FAN FICTION AU AND TIME TRAVEL
Flipped
Summary
Female Harry Potter (Juniper) wins the war but the cost is too much so she performs a ritual and performs dimension travel after much research when she is 24. Her counterpart is Cordelia Faye Black, the daughter of Altair Black and Adelaide Malfoy. Has memories of both the worlds. Lives in France. When Juniper (Harry) seeps into consciousness, she is 14. Born on Beltane. Thus even though she is a girl, she has a high standing among the Blacks. Has gone to Beauxabatons for her first three years. Born on May 1, 1927. Start school in 1938. Goes to Hogwarts in 1942. Meets Tom Riddle. (Romance and power play)
Disclaimer: The characters and the world in the story belong to J.K. Rowling. I am not earning any profit from it.
Note: I have been a fanfiction reader for quite a lot of years before I gave this fic a shot, so if you see any ideas seeping in that I do not openly acknowledge, just let me know and I will add the credits. I have read too many to keep a track of them but I will try my best.
1) The idea of totems belongs to Catsarecool who is writing A Maurader's plan .
2) The basic idea of dimension travel comes from Hollow Thunder, Vital Lightning by Aariya07. You will see quite a few similarities in the first couple of chapters but it diverges after that.
3) This is a gender bender. Harry was born a girl as Juniper Anastasia Potter. Everything is as it is in canon except for her romances and nineteen years later. This is not because I don't read slash or like it. You will see a lot of them in my favorites but because I don't think that I could do justice to that genre and because I want to do this. If you do not like such fics, do not read. Please do not flame. I will welcome criticisms, I know I am not perfect, just don't meaninglessly bash me for nothing.
For your references
"Talk"
"Thought"
"Parseltongue"
Interlude 4: The Lover
She and Tom were kissing. She did not think it would happen so soon, so soon. His arms were wrapped around her waist and her fingers were knotted with his hair.
It was the alcove behind the third left in the dungeons. How had they found the place again? Something potions, yeah Draco had shown it to her when they had visited Slughorn for memories of Hogwarts while Tom had been there, cooking some excuse about her wanting to know more about the man she had killed. Draco? Wait, what?
Her vision blurred, voices went high and low and she was kissing again. It wasn't Tom.
Sid?
Flashback
Cordelia's POV
Cordelia was exhausted by the end of the day, not because Flint was as hard a slave driver as Oliver Wood but because the memories of her past as Juniper had been on a continuous onslaught during the day.
She passed Tom a small and weak smile when she saw him in common room and received a nod in return but she did not linger and immediately went to her room for a shower and some sleep.
She needed to sleep. It had been 5 days since she had.
Exhausted, she switched on the faucet of the shower in her trunk.
She quickly wiped herself, pulled on her clothes, a silk shirt and pajamas and dropped dead on the bed of the master bedroom.
She slept in the center, desperately hoping to smell her friends. They had spent hours in here, trying to figure out her situation, trying to fix it, fix her, and fix her pain.
She did not even realize when her eyes fluttered shut and Morpheus embraced her.
She was dreaming. She was not surprised by the realization. She had always been quick to realize that after she researched enough on dreams and mind arts. The question was, would she be able to control the dream. She didn't think she would.
She was in a wilderness, she glanced at a forest pool and instead of a 14 year old Cordelia, she looked like the 24 year old Juniper. There was not much difference, except Cordelia's body had not gone through the magical maturity. Cordelia was still a child.
She looked away. It was a stark reminder of the fact that, she a 24 year old was trapped inside the body of a 14 year old.
She could have gotten her maturity right now, but she was biding her time. After the last time it had happened, how destructive her magic had been, she was not risking it without the presence of …. She had destroyed the entire west wing of the Malfoy manor.
A simple reparo after her majority had taken care of it but , no, she could not risk exposure just because she was not used to being so low on her magical strength.
The scene fleeted, blurred and she saw a huge snake sliding in the grass, the same as her patronus. The scene changed. She was falling, falling down and she woke up with a startle.
Eyes wide in panic, she panted.
Present
Cordelia's POV
She and Tom were kissing. She did not think it would happen so soon, so soon. . His arms were wrapped around her waist and her fingers were knotted with his hair.
It was the alcove behind the third left in the dungeons. How had they found the place again? Something potions, yeah Draco had shown it to her when they had visited Slughorn for memories of Hogwarts while Tom had been there, cooking some excuse about her wanting to know more about the man she had killed. Draco? Wait, what?
Her vision blurred, voices went high and low and she was kissing again. It wasn't Tom.
Sid? Tom?
She broke the kiss and looked and in front of her eyes, the eyes of the person she was kissing were midnight blue.
He again bent down to kiss her. This wasn't Tom, this touch was more familiar. Siddharth.
And when the guy looked up again, he did not have midnight blue eyes. It had slits, not the Voldemort red slits, a deep green colored pupil slit, as green as a dense forest, so deep green that they almost looked black. They were blacker today. His slit eyes had always went darker in color when he was aroused.
Cordelia woke up again in panic. This was the second time when she had dreamed of Siddharth in a single night. First, as that majestic snake, his animagus and then him, trying to control the transition as his body confused arousal with flight and fight response.
Dreaming about Tom, that was not a first. She had always had vivid dreams about him, about his life, recurring images of the memories she had seen of him as a boy and one and two of sexual fantasies. None had gone beyond a kiss because she always woke up.
Even when she had been 19 and fixed on traveling back in time, she had known that a part of her was in love with the boy that was before Voldemort. Not perhaps romantic, she didn't understand it clearly till date, but she identified so much with him, all she had wanted to do was travel back in time and love him until he understood what love meant.
Then her Black blood and her quotient with Salazar had complicated everything. She had complicated everything, because well, he for the longest time had been her equal. She had realized later that it was not. Tom was not her, was not even like her even though they had similar childhoods.
But this was her first about Siddharth. She had never needed a fantasy, he had been so available. She had barely slept, and when she did dream, it was all about saving Tom, or assorting her knowledge.
She had known that it would hurt like a bitch, leaving him behind, more than anyone else, leaving him behind because he had filled a hole that nobody else had.
He had no connections to British war. He was untainted, in his opinions about her. He saw her, not June Potter, the savior, the girl who lived, the chosen one…nothing. Draco for the longest time, saw her as an antagonist and even though their friendship went deeper years later, a part of her had resented him.
Ron and Hermione had not understood her obsession with Tom. She had not told them anything, not until 2001. They had been helping her long before that but they had not known for what. George, every time he looked at his face, she blamed herself for the death of Fred. Luna, she had known, even before June told her anything, but Luna was not somebody who could heal her wounds and scars. Neville himself was too scarred and June never turned to him.
Siddharth, in that case had been a novelty. A fresh breath. He had healed some part of her, even before she realized. But only parts, she had not let him see how utterly damaged she was but she knew that he had never cared.
And even though, a part of her always screamed that she was betraying Tom by being with him, she had gone along with the sway, simply because, healing emotionally felt wonderful.
She had never denied it. She loved him, but less than she loved Tom. Or at least she thought so. She closed her eyes and laid back on the bed again. But today and tonight was about Siddharth, she did not understand why, why he was just constantly there on her mind.
Her hand went down through the waistline of her pajama to her clit. She had suspected it, she was wet. Tears sprang out her eyes, Morgana, she missed him. She swiftly got up changed into her track pants and tank and a sweatshirt, performed a complicated invisibility spell on her body in parseltongue, bounded down the stairs into the common room and out in the Hogwarts ground.
It was still night, about two hours after the midnight.
There she transformed, into a Snow white wolf with her emerald orbs and still invisible, she just ran in the forest mindlessly, until she forgot.
It was towards dawn that she stopped. Quickly transforming back and canceling her invisibility spell, she trudged down a goat trail and sat underneath a humongous and old tree.
She had learned that exercising was a good substitute for arousal the hard way. She panted a bit and then waited until her breathing evened.
She looked around. She was way away from the Centaur's colony. And there were no acromantula in the forest yet, but she was also away from the cave where Aragog and Mosag had eventually made their nest.
She had found the place when she had been training with centaurs about their customs and their techniques of wielding the bow and arrow. She had stayed here less than a month but her magic had enabled her to speak with the forest.
She had heard whispers from the trees and stones and she had found this place.
The place was magically saturated. Cordelia had not tried figuring it out then, she was not going to try now. But the sheer magic of the place would let her perform magic that she could not without her majority.
She created a privacy ward for a diameter of 5 meters and laid her head back on the tree.
She murmured in an Indic language. She had asked Siddhartha what is was. He had shrugged. She took it to mean that it was difficult to understand the origin or difficult to pinpoint a single thread in the language.
It was a mix of stuff that people in his community spoke.
She continued her murmuring, shaking herself out of the thoughts and drew a huge rectangle in air and a shimmery screen appeared and next, she was pulling out a memory from her hand and the screen came forward and grabbed it from the wand and begun playing like a good old movie theatre.
This was a memory of her and Draco. Her first potion lesson with him.
"No, June, I said dice it, not slice it." Draco's patient drawl interrupted her as she was absent-mindedly cutting some plant root.
"Is there a difference?" She asked very curiously.
"How did you get an E in OWLS?" Draco asked rhetorically.
She just made a face.
It just went on mindlessly as Draco made her brew forgetfulness potion from scratch, following instructions.
She never got potions right, never, not until that day, a day before she turned 20 when Siddharth had peeked in on her potions lessons.
"You wand wielders. You know nothing!" He had exclaimed, grabbed her hands and proceeded to take over her lesson, much to the chagrin of Draco.
"Feel your core and feel the magic in the ingredient." He said.
"The root if diced would release a certain kind of magic? Sliced, another kind and the ingredient speaks, so listen to it. Go back to your magical instincts." He had muttered.
He had never taken over another potion lesson. And with his advice, she had finished the potions worth a mastery under 2 months under Draco's tutelage. She still had occasional doubts about her potion-making skills.
Wands. That had been another thorn according to Siddharth. Draco had been gob smacked when he and Siddharth had met first in her London Apartment.
"You don't use a wand!" He had looked dubious.
"I do not need one!" Siddharth had replied back, quite candidly.
"I have never heard of Indian Wizards not using wands. I have been to the Ministry and everything." Draco asked skeptically.
"Yes, the wizards you colonized have the need to use wands. My community, we are cut off from the rest of the world, does not." Siddharth had replied back patiently.
He had an accent, not Indian, not American, where she had met him, but the lilt of the tongue that came when you talked too much in parseltongue. It sounded dangerous, but oh, so seducing.
"You look colonized to me!" Draco had drawled, inspecting Siddharth's Cargo pants and Wind sheeter and neatly styled hair.
"Just because I have knowledge of your modernity, does not mean I am colonized, wizard. I would stand out if I came out in my dhoti in the middle of the London, wouldn't I?" Siddharth had said, sarcasm laced in his voice, towards the end.
"You would still stand out, brownie!" Draco had passed the racial slur in a blink.
It was technically true, Siddharth was brown, not quite as pale as June and Draco but not as dark as Dean Thomas. He was fairer than the Patil twins but he said that was only because of the lack of sun exposure in America. But that did not mean that it was not offending and Siddharth had taken offense
. He had picked Draco up and pinned him to the wall and said with a little sibilant, "Never call me brownie again, or you will know what a 'real' snake can do with his fangs." He had partially transformed his canines into the venomous fangs of his form with his slit eyes.
It was a dig at Draco, who prided on being a snake aka Slytherin.
He had left Draco the next moment and reverted back to the human form. There had been a tense silence as her friends, including Ron, George, Neville, Luna, Ginny and Hermione looked torn.
She had been taken aback, a little.
But Siddharth had broken the silence and elevated the mood in seconds. He addressed her wryly, "You know you were right!"
"Huh," She had just made that noise and given him a questioning look.
"He is a darn arsehole." Siddharth replied.
Ron had spouted off his tea in a shower of saliva. George well, he and Siddharth had gotten along so well after that. Hermione had looked stricken by the cussword, Luna had smiled her angelic smile. Neville had just grinned.
Ginny had given out a snort, at the same time as her and both of them had burst into laughter next.
Draco had looked unhappy.
"You should be glad Blaise is not here. He would have loved to witness this." She had murmured aloud to him.
"I can call him. Wait" Ginny had opened her floo in a blink to call her boyfriend.
"Ginerva." Draco had said dangerously and received a stinging hex from Ginny, "Never call me by that name." Ginny had hissed.
Of course, both, Siddharth and Draco had come a long way from their reservations around each other. Both were just too protective and possessive of her.
But her eyes fleeted back to the screen, back to the form of Siddharth.
He was six feet tall, lean and muscular. He worked out a lot. He had a thin, long face with sharp features. Aristocratic, though he denied any lineage claims, which was obviously not true, he was the clan leader. He was considerably older than all of them, about four years older than June. Normally, he had deep green eyes, about 5 shades darker than hers. And he was always clean shaven. His hair length had fluctuated over the years, from a long ponytail to a bun to short, cropped hair to slightly long wavy hair that covered his ears, the latter being the most common.
He hated British Wizarding robes. Britain was the only country that insisted on using them on a daily wear. He preferred modern muggle clothing. Easy and comfortable and of course, he was magically strong. He only ever used wandless magic. The perfect blend of modern and old. That's how she thought of him.
The memory switched.
She had learned the partial animagus transformations from him.
She glanced at her hand and pulled out claws from her fingers and made them disappear again.
She glanced at the screen.
Hermione was teaching her the undetectable extension charm. She had not even turned 19. She had cooked up some excuse about wanting to clean Grimmauld place and place the dark artefacts in a bottomless trunk and Hermione had bought it up, because June had been showing enthusiasm about living life after a long time.
She had spent the time restoring Hogwarts and appearing for trials in silence. She may as well as have been mute if it was not work related. She had refused to stay at Weasleys, instead staying at the grim Grimmauld place. The Weasleys and Hermione had tried cajoling her, prying into what the issue was, but June had been too irritated, too locked in her own thoughts to take any heed. She had ordered Kreacher to keep them away until she permitted them to intervene.
She had spent the next week being tortured by a werewolf and when she had remembered Kreacher and asked him to take her someplace safe. He had taken her to Malfoys since she had forbidden the presence of Weasleys and Hermione. And that was how she and Draco had become friends.
She shook her head, focusing again on the screen.
The wedding of Blaise and Ginny in 2003. She had been in Egypt. She had come for three days to England for the festivities after some 9 months. Sid had visited her and so had Draco. The others just wrote letters because they did not know where she was.
She had come in between, once or twice, to chat with Salazar in the Slytherin Manor and visit the graves of Voldemort and her parents. But she had met nobody and told nobody. She suspected that Salazar had ratted her out to Draco and Sid, but they had never questioned her.
Her eyes took in every face hungrily, wondered about the faux smile that her counterpart was wearing. She had smiled for real later that evening, when Sid had sung that song and dragged her for a dance, but she had soon been too morbid again.
The memory switched or rather fast forwarded to the end of the reception. The guests were leaving. Blaise and Ginny were wrapped around each other in the middle of the dance floor with a few others. And she was sitting with George, talking animatedly about a few Egyptian pests that he could use for some of his potions. Ron and Hermione had joined in. Draco had been quietly sitting behind her. Luna was humming a tune. Neville was slightly drunk and Hannah was keeping him steady.
Susan had joined them that night, which was surprising. June had never recalled that she had been there.
And then Sid had sprung out his guitar and started to sing.
That made her sad. She looked down away from the screen, lost in her thoughts.
Slowly the memory finished itself and the screen dissolved when there was no magic to feed her anymore. She just kept looking at her feet and shuffling. In between, she froze and then went on with observation of ground. When the screen ebbed away and took away the light, she said conversationally, "What brings you here?"
And Death spoke to her, "You are normally more vigilant. It took you 10 minutes to realize my presence."
"I felt you as the void was created, even before you entered this realm. I was just hoping that ignoring you would make you go away." She laid down in the roots of the tree.
"I thought you knew me better, Mistress" Death replied.
"I thought I did. Wasn't that my folly?" She asked rhetorically.
Death chuckled.
"You took a while before you reached out. It has been what, 3 months or more since I have been in this dimension." She made conversation, fixing the dark, shrouded figure with a look.
"I wanted you to settle in. How is the world suiting you?" He asked. He had a rusty voice as if he seldom used it.
"You made her too perfect!" Cordelia said calmly, but her voice betrayed her anger.
"You asked me to mold Cordelia Faye Black to resemble you. I did that. I spared her life when the werewolf attacked and I spared the life of the Naga, as you asked me. I kept her away from Tom Riddle until you could come in the world and take charge. I did what you asked." Death's voice was frosty.
"I requested, never ordered." She said succinctly, "It is not right, me being your mistress."
"You have told me that often. And isn't that the reason why none of your friends knew about me, not even Siddharth?" Death asked.
"You keep too close an eye on me!" She said pointedly.
"To protect, nothing else." He murmured back.
"If you say so.." She snorted.
"You made her too perfect. This was not what I needed, being hung on a pedestal after being the freaking savior of one world. I am not a wax doll or a statue that people can.." She said bitterly after a while.
"She balances you. You were too imperfect. She is too perfect. I just struck a balance." Death spoke.
"Imperfect? Why don't you just say damaged?" She said bitterly.
"You are not damaged!" Death spoke harshly.
She chuckled, tears falling down her face, "Kid somebody else, Death. I spent a thousand years in the void of fire to reach this world. I know a tad bit more about life than you do."
"You always knew more about life than I do, I just know that life is fickle and I need no more truths about it." Death spoke, "But I still sometimes doubt that you know life. You perhaps know life, yet you do not realize it. Why do you insist on being a machine?"
"I am afraid the burden comes with my title." She said shortly.
Death snorted, "I agree with your Indian, you lie to yourself a lot."
"It has kept me alive. It has done a whole lot of good. If you think I am going to stop lying to myself, I won't." She said stubbornly.
"As you please, Mistress." Death said submissively, "I just came to give you a missive."
She gave him a questioning look.
"Your lover searches for you!" He said softly.
'Tom.." She quickly muttered, hastily transformed and ran towards the castle without saying a goodbye to death.
Death's POV
"Tom Marvolo Riddle is not your lover yet, Cordelia Faye Black. I spoke about the lover of June, or more aptly Anya. Your lover is searching for a way to cross dimensions to come to you." Death spoke softly. He knew that she could not hear him. She had long ago, swept into the other part of the forest.
He smiled a crooked smile and dissipated.
Aha, I thought I would never get this done. I was especially scared about how I write death, but I guess it turned out well. Next up will be another interlude, before we go back to chapters for some time. It is a crucial one. Cordelia will be making an important decision. Consider that a teaser.
'And death spoke to her' is a variation of 'And death spoke to them' and is directly picked from The tale of three brothers from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
A reply to the guest reviewers: I
Anonymous: I am so glad that you are liking it and that you can see deep layers within the story. Thank you, that kinda validates the writer in me.
Odette Bell: Thank you. I hope you like this one too.
Naru kashi: I update every Saturday Naru. Thank you for the review. It means a lot.
kakashi namikaze: I honestly await Saturdays so that I can update. I love hearing from the readers. Thank you for reviewing.
AND a warm welcome to all the new readers and regards to all the old ones. You make this story worth my while. :P
