WARNING: Upfront there is going to be a lot of things mentioned in this fic that people are sensitive about. First off Harry is a woman and remains a woman in Canon Harry's body. Her relationship with her gender will come up. Secondly there will be moments of gender identity discussions and LGBTQ characters. Thirdly we will be mentioning child abuse and the consequences of. Harry's adventure is the focus of the story, but these will be topics that come up and I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea.
Thank you, an enjoy the story.
"Up! Get up! Now!"
She woke up with a start but refused to open her eyes. Her mind was slow to adjust to the sudden interruption, but she felt a quick and vicious urge to punch whatever was causing it. There was a rap on the wall immediately in front of her face. If she had been a little more aware she would have recognized why that was weird. Instead she was following her usual reaction to being awakened much too early.
She went straight from confused and annoyed to murderous.
"Fuck off."
The harsh demand came out higher pitched than she intended, but with an equally 'bitchy' tone the uncalled for wake up demanded. It sound slightly strange, but she supposed that was because she didn't shout in the dorm often enough to recognize the way it sounded with the 'acoustics' her musically inclined friends talked about. The voice echoed back at her almost immediately making the room feel oddly smaller.
Something in the back of her mind stirred at that, but a quick snuggle into her pillow distracted her.
For a moment there was silence and she let out a sigh the haze of sleep dragging on her mind. Whoever had shouted, she didn't feel awake enough to try and place the voice, had shut up it seemed.
Good, she thought feeling a stab of viciousness. With how her body was curled up and aching she doubted she'd been asleep more than an hour. Her head hurt behind her left eye, a dull thud that reminded her of the precursor to a migraine. Which considering the sun had just been creeping up when she finally drifted off made sense.
"What did you just say to your Aunt?" a male voice thundered as the door was wrenched open with a thud and her eyes flew open, stomach leaping into her throat.
Her heart beat jerked to an unsteady rhythm as fear lit her every sense and sent her grabbing for the nearest projectile. Something inside her pulled tight.
The sight of the huffing purple face was blurry and unfamiliar.
That sent her hands searching even more frantically as she found herself shoving her body back against the wall, which was shelved and wooden. Her fingers meet rough-hewed wood that scratched her as she made contact with and dismissed the little collection of goods settled there as potential weapons.
Her insides felt like an elastic band being tightened more and more as the man leaned forward screaming, though his words weren't registering for her.
One hand tightened around something small and metal at last as the other found the familiar shape of glasses.
She sent it flying straight into the man's face with unprecedented precision as a scream simultaneously came loose to warn her roommates. She didn't stay on the bed as the man spluttered and howled rearing back. It left a small space open for her.
She took off instantly letting her body follow the instinct to run, ducking through the strangely shaped opening. She barely took in the sight of the neat entrance way of a home she had never fucking seen.
She saw the front door and the glass panels showing outside and went for it. The tightness in her snapped at the sight.
The door seemed to fly open before she touched.
She tumbled out into the sunlight and unfamiliar little suburb a high pitched screech of "Vernon!" and the sound of footsteps thundering after her with roar that sent her mind back to childhood. Fingers brushed her shoulders when she leapt off the front entrance and went running at full speed.
Her mind was blank as she choose a random direction along the idyllic street with identical houses and hedges. She heard the roar of the man behind hear, her heart pounding in her head as the adrenaline helped her keep her legs moving, and screams from ten years before making her start shaking, first inside and then out. Only the complete inability to recognize any of the area around her and immediate fear kept her from falling down and hugging her knees at the memory. Instead her eyes burned and her mind stayed blank as she ran.
And ran.
And ran.
And ran.
Her lungs burned and her legs ached but she didn't stop.
She ran until the small suburb was a distant memory and the voices long faded away. She stumbled into a park going passed a few joggers and dog walkers. Finally she collapsed under a tree away from them and started gagging only to find her stomach empty.
Her breath came in rapid burning gasps. Her lungs began to burn. She choked unable to get a smooth inhale in. Her tears burned blurring the world even further than her vision did. She heard a shout behind her distantly.
I've gotta breathe.
The gasps only got worse.
Breathe.
Fear bubbled back up more vicious than ever. Her hands flailed instinctively to her hips to find only worn out sleeping pants and empty pockets. No inhaler.
BREATHE DAMN IT!
Her vision started to darken. The panic set in. Then something touched her back making her flinch forward. The only thing the stopped her from attempting to flail away was the smooth plastic shoved in her mouth. The shape was familiar. Her hand went to it pressing down on the trigger she found on top and inhaling deeply. The moment she completed the actions she felt her heart slowing, air coming in.
In increments of seconds, hours, decades, the air came back to her and so did the world. A hand was rubbing up and down her back connected to the body leaning over her on her left. The stranger was woman, she registered, the voice from that direction trickling in as she came above water.
"Shh, there you go. Just breathe. That's all you need to do." It was a soft soprano and unmistakably English.
Her vision cleared, as much as it could without her glasses, and the rest of her body came back to her.
Her feet felt numb and wet in a way that meant they were definitely injured. Her head throbbed and felt light. It was a unique feeling that only followed panic and an asthma attack. Her throat was raw and the rest of her sore and covered in sweat. She was warm though she realized, finally noting the unexpected temperature for January.
Slowly she removed the inhaler from her mouth taking in some unfiltered air. She looked down.
She wasn't wearing the dress she'd fallen asleep in, instead, it was a too large T-shirt.
Her boobs were gone.
Her hand, the one not clenching the inhaler, dropped the glasses held in a death grip and pulled at the collar. She ducked her chin to look in. A completely flat chest and thin scrawny body. There were no cuts or scars to explain the sudden absence of body fat either.
The stranger's hand was still going up and down her back.
"Where am I?" her voice came out croaking and rough.
It wasn't her voice.
Too high pitched and even worse accented and not the familiar soft drops of American Southern.
The stranger beside her took in a sharp breath. The movement made her look up through a fringe of dark hair and she found the other woman was significantly larger than her. The stranger was close enough that she could see the expression without the blur of bad eyesight. It was a gentle one on a brown sharply angled face, black curly hair pinned back by what seemed a dozen small little butterfly clips.
"You're in Little Whinging kid. Do you have, an," the stranger's face pinched and close up, mind clearing to a low level hysteria at the impossibility of this situation, she recognized the youth in it then. "An adult?"
God, this kid couldn't be more than seventeen.
"I'm supposed to be an adult," she admitted not sure how to process the facts that were slowly building up. Her mind going back to what the people in the strange house had actually said.
"your aunt"
"freak"
"Boy, are you listening?"
The stranger's concern went to confusion and dubious. "You're what, eight?"
"Ten," The words didn't make sense. But the protest came out of her offended and without her consent.
The stranger gave her a look, but eventually shrugged it off and began shifting awkwardly, face screaming that she had no idea what to do now.
"Look, I'm going to take you to the cop shop, alright?"
She starred and after a moment realized the stranger was waiting. She picked up the dropped glasses and slipped them on her face. The world cleared up significantly, still unfamiliar and still wrong.
She nodded.
The girl, too young to be anything else, she was even more certain now, helped her up. Putting pressure on her feet almost sent her sprawling and her eyes burned as the cuts screamed. She could now feel what the numbness had been covering. She could feel every tear and split, growing wider as gravity put pressure one them.
The girl followed her gaze and cursed when she spotted the blood on the grass.
"Bloody hell." There was a moment and then an arm went to her shoulder and another her legs.
"Not walking then." The girl looked and she understood relaxing and letting herself be swept up. She was way too light and small for a teenager to pick up so easily. The girl must have thought something similar because she scowled, but carried her forward.
"What's your name?" the girl finally asked as they made their way to the street that was waking up in what was clearly a summer morning.
The hysteria bubbled out in strangled laughter and more burning tears when she answered with honest despair.
"I don't know."
. . .
They barely made it into the police station, cop shop the teenager, Maggie apparently, insisted on calling it, when the question was answered. The angry man she had met upon waking up was waiting there, purple-faced and bellowing his black mustache bristling with his rage. She had ducked behind Maggie, who to her credit, squared up in the face of her obvious fear and the man's fury. Seeing the tense reaction of those surrounding them the man quieted under his wife's, the screeching woman she assumed, touch.
She didn't get to see the confrontation that followed though. She was led into another room to be bandaged up and petted over by an elderly woman, who was just as English as everyone else she'd met so far. Maggie had given her a smile, which she supposed was meant to be comforting.
Nothing about this situation could be made comfortable though.
The woman, a secretary, in neat clothes that looked new and she vaguely recognized as better fitting in the 80's, called her Harry.
While they waited the screaming started again making her flinch for a moment, but she quickly suppressed it mind spinning.
She had long gone passed this believably being a dream. It was too clear-cut, sharp and organized. There was no way her friends had the gung-ho to prank her in an elaborate way. This was real and she was in a different body. There was nothing that cleanly explained the change of voice and lack of growth. Not to mention the way the size of the world had suddenly shifted. She was short, but her feet still usually brushed the ground when she sat.
She sipped the tea from the warm paper cup she'd been handed. The fact it tasted good made her insides clench. She hated tea, but this warm sweet mixture soothed something in her. It tasted familiar or at least smelt so.
No one she lived with drank anything beyond sweet ice tea and coffee.
Her hands shook and she settled the cup on the table beside her as the voices outside the room quieted again. She went back over her information slowly.
She was in England. She was ten, she knew that somehow. She was in a place named Little Whinging. She'd woken up in a cupboard under the stairs. Everyone kept calling her Harry.
She hadn't touched the door when she fled the house. It wasn't like she didn't. She hadn't touched it.
. . .
Some time and a few cups of tea later, the door opened and a police officer entered. She wasn't crying, not anymore, but her face seemed sufficiently distressed to make the older man's face smooth out from the scowl into a gentle smile. The man took the secretary's abandoned seat pulling it across from her. He settled his arms against his knees, but kept his distance.
She felt oddly grateful for it.
"My name is Sergeant Bartholomew Rathburn. I have a few questions I need you to answer Harry." the man spoke in a deep voice that reminded her of the gravely rumble of her Papaw's voice from years of smoking. It was more reassuring than any smile. "Can you do that for me?"
She nodded, though she was unsure of her voice.
Sergeant Rathburn's face fell into a kind, sternness then.
"That's good. Now, first of all, you aren't in trouble Harry. No matter what you tell me you won't be in trouble. Not even with your aunt and uncle. So, I need you to be completely honest."
He waited for her to nod again and then smiled.
"Can you tell me why you ran away from home this morning?"
She hesitated for one moment and finally thought, fuck it.
"I don't know those people."
That sent him leaning back, but he composed himself quickly.
She kept speaking before he could interrupt and make this harder. It all came pouring out, painful, unbelievable, and the complete truth.
"I woke up in a place I didn't recognize and got yelled at by a large man I didn't know. So, I threw something and ran. I kept running until I got to the park. Maggie helped me calm down. She had an inhaler. Then she brought me here."
She took a deep breath.
"I don't understand what's going on. I didn't even know my name was Harry until you all started calling me it. I was scared and confused and they were yelling."
This was clearly not a twist the man was expecting and she fell back into the chair shoulders slumping as exhaustion overwhelmed her and she spoke again with tears in her voice, head giving a sharp throb to the left.
"I just wanna go home."
. . .
It took another check-up, which caught a forming bruise under the hairline, but she, Harry Potter, was taken to the hospital to be scanned for a concussion. Hours passed being looked over by doctors as she processed the full name she had been supplied. Her Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were left behind to be interviewed.
After they had finished looking her over and confirmed a minor concussion, she had been fed and allowed to use the bathroom. The mirror only confirmed her worst assumptions.
She now had messy black hair, bright almond shaped emerald eyes, and, when she lifted the fringe, an iconic lightning-shaped scar. She was no Daniel Radcliffe either. Tiny with a strangely fragile look that could have been nice in a fey way, if she hadn't known it came courtesy of malnutrition.
She opened her mouth and closed it again. The strange child in the mirror did the same.
He looked exhausted, the bags under his eyes, only emphasizing the brightness of the green. She'd always wanted green eyes, she reflected searching fruitlessly for the smallest hint of blue-gray.
He looked frightened, confused, and vaguely nauseous.
His, her, front teeth were straight.
She stared and abruptly began laughing.
She kept at it until she cried and then laughed some more.
She was Harry Fucking Potter.
She was the main character in her favorite book series.
She was a Horcrux.
She had gotten the Dursleys forced into an interview about possible child abuse charges.
She pinched herself. It hurt.
That just made her laugh harder as the tears spilled down her face.
This didn't make any sense.
Not a single tiny bit.
But it was real.
Her breathing returned to normal as her laughter faded and she looked over herself dully. She turned on the facet and cleaned her face to wipe away the evidence of tears. She closed her eyes and hummed, clicking her tongue and letting her mouth move and vibrate in a way that felt unfamiliar to it.
"Hm, hm hmhmhmhm, hm hm, hmhmhmhm," Came out of her mouth, tone off, but slowly forming into something recognizable as the Imperial March let her focus until the last lingering traces of hysteria faded away. She opened her new green eyes and met them in the mirror.
"I'm Harry James Potter," she told her reflection, listening to the unfamiliar rise and fall of the accent so unlike her former one.
She, Harry, nodded and quietly left the loo. A quiet request to a nearby nurse led her back to her room. She settled in pulling up the blanket to block out the world and let herself think.
She would be Harry until she figured out if she could become herself again.
End Notes: Haha, funny story. I've been rereading the Harry Potter series and wondered who would be the worst person to wake up as. I clearly settled on Harry. Our Protag is in for some fun times isn't she?
Edited it a bit for a cleaner story and added some smaller relevant details.
Fixed the minor plot hole with the glasses.
