Author's Note:I'm finally out of the set up part of this story. Okay, you still have to meet Harry and Ginny's psychologist, but other than that every one is firmly in place.
This chapter was revised 7/30/18.
Chapter Four
Harry Potter woke up his first morning as a girl, rather uncomfortably. While the bed was actually rather good, with a nice firm but not to firm mattress, and the pillow was not that bad, though he would have preferred something a bit thicker, that did not account for the differences in anatomy causing problems with his preferred sleeping position.
Harry tended to sleep partially on his side, mostly on his stomach, though. It was the result of a long-standing habit, developed due to the fact that he could easily curl up in a protective ball if his uncle started his punishment. With his new breasts, however, it had driven him into a slightly modified position that had left him with a rather stiff neck and from the way it felt, possibly a bruised breast. His boxers were also a bit twisted and dug into his hip.
Harry stretched in bed, his left hand hitting the wall behind the head of the bed, before rolling out to stand. Sleepily he removed the night shirt and put on the robe that had been hanging on a hook on the backside of the door. Only then did he turn on the light, put on his glasses and take a look at himself in the mirror.
His red hair was a tangle around his face, and with only the robe on, he showed an uncomfortable amount of cleavage. Off went the robe, and back on the night shirt, before putting back on the robe. There was a brief pause as he had to readjust his boxers, as they had sild down a bit. He hoped they'd stay up.
Snape had left a brush on the shelf bellow the mirror, which was mercifully a non-magical one. Harry had suffered through the insults against his hair with two successive ones in the Gryffindor Boys dorm, and shuddered at the thought of what his messy shoulder length hair would result in. Recalling some instructions overheard in the Gryffindor common room, Harry began to carefully brush the tangles out of his hair.
As he brushed, he marveled at the way his hair looked like tendrils of fire surrounding his face. It didn't take long to do, actually. In a way, the longer hair seemed to be a lot easier to tame, or at least met the admittedly low standards that Harry had for the styling of his hair.
Then out of the room, and down the stairs, Harry went, moving as quietly as possible. Dudley always pounded down the stairs, but not Harry. Harry kept things quiet, making sure that Uncle Vernon was only woken by his alarm, or perhaps the scent of breakfast. It was always best when Uncle Vernon woke due to the scent of a well prepared breakfast.
It was not yet light enough in the kitchen to cook without the lights, so Harry flicked on the switch. The light flickered on with a slight hum. Harry examined the stove and other appliances. They all looked old, but serviceable. There was a coffee pot next to the stove, ready to go on the stove. As Harry watched, the stove turned on and the coffee pot slid over, just as the clock turned to six twenty.
Harry smiled. It was obvious that Snape had sent up that. He moved to the ice box, as the Professor had called it, and pulled out a couple eggs. Judging from the supply, it looked like eggs was part of Snape's regular breakfast. A little butter on the frying pan, and Harry was able to start up his favorite type of eggs, scrambled. He knew how to make others, like sunny side up, but scrambled appealed to him. It fit his life. He removed a couple plates from the cupboard, and pulled a couple slices of bread from the bread box.
Harry liked his bread lightly toasted, and well buttered. It didn't take long for him his breakfast to be ready, but he didn't move from his post near the stove as he started to nibble his toast. He as hungry this morning, so he expected that he'd probably need to make more eggs. He didn't think Snape would begrudge him an extra egg or two, unlike Aunt Petunia.
Looking back through the door way to the hall, he spotted Professor Snape turning down the hall from the stairs. "Good Morning Professor, how do you like your eggs?" Harry asked.
"Sunny-side up, two," Snape replied, as he entered the kitchen. The Professor was definitely not dressed like he did at Hogwarts. He wore a gray collared shirt, with a trio of buttons, the top of which was not buttoned, and a pair of slightly faded black pants.
"Coming right up," Harry said, retrieving another pair from the ice box. He neatly cracked them and began to cook them, only pausing to pour a cup of coffee for the Professor. As he handed Snape the cup, Harry saw an expression that he had rarely if ever seen on the Head of Slytherin.
Snape smiled.
Severus Snape was not a morning person, really. He was more of one than several of his colleagues though. With just the scent of his favored Turkish blend of coffee, he would wake up enough to function. At Hogwarts, he had it strategically delivered to his main room, on an occasional table that was right outside the door to his bedroom. At Spinner's End, he'd set up his coffee pot to make six cups every morning, charmed to start at just the right time for the scent to waft up and wake up in time to have a relaxing morning. Not that he drank six cups, he just couldn't get it to make any less.
He didn't expect that when he entered his kitchen, still in his night robe, Harry Potter would be busy making eggs. For just a moment, the resemblance between mother and transformed to a daughter son fed a long dead dream of waking up to Lily cooking. He quickly banished the thoughts to answer Harry's request on what eggs he wanted.
The Daily Prophet arrived just as he sat down to await his eggs, cup of coffee in his hand. He placed the coffee down to retrieve the Prophet from the owl. Unrolling it, he looked at the headline. It looked like the Daily Prophet was going to do another Thousand Gallon Draw.
The plate of eggs seemed to just appear on the table in front of him. "Thank you, Harry," Snape said. "I did not expect you to be cooking breakfast this summer."
"I always do it for the Dursleys," Harry said. "It's habit."
Severus took a bite of the eggs. They were perfect. "Understand that I'm not going to require you to wake up early every morning to do breakfast. I am not your despicable aunt or uncle. I want you to have a much more normal Summer. You are about to turn thirteen, and I've never known a teenager not to want to sleep in. I certainly encounter enough of my older Slytherins sleeping through breakfast each year."
"I kind of like to cook, especially when can make something for myself," Harry admitted, putting another slice of toast in the toaster. "Aunt Petunia had me cooking since I was five, especially breakfast. I'm really good at cooking breakfast, dinner, not so much. My pies and tarts, though get rave reviews."
"Then, I trust you to make breakfast at your pleasure," Severus said, turning to sports. "We shall be going shopping for new attire for you and Ginny as soon as she is up and ready." As he looked down at the scores, he caught the fall of Harry's boxers from under her night shirt. "I suggest you look for a more fitting pair for shopping."
Ginny Weasley had not expected to get much when Professor Snape had taken her and Harry to the muggle clothing store. She had a rather good supply of almost everything she thought she needed. A couple new outfits that weren't second hand would be nice, but she really didn't expect anything more.
The strange thin white bags she placed on the bed in her room for the summer were bulging. She wasn't sure what the bags were made of, but they were surprisingly strong for their thinness. The first thing she took out of one of the bags was one of her new bras. She really hadn't expected to need one, but after the lady measured Harry for his, the lady had turned to her. She hadn't expected to get measured, and being told she was wearing a too small bra was entirely unexpected.
Ginny took off her blouse, and for the first time attempted to put on a real muggle style bra. She'd listened closely when the sales lady had advised Harry on "a better way to put on a bra." The bras she'd seen at school with the well developed members of her class hadn't had hooks like this one. It took a couple attempts to hook them right, and Ginny was glad she'd followed the suggestion to do the hooks in the front, then rotate it around and pull the straps over her shoulders.
She pulled out a shirt, something the sales lady had called a knock off polo. Ginny buttoned all but one button after she slid it over her head, before pulling out the jeans. Genuine Levi jeans. She'd heard all about the brand from some of the muggle-born girls. It was, according to Lisa-Marie, the original, accept no substitute brand. Ginny had managed to score two pairs stone-washed, one pair black, and one pair of the original dark blue denim.
She quickly replaced her shorts with the black jeans, before taking a look at herself in the mirror. With her hair cascading across the deep blue shirt, instead of being restrained in any way, Ginny thought she looked a lot more grown up. Ponytails made her hair easy to handle, but there was something about the way her hair looked unrestrained that Ginny always liked. She pushed her hair back over her shoulders.
She was ready to see this ... what had Professor Snape called her again ... yes ... psychologist. Ginny wasn't sure what that word meant, but after four days with only ten not so good hours of sleep, she would take any help she could get.
Petunia Evans Dursley sat in the Emergency Room of Prince John Hospital in Greater Whinging. The room was white, the chairs were white, the nurses wore white ... the only color in the room was Petunia's amethyst earrings, reflected in the steel top of the table, in between ancient copies of the Times.
Petunia felt as if her life had been whited out from the moment she'd been shunted into this room. Her Vernon had a heart attack, or as the person in the ambulance had said, an acute myocardial infarction type one. Petunia had just known it would happen some day. Vernon had long spurned the advice of his doctors. Publically she tended to side with him, living with Vernon was always better when you sided with him. That was what she'd always been told that a wife should do, to. Privately she'd worried, where and when no one could see.
Vernon was all she really had. She had not had a job since she had worked at the flower shop before she had Dudley. Dudley ... where was Dudley? She'd left her Dudley-kins home alone. He had just turned thirteen. Dudley couldn't survive alone without his mother ... without his father. What were they going to do if Vernon died.
Marge wouldn't help. Marge would probably contest Vernon's will. Petunia hated Marge. She tried to hide it, for Vernon's sake. Her dogs always scared Petunia. She'd seen them attack Harry, and knew that they could turn on Petunia and Marge would not lift a finger.
Where was the doctor? What was going on with Vernon? Petunia's vision was washed out with tears as she waited in the room, hoping beyond all hope that her Vernon would recover, that the surgeon would come out and announce that all was well.
Petunia remembered the last time she'd talked to Vernon, after Harry and his Professor had left. Vernon had been beside himself with anger that the Professor had frozen him. The reflection of the stone of her earrings reminded her of the shade that Vernon had taken while he was frozen by the spell. Petunia wanted to blame Severus, Lily's friend who had taken her sister away, for that. She couldn't honestly do so, no matter how much she wanted to. She'd seen Vernon that way so many times when somethings went other than the way he expected them to.
Here in the white of the room, Petunia couldn't hide anything from herself. The folds of the papers in front of her suddenly brought to mind the scars that she'd seen on the back of Harry Potter. Until he'd stood there, vulnerable, his eyes meeting hers, before Severus had raised the screen to provide Harry with some protection. Even after, his eyes still stared down at her over the barrier, as if to say don't deny what you saw.
Then he'd downed that potion, and suddenly it wasn't Harry Potter with his deep green eyes staring at her, but her sister Lily with those emerald eyes she'd always wished she had. Petunia knew it was still Harry, but the image was too much. She couldn't deny that she had done wrong, not with the spitting image of her sister Lily looking at her. If only he'd been her that first day of November when she'd found him on her steps.
It had been oh so easy to push Harry away. To associate him with the man who had put the nail in the coffin of her sister's exile from home by providing her with a new home, a home away from that jealous sister who deep down didn't want her sister to go away, who longed to pull her sister back into her embrace. To pull Lily into a hug and hear the whispers she'd heard again and again but had never believed, that she hadn't lost Lily.
But she had lost Lily. Lost her to a magical world, lost her to a school so far away from home, and lost her to a man that she'd loved dearly. She'd lost Lily long before Harry Potter had turned up on her doorstep with that letter, the letter that had changed everything. The letter that had made final Petunia's loss of her Irish twin.
And now she sat in this white, washed out world, knowing that her world had changed again. Before, she still had a chance. Before, she could have changed. Before, she could have met the challenge.
She had not. She had put her sister's child away in the closet. She could have shown love, not hate, and she infected the whole house with her hatred. If she had not been that way to Harry, maybe Harry wouldn't have shown so much reactive magic and driven Vernon to react with anger.
It was all her fault, that was the one thing that Petunia knew was true as she awaited word on her Vernon. If she hadn't done anything to Harry, neither would Vernon have, she was sure. If she had been better to Harry ... to Lily, she wouldn't be in this washed out white world.
Suddenly something else filled her view, a black t-shirt whose logo she couldn't read through her tears. A hand fell on to her shoulders, as she looked up into the blue-green eyes of her son.
"Mum, is Daddy going to be okay?" Dudley said, his voice sounding not the mature and assured newly christened teen, but the breaking sadness of a child whose world had just cracked open.
"I don't know, Dudley," Petunia admitted. "No one's told me anything since they sent me here."
"It's bad, isn't it?" Dudley asked. "Daddy might die."
"I hope not," Petunia said, drawing her son into her lap. His heavy weight leaning into her somehow grounded her, ended her spiral of thoughts. "I'll be here for you, always my little Dudley-kin."
"No you won't," Dudley said as he buried his face in Petunia's shoulder, just like he'd done when he was much littler. "Harry's parents are dead."
Petunia didn't know how to say anything to that. She'd known that the words were coming. Having taken in an orphan, how could she not? All she could do was hold her son, hoping that by her arms around him she could reassure him in a way that words that couldn't come did not.
"Mrs. Dursley?"
I think I'll let the fate of Vernon Dursley go a little more.
