"Are you…" The man in the fire said incredulously, drawing their attention back to the fireplace, "are you flooing from the Leaky Cauldron?"
"Where else would I get access to a floo?" The nurse asked sarcastically.
"Hurry," the man said quickly, "come through the floo."
"Okay Harriet," the nurse said, kneeling down to look Harriet in the eyes, "this may seem a bit strange, but you have to understand that it's magic. Okay?"
Harriet nodded, wondering what was going on. The common room of the pub was still silent and everyone was still staring at them, which Harriet didn't like one bit. Nothing good ever came from everybody staring at you.
"You need," the nurse said, as she looked Harriet in the eyes, "to walk into the fireplace."
Harriet looked around the nurses head at the green flames in the fireplace, then looked back at the nurse incredulously.
"You want me to walk into the fire?" Harriet asked.
The nurse nodded, "uh huh. It won't hurt you. You'll disappear from here and reappear somewhere else."
The nurse reached back and put her hands near the fire, "see? It's not hot."
Harriet knew very well how much hot things could hurt and she copied the nurse's actions tentatively, but was reassured by the lack of heat coming from the fireplace.
"Okay?" The nurse asked, "ready?"
Harriet nodded and steeled herself before walking into the flames, just before she came to touch the emerald coloured magical fire the nurse gave her one last instruction, "keep your elbows in!"
Harriet had walked into the flames and whooosh! She was swept away into a very disorienting place where she seemed to be whizzing past fire place after fire place, hearth after hearth until suddenly she zoomed straight into one particularly fine looking marble fireplace in a flash of emerald flames.
"Don't just stand there!" Came the man's voice, "keep walking through!"
Harriet jumped a little in surprise and kept walking, appearing inside a huge hall. The man from the fire was standing back a little from the fireplace and Harriet was able to get a good look at him. His brown hair and beard were both combed, cut and styled and he was wearing some sort of long coat over the top of a shirt, waistcoat and trousers. All of his clothes appeared to fit him perfectly and looked much more posh than the sort of everyday wear that the great walrus would wear. He was looking at her in a way that seemed like he was studying her, as if she were an insect to watch or a puzzle to work out. The hallway itself was huge, with mahogany wainscoting. The walls above the wood were filled with paintings, banners or tapestries. Harriet started! One of the paintings moved! It was a painting of a young boy and a log, but one moment he was standing on the log and the next he had jumped down! Harriet looked around in shock, all of the paintings were moving! The green flames behind her roared and the nurse stumbled out of the fireplace, brushing soot from her uniform.
"Nance," said the man, curtly, not sounding at all pleased to be seeing her.
"Father," the nurse replied, just as curt.
Harriet looked between them, not really understanding at all what was going on but hoping that she'd get some answers.
The older man looked down at Harriet, "now girl," he said sternly, but despite his tone; calling her 'girl' sent a surge of happiness through her that resulted in a huge smile, "your name is Harriet?"
Harriet glanced at the nurse, who just nodded, "yes Sir," she said.
"Do you have… a brother?" The man asked.
"No sir," Harriet said, shaking her head, "just a cousin."
The man hummed, "so… Strange things have been happening around you?"
"Uh huh," Harriet nodded, "my teacher's wig turned blue and my hair kept growing up after my Aunt Petunia cut it."
"And you had boy's bits," the nurse offered, "until they disappeared when you told your aunt that you were a girl."
The man reacted with a very shocked expression, "what?"
"Oh yes," Harriet told him with a nod, "I got angry at how everyone was calling me 'boy' and I told them all that I was a girl and there was a big flash and… after that, my boy bits were gone."
The man's eyes narrowed, "Harriet?" He asked, "have you always been called Harriet?"
"No," Harriet said, shaking her head emphatically, "Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and Dudley always call me 'boy' or 'freak'."
The man's eyebrows furrowed and he looked suddenly very angry. Harriet took a step back and to the side, closer to the nurse. Was that the wrong answer? Was there more?
"Oh!" She added, "I forgot. At school they called me Harry."
"Harry Potter?" He asked in a musing tone to which she nodded, "but now you… prefer Harriet?"
Harriet nodded happily, "She…" She pointed at the nurse, then realised that she shouldn't call the nurse 'she', "your… daughter… told me that Harry wasn't a girl's name, so I decided that I preferred Harriet."
The man let out a barking laugh and mused to himself, "the boy who lived no longer."
"Girl," Harriet spoke up in challenge.
The man's features softened a little, "right you are Harriet Potter… The girl who lived."
Harriet gave him a satisfied nod and both the man and the nurse gave happy sounding laughs.
"Do you know who she is Nance?" The man asked but his daughter just shook her head and he continued, "Harriet's the one who defeated Voldemort, or her parents did. Nobody knows. She disappeared right after, but the reports in the Daily Prophet stated that she was alive, her parents were dead and so was You Know Who. Do you have the scar Harriet?"
Harriet had no idea what he was talking about to begin with, her aunt and uncle had told her that her parents were drunks that had died in a car crash; she had no idea who she was meant to know, but when he mentioned the scar she smiled brightly and lifted her bangs to show him the jagged lightning bolt scar on her forehead.
"Well I'll be…" The man breathed at the sight of her scar and stepped back a few paces to sit down heavily on an armchair that rested against a wall.
"This is an entirely unexpected turn of events Nance and I'm a little lost as to what I should do," the man said, "for the moment however," he continued and then shouted, "Dippy!"
There was a slight pop and suddenly next to the man appeared a curious creature. It was about as tall as Harriet and had brown skin with long ears and a long nose. It's limbs were long and it was thin and very boney, quite like Harriet herself and whilst Harriet's clothes were hand-me-downs from Dudley and much too big, the creature was wearing what appeared to be two tea-towels sewn together to form a rudimentary smock.
"What can Dippy be doing for Master?" The curious creature asked.
"Dippy," the man addressed the creature, "take young Harriet here up to play with Daphne while I make some floo calls, then tell Cossima that I'd like to speak with her."
"Yes Master, Dippy will be doing that," the creature simpered and quick as a flash took hold of Harriet's hand.
Before Harriet could do anything, she suddenly found herself standing in a large sitting room instead of the grand hallway she was in moments earlier. Large windows let in the afternoon sun from outside and lit up the warm looking room. Within a blink of the eye the little creature had let go of Harriet's hand and disappeared!
"Oh, hello!" Came a cultured voice from behind her and Harriet spun around in shock.
Sitting on the floor in front of a truly magnificent dollhouse was a young girl about her own age. She was wearing a very old fashioned sort of dress, white with lace sleeves and a dark green pinafore. It was gorgeous and Harriet was immediately jealous. Her hair was straight too, blonde and tied back with a green bow. She had been playing with a doll house, a magnificently huge one that looked so amazingly intricate that it almost looked like an entire real house had been shrunk down to a size fit to be played with.
"Hello," Harriet greeted her.
"My name is Daphne Greengrass," the girl said with an introduction that sounded very rehearsed.
There was a pause for a moment before Harriet realised that the girl, Daphne must have been waiting for her to introduce herself, "I'm Ha… Harriet Potter."
"I'm pleased to meet you Harriet Potter," the girl said politely, "won't you please join me?"
"I'd love to!" Harriet exclaimed and plopped herself down in front of the doll house. She did notice out of the corner of her eye the way that Daphne gracefully knelt and hoped that Daphne wouldn't be upset at her boyish behaviour.
She hadn't ever been invited to play with anyone before, she reflected, even when she was playing with the girls at school it felt like an imposition, like her presence was unwanted. For Daphne to actually invite her to play with her and her toy was an amazing first that created a feeling of elation that actually far surpassed the euphoria she felt when the man had earlier called her 'girl'.
The dolls, like the rest of the house, were amazingly intricate and dressed in a similar manner to either Daphne or the man. They played together happily and normally for all of about three minutes until their dolls had eaten their dinner in the dining room and it was time for the dishes to be cleaned (they did in fact look dirty).
"The dolls don't have a house elf," Daphne explained, "so they have to do the cleaning themselves."
"What's a house elf?" Harriet asked at the same time that Daphne said, "Scrougify!"
Harriet's eyes bulged as the food scraps on the miniature dishes disappeared!
"How did you do that?" Harriet exclaimed.
"The scrougify?" Daphne asked, "well it wasn't me of course, I don't have a wand yet. The dollhouse is charmed especially so that I can pretend to do household charms," she frowned for a moment, "what do you mean, 'what's a house elf'? Didn't Dippy bring you up here?"
Harriet was so confused, she didn't know what Daphne meant by a wand and household charms but set it all aside in the manner that young children are so easily able to do. Daphne's confusion about her confusion regarding a 'house elf' let her know that she was obviously missing something.
Dippy was the name the man in the hall used to call for the little creature, so Harriet put two and two together rather quickly and stuttered, "oh yes, Dippy did bring me here."
Daphne looked at Harriet suspiciously and with a bit more attention to detail than she had at first, "why are you wearing such strange clothes?" She asked Harriet.
"They're my cousin's," Harriet admitted self consciously picking at the tattered jumper, "they are what my aunt and uncle gave me."
"Are they… muggle clothes?" Daphne asked, with a horrified expression.
Harry gave her a completely blank look in return, "what's muggle?"
Daphne returned her look, "you don't know what a muggle is?"
Harriet shook her head, completely lost.
"A muggle is a person who cannot use magic," Daphne explained, "my tutors say that because they are born without magic it does something to them to make them ugly, violent and stupid!"
This made perfect sense to Harriet and she nodded thoughtfully; ugly, violent and stupid were very good descriptors of her aunt, uncle and cousin and she started to pity them that they obviously were born without magic. In fact, it applied to many of the boys at her school and some of the girls… and most of the teachers.
Daphne looked at Harriet in suspicion, "you can do magic, can't you?"
"Oh yes!" Harriet exclaimed hurriedly, "I turned my teacher's hair blue and made myself appear on top of a building and my hair kept regrowing every time my aunt cut it."
Daphne thought for a moment and nodded with satisfaction, "that's okay then."
They continued playing with the dolls and when Harriet made her doll open the door handle of the one room in the doll house that was closed, Daphne exclaimed, "stop!"
But it was too late.
"Now you've done it," Daphne said ruefully and pointed at the doll.
Harriet looked down to see the doll's face change to one of extreme pain, before the paint that made up its eyes, nose and mouth started to change and drip off it's face.
Daphne held up her doll and pointed to its finger, "only the head of the house can enter the head of house's study without setting off the face melting curse."
Harriet noted that Daphne's doll was the only one with a ring on its finger. Whatever the ring was, that must have meant it was the 'head of the house'.
Daphne stood up and straightened her skirts in one smooth motion, "I have a better idea, rather than playing dolls."
Harriet stood as well, trying as much as she could to copy Daphne's movements, and looked at her new playmate.
"Mother set aside some of my old clothes that are too small for me," she explained, "they are set to be thrown out. But I think that they are the perfect size for you. What do you say? Would you like to wear some proper clothes instead of… whatever those are?"
Harriet was ecstatic! One phrase was repeating through her mind over and over and over, 'I get to wear a dress! I get to wear a dress! I get to wear a dress!"
"Oh yes please!" She exclaimed.
Daphne reached out and took Harriet's hand in hers and together they skipped out of the sitting room and down a hall to Daphne's bedroom.
An hour later, when Cossima came into Daphne's bedroom looking for them she found a much improved young lady than the one that had appeared in their home. Harriet was wearing a green and silver dress that had been Daphne's favourite until she had outgrown it and a dark green pinafore that was a match for the one Daphne was wearing. Dark green tights and a pair of shiny black flats completed the ensemble and Daphne was just finishing up helping Harriet to brush her hair.
Daphne immediately pointed at the pile of Dudley's hand me downs and said, "I hope it's alright that I've given Harriet some of my old clothes Mother, but you should have seen the horrid clothes her aunt had dressed her in!"
"Of course dear," Cossima told Daphne, giving her a kiss on the forehead and poking at the pile of clothes in distaste, she gave Harriet an appraising look, "you look absolutely gorgeous, Harriet. That dress suits you just as much as it did Daphne."
Harriet blushed at the compliments and mumbled, "thank you."
Cossima immediately corrected her in a slightly strict tone, "don't mumble Harriet. A young lady should always speak clearly and concisely."
"Sorry," Harriet said, looking at Cossima attentively, "thank you."
"Much better," Cossima replied and gave Harriet a kiss on the forehead as well. The contact was unexpected and different, but it made Harriet feel warm and secure.
"Come with me down to the main hall girls," Cossima said as she turned to leave the room, "Hew has been floo'ing everybody at the Ministry trying to figure out what to do with you Harriet and I think that their planning has been concluded."
Harriet stood up quickly and began to run after Daphne's mother, but Daphne's hand shot out and grasped hold of her's so quickly that she almost dragged Daphne along with her.
"A young lady never runs in the house," Daphne told her and Harriet let out a little, "oh!"
Hand in hand, they walked sedately down to the main hall and to Harriet's future.
AUTHORS NOTES: Thanks so much for the reaction to my story!
Thanks for the story favourites Willowbreeze the fluffy, RedMysticwolf, NRMania, Inumiru,!
Fletcher: Thanks SOOOOOOOOOO much for the review!
Taimu Shu: Thanks for your attention!
Archer1Eye: Haha! The Greengrass family were always just 2 dimensional purebloods in the books with Daphne herself gaining very little mention. Nance will likely play a bigger role and her existence will affect the story. No matter how I look at it, Dumbledore is either an abusive manipulative narcissistic sociopath or a senile old fool. I can tell you one thing about pairings, it DEFINITELY won't be snape or voldemort ;-)
Thank you SO much! I'll try to update Darkness' Love soon, the next chapter is about halfway done.