Disclaimer; I don't own Harry Potter. I used to own a fifth of Tom Sims Bourbon but it heroically sacrificed itself by jumping down my throat so this story could be brought back from the dead.

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As Harry slowly woke up, a few things filtered into his mind. The first was that the day was well underway, given how the bright sunlight invaded his room. The second was that there was an owl on his nightstand that was looking at him with an annoyed expression. Apparently it didn't like being ignored. It was as he reached over to free the letter and send the owl on its way, Harry noticed the third unusual thing for the morning. His bed was very warm. Deciding to investigate later Harry opened his letter, a bit unnerved to see the Ministry seal in the wax.

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Mr. Potter

We at the ministry of magic wish to offer our good wishes on this the day of your birth. According to our sensors you completed the Wishing Candle ritual just after midnight on July 31st. While normally we at the ministry are forced to discourage underage magic use, we understand that some Pureblood Families have coming of age traditions that predate these laws. For this reason it is procedure in such cases to allow young people to practice their magic when in the company of their family or family friends while these traditions are taking place. However we remind you that tomorrow the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Magic will still apply and magic use in non-life threatening situations will be prohibited.

Best wishes,

Mafalda Hopkirk

Ministry of Magic

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Harry breathed a sigh of relief that he would not be getting into trouble and flopped backwards on his bed. Doing so forced him to realize the fourth unusual thing for the morning, there was someone else in his bed! The other person shrieked loudly and started pummeling him with her fists as best she could. With a crash Harry rolled off the bed towards the door and dove across the floor to grab his wand from where it had fallen the night before.

The other person also scrambled for a wand and within moments Harry and his surprise visitor found themselves laying on the floor together, each with their wands digging into the other's throat. Green met Green as two black haired combatants with glasses tried to decide what to do next. Aunt Petunia's shrill voice carried through the house and she yelled about freaks and started coming up the stairs. Both combatants moved almost imperceptibly as they heard her at the end of the hall. Just as the door was about to be flung open, Harry rolled over and shot a stunner this caught his aunt before she could take stock of the situation. This proved to be his undoing however as the young woman he'd found in his bed put her wand to the back of his neck.

"Drop the wand or we'll see if I can cast a decent cutting curse," she commanded. Harry reluctantly complied. "Now on your feet, and put your hands on top of your head."

Harry did as he was told and she grabbed his wand from the floor. She gave him a quick frisk from behind as she looked for a spare wand or portkey. When she grabbed his crotch, Harry decided there were limits to acceptable paranoia, "Don't I get dinner and a movie first?"

"Shut up! Now tell me your name and what the hell you're doing in my bed!"

"Your bed? Look you've got to be confused. I live here, I'm Harry Potter," He insisted.

"Bollocks, try again," she pressed the point of her wand into the back of his neck briefly to remind him who was in charge.

"I'm telling the truth! If I show you my scar will you believe me?"

"You better explain real quick what you're doing here or there will be worlds of hurt coming your way. Did the twins put you up to this? Who gave you polyjuice with my hair in it?"

Sensing who ever this was wasn't going to listen to reason, Harry dropped to the floor kicking back with his feet while he caught himself with his hands. It was something he'd discovered after years of Harry Hunting that generally knocked his attackers off guard. It worked as planned and the young woman fell on top of him and Harry quickly rolled to put himself on top of her, using his knees to pin her arms to the floor as he straddled her chest. He pulled his bangs to the side and displayed his scar to the girl. "Real enough for you?"

The girl looked up at him in shock. As soon as she stopped struggling Harry eased off of her a bit, making sure to take the wands. Without a word, she just put her hand to her head and moved her black curls to reveal an identical scar. With a bit of wonder in her voice she asked again, "Who are you?"

"I told you. I am Harry James Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, Hero of the Wizarding World, Honorary Member of the Dark Arts Defense League, and various other rubbish depending on who you listen to. Who are you?"

"Harry Jasmine Potter, Girl-Who-Lived and all that other stuff."

"Ok, we've got a problem…" Harry helped the other Harry up off the floor and shut the door on his nosey aunt. After thinking about it for a second he scribbled a quick note to place on his door before they sat down to figure everything out.

"Relatives-

As you may have discerned from the lack of owls and angry wizards threatening to expel me, I am now able to do magic. Do not enter my room. Do not bother me. Do not expect me to do any more chores. I can and will curse you.

-HJP"

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"Ok, so let me get this straight. Voldemort in our first year, snake in our second, Sirius in third, the tournament, and a prophecy, did I miss anything?" Harry James asked.

"Apparently we both blew out candles and made a wish last night too," Harry Jasmine threw out, looking over the short personal histories they'd written to compare. "What did you wish for?"

"Someone who could understand me, you?"

"The same. I guess we got our wish, who better to understand our troubles than ourselves?" She considered her options.

"Well at least we know one thing that is constant between both of our lives." James said slowly.

"All of that and you say there is only one constant?"

"Yep, Mum's love/hate relationship with us."

"What? She died to save us, how is that a love/hate relationship?"

"Yeah but she named you Harry first, definitely not a pureblood name so it wasn't Dad. Harriet I could understand, and then maybe shorten it to Harry. Instead she goes straight to Harry, just like she didn't call me Harold. Harold's a name with dignity, but imagine a fifty year old man named Harry. All my life people are going to expect either a kid or someone 'young at heart'. It's hard to get respect with a little kid's name."

"Hmm, I just thought it was the drugs they gave her to make the childbirth easier. She probably wasn't thinking straight. But you're ignoring the real problem here. There are now two of us, that's twice the target and twice the likelihood of something weird happening."

"You don't think this qualifies as weird?" James sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I'm ignoring it because I don't know what to do. If we go to Dumbledore and the Order for help, there will be no way to avoid the astronomical amount of attention a second Harry Potter will generate. We'll both effectively be prisoners behind all sorts of protections and guards. If we try to keep this a secret we might be able to swing some freedom but… Well we're not exactly the Twins here."

"That's it, the Twins!"

"Huh?"

"Do the Twins run a joke shop here? I helped my Twins start one after the Tournament so they definitely owe me some favors."

"Yeah I did the same, do you think they can help?" James asked hopefully.

"At the very least they know all about living in stereo," she pointed out. "Besides, if they can't help or try to ask the Order for help, it's so absurd that no one will believe them until after we've had time to run for it."

"You'd rather run than have the world know about us?"

Jasmine looked torn as she thought about how to answer, "We both know what will end up happening. You can barely sneeze without half the Wizarding world saying 'bless you' or complaining that you've got bogies on their best robes. It would only get worse if there are two of us. I don't know if I can take it getting any worse than it already is."

He nodded sympathetically, "I know, but if we can somehow stick this out it will only be half as bad for each of us. Or if you want, you could go be someone entirely different. Take a new name, start over, and just be normal. This isn't your world and it isn't your Voldemort; I would not blame you if you just walked off."

"Oh hell no, you can't keep me out of the fight that easily!" She protested and grabbed him in a hug. "If you're going to fight I'll be right there by your side."

"Oh yeah, you're definitely me," James laughed as he extricated himself from the hug. "So you're going to the Twins to ask for their help? What are you planning to tell them?"

"Why am I going? And why not just tell them the truth?"

"It's obvious you have to go. The Order will never let me out of this house without someone following me and you'll need some clothes and things anyway. It doesn't look like your trunk came with you. You take the vault key and the cloak, and I'll go for a walk to the park. Once I've got the Order following me you escape under the cloak and take the muggle train to London. When you come back, set off one of the Twins' rockets and I'll take another walk so you can slip back in. As for why not tell the truth, I thought that was obvious. If they know everything we might as well involve the Order and the ministry because it's way too big to hide."

She mulled it over for a bit before coming up with something, "I'll tell them we got a cursed object in the mail. If they think this is all temporary and that we might be able to get back into one body they'll be more likely to help cover everything up."

"And what do we want them to help with exactly? What is our plan?"

"Short term I'd like to keep as many people in the dark as possible. In the long term, live as normal a life as we'll ever be allowed."

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Getting to the Leaky Cauldron was very easy once the Order was out of the way. Harry just had to catch a bus to the nearest train station and then rode the Southern line all the way into London before hopping on the Tube to get to Charing Cross Road. She slipped the invisibility cloak over her and walked right through the Cauldron to the back courtyard. The wizards inside saw nothing at all odd about the doors opening and closing on their own. Almost anyone who attended Hogwarts had seen something weirder at one point or another.

Getting into the Twins' shop unnoticed was another thing all together. She had no trouble finding it, it was painted pink after all, but when she opened the door a hail of glitter and confetti showered down over the invisibility cloak. Looking around it was obvious that everyone else had received the same treatment and that they were looking right at her since she was now a glitter covered shape.

"Oi, you!" One of the twins pointed right at her, his tag said Fred but that wasn't a guarantee. "You can't wear that in here, we'll not have spies or thieves taking advantage of all our hard work and creativity."

Harry reached into her pocket and pulled out the note Harry had given her for introduction. When Fred came over to kick her out she slipped her hand out of the cloak long enough for him to see the letter. He took it and read it without complaint.

"Fred and George,

I'm in a bit of a pickle but Merlin help me you two are the only ones that can help so I'm calling in my favors. The bearer of this note will explain but for now just trust me that everything is alright. Hopefully you've got a back room or somewhere you can talk quietly. It's going to sound really weird but it's all true. Under no circumstances should you call the Order. We'd like to get through this with as little fuss as possible.

HJP"

Fred nodded to Harry and indicated she should follow him. Once they got behind the counter, he called for Lee to come mind the front and opened a door back into their workshop.

"Hey George, Harry needs our help and he sent someone to explain. Apparently it's something big." Fred called his brother away from the potions bubbling in the corner and reached into an ice chest for some butterbeers. Once everyone had taken a seat and a butterbeer, Fred motioned to Harry who was still under the cloak. "Well, go ahead and explain whatever brought you here."

"There's no good way to explain so I'll just show you. I woke up this morning to find I had a bit of a problem," Harry dropped the cloak and watched the Twins' eyes bug out slightly.

"We didn't do it!" They both yelled together.

"I know that. The problem is that there are two of me now, and as you can see we aren't exactly the same. We think someone sent us a cursed artifact but we know that we are both the real Harry Potter. There are a few things I've never told anyone but we both know about. We think we can fix it if we have enough time but until then we can't deal with it if the whole world blows it out of proportion," She shrugged helplessly. "So what do you think we should do?"

"Cool so you got yourself a twin of your own now. The question is are you the good twin or the bad twin?" Fred quipped. Then he and George turned and whispered to each other for a few moments and Harry noticed a few hand gestures that she couldn't quite decipher. Eventually Fred had to ask, "Is it the whole Order you don't trust or just Dumbledore and Snape?"

"We don't really want anyone to know but if it came down to it, I guess we could accept help from anyone but those two. Dumbledore and I…" She had to hunt around for the right words, "It's complicated but sometimes I just feel like he's so busy watching out for the rest of the world that he never considers my feelings."

"Ok we can understand that. How about this then, we kind of sort of let people know what happened but not really?" George offered while Fred was busy scribbling something down on a piece of parchment.

"What do you mean? How can you sort of reveal this?"

"What if Fred and I took the blame for this? We'll say one of the experimental pranks we sent you for your birthday went wrong somehow and left you constantly changing between genders. In reality the two of you take turns being Harry while the other is working to find out what happened. Let us hammer out a few details, this is going to be one of the greatest pranks ever!"

"Thanks, I need to go get a few things anyway, new clothes and whatnot. Do you two have anything I can use as a disguise while I'm out in the Alley?"

George went over to a one of the shelves and searched among the little boxes for a moment and came back with a few candies. "Sloe Gin Twins, they're still experimental but they seem to work. They're made with trace amounts of polyjuice so as long as you have one in your mouth you'll look like one of us. Once the candy is done or if you spit it out the effects last about five minutes. Incidentally they're probably what we're going to blame for the accident."

"Ah, perfect idea brother mine!" Fred yelled from his planning table.

"Thanks guys, I really don't know what I'd do without you." Harry hugged both twins and took the candy before almost skipping out the door, leaving the Twins with the Cloak.

"Is it just me or is Harry a lot more huggy than he used to be?" Fred asked.

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A/N; Sorry about this. I sat down last night after dinner and started writing the next chapter of Master but long about the fourth glass of Bourbon I got distracted and this came out. The first part was written back in early January and I wasn't really intending to take it anywhere it was just something I tinkered with. But then I was drunk and saw it in my writing folder and one thing led to another. Why does it sound like I'm trying to explain after being caught in a sultry love affair? Well anyway you can all rest assured the Bourbon is punishing me worse than you guys could.