The thing that makes me root for a character more than anything is watching the character struggle through adversity, never give up, and finally win in the end. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files is a good example of this. Harry Dresden is a punching bag while he struggles to figure out wtf is going on and just who is behind everything. Then, when he finally figures it out, and knows who to aim at, he blasts them into smithereens. And that final round of JUSTICE is so cathartic. It's what makes the story satisfying in the end. Because if there was no payback after reading about the character struggle for so long, I'd just end up frustrated.
So I started thinking (bad idea that): What would be the single most awkward place to put an SI character? Self Inserts are usually wish and power fulfillment stories. They fix the crappy plots. They gain lots of power and wealth. And they hook up with all the hotties (male or female) in the story.
So where could I put the SI so they suffer the most? What would make an SI so uncomfortable that they would decide to upend the table instead of playing the game of "Follow the Plot." So that's where I got this.
The pounding on the door is what woke him from his deep and dreamless sleep. He turned over, noticing the sunlight shining in the window, letting him know it was daylight.
"Mum said to wake you up, Lily! Get up!" A voice on the other side of the door yelled, accompanied by the pounding.
"I'm up!" He yelled back. Wait, that didn't sound like his voice. He had a much deeper voice. And who the heck was Lily?
"Mum said to get downstairs in 5 minutes if you want breakfast!" Yelled the teen girl's voice from the other side of the door.
"Got it!" He yelled back after sitting up. When he sat up, he noticed how small he was. He had long red hair that spilled over his shoulders and down his back. He looked at his hands. Little girl hands.
What. The. Fuck.
Tossing aside the blanket, he got up and looked around the room for a mirror. He spotted one on a desk to the side of the room. He moved over and picked up the round mirror, peering into it. The face of a pre-teen girl looked back at him.
What. The. Everliving. Fuck.
The face that stared back at him in the mirror was a little cutie. He knew it would grow up into a great beauty. The green eyes that stared back at him were gorgeous. They looked almost like a brilliant green light shone from within. If he had seen someone with brilliant green eyes like this before, he would be convinced they wore colored contacts to achieve the effect. They were too vivid, no one naturally has eyes like that. But he could tell he wasn't wearing any contacts. His new eyes were naturally like that.
In a daze he put the mirror on the desk, fumbling it a little so it lands with a small clunk. He slowly, reluctantly looks down at his body. Thin, short, preteen girl body. He reaches for the waist of his pajama bottoms. Taking a deep breath to brace himself, he pulls the waist band away. He looks down to check. Just as he feared, he's lost his John Thomas. He's a girl now.
Despair.
A sense of loss fills him. He fills lost, adrift, not knowing what to do or where to start.
He's been transmigrated into a preteen girl body. He didn't get the body's memories like he's supposed to according to all those stories. He doesn't know his identity. He doesn't know his new family. He doesn't know what kind of world he's in.
In a daze, he looks around the room for clues to his new identity. He spots a pile of school books and papers on a bookshelf. Moving gingerly, as if he expects something else to jump out of nowhere at him and screw him over even more, he picks up a school paper. The name he sees is Lily Evans.
Red hair. Brilliant green eyes. Lily Evans. 11-ish year old girl body.
The clues coalesce in his mind. He's in the Harry Potter universe. He's somehow been put in the body of Lily Evans, before she went to Hogwarts.
His mind is in chaos. He's elated that he gets to learn magic. He's freaked out that he's now a girl. He's terrified that Voldemort is out there, and he's a muggleborn. A target. But he's happy he's not an inbred cannon fodder for the half blood tyrant. But he's a girl now.
Everything swirls together in his mind. He can't help but think of all the possibilities. All the dangers. So many dangers. He's frozen in indecision, he has no information to base his actions on. What should he do?
He doesn't even know anything about this new world. Reading different fanfictions only gave him possibilities, not solid, hard facts about this new world. And they certainly don't help him learn magic. Or how to interact with his new family.
A little factoid popped up in his head. Oh, god. He's Harry Potter's future mum. If Harry is to be born he has to marry James Potter. Have sex with a man. Urkk. He threw up a little in his mouth. Just because he's in the body of a girl now doesn't mean he's automatically changed his orientation. He still likes girls, dammit!
No, can't think about that right now. Lock that up in the depths of his mind, never to be visited again.
He hears someone stomping up the stairs, a welcome distraction. Oh, right, breakfast.
He opens the door just as the stomping person gets to the door. He sees a 14 year old Petunia Dursley. No, she's Petunia Evans right now. And she has an adorkable pout on her face.
"What's taking you, Lily?" Petunia complains. "Mum won't let us eat until everyone is at the table, you know that. Now get moving!" Petunia suits actions to words and gets behind him, pushing him out the door and down the stairs.
"Sorry, got distracted." He muttered as he was tromping down the stairs with Petunia's assist. With Petunia's help at least he doesn't have to search for the dining room. When he arrived, he saw Lily's parents sitting at the table, smiling at the two girls. The table is set, food ready.
He goes to sit down in the closest chair, only to have Petunia push him to the other seat with a muttered "That's my seat."
Act like nothing's wrong, he muttered to himself as he sat in the other seat.
"What's wrong, dear?" Lily's mother asks him. "You slept in, and you look a little out of sorts this morning. Are you feeling under the weather?" She asks as she reaches over and feels Lily's forehead.
"I'm fine." He mutters. Nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, he keeps muttering in his mind.
"Hmm, you don't feel like you have a fever. Just enjoying your first day of summer break with a lay in, then?" Lily's mother continues as if she didn't hear the new girl's response.
"Yeah, that's it." He mutters before the family has a quick prayer and everyone started eating. Apparently this is a family that doesn't talk much during meal times, allowing him to focus on eating, thinking, and planning.
The most important thing is to gather intel. Since he didn't get a memory download from Lily's body, he's going to have to figure everything out the hard way. He hoped that Lily kept a journal, and that it wasn't hidden too good.
When breakfast was over, Lily's father thanked her mother for the meal, said a few words of goodbye, and left for work for the day. Petunia made her escape back to her room.
Just as he was about to make his own escape back to Lily's room, his new mother stopped him. He found out that it was his chore to clean the dishes in the morning. Okay, no biggie. No leftover foods from breakfast means he doesn't need to figure out if it's okay to just toss it away or save it for later. He enters the kitchen and sees that they have a dishwasher. Easy peasy.
After loading the dishwasher (which actually took a few minutes to figure out, it's not like the dishwashers he's used to from 2020), he quickly wipes down the table and counters. While no one else is in the kitchen, he takes a few extra moments to open all the cupboards to learn where everything is. It would look odd if their daughter suddenly doesn't know where to get a cup from.
Finally free from the chore, he makes a break for his new room. Closing the door behind him, he flops onto the bed to relax for a few moments. He never would have thought simply having breakfast could be so stressful.
"Okay, if I were a diary, where would I hide?" He asks himself aloud. Great, now he's talking to himself. He must be going crazy.
He decides he'd search the desk drawer first. Art supplies. Miscellaneous souvenirs. No journal. He looks around the room. Bed. Desk and chair. Bookshelf, maybe there. Nope, just school books.
Night table. Okay, maybe there. Nope.
Closet. Clothes. Clothes. More clothes. No diary.
Under the bed? Nope.
Under the mattress? Nope.
Behind the desk? Nope.
Loose floorboards? Nope.
In the air vent? Nope.
Various shoe boxes in the closet. More souvenirs. No diary.
Sighing, he sits back down at the desk. He's about to throw in the towel. His eyes are scanning the room, trying to spot any other hidden spots. After the third time his eyes pass the bookshelf, he gets an idea. He starts picking up each book one at a time and actually looking inside. Second shelf from the bottom he finally finds the diaries. There were three of them. "Hidden in plain sight, this clever girl." He exasperatedly thinks.
The oldest one started when Lily had just started school. She'd already learned how to read and write, the little go getter.
He spent the rest of the day, only taking a break for lunch reading about the world of Lily Evans in her own words. Her achievements in school. Her personal art and study projects. Her friendships.
He learned that Severus Snape went to the same school she did. When the rest of the students made fun of him for his name and mocked him, calling him all kinds of names, she stood up for him and befriended him. She calls him Sev, and he calls her Lils.
When she was eight, she had a bout of accidental magic when she was furious at a teacher for badgering Sev about not having his homework done. It was so unfair because Sev's father had been on a drunken binge, and Sev had to hide away and couldn't finish his work. She could see Sev cowering from him. The teacher was reminding Sev of his drunken father. Furious, her magic reacted to protect her friend. The art supplies in the room had attacked the teacher, chasing him out of the room.
That was when Sev told her about magic. That she had magic. They would go to a magic school together, and learn magic, and life would be grand! She had to keep it a secret until the school contacted them, but she was so happy! Magic!
As he thought about what he learned he couldn't help picturing the way the future would have gone for her. Separated from her friend by houses, she still fought to keep him. Even when her friend fought with the bullies from her own house, she would strive to defend him. He was important to her.
But her friend kept drifting away from her. Always hanging out with his new friends that mocked and derided her. Her dream of learning magic with her friend was slowly eroding away.
Then the final betrayal. He yelled at her, called her names. He'd become just like those classmates a decade ago that made fun of his name when she defended him. Just like those imbecilic bullies from grade school. He'd changed so much that he was now just like those Pureblood snobs. He hadn't been there for her for a long time now. And now he was so far gone, lost from her, that he would dare act like those bullies she defended him against.
The friendship that she had struggled for so long to keep alive died that day.
The war in the wizarding world would have heated up. Students would have received news of the deaths of relatives. And there would be the pureblood snobs, mocking people for the deaths of their loved ones. And there was her ex-friend, Severus Snape, doing the exact same thing. Seeing her ex-friend participate with those evil bullies, mocking people for their loss, just solidified her decision to cut him from her life.
Thinking back on the actions of her ex-friend and James and his marauders, she came to a realization. James and his band hadn't been bullies at first. Robes or hair changing color. Singing sweets that make someone sing a song. The pranks were silly and lighthearted, not malicious. But she had always listened to Severus and taken his side when he was furious at being pranked.
But now her eyes were opened. She could see how Severus had always "got back" at them. Sometimes he was overly malicious in his retaliation. She'd gone along with it because of her loyalty to her ex-friend, but looking back on it she could see how it was Severus that escalated the hatred between the two groups because he couldn't stand his "dignity" being trampled. And of course the marauders weren't going to let the more malicious actions go without retaliation. So it kept escalating.
The last year of Lily's time at Hogwarts she would have been the Headgirl alongside James Potter as the Headboy. They would have spent more time talking and getting to know each other. James' parents, according to what he knew, would have died that summer, leaving James on his own and forced to grow up. His increased maturity would have made him that much more attractive to Lily, leading to them getting married and having Harry Potter.
But she and her husband would have died at the age of 21 at the hands of Voldemort. Lily's baby boy would be sent to be raised by her bitter sister and her sister's magic hating husband. He would enter the wizarding world timid, feeling more hopeful for an escape from his relatives than happy at just having and learning magic.
A tragedy if he ever heard one.
That night, he thought long and hard about his new circumstances and his future.
The first thing he had to do was accept his new life and identity as Lily Evans. She was stuck in this body now. He-no she- had to accept it and move on. Make the best of it.
After reading Lily's diary, she felt close to the smart and bighearted girl. She liked Lily, and felt bad about taking over her body. She didn't know what happened to the spirit of Lily Evans. But since she was now wearing Lily's body, she felt she owed it to Lily to live well for her. And if there was any way to use magic to find Lily Evans and get her a new body then she would make it happen.
The next issue was Lily's friend Sev. Right now Sev hadn't made all the poor choices that led to and created the bitter and hateful Professor Snape that Harry met years later. She decided that she would do all she could to convince Sev to get the sorting hat to put him anywhere but Slytherin.
That's the best she could do for Sev. If he still got sorted to Slytherin, then she decided she would cut ties with Sev. If the original Lily Evans couldn't save Severus Snape from falling in with Voldemort's lackeys when Severus was sorted to Slytherin, then she had no chance either. At least not without the Imperius. She did not just giggle. Nope. Definitely not.
She didn't have the time or energy to waste on such a time consuming, thankless, and ultimately doomed task as saving Severus Snape from himself. So if he got sorted in Slytherin, she wasn't going to waste her time.
Thinking of bitter people, she was reminded of Petunia. Petunia Evans was actually a cute teenager, not at all the bitter prune that Petunia Dursley turned into. She didn't know if she could change Petunia's path to becoming bitter, but she could always hope. She could encourage their parents to pay more attention to Petunia. She could work hard to listen to and encourage her new sister, instead of being so caught up in magic that everything was about her. And when she finally learned enough magic, she could cast a Vernon repelling ward on Petunia. Her new sister could do so much better than Vernon Dursley.
Which only left the final thing. The big elephant in the room. Voldemort. That half blood bastard with a penchant for murder and rape. He needed to go posthaste. Time to start working on the [Kill The Dark Lord Before I Have To Have Sex With A Man To Give Birth To The Child Of Prophecy, Then Be Murdered By The Dark Lord To Give The Child Of Prophecy Blood Protection] plan.
She needed a shorter name for that plan.
[KATRAP] would do. Short for [Kill A Tom Riddle Action Plan].
And if Sev listened to her and got the Hat to put him anywhere other than Slytherin, he could join her in setting up KATRAP. She was damn sure going to include James Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin in her organization. Strong and devious, they would make the perfect minions.
Pettigrew might end up coming along too, but she would definitely be putting some safeguards on Pettigrew to protect from betrayal if the silly Gryffindor boys just wouldn't leave him out. A rat animagus would make a great spy, she mused.
Maybe Hufflepuff for my house? A lot of automatically loyal minions available in that house. I just need to work on increasing their backbone so they don't take shit from anyone. Dark Lord? Pshaw! We have the HuffPuff McDuff Lady so be afraid!
Okay, now she's just getting silly. Time to sleep. Planning will go better tomorrow when she's well rested and not so punch drunk.