Hadrea Potter: A Fox is Born

Chapter 1: Trunks, Traveling and Twins

A/N: Welcome to my new (and first) Fic! Harry Potter is a huge favorite of mine, my first fandom, and I’ve often wondered what a fem!Harry would be like. This story is sorta inspired by ‘Looking Beyond’, but in no way am I copying that story. I hope you enjoy! :)
Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever own the Harry Potter series. They belong to Queen Joanne Rowling, and I would never pretend to be at her level of literary genius.
                                |-/\-|

Chapter 1: Trunks, Traveling and Twins

Hadrea Lily Potter was sick of it. She was sick of her life, or lack thereof. Eight years, eight miserable years she had spent here, without any friends or family, at Number 4, Privet Drive. That wasn't to say she lived here alone, no indeed. Three others lived here with her, the Man, who looked at her with fear and hatred, the Woman, who sent jealous glares her way but couldn't look her in the eyes, and the Child, who viewed her as nothing more than his personal punching bag.
Of course, they had names. The woman was Petunia Dursley, Hadrea’s mother's sister. The Man was her husband, Vernon, and the Child her son, Dudley. Hadrea had lived with them since her parents died, when she was but a year old. Hadrea hated them, and she was quite sure the feeling was mutual.
She would do anything to go somewhere else, to be someone else, but she knew nothing of her parents, of any family or friends they could possibly have had. She had considered running away, but a nine year old girl living on her own, however happily, was sure to draw attention, and then the police would be involved and she'd be back to the Dursleys within a week. No, it was best she stuck around, for now.
“Girl! Where are you, I want you to clean out the attic!” her Aunt's screeching voice jarred Hadrea out from her musings. It was a sunny day in late June, and she’d been sitting on a grassy spot under a large Hydrangea bush, drawing with a sketchbook and pencils she had stolen from her cousin. (Well, she said stolen, but he was never going to use them anyway, they were just collecting dust like the many other things in Dudley's second bedroom.) She was drawing a fox. Foxes had always fascinated her; quiet but clever, seemingly shy but still vicious. ‘Sorta like you.’ a little voice in her head said. ‘Shut up!’ she told it.
“Get in here, Girl!” she heard her aunt calling again. Hadrea sighed, stood up, and brushed the earth and leaves off her body. Quickly She closed the sketchbook and box of pencils, and hid them in amongst the branches and leaves of the hydrangea bush. However little ‘Ickle Diddykins’ cared about them, it would not do for her aunt and uncle to find them.
Hadrea moved into the kitchen, where her aunt was waiting. Petunia was thin and blonde, but that was where the attractiveness ended. She had a horsey face and an unusually long neck, and her chin jutted out rather farther than average.
“I want you to clean out the attic.” she said again, glaring and Hadrea (but still refusing to meet her eyes).
“Why?” Hadrea asked insolently “no one ever goes in there!”
“Don't ask questions!” her aunt snapped, the glare becoming, if possible even sharper. Don't ask questions. That was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. It was also the reason for what Hadrea considered her most impressive quality.

From a very young age she'd understood that she wasn't going to learn anything from the Dursleys (besides how to clean their house, cook their food and spend the rest of the time pretending she didn't exist), so she'd decided she had to start figuring things out for herself.
She’d learned to observe people. She could tell just by watching someone whether they were lying or telling the truth. She could learn a lot about a person just from watching them. An example of this was her aunt. Petunia always looked at her with jealousy. She also refused to look her in the eyes. She refused to talk about Hadrea’s mum. This lead Hadrea to the conclusion that Petunia had been jealous of her sister for some reason,and something about Hadrea (probably her eyes) reminded Petunia of her.
“Get going upstairs, brat!” her aunt screeched. The Dursleys never called Hadrea by her name, in fact, she hadn't even known her name until she'd gone to school. It had always been ‘Girl’ or ‘Brat’. When Hadrea had asked her aunt about it, her aunt had replied “Hadrea! What a freakish name! As if we'd be seen calling you that!”
Hadrea quickly took a broom, a cloth and a bucket of soapy water and retreated to the dusty, smelly attic. Hadrea had never been up here... in fact, it looked as if  no one had been up here for several years. She quickly set about shifting the boxes and trunks to one half of the room, so that she could begin cleaning the other half.
As she worked, a certain trunk caught her eye. It appeared expensive, and it had a name embossed across the top in gold lettering.
Lily Evans Potter
It read. Hadrea’s heart leapt. She knew her last name was Potter, and Petunia’s maiden name was Evans. Could this be her mother's? Abandoning her cleaning, Hadrea pulled the trunk out of the corner and directly under the single naked lightbulb, so that she could see clearly.
She undid the two latches and heaved the lid open. Hadrea’s eyes widened in surprise. The trunk appeared to be a good deal bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. The first thing she saw was a mass of black fabric. She lifted the thing out and discovered that it was some sort or robe, black with scarlet trimming. Underneath it was what Hadrea recognised to be a girl's school uniform.  A white blouse, black skirt, stockings and shoes, and a striped red and gold tie, along with a scarf, also striped with red and gold. There was some sort or crest on the blouse, as well as on the robes. A lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake, surrounding a big letter H. Hadrea was surprised to find that none of the clothes looked worn, or holey, or dirty at all, despite having been there for a long time, judging by the amount of dust on the trunk.
Under the clothes were books. Loads of books whose titles made no sense go Hadrea. Titles like “A beginner's guide to transfiguration, by Emeric Switch, or The Standard Book of spells, Grade 4 By Miranda Goshawk. One book, a small, silver one without any title or writing caught her eye. It looked like a journal. Hadrea picked it up and opened the cover. On the inside, in neat lettering much like Hadrea’s own It read:
This Journal is the Property of Lily Evans
Hadrea quickly slipped the journal into her pocket, stuffed the clothes back it to the trunk and shut the lid. I'll come back. She promised, before continuing on with her cleaning.
                                                          |-/ \-|
Later that day, Hadrea sat in her room (which was actually just a cupboard) looking at a mirror portrait she'd done herself, and wondering if she looked anything like her parents. She had a thin face, with high cheekbones and a slightly upturned nose. Her eyes were wide, almond shaped and framed by thick, dark lashes. They were a bright, emerald green and sparkled with mischief. Her lips were thin, and seemed to be set in a perpetual sly smirk that, combined with the mischievousness of her eyes, made any teacher check their seat for tacks and swear never to take their eyes off her. Her hair was wavy and black, the sort of black that almost looked blue, and was cut to not quite touch her shoulders with a long fringe that tapered out just below her left ear. It was choppy and slightly uneven (which did nothing to help her troublemaker look) because she'd had to cut herself. It was dangerous to have long hair. Long hair could be pulled, long hair could get caught when climbing trees. It was simply impractical.
Hadrea also had a scar on her forehead. Scars were nothing special, at least, not to Hadrea. She had one on her right forearm, (a large burn from when she was six and had spilled a pot of boiling water on herself when cooking dinner) and another which wrapped around her left ankle (she'd been running from Dudley's gang, and had gotten caught in some old barbed wire fencing), amongst many others. But this scar was different. She’d had it as long as she could remember, and the first question she could ever remember asking her Aunt Petunia was how she had gotten it. ("In the car crash when your parents died. and don't ask questions!” her aunt had said, but Hadrea knew she had been lying) it was long, on the left side of her face, running from her hairline down to the corner of her eye, and was shaped like a bolt of lightning. This scar was the reason for her long fringe. Not the thought it made her look ugly, no, Hadrea was actually rather proud of her scars, they showed that she was a fighter. But this one she disliked. She’d had it for eight years, and it hadn't faded in the slightest. It garnered her a lot of unwanted attention.
Hadrea was small and wiry, because she spent a great deal of her time running. She looked even smaller than she really was because all she had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's, and Dudley was a boy, and about four times bigger than she was. She also wore round glasses, held together by a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched her on the nose.
She wondered if either of her parents had worn glasses. This brought her back to her mother's diary. It was late, the Dursleys wouldn't bother her now. She slipped the little book out from under her tiny mattress and opened it up to the first entry.
Jan. 30, 1970
Dear Diary,
Sev got me this book for my 10th birthday! He says he got it from a wizarding shop called Flourish and Blotts. He says it's magical, and it'll keep adding pages so I'll never need a new one! Isn't magic amazing?! I can't wait to go to Hogwarts and learn everything!...