Genderbent—
by rayningnight


Disclaimers: Main concept is the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury and Warner Bros. Not Mine.

Summary: He'd finally died. And joy, instead of being sent to the afterlife, Harry got sent to an alternate reality. With another Harry Potter around. Except it wasn't Harry Potter — apparently it was Harriet Potter — and every other gender-bent magical folk from 'his' world. …Why do the Fates hate him so? Harry-centric. GEN. Time/Dimension Travel.

General Warnings: Harry-centric. Past canon-pairings. GEN. May contain violence, some coarse language (not really, but just in case). Time/Dimension Travel (with as a bit of CU-compliance in plot) — so SPOILERS for all books. Some stuff's going to be a parody of canon!verse.


Chapter I—


It'd been a good minute before he understood that, no, he didn't cross on into his Next Great Adventure because no heaven or hell could possibly be some small, empty alleyway squashed between a towering skyscraper and a four-star Muggle hotel.

Simply put, if he'd been upstairs, he couldn't fathom angels and the like being mean enough to dump him here; and if he'd been down there, they'd probably have had some better form of torture than the typical fuzziness, lingering aftertaste and bad breath that normally accompanied someone who'd just awoken. Yeah. Nothing normal like waking up in some dark alley with no memory of what happened the night before.

Because, of course, Harry James Potter was perfectly normal.

That said, Harry wondered exactly where he'd been left this time. He'd been sent by Portkey into a graveyard for his death by a demented megalomaniac Dark Lord, he'd been thrown into some less-than-legal Dark workshop courtesy of Draco's closet, and there was that other time he accidentally combusted in one of his Auror missions to the middle of Hong Kong in some Out-of-Order Floo…

Harry sighed and supposed, on the bright side, no matter where he was, he still had his necessities in his emergency rucksack he kept in non-space (…that seemed to be used far too often for his tastes). Summoning it, he tried to recall what kind of food he'd put in last time, if there was enough drinkable water, maybe some extra clothing—

He froze, eyes widening before narrowing in green fury.

How in Merlin's hallowed name did all the Deathly Hallows get in here?!

Harry remembered, quite vividly, how he'd hurled the wretched Resurrection Stone into the Forbidden Forest, confident that it'd been disposed of from the eyes and hands of magical folk for good. Then there was him snapping the thrice-damned Elder Wand back at the bridge before the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at the ending of the Second War with his best mates as eyewitnesses. And though he hadn't gotten rid of the Invisibility Cloak, he swore tucking that family heirloom away in his Gringotts Bank vault, never to see daylight again.

Until now.

Harry lifted the transparent, liquid-like cloth from his backpack before he stilled once more with an internal explosion of profanities.

His hands.

What the bloody, flying Snitch happened to his hands?

They were tiny. Scrawny little twigs of thin bone and tanned skin, cleaned immaculately of scars and calluses alike. They were instead replaced with blemish-free, boyish hands like — like — like some sort of pianist.

He played piano as well as the next Hungarian Horntail.

With a half-hearted sigh, he stuffed his Invisibly Cloak into his knapsack and hoisted it over his shoulder once standing. He noted the physical difference immediately and wondered if he could find some sort of reflective surface soon, because from what he could tell, he was not only scraggier and scrawnier, he was also younger.

Because no human body in their middle age, no matter how fit, could ever feel — for lack of a better term — young again. If one was a wizard, it was less noticeable, because they aged slower, but once you hit a certain point…

He stepped out of the alley and onto the highway streets, instantly narrowing onto the glass window frame of some sort of Muggle law firm with seventy-something stories.

Well, that answered his questions.

The glass window reflected him as his fourteen-year-old self instead of someone a good two decades older. He had his owls' nest of inky black hair (not his usual cropped salt-and-pepper), his unnaturally bright green eyes (no lines or wrinkles under or above them), an olive skin tone with more golden quality than what he'd seen in the last decade — Hey, Head Aurors had more paperwork than people expect! — and Harry suddenly remembered he'd spent a good few hours outside on Aunt Petunia's garden and playing Quidditch before the Second War had hit him hard at the Riddle Cemetery.

"You lost, kid?"

Harry looked up — yes, up, because he was bloody fourteen and he remembered he was only just hitting his growth spurt at the time — and met a middle-aged, black man in a spiffy business suit holding a professional-looking suitcase with a curious, leashed dog beside him. He was probably wearing Armani or something equally extra expensive, just like the rest of those deskwork rich guys in the building to Harry's left, and just going for an walk before work.

He shook his head, both in dismay because of what 'bachelors' waste their money on these days — really, all those top brands fell out of style so quickly, you'd find yourself buying another the next week and the next week and etcetera— and on the man's question.

"Nah. I'll just pop myself home soon. Thanks for asking though."

Harry stepped back into the empty alleyway once the Muggle left and Apparated home.


Genderbent


Harry then realized Apparating home wasn't such a great idea.

Especially, in hindsight, when he was fourteen and shouldn't really know how to do so in the first place; so, once landed, he quickly casted a Disillusionment spell. He hadn't made the notable crack like most wizardfolk, since he'd mastered that back in some backwater stealth mission for Hermione ages ago.

Oh, the hours he spent for his best friends…

It was a good thing he did too, however, because 'home' was currently an uninhabited acre of land with weeds and the stray Ghoul in the old, abandoned gardening shed.

There was also a too-perky saleswizard, clipboard in hand waving away a persistent dragonfly, trying to retail aforementioned property to a portly witch in her mid-fifties wearing atypical wizard attire.

Harry idly wondered if the Fates had sent him back in time, into another universe, or both, considering his wonderful luck and constant games with probability. Really, he wasn't actually too surprised with the circumstances. Annoyed, yes, but if one lived the life of a wizard, 'impossible' was not in your vocabulary, let alone your dictionary.

Still. After dying a rather… notable death, he wondered why he ended up with this curse of not-dying instead of Voldemort. Harry didn't even want to be immortal. Snakeface would be rightly angry if he ever found out about it.

Probably throw a Dark Lord-style hissy fit too.

With a sigh, he turned tail down from his ex-household and to the streets of Hogsmeade, into the marketplace to contemplate over a round of Madam Rosmerta's good ol' Butterbeer. A newspaper would probably be important too, informative and whatnot, so he added that to his mental to-do list.

Briefly thinking about his rather blasé attitude to this whole situation — he'd died for Merlin's sake, and ended up in his fourteen-year-old body instead of an incorporeal spirit — Harry tacked that onto "expecting the unexpected" (or in Mad-Eye Moody's terms:"Constant vigilance!") or just the typical shock.

Probably neither.

Entering the warm, crowded, smoky, but somehow clean and welcoming Three Broomsticks Inn and tavern ground, Harry was hit with a surprising sense of normalcy. He'd thought it be, well, more different if he was back in time or in a different universe, but everything was practically the same, if the hostelry was fuller than the norm, louder, with some stray animals that managed to sneak into the trash.

The mirror behind the bar reflected the cosy atmosphere and alcoholic drinks, such as Butterbeer and Firewhiskey, served in tall glasses and in foaming pewter tankards. Gillywater, mulled mead, red currant rum, and even cherry syrup were passed here and there; Harry wondered if he'd any sickles left in his bag for one of the sodas with the ice spheres and cute little umbrellas in it and smiled as he rummaged through and managed to find a handful.

Iced sodas were one of his favourites, and that trait had been passed to his son.

So. If everything was the same, maybe it was him who was the problem. His 'death' may have sent him to some Muggle city, but maybe he was still in his universe and time, and all that's changed when he'd "died" was him de-aging so that his mortality would just keep resetting.

pfft…

Fat chance that. There'd probably be more to it — he'd have enough run-ins with probability and luck, and it wasn't ever as it seemed.

Quickly heading for the bar corner, which was surprisingly empty, save for that small drunken woman in a ridiculous purple top hat and ferret scarf and the barista herself, who was at the moment wiping a Firewhiskey glass, Harry asked politely.

"Could I get one of your iced sodas, M—"

He cut himself off as he saw the one coming out of the shadows; not the voluptuous Madam Rosmerta, but some tall and rather muscular bloke stepping towards him in the Madam's signature rolled-up white shirt and some … some black trousers.

Harry took a breath of relief. Good thing, because that fellow in a black apron-dress would not be a sight for the eyes. At all. Well, unless you swung the other way.

"Who're you?" blurted Harry as his thoughts wandered too far, and then an immediate sense of mortification swept over him. Yeah, he's quite sure he won't be getting the Gentlewizard's Award this year in Witch's Weekly.

Or ever.

Did Witch's Weekly even exist?

Snapping away as Harry registered the middle-aged barista's laughter, he looked up from his thoughts. The large wizard didn't seem to care much about Harry's moment of Ron-like tact while rubbing out the tall glass in his hands with a dirty cloth and shooing off a black cat that got on the table. Harry remembered the feline jumping him at Ron's Bachelor's Party, and took a sigh of relief; at least some things, however insignificant, didn't change.

"I guess you're new here, lad. Though…" He placed the cup to the side table and scrutinized Harry, "I'd've sworn seeing you somewhere before," before letting up with a quirky smile, clapping his hand onto Harry's back. "Well, the patrons 'ere call me Mister Rosmerto."

Harry blinked. Twice.

Wha—?

"Yes, yes. The Mediwitch who oversaw me mam messed up in the tests and thought I were a girl!" He erupted out in laughter. "Rosmerta was supposed to be me name, but no, when I popped out, they were too used to calling the baby-in-the-belly 'Rosmerta' so ended up just changing a syllable."

Harry's eyes widened, exclaiming, "You're Madam Rosmerta?"

"Was. Or would've been," Mister Rosmerto tapped his goatee, "whichever you prefer."

Harry, like any other wizard unfortunate enough for such circumstances to happen, was going through a mental breakdown. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened to him, especially when he could now see the similarities the top-hat witch he sat next to had towards a certain Dedalus Diggle, the first wizard to ever shake his hand.

"Um, Mister Rosmerto… do you happen to know the date?"

Mister Rosmerto blinked at the odd question, sweeping his hand across the too-boisterous pub. "Why, it's the Girl-Who-Lived's birthday o' course! The 31st of July — and the thirteenth year anniversary of her defeat of You-Know-Who!"

Yeah. He kind of expected that.

So it was perfectly logical for someone, even one who didn't have 'impossible' in their dictionary, to fain— err, black out.

He did not faint. That only happened to girls.

And Harry Potter was not a girl.


Author's Notes: This plot-bunny was just taunting me to snatch it and showcase it. Dunno exactly where I'll be taking this though… 'specially when I've got this Pre-Cal test… Physics quizzes… and Chemistry homework… dang.

Post Script: Not really a crack!fic but… uh, not all of the characters will be genderbent. Majority will be. Not all. And remember, most names, though some may be pretty weird,do exist. Somewhere. People can name their kids the weirdest things…