Chapter 9
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She hadn't even made it to the Great Hall, and Harry was already regretting her decision to leave the Gryffindor House. At the worst, she was expecting some gawking from passing boys who didn't appear to care that she was still Harry Potter. And even though there was plenty of that, she should have known that it wouldn't be that simple.
"Hello, Harry."
Harry muttered a string of curses under her breath, none of them the magical variety. "What do you want this time, Malfoy?"
Draco, decked out in black leather pants and no shirt underneath an open emerald green robe, roved his eyes up and down Harry's new body. "I see you've become a woman, Harry."
"You're hallucinating, Malfoy. I suggest you go back to bed until it passes."
"This is perfect," Draco continued, unfazed. "Now that you're a girl, there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of our loving relationship."
"But what about my ever-growing hatred for you?" Harry asked.
"We can work through that, my love."
"Ever-growing," Harry mumbled to herself. "Look Malfoy, I'm not doing this with you again. You're not a Veela, we don't have a soul-bond, and as much as it saddens me to say, you're not going to die just because I reject you."
"I know."
"...You know?"
Draco nodded. "Yes. You see, it turns out you were right, Harry. I'm not really a Veela."
Harry almost smiled. "Well, it's nice to see that someone around here can still be reasoned with, even if it is you, Mal-"
"It turns out I'm actually a vampire."
Harry facepalmed so hard she nearly knocked herself out. "So. Much. Hatred."
"And as a vampire, I've come to realize that you are-"
"No no no no no! You are not a vampire. You're not a Veela, or a dragon, or a merman, or a chimera, or a ghost. And even if you were, it wouldn't change the fact that I hate you! You are an insufferable, arrogant, spoiled, intolerant little cry-baby who thinks the world revolves around you just because your daddy has money! You're a smug, smarmy git who has dedicated the majority of the last six years of your life to attacking and antagonizing me and my friends! You openly sing the praises of the man who murdered my parents when I was a baby and who continues-!"
"But, your parents are still ali-"
"Ranting! Mouth! Shut!"
Draco shut his mouth.
"And now, after years of being the biggest pain in my ass who wasn't Snape or a Dursley, you suddenly think I should fall right in love with you just because you say so? Give me a single reason as to why I would or should be inclined to do that!"
Draco was silent a moment, wanting to make sure that the rant was really at an end, before speaking. "Because I'm a sexy vampire and chicks dig that?"
"...I'm going to punch you until your face is concave," Harry stated, her breathing ragged.
"If you'd just let me suck your delicious blood, I'm sure you'd come to realize-"
"You're not a vampire!"
"But I have fangs," the blonde stated, pointing to his teeth.
"Those are canines, dullard. Everyone has them!"
"I'm sparkly," he pressed, gesturing to his bared torso.
"That's body glitter!"
"I sleep in a coffin!"
"I don't want to hear about ANYTHING that goes on inside your bedroom! And you know what? I'm going to go ahead and prove once and for all that you're not a vampire."
"How?"
Waving her wand, Harry conjured a sharpened length of wood. "I'm going to jam this stake into your heart. If you die, that means you were a vampire and I'll owe you an apology."
Draco looked confused. "But... that would kill me even if I wasn't a vampire."
"...Hold still."
"What is going on here?" a voice from behind interrupted, making Harry cringe and Draco dash away before she recovered.
Great, Harry thought. As if dealing with Draco wasn't bad enough. Resigning herself, she turned to face her least favorite professor.
Two pairs of eyes flew wide.
"My daughter!" "What the Hell happened to you?" they spoke at the same time.
Silence passed over them, and Harry hung her head. "Okay fine. You can go first."
Without warning, Snape scooped The Boy-Who-Was-A-Girl into a tight embrace. "Oh, my daughter! How I've longed to finally see you like this!"
"I need an adult!" Harry shouted.
Thankfully, Snape let go of the hug, but kept Harry at arms length. There were tears in his eyes as he stared at her face. "Oh, my daughter."
"Please stop calling me that, I feel dirty enough from the hug," she pleaded.
"Never did I believe that the spell would take so long to wear off, Helena," Snape continued undaunted.
Headache was returning full force. "Okay, you do know who I actually am, right?"
"You're my daughter, Hele-"
"Nonononono." She pointed to herself. "Harry Potter. I'm usually a guy, remember? Son of James and Lily Potter? You and I kind of loathe the existence of each other? Ringing bells?"
Snape sighed deeply, his body sagging in anguish. "Yes. Yes, that is the lie that you've been forced to live your whole life. But it's time for you to finally learn the truth."
Harry facepalmed again. "Oh Allanon..."
"You see Helena, you were not born male. Nor were you born to Lily and James Potter. You were, in fact, born to Lily and myself."
Harry gave a small dry-heave, not that Snape noticed.
"Not too long after we graduated from Hogwarts, I realized what a fool I'd been in letting Lily leave me on such horrible terms. I managed to seek her out before she and James went into hiding, and I convinced her to forgive me."
"Lovely," Harry deadpanned.
"Then she forgave me again the next morning," Snape added, causing Harry's eye to twitch violently.
"Dude."
"Twice."
"Shut up!"
Snape glared at her in fatherly reproach. "If you weren't my daughter I'd take points away for your sass, little lady."
Harry rubbed her eyes. "I miss Azkaban."
"Now where was I? Ah, right: Several months later I received a letter from Lily informing me that she'd given birth; a girl, and that it was mine. Obviously, this created a problem, as she was now unhappily married to that abusive drunk, James. Fortunately, she used her brilliant mind to come up with a perfect plan: She used a powerful charm to change you into a boy, and another one to make you look identical to James."
"Were either of those even necessary?" Harry asked, although she was no longer even pretending to sound interested in what was being said. The only reason she was even asking was that there was a chance that someone out there somewhere was listening in on the conversation and really wanted to know the answer themselves. "I look like a black-haired version of my mum, why would he be suspicious of that?"
"Because you have my feet."
"...Your feet."
Snape nodded. "Yes, if James had ever gotten a good look at your bare feet he would have immediately known that you weren't his child."
Harry could only shake her head before pressing on, knowing that there were still issues that somebody would probably want to be addressed. "So you've just been spending the last several years hating your own daughter... why, exactly?"
Snape sighed a truly heart-wrenching sigh. "That was the one folly with Lily's plan. When she made you look like James, she really made you look like James. To the point where I couldn't even stand to look at you without feeling the urge to punch you until both my hands were broke. All I could do was wait until your mother's charms finally wore off and revealed you to be the daughter I've always longed for. And now, finally, that time is here, and we can be a family at long last!"
Harry held up a hand. "Okay, One: No. Never. Not even then. And Two: What about Daniel?"
"Who?"
"Daniel Potter. My twin brother? The Not-The-Boy-Who-Lived? Died yesterday?"
"Oh, right. What about him?"
"Well, if all this crap you're spewing is true, that means he was your son and or daughter too, right?"
Snape rubbed his chin. "Hmm, no. No, I believe he was actually Sirius' kid."
Harry shook her head. "I guess I deserve that for trying to assume logic... Wanna explain to me how that's possible?"
"How what's possible?"
"That my twin brother and I have different fathers."
"Ah, that. It's quite simple, really."
Harry's eyes widened. "Don't you dare say it was-"
"Magic."
"NO! NOT MAGIC!" Harry raged. "You can not just make wildly unbelievable claims like that and then explain it away by saying 'Oh a wizard did it with his magic'! Just because magic exists in this world does not make it a catch-all excuse for every single thing that would otherwise be impossible in a world without magic! It's stupid and it's lazy and it's bad storytelling!"
Snape blinked. "It's what?"
"Stupid! If you're going to be making things up like that the least you could do is attempt to make a bit of sense out of them, you know? Granted, I don't see how you could do that when claiming that twin siblings were born from different fathers, since the only way I could possibly see that working was if you, mum and Sirius had a three-"
The words died in her throat. Her body sagged, her jaw slackened and her eyes shrunk. For a good twenty seconds she didn't move or speak, to the point where Snape was starting to worry.
"Magic," Harry whispered more to herself than anyone else. "It happened by magic." That decided, she nodded and walked away.
"Helena wait, where are you going?" Snape asked.
"I don't know," she called without emotion. "I don't know anything anymore."
"Don't you want to have some father-daughter bonding time?"
"I sure don't."
"But wasn't there something you wanted to ask me earlier?"
Harry finally stopped to look back over her shoulder at her could-be dad. "Well, I was going to ask what you'd done to get rid of your ugly greasy hair, your ugly yellow teeth, your ugly parrot nose, your ugly beady eyes and your ugly sallow skin in order to make yourself look not that ugly at all, but I don't seem to care in the slightest anymore. See you in class."
As she left him behind, Snape's chocolate-brown orbs followed her until she was out of sight. He ran his perfectly manicured fingers through his luscious, flowing raven locks, using his other hand to rub his perfectly straight and symmetrically-pleasing nose as his tongue traced along the ridges of his perfectly straightened, white-as-pure-fallen-snow teeth.
"I don't know what she's talking about," he muttered, pulling a hand mirror from his pocket to admire himself. "I've always looked this sexy." His eyes darkened as he glanced toward the sky. "Always."
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Harry had almost made it to the Great Hall when she was stopped once again by someone. This time it was Professor Flitwick.
"Ah, Harry my dear, uh... girl." He seemed at a lose while looking her over, but recovered quickly. "Just who I was looking for. I happened to witness your return to the castle yesterday and I was astounded by the way you turned Peeves to stone by staring at him the way you did. It got me to thinking: It's very possible that you could be the first person in known Magical history to have a basilisk as an animagus form, in which case-"
"In which case I would use it to eat anybody who stopped me from getting my breakfast and going on about my day as normally as possible," Harry growled, glaring at the tiny man who quickly diverted his eyes elsewhere.
"...We'll uh... we'll talk later, perhaps." In his haste to get away, he tripped and fell twice.
Harry continued on her way, and Heaven help anyone who decided to spring another surprise on her.
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I'd make comments here, but I'm in a rush.
Til next time.
LL
