NEW AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Greetings. I'm sorry for the woeful lack of updates, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing for you.

As it was, I was rather unsatisfied with the version of this story I had started. I began writing it on a whim and didn't even fathom how large it would be. I'm now planning to give it greater dedication, but that meant starting over and paying closer attention to detail and really playing around with the world JK created.

There are some outstanding differences: new characters, entirely new scenes, and perhaps the strangest change I have made—Harriet is a redhead like her mother. I didn't make such a change lightly, but I do believe that it will come to give additional purpose to the story that couldn't have been given to it any other way.

Some of these scenes will be familiar, but absolutely no chapter is a replica of what it was before. I thought of signifying new material in some way such as italics or bolding, but it was too intrusive to the reading. Skip any scene that you think you know at your own discretion.

Please, settle in and be open to some changes in the world that I hope will make this palimpsest more enjoyable.

ORIGINAL AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Fem!Harry/SS is the ultimate pairing, though there will be no funny business until far down the road. Warnings include all the usual, terrible things that could and will go wrong (or right, if you catch my smutty drift). This story very well could end up being quite massive, considering it follows a seven book series. That does not mean that this will be a rehashing of the books with a female main character. As a matter of fact, this could end up seriously, seriously AU. Consider yourselves warned. While I will try to keep people in character, do consider that I am forcing them to do things that they have never had to do in canon and that I am not (and never will be) JK. They are only as in-character as I can make them.

I'm unbetad and unBritish. See you at the end.

Palimpsest: a page of a manuscript which has been cleared so that it may be reused and rewritten.


Harriet Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

A Prince for Harriet

Harriet Potter, the solitary female child at 4 Privet Drive, considered herself to be the home's best kept secret. A plain and inconspicuous nature had been cultivated in her much in the same way others tended gardens in their backyard, and the comfort of her childhood had been sacrificed for the sake of secrecy.

On the mantelpiece in the home's sitting room rested framed photographs of the most average family one could ever have the misfortune (or, as her aunt and uncle might think, the good fortune) to meet: Aunt Petunia, slight and tall, with fair hair and far more neck than what was physically necessary nor aesthetically pleasing; Uncle Vernon, as short and wide as his wife was tall and slim with almost no neck and a penchant for displaying his emotions by the changing colors of his face; and Dudley, Harriet's cousin, who was quadruple her size and often resembled some sort of large, cruel beach ball.

Nowhere to be found was a single picture of the home's final and youngest occupant. Harriet was very short and thin for her age. She didn't eat much, but this was more due to her aunt and uncle rationing her food than any lack of appetite on Harriet's end. Vernon and Petunia seemed to see a great many bad qualities in Harriet that needed stamping out; for instance, when Dudley ate his weight in bacon, he was considered a growing boy, but if she asked for a second sandwich she was 'being wasteful and greedy.' Almost opposite to the Dursleys, Harriet had hair and eyes that were not at all plain: her hair was a vivid red and her eyes a gemlike green, the latter marred by the thick glasses that she needed to see only anything and everything.

Harriet's most distinct feature was the easiest to hide: beneath the wild fringe of her bangs rested a thin, lightning bolt shaped scar. She had obtained it in the car crash that killed both of her parents and which had forced her to live with the Dursleys in the first place. While it was her most notable characteristic, it was also her least favorite; around the time of her monthly haircut, Harriet always reminded Aunt Petunia of just how noticeable the scar was—it was the only sure way to maintain bangs in a home where she did not get to choose anything else about her appearance.

On a street like Privet Drive, one could not afford to be different. Each house seemed to be a replica of the next with tall fences that were mostly there for show since everyone was always craning their neck so as to have a better look into their neighbor's yard and business. Harriet made her aunt and uncle nervous. Orphans were not ordinary. Even more unordinary in this instance were the orphan's parents, James and Lily Potter, who had not been spoken of on Privet Drive for almost a decade and who wouldn't be spoken of at all if the Dursleys could help it.

Petunia and Vernon took a hands on approach in teaching Harriet to become invisible, and that was by treating her as such. When they were not ignoring her, they were making her wish they had ignored her; in that way, they were very effective teachers and won all around. Often in the evenings when she was locked into her bedroom (which could hardly be called a bedroom as it was a cupboard under the stairs), her stomach rumbling with hunger and body aching with pains from the chores her aunt demanded of her during the day, Harriet wondered how any one person could be as miserable and lonely as she was. She often fell asleep with tears on her lashes, her hand over her mouth so no cries could wake the house's other occupants, wishing she had never been born or something similar.

That morning seemed not much different, though that is precisely the issue with extraordinary days: one often doesn't know that a day will be extraordinary until it is far too late.

Harriet woke before anyone else in the house. She had been dreaming—for once, a pleasant one filled with warm scents, the glow of candles, and the bubbling sound of liquids, as if she had been standing in front of a very busy stove. When her eyes finally opened to the darkness of her cupboard, she squeezed them shut for a few moments longer hoping that maybe she could slip back into the dream.

When this was futile, she crept to the cupboard door to try the handle—and it was unlocked. The hinges creaked terribly as she pushed the tiny door open, the noise causing her to wince and to stop the motion several times, holding her breath to listen for any further sounds in the house. At one point she thought she heard a quiet stirring, but after long moments of silence she continued her creeping.

In the kitchen, she stood on her tiptoe to pull a loaf of bread down from the cupboard. She stuffed one piece into her mouth and tucked a second slice aside for later. Getting down a cup to sneak some water from the tap was a more difficult task, as the cups were kept up quite high and Harriet was quite short. Using her skinny arms to pull herself up onto the counter, she was just reaching for the cup (chewing on a mouthful of dry bread) when she heard the sound from behind her.

It was Aunt Petunia, standing in the kitchen doorway with her eyes wide as if she had caught a burglar in her kitchen as opposed to her niece. Harriet froze, cup in hand. For a long moment the two of them just stared at each other. Then her aunt was in action, springing across the kitchen and grabbing handfuls of red hair to haul Harriet down from her perch on the counter. The plastic cup clattered to the floor.

"You demon!" Aunt Petunia shrieked. "Stealing from our food—climbing on my counters—your filthy, filthy feet—!"

"I was hungry!" Harriet stated uselessly around a mouthful of bread.

"Out!" Hauling Harriet to the backdoor, Aunt Petunia wrenched it open and pushed the girl out with such force than she landed on her hands and knees on the back porch narrowly avoiding a striped lawn chair. "Get out and stay out!"

The door slammed shut behind her.

The girl rested there panting with adrenalin, trying very hard not to cry and failing entirely. Her palms and knees were scratched and stinging, but she couldn't see them for long before tears obscured her vision. To make matter worse—both pieces of bread had been lost in the struggle. Her mission had been for naught.

"I hate her," Harriet said into her palms. She struggled to find a name terrible enough for her aunt. "She's—she's—"

"A bitch?" A voice drawled.

Harriet's head flew up, blinking away her tears. Slowly an image formed: a man was standing inside Aunt Petunia's privacy fence. Man might have been a stretch—he looked like one of the young adults (perhaps twice her age at most) that Uncle Vernon liked to give nasty looks to in public for their funny clothes and mannerisms. The man was dressed in all black with hair long and blond that touched his shoulders. Despite the warm weather, he was wearing a long-sleeved, fitted jacket. Through one of his ears was a piece of metal and clutched in between his first two fingers was a smoldering cigarette that he sucked on for a long moment. Harriet gaped.

"W-what?"

"She's bitch. A foul useless cunt." He took another drag, cheeks hollowing.

"I'm sorry," Harriet said, pushing herself to her feet. She gave a glance over her shoulder to see if Aunt Petunia was watching through the glass window on the door, but the curtain had been drawn. "Do I know you?"

"No," he said. He flicked some ash on Aunt Petunia's hedge.

"I don't mean to be rude, but what are you doing here?"

"I was smoking. Let me see your palms."

"Why?"

"You're bleeding—I can see so from here."

Sheepishly, she held them out. "It's not that bad really—Dudley hit me in the nose with a football once and there was loads more blood then."

The man left his cigarette to rest in the corner of his mouth while he searched through his jacket, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like 'push the whole bloody lot of them down the stairs.' From nowhere he seemed to produce a long piece of dark, polished wood. He gestured her closer with an impatient hand, scowling.

"Get over here, girl."

She hesitated for a long moment, looking back and forth between the man and the Dursley house. Children weren't supposed to talk to strangers, especially not strangers who looked strange and acted strange, appearing in one's backyard and such. But she was always better at obeying orders than questioning them, and sometimes she thought that if someone snatched her up and ran away with her, then she might be lucky. She ambled closer and presented her hands.

He pressed the tip of the stick to the center of her palm, murmuring a word under his breath. To Harriet's amazement, the scratches and scrapes closed themselves up and then disappeared completely. She gaped up at the stranger who was tucking away the stick back inside his jacket.

"How?" She asked, mouth open wide.

"Magic," the man smirked.

"There's no such thing as magic."

He snorted. "Shows what you know."

#

That was the first time she met Mr. Prince—that's what he introduced himself as, at least. Harriet wasn't sure if that was really his name though, as he seemed to do an awful lot of smirking whenever she said it. He was standing in the same spot the next day, and the day after that. Even on the days he did not appear, Harriet couldn't help but feel like maybe he was there watching her and just didn't want to reveal himself. Sometimes she caught the scent of cigarette smoke on the breeze and twisted her head every which way to try to see if she could spot him, but she soon gave up on such a game. When Mr. Prince did not wish to be seen, he was not seen.

He was magical, see.

On days when Aunt Petunia wrote Harriet a long list of chores, he would often take the slip of paper from her and read it over, scowling and mumbling foul curses under his breath. Then, he would wave his wand—that's what he called it, a wand—and the chores would begin to do themselves: hedge clippers came to life as if invisible people were holding them, flowerbeds removed their weeds on their own, and water could shoot from the end of his wand in a stream he directed all over the lawn to water it.

If Aunt Petunia noticed that Harriet suddenly became an expert at completing her chores before the end of the day, she never said anything. Harriet thought that this was because Aunt Petunia tried not to notice her much at all, which was alright by her.

June passed with all the alacrity of a slug. Now that there was more to her days than never-ending chores and meals she'd never eat, time seemed to pass more slowly instead of blending together blindly. For once in her life, she couldn't complain.

On days when Mr. Prince helped her to complete her chores ahead of schedule, the two of them often sat on the lawn chairs that rested on the back porch and talked. He asked her questions about life with the Dursleys. She once tried to lie—just a bit really, because admitting how dreary her days were seemed much more shameful than lying—but Mr. Prince seemed to know when she was telling the truth and when she wasn't. More than once, Harriet had the distinct feeling that he could even read minds, especially since he was so adept at knowing where Harriet's family was and whether any of them were glancing out the windows.

When she admitted that she wasn't often fed by her aunt and uncle (at least, not as often as she would have liked), he began to bring food for her: sandwiches with thick, brown bread stuffed with meats and vegetables and mayo and mustards. She tried to eat as gracefully as she could, though she was often hungry enough that manners took backseat to her appetite.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," he would snap, handing her a flask warmed from his pocket and touch. As soon as it touched her lips though, she could tell that the insides were quite chilled. He produced his own flask that he sipped from periodically, though judging by all of his wincing, he didn't much care for its contents.

Making sure she had swallowed the last bite of her sandwich, Harriet repeated her question.

"Will you tell me more about Hogwarts today?"

Mr. Prince had the most fantastic stories about magical schools filled with students who learned magic the way she learned maths and reading. He talked about another world existing alongside the one she knew, where pointed hats were all the rage and people could use their wands to accomplish nearly any task. Best of all—he said his stories were real.

"Do you remember the four houses?" He asked, voice becoming serious and methodical. Harriet thought that he would make a marvelous teacher—perhaps he was a teacher, but he didn't like to tell her many things about himself and downright refused a majority of the time.

"Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflelump."

He snorted. "Quite right. Each of the houses were created by and named after the four founders of Hogwarts. Each had different qualities they valued and looked for in their pupils. Students are sorted into their respective houses based on those qualities."

"Did you attend Hogwarts?" Harriet asked. He frowned, searching his jacket for his cigarette case.

"Yes," he said at last.

"What house were you in?"

"That's none of your business," he snapped, lighting his cigarette with the end of his wand and sucking until the flame caught. Suddenly, he tucked his wand away, stood, and took long steps towards the hedge. He twirled his wand around himself and disappeared. She could still feel his eyes on her.

The back door opened and it was Dudley who stepped out into the yard. Dudley had just been accepted into Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. He was dressed in an outfit even fouler than usual: a maroon tailcoat, orange knickerbockers, and a flat straw hat called a boater. Boys at Smeltings also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. Dudley took every opportunity to practice this skill on Harriet.

"Where were you?" Dudley asked.

"Where else but here?" Harriet asked. "I just finished trimming the hedges."

Dudley smiled nastily. He strutted to the hedges in question which were shaped perfectly thanks to Mr. Prince's magic. Unknowingly, Dudley was a few feet from where the older man must have been standing, invisible. Harriet thought she could see a slight shimmer towards his right—was that just her imagination? Raising his stick, Dudley beat at one of the hedges until he had made a sizeable dent in its branches.

"Looks like you still have work to do," he said when he was done, wiping away sweat from his brow. Dudley had a penchant for sweating at the mere thought of physical exertion. His cruel grin widened.

"Looks fine to me."

He turned to see the hedge in pristine condition. His mouth gaped.

"How'd you do that?" He said, eyeing her like he was thinking of beating her with his Smelting stick now, but perhaps that was just his face.

"Magic," Harriet said smiling.

He swung the stick at her, though she ducked in time to feel it rustle the air just above her head. Furious, Dudley smacked at her knee making her wince.

"Stop it," Harriet said through her teeth. Dudley barely seemed to hear her, giving her another sharp smack with the stick. The noise it made against her hipbone was impressive even if it was dulled by the thick, murky air. "I mean it Dudley—knock it off."

"Or what?" He taunted, hitting her about the head with it so that she saw stars. Her face felt red like the sun had baked it, and she imagined the look on Mr. Prince's face as he stood there watching.

The next time the stick swung at her, Harriet tried to catch it, stinging her knuckles on it hard enough that she cried out, shaking her hand as if to chase away the pain. Seeing red, she reached out for it again and this time caught it. Surprised as he was, Dudley let it slip through his fat fingers and then stared at her, face paling.

"Give me that back—I'm going to tell mum—"

"Tell your stupid mum," Harriet hissed, holding the stick with both hands like a bat. She aimed it at Dudley's belly (admittedly the biggest target) but wasn't pleased with the dull thwack it made against his fat. He turned to run away from her, tripped over his own feet and ended up sprawled in the grass. Harriet brought the stick down on his back, his arms, his legs, avoiding his head because getting hit in the head with a knobbly old stick really hurt.

Suddenly, the stick disappeared from her hands. It floated next to her for a moment before throwing itself across the yard to lay uselessly by the door. The air next to her briefly shimmered.

"That's enough," a voice whispered in her ear though she could barely hear it over the sound of Dudley's wailing.

Face burning with shame, Harriet nodded. As soon as the rain of blows stopped, Dudley scrambled to his feet. His uniform was damp and smeared with grass stains. Still wailing, he made a run for the door, stooping to pick up his Smelting stick.

She felt the smooth tip of Mr. Prince's wand touch a particularly tender spot on her scalp, hearing his mumbled words. The pain disappeared. Another moment later and he had appeared from thin air, smirking widely.

"Your aunt won't be pleased," he said.

Harriet smiled. "It was worth it."

Though he said nothing, his dark eyes glittered as if he quite agreed with her.

To say that Aunt Petunia wasn't pleased was an understatement. More accurately, she was livid. Her face twisted with fury, she grabbed Harriet by a fistful of red hair and pushed her into her cupboard under the stairs swearing that they wouldn't be letting her out again anytime soon. It was not the first time they had made such a threat to her, but it was the first time she had lamented it so greatly. Would Mr. Prince stand outside and wait, only for her to never arrive? The idea made something in her chest hurt, and she pressed her palm against it as if to sooth the ache.

She closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to come and tried to sleep. In her cupboard, sleep made time move. Perhaps she could sleep right up until the day that the Dursleys weren't angry at her anymore. If such a day ever came.

Two days passed, and Harriet mourned Mr. Prince more than ever. She often laid on her mattress and tried to imagine what sort of magic he might have been showing her if she'd been allowed out of her cupboard. Were there spells that could make someone's facial hair grow very quickly? What about a spell that could transfigure her into a lobster? Not that she wanted to end up on anyone's dinner plate, but the idea of being something that she wasn't sounded very appealing.

Once she was thinking of the same sort of spells over and over again, Harriet thought to turn the light on and try to read one of the old, musty story books in the corner of her cupboard. Aunt Petunia had purchased them at discount for Dudley, but he had never wanted to read them. She pulled the string to turn on the light and went through the books. Some of them were for adults, with small print that she had to squint to see and words she could barely pronounce. Others were the ones that had been for Dudley—fairy tales and picture books. Harriet read those with interest.

She couldn't tell when it was time to sleep properly, as there were no windows in her cupboard and it often seemed like time ceased to exist when she was locked away there. Soon sounds began to come from the upstairs bedroom as Uncle Vernon—or was it Aunt Petunia?—woke and went about their day. Footsteps down the stairs and then past her cupboard door, but no one let her out. Judging by the quiet clinking of pans on the stove, it was Aunt Petunia starting breakfast.

Harriet dozed in and out of sleep with nothing else to do, hearing the rumbling voices of the Dursleys having breakfast. The smell of bacon made her stomach gurgle angrily and reminded her of Mr. Prince's sandwiches. She pressed her fist against it. Silly thing.

It wasn't long until Harriet realized just what day it was, and then she could scarcely believe her fortune: it was Dudley's birthday. Dudley's birthdays were the most miserable affairs for Harriet—she was forced to witness his parents' love for him manifested in the form of dozens of gifts that she could only dream of receiving and that he barely seemed to care for. More often than not, Dudley spent the day with his closest friend Piers and they got to do all sorts of fun things: amusement parks, the theater, birthday parties at the park. Harriet usually spent the day with Miss Figg, a kind, older woman who smelled of bath salts and owned far too many cats that she seemed to love with eagerness.

Perhaps this year, since the Dursleys were still ignoring her, Harriet would be allowed to spend the day in her cupboard—or, though she knew almost certainly that such a thing would be too good to be true, allowed to lounge around the house and watch television and do as she pleased.

It wasn't until she heard Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon arguing outside her cupboard that she suspected the day might go any differently. Dudley's plaintiff cries in the distance sounded like music to her ears when she was not required to look at his twisted, bloated face as he lied to get his way. Not to mention she wasn't in danger of being pelted by his Smelting stick…Harriet crept to the door to press her against it and hear better.

"—can't bloody well leave her here. She could blow up the house—"

"Dudley doesn't want her there—"

"We've no choice, Petunia, the girl has to come along—"

Suddenly the door of her cupboard was ripped open, sunlight streaming in and making her shriek with pain. Both hands over her eyes to try to stem the flow of tears, she barely heard Uncle Vernon tell her to get herself dressed and looking presentable (though all of her clothes were either much too large as they were Dudley's or much too small as they were old).

Tugging on a pair of pants short enough to show her ankles, she pulled her fingers through her long hair to try to comb out the tangles.

She could not help but feel like a trip to the zoo with Dudley and Piers Polkiss was a disaster waiting to happen.

#

But she was wrong—the day wasn't a disaster. It was a catastrophe. Things had gone beautifully at first even if she was saddled into the backseat of the car with Piers and Dudley on either side of her, pinching her arms until she was covered in tiny bruises; however, it had all gone to hell in the reptile house at the zoo, Harriet was almost positive that she had accidentally vanished the glass on the tank of a large Brazilian boa constrictor, and that was after she had a full conversation with it. Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon was just as positive if not more so that she had done this—and he spent the entire ride home in the car on the verge of apoplectic rage.

Harriet cleared her schedule, because she was positive that she would be stuck inside her cupboard for the rest of her life.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" She shouted every time someone walked by the stairs. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon ignored her, but Dudley liked to laugh and bang on her door as he passed, rattling it with his Smelting stick.

At last, she had given up. Her aunt and uncle were capable of holding grudges and remembering misdemeanors for months—years. She might be let out once school started, and they most certainly had to let her out once in a while so that she could use the restroom (she couldn't hold it forever), but she had no doubt that between now and then, her every waking moment would be spiders and darkness and her cupboard. Harriet stared up into the fathomless ceiling, tearless with resignation, hoping that she might fall asleep the way the rest of the house had.

Until she heard the noise: the quietest creaking of a footstep in the kitchen. She held her breath to listen, unsure whether or not she was dreaming or hallucinating. Harriet slipped off of her mattress and snuck to her cupboard door to press her ear against it and listen. There it was again: another footstep.

"Please, Aunt Petunia," Harriet said to the door, her voice cracking. "I didn't mean to make the glass disappear. Please let me out."

And from outside her cupboard, someone unlocked the door.


You will notice that the other chapters that were previously up have been removed. Never fear: I've already finished the new chapters 1 through 4 (which is what was previously posted). Instead of replacing them all in one fell swoop, I'm going to give this chapter a few hours to be read and then post chapter 2 and so on and so forth.

Check back in two or three hours, there'll be something new for you.