A False Assumption
School: Beauxbatons
Theme: Unmerited accomplishments
Mandatory Prompt: [First/last line] It was 11 o'clock when time stopped.
Additional Prompt: [Word] Hopeless
Year: 3
Wordcount: 1648
AU Notes: Female!Harry, WBWL. Harry (Harriet) has a fraternal twin (Richard), who was incorrectly declared the Boy Who Lived.
It was eleven o'clock when time stopped. Not literally — although it might have seemed that way to an outside observer as they watched everyone freeze in shock. Spells, on the cusp of being cast, died on their casters' lips.
The waxing crescent moon shone, and the stars twinkled, illuminating the many figures congregated below. Some were lying on the ground, still and unmoving. The rest were gaping at the two figures — a young man and a young woman — who were duelling against a pale, snake-like man.
The two youths stood shoulder-to-shoulder. There was a clear resemblance between them as they gripped their wands in their right hands. They both had dark black hair and piercing green eyes and could have passed for identical twins if their scars didn't clearly distinguish the two. The woman, who was standing on the left, had a lightning-shaped scar on her forehead, and her brother had a crescent-shaped scar on his cheek.
The man whispered, "You owe me five Galleons. I told you that Voldemort knew you were the one who survived the Killing Curse."
His sister groaned. "We'll deal with that if I'm still alive later. Ready?" At her sibling's nod, she shouted, "Expelliarmus!"
This shout seemed to break the stupor of the others around them, for all at once, as if time had been turned on again, the others began to join the fight and started to fire their spells as well.
A few minutes later, with her brother by her side, Harriet Potter stared down at the corpse of Lord Voldemort, having been killed by his own reflected Avada Kedavra for the second time — and this time, for good. She knew that there would be a great deal of uproar over the fact that there wasn't actually a Boy Who Lived — but a Girl Who Lived — and that it was Harriet Potter who killed the greatest Dark Lord alive, not Richard Potter. But for now, the knowledge that Voldemort was dead and that her brother would always be by her side calmed the turbulent emotions within her.
Six and a half years prior, Harriet and Richard Potter had been perfectly normal siblings. Sure, weird things happened around them from time to time, and their aunt and uncle made it very clear that they did not belong in the family, but in general, they were just two normal orphans whose parents had died in a car crash.
Then, they received the letters that changed everything. Their Hogwarts letters and their discovery of the magical world around them. With that came the knowledge that Richard was the Boy Who Lived.
At first, they'd had no idea who or what the Boy Who Lived was. They soon found out that although Richard was someone famous — an almost worshipped figure — in the wizarding world for an event that he didn't remember, most people weren't even aware that Richard had a twin sister.
Despite all the adoring fans, despite the fame, despite the attention lavished upon Richard, the siblings' relationship was not affected. They had survived ten years of Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's lovely treatment, after all, and being famous wasn't going to break the bonds that they had formed. If anything, it only made them grow closer to each other once they realised that most others would only want to befriend them for their fame.
They vowed to each other that no matter what — whether they were in the most hopeless of situations or the most joyous — they would always stand at the other's side.
When they went to Hogwarts, they were quickly sorted into Gryffindor — although the Sorting Hat did mention that their remarkable loyalty towards each other made them well-suited to Hufflepuff — and welcomed with open arms. However, even though they were friendly with most of their house-mates, none of them could ever compete with the deep friendship that the siblings shared.
In their third year, Harriet and Richard discovered that everyone was wrong.
They were sitting together in an otherwise empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express when they began to feel the all-encompassing cold that they would later associate with Dementors. A hooded figure dressed in black, tattered robes opened their compartment door, suffusing the atmosphere with an aura of hopelessness.
Both Harriet and Richard heard a woman screaming and a high, cold laugh. Then, a flash of green light raced towards Harriet before bouncing back.
Later, they learned that those dark, hooded figures had forced them each to relive their worst memory — the night their parents were killed at the hand of Lord Voldemort. From those memories, they realised that it was Harriet who had survived the Killing Curse, not Richard.
They realised that Harriet was the Girl Who Lived.
When they tried to tell Professor McGonagall though, she dismissed it as a product of their imagination due to the trauma they had experienced. She refused to let them see Professor Dumbledore, telling them, "The Headmaster is a very busy man."
Adults, it seemed, didn't like to be told that they were wrong, and the twins soon gave it up as a hopeless cause. And so, to the rest of the wizarding world, Richard remained the Boy Who Lived, and Harriet remained the little-known sister of the Boy Who Lived.
It had always been quite odd to the twins that despite all the signs pointing otherwise, Dumbledore continually insisted that Richard was the Boy Who Lived — after all, it was Harriet's name that came out of the Goblet of Fire, it was Harriet whose blood was used to resurrect Voldemort, it was Harriet who received visions, and it was Harriet whose scar hurt. Even Voldemort had seemed to realise that Harriet was the one who survived his curse, although he had never stated it outright.
But of course, Dumbledore insisted, and everyone else believed him.
It wasn't until their fifth year that they found out why. When Dumbledore revealed the prophecy to Richard, telling him of the only person with a chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good, a baby boy who was born at the end of July nearly sixteen years before to parents who had defied Voldemort thrice, telling him that he was the only one with the power to defeat Voldemort, things all fell into place.
The reason Dumbledore was so insistent on the existence of a Boy Who Lived was because of a prophecy. One tiny line in a prophecy that supposedly sealed Richard's fate as the defeater of Voldemort.
It didn't matter that Richard had never truly been marked as an equal by Voldemort. Richard tried to tell the headmaster, of course, but ultimately, his attempts were hopeless. Dumbledore, so caught up in his belief that the prophecy would come to pass, refused to listen.
Later that evening, in the Gryffindor common room, Richard told his sister everything that Dumbledore had explained to him.
"So you're telling me that Dumbledore will forever insist that you were the one who survived the Killing Curse because I'm a girl?" Harriet exclaimed, her fists clenching as if she were preparing to punch someone in the face.
Richard nodded. "The prophecy says that the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal."
"This is insane. The fact that I'm a girl should mean nothing. Especially because the rest of the prophecy clearly points to me. Voldemort never marked you as an equal, after all," Harriet said. She shook her head. "Well, I'm glad of one thing. At least I'm not the one who has to deal with the insanity of wizarding fans."
Richard groaned. "And here I was hoping that I would be able to pass the burden on to you. I suppose that's hopeless now, isn't it?"
Harriet laughed, Richard joining in moments later, their joyous sounds echoing in the otherwise empty common room. It was a rare moment of levity in an otherwise bleak world.
"...and so you see, all of this could have been sorted out ages ago if only Dumbledore believed that the saviour of the wizarding world could be a girl," Harriet said as she finished her explanation.
Voldemort had just been killed at Harriet's hand, and everyone who had fought in the battle had gathered in the Great Hall, demanding explanations for why Voldemort had said that Harriet was the one who had survived his Killing Curse sixteen years ago.
"Yeah," Richard added. "Or if people had actually listened to us." He turned to Harriet. "You still owe me five Galleons, you know."
"You're trying to tell us that a girl could defeat You-Know-Who, the darkest wizard of all time?" a voice shouted from the crowd. Harriet recognised the voice at once. It was Cormac McLaggen, one of their more distasteful classmates.
"Yeah, and I did," Harriet said shortly.
Cormac opened his mouth again. "A girl? When even the strongest men couldn't kill You-Know-Who, why would anyone believe that a girl could?"
"Silencio!" Richard shouted, pointing his wand at Cormac. His face was flush with rage. "Anyone else who wants to object?" The occupants of the Great Hall stared up at him, some with anger or confusion colouring their features, but none daring to object. "Good."
"And for your information, McLaggen, I faced Voldemort and survived a grand total of five times, which is far more than you could say," Harriet said.
With that, the two siblings left the Great Hall, leaving a silent and stunned audience in their wake.
Many years later, when their children — and later their grandchildren — would ask them about their childhoods, Harriet and Richard would tell them about the occasion when they defeated a dark lord, and in the process, caused time to seemingly freeze. And each time, they would begin the story with, "It was eleven o'clock when time stopped…"