Chapter Text
My mind was in a state of numbness for the longest time, my thoughts slurring together like colorful liquids mixing and turning a murky brown the second they hit the glass.
I saw a woman with the loveliest red hair I’ve ever seen, and a spectacled man with a smile that could purify gold.
I saw a scraggly roughish man with a barking laugh and a plump, boyish nervous golden-haired man who never failed to fret over her, together with a scarred yet kind-faced man who I would bet was a nerd.
I felt like I was falling into a vortex, descending into wonderland without even seeing the rabbit I was chasing.
My return to consciousness did not happen gradually as I had assumed by now. Some moments I felt almost fully myself, like I could stare into my mother’s eyes –the red-haired woman, she must be my mother- and think, properly-
-and the next I was unaware of anything but sleepiness, hunger, upset-
The last one I understood, this was all very upsetting.
That my parents and their friends all seemed perfect for a full cast of Harry Potter’s parents and their friends was something I didn’t let myself think about, even in my brief moments of having the capacity for such thoughts. I had adapted to a principle of stoicism a while back; if I couldn’t effect, change or otherwise have control over something, there was no use worrying or overly thinking about it. My mind was a trainwreck enough as it was right now: I did not need to give infant –possibly- Harry Potter depression on top of everything.
I just hoped all this muddiness would make way for more of the clear moments soon enough.
“No! Not Harry!”
“Step aside, girl... Step aside now”
“Not Harry, take me instead!”
“Lord Voldemort has told you to step aside, you foolish girl”
“Please! Not Harry!”
“I will not ask again. Step. Aside. “
“I told you, not FUCKING Harry!!!!!!!!!” And then Lily Potter started mauling Lord Voldemort with a knife.
I got why they kept this part out of the books, because this was... not...PG rated. At all. And yet some part of me wished they kept it in, because my respect for Lily Potter...[insert chart showing exponential growth here]
In fact, I found myself getting agitated. That such a fiery woman, that someone so full of life was going to die suddenly sunk in for me, and I found a stray tear dripping down my face.
And she was going to die. And she did.
Voldemort threw her off him with an unmistakable green flash, her skull cracking against the wall, blood dripping down our misty turquoise wallpaper.
He looked at her for a second, breathing heavily, as if acknowledging her audaciousness. Then, he turned to me. And I turned to him. This was a clear moment for my brain, something I was grateful for, getting to see Lily one last time. I felt a pang of guilt for not being Harry, for taking his place. But I would forever be forever thankful to Lily for all she did for me, maybe more than the mother I had before this bizarre experience.
As Lily’s eyes on my(my?) face met Voldemort’s pooling red, I found rage fill me. And more than that, blazing determination to kill him. To end him. Before all this, I was a climate activist. I was no stranger to the determination, the pure will that filled me now, though I had never felt such anger for one person before.
Voldemort approached me with the comfort of a man who knew he had won. Though... he had walked like that since he had entered the house. He had never seen Lily and James as a challenge, had he? They, this was nothing to him. I would make him walk differently. I would make him feel fear before I killed him finally.
Though I guess he would be getting a prequel of that particular emotion pretty soon.
“So this is to be my destined enemy...”
He sounded almost bored as he said it, and though he kept looking at me searchingly for a brief moment, whatever he was searching for, he must not have found it.
The moment he flung the curse, it seemed like time slowed. Then the beam finally reached me, and there was only oblivion.
o0o
It took much too long for me to have a moment of awakeness again after that. I would have thought something went canon divergent, the killing curse actually worked and I started this entire life again –with the unconscious newborn phase that entailed- except I was soon unceremoniously dumped back into full consciousness permanently, and not in a way I would have preferred.
o0o
This is strange... I thought as I opened my eyes to utter darkness. What an underwhelming sight to greet you as you feel fully awake for the first time in what might actually be years.
Suddenly, my confused peace was interrupted by the slamming open of a door, followed by the loudest, most ear scratching I’ve ever heard. I didn’t know if I wanted to scream back like some kind of animalistic power play or recruit this woman for an anti-smoking ad.
Seeing as I was currently extremely disoriented and not in the state to channel my more business savvy self, I chose the former-
“Aaaaa-”
-and proceded to be slapped in the face, hard enough to knock my face to the other side and knock my mind into a full, reeling hyper vigilantness.
My body was bigger than it was last time I saw, though it had obviously had to struggle to get there, because I was obviously malnourished.
No one had ever physically hit me before, not really. I had dealt with mental pain in loads though, and I had literally just been through an assassination attempt, so why were there suddenly tears stinging my eyes?
Probably shock.
I actually succeeded in reigning in the tears and schooling my face, something I had had a lot of trouble with before all this.
“Don’t you dare speak back to me, you ungrateful wretch! “She breathed heavily before schooling her own face and adding coldly “and make breakfast. We’re waiting, and you know your uncle doesn’t like waiting. “
I stiffly started preparing the bacon. I was a vegan in my past life, but it was clear I would have to sacrifice some values here. The only question was, how many? Or rather, how much could I take?
Staying at the Dursleys was clearly the safest and least risky option. Even discounting the blood wards which depending on the AU either did absolutely nothing or were literally the only thing keeping me from being tortured to death by a legion of death eaters waiting with pitchforks and torches right outside, I had nowhere to go and being homeless posed its own risks, if only from the slightly more managable -or at least predictable- non-magicals.
The only problem was that I did not have a history of very stable mental health. If I... was going to cause my death because of this Dursley infested environment before I got to go to Hogwarts, then running away would be the better option, always.
And I did want to go to Hogwarts. There had been time in my life where I wanted nothing more than this. To leave my old life behind and just be in the Harry Potter world.
I sighed, putting another packet of bacon into the greasy pan.
I would have to sniff for a third option before anything. Firstly, I’d have to see if I could do any magic consciously right now. That was absolutely the gamechanger that usually decided how a fanfic was going to pan out for Harry’s life with the Dursleys. Of course, depending on just how horrid they were in this world, they could always poison me if they saw me as a threat, but by the time I had mastered enough magic to threaten/bribe/scare them into submission, hopefully I would have gotten to know them enough to predict something like that.
If I even could harness magic without a wand and at this ripe old age of six, even with practice. British accent and find myself super fancy without being offensive. Huzzah!
Let the story begin.