pronouns, and only near the end was when Vernon called her a number of nasty things—but also a witch!— before they'd been dragged off to safety by Hestia and Daedalus.

The potion started to work slowly, but Harry noticed. The first set of potions acted as a puberty blocker, and the next set brought forth the changes, some like the softness of her skin and the slight adjustments in her body shape.

"Where did you get those?" Ron tactfully said when they picked her up from the Dursleys.

Hermione punched his arm.

Ron shrugged this off. "But how are those going to affect Quidditch?"

She and Ron danced, and by dancing, Ron was constantly stepping on her toes while Harry stared at Cho.

"Mate, she's straight," Ron reminded her. Again, he stepped on her foot. Harry stepped on his foot in retaliation. Poor Ron was suffering a lot of bodily harm that year. He clumsily steered her away from Cho, nearly knocking over Neville Longbottom's drink all over the front of his dress robes in the process. "She's really straight," he reminded her.

"At least I've noticed that she's a girl." Harry's glower was nearly lethal.

Ron stepped on her foot again.

Rita Skeeter.

Just Rita Skeeter.

Apprehensive, she and Ron noticed the dangerous glint in Hermione's eyes. It was the same one that caused Snape's robes on fire, Polyjuice to be made, and justified the use of a Time Turner.

"Should we be afraid?" Ron asked.

Hermiome smiled. Harry burned another article.

Ron sighed. "Should I be afraid?"

There were other reasons to be afraid by the end of the year and for the following.

Under Umbridge's rule, the Gobstones Club was the first to be disbanded (and first to join Dumbledore's Army), then all of the Quidditch teams except for Slytherin's, and a rash of other terrible decisions that made every student curse and send owls to the twins for proper pranking materials.

Ron said, "The job's jinxed. She'll be gone by the end of the year."

"Excellent," said Harry. "Then I'll get to whack her with my broom!"

Harry's childhood had died many times before Dumbledore told her about the prophecy.

But this was one of her greatest deaths before her walk to the Forbidden Forest.

"I don't care!" Silver trinkets hit the floor and pieces broke off. "I've had enough! I've done enough! Sirius is dead, and I've had it!" She balled her hands into fists that she pressed on either side of her head, her sobs breaking her heart into more pieces. "I just want it to stop…"

Rooming arrangements in the Burrow were much like that previous' summer. Gal had been forced to Ron's room, while Hermione and Harry had his. Fleur, much to Molly's muttering, was happily staying in Bill's old room with her fiancé.

Harry settled under the blankets and sheets, slowly blushing at the thought that Gal usually slept in that very same bed. She wasn't used to this kind of intimacy, but that didn't stop her from accidentally stealing one of his Christmas jumpers when she was helping Ron with the laundry.

"Bollocks," she realized when she woke up one morning.

"Why is everyone in this house being so weird?" Ron complained a few days later, not noticing the way he looked at Hermione and how Hermione looked back at him with an equally soft and adoring expression.

"You are all unbelievable," Mrs Weasley muttered over her tea.

A brief interlude about Hermione Granger; the brightest witch of her age with the ruthlessness and need for justice to match. Brave, brave Hermione, who found at a young age that the world was a cruel place to live in.

"Honey, you can't always fight," her parents had tried to tell her. They were in the headmaster's office at her primary school, called in because of another incident of fighting with a bully. "You'll burn out."

"I had to fight him," she said. "And I won't burn out if I have friends."

Ron and Harry became those friends.

Ron, even when they were in the middle of an argument, would leave tea and sandwiches out for her when she forgot to eat. Harry drew the line at nights, telling Hermione that the book of goblin magical theory could wait for her in the morning. They took care of her when she was trying to take care of everyone but herself.

When she couldn't run, she could walk, and when she couldn't walk, she had her friends to help carry her.

They sat close together near the fireplace in the common room, all hunched over piles of books and plates of biscuits, notes scribbled on odd pieces of parchment./p

"We're going to save Hagrid and Buckbeak," Hermione muttered under her breath. "We have to."

Not I, but We

Silencing Charms were a blessing when the school year went on. Lavender was loud about her gossip and words about Ron, Parvati was loud about horoscopes, and Hermione was loud to tell the both to kindly shut up.

Because of this, Harry became very good with the charm as she read over the Prince's book.

"Please break up with Lavender so that my life will make sense again," Harry told Ron.

By the time Slughorn's Christmas party arrived, Harry found that needed a date.

She cornered Gal after practice, stumbling over the words.

"Does this mean I'll have to wear Ron's old dress robes? The maroon ones?" He appeared wary by this.

"You could show up nude, probably," said Harry.

"So, you do have standards." He bumped shoulders with hers, and left the changing rooms before calling out: "You better hope I'm a better dancer than Ron!"

He was actually a worst dancer than Ron, but he made up for it by making her laugh as they teased and whispered commentary about the other guests. He told her that was lovely in her dress robes that Tonks had helped her pick out, and she told him that it was a shame that Ron's maroon ones had gone missing.

There was more laughter, and they danced when a slow song came on. Careful to move in slow circles to avoid stepping on her feet, Harry supposed that this was slightly better than flying with her heart beating wildly and eyes wide.

She thought about kissing Gal. She thought about it when she rested her head against his chest, when he played with the curled ends of her hair. She was certain he was thinking of it, too.

There were little things that came from that dance. Long looks that made her stomach flutter and his ears go red (those alone made Ron sigh loudly whenever he was in the room with them), touches that lingered and smiles that were shared, Halley found herself stumbling more whenever he was near, more so when he paid her compliments that she wasn't used to.

In a year full of hushed whispers and people calling her the Chosen One on top of The Child-Who-Lived, she much preferred Gal saying that she looked beautiful after a rough day of practice in the sudden rain.

'Kiss him,' Tonks told her in a rushed letter that Harry desperately needed to read. 'Enough with the pinning already!'

'Aren't you and Remus mooning over each other?' Harry wrote back tactfully.

"I don't have a choice!" wailed Malfoy. "They never gave me one!" He was a bully who had tormented her and her friends' lives, but he was still a boy.

"Make one," said Harry.

There was a boy who had made all of the wrong choice, and Harry never knew who Dumbledore meant the boy to be: himself, Malfoy, or Riddle.

She wanted to wear a bridesmaid robes and dance with her friends. Instead she was standing at the edge of the party in a body that wasn't hers, watching almost mournfully at all of the happy people. She tugged at the hem of her own robes. It was much too pink, and her hair was too curly and blonde. She had enough of feeling like an outsider in her own body.

"Galahad." She opened one eye and shut it. He was handsome in his dress robes. The evidence of the party strewn over his robes and hair in loose petals and glitter, but he wore a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

He brushed golden petals out of her strawberry-blonde hair, and then touched the side of her jaw. "What do you think?"

"I want to have a future," Harry said, but she thought of tea leaves and prophecies.

In the shadow of the Burrow where snatches of the party echoed in the wards, the kiss was a short, sunlight spilling between then, a cherished moment between two people who wanted more time.

Amidst the chaos, Harry held fast onto the hands of her best friends and they vanished.

In the Forbidden Forest, the dead appeared during the war.

"My baby girl," said James. He brushed Harry's fringe away from her face, his hands cool to the touch. "My beautiful, beautiful girl."

"Look at you," added Lily, still young and beautiful in her death. "You're so brave."

A brief interlude about Harry Potter; also known as the Child-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, and the Woman-Who-Won.

She made her way to make breakfast for the Dursleys one morning to see Petunia already scowling in the kitchen, having no clue how her life was about to change that day.