the girl who lived
dirgewithoutmusic
Summary:
Harriet Lily Potter was left on the doorstep of 4 Privet Drive. They called her ugly and gave her Dudley's hand-me-downs. They would tell people that she went to a boarding school for troubled young women. Dudley still offered to stick her head in toilets, and she still learned to snap back, "Really, Duds? The poor toilet's never had anything as nasty as your head down it, it might hurt it," and run.
Harry was the kind of girl who came home with scabby knees, who snuck the kitchen shears in the dead of night to snip her dark messy hair short.
She wondered, as she curled up in her cupboard, if Vernon and Petunia would have loved a niece who was pretty instead of scrappy, who had soft hands and never burned the bacon at breakfast.
Work Text:
They told the story differently. When they spoke in hushed whispers and in exultant shouts that Halloween about the Girl Who Lived, they did not wonder how she survived. They did not ask what hidden strengths of prophecy might lie under her skin. They talked of innocence. They spoke of purity. They murmured about blessings.
Harriet Lily Potter was left on the doorstep of 4 Privet Drive. They called her ugly and gave her Dudley's hand-me-downs. They would tell people that she went to a boarding school for troubled young women. Dudley still offered to stick her head in toilets, and she still learned to snap back, "Really, Duds? The poor toilet's never had anything as nasty as your head down it, it might hurt it," and run.
Harry was the kind of girl who came home with scabby knees, who snuck the kitchen shears in the dead of night to snip her dark messy hair short. She wondered, as she curled up in her cupboard, if Vernon and Petunia would have loved a niece who was pretty instead of scrappy, who had soft hands and never burned the bacon at breakfast.
The story did not go much different.
When a giant banged down the door of the little shack on the little rock in the sea, Harry stood her trembling ground. When Hagrid offered her a happy birthday, a cake, a kindness, a hand, a new life, she took it.
When Harry stepped into Madame Malkin's, Malfoy ignored her, eyes glazing over. Hagrid bought her an owl, eleven birthdays all wrapped into one.
When Harry asked if there was room for her to sit in his compartment on the Hogwarts Express, Ron said yes. She shared her candy. She told him he had a smudge on his nose.
When the first years all lined up on the steps, waiting to be let into the Hall and the Sorting, Ron went so pale all his freckles stood out. Harry shifted next to him, and then a girl with a flat nose, a round chin, and a sure twist to her mouth stepped in front of her and stuck out one bitten-nail hand. "Parkinson," she said. "Pansy Parkinson. What are you doing hanging out with trash like Weasley, Potter? I can show you a better class of wizard."
Harry curled her hands softly in her robes, still feeling like she was wearing a bathrobe and not real clothes. "I think I can figure that out just fine by myself, thank you."
The story did not go much different. When the Hat called "POTTER, HARRIET" the hall went quiet, then filled with murmurs. It offered her Slytherin, but she thought of Parkinson's sneer, of Ron's smudged nose on the train, the way Molly had helped her through the platform entrance, and told it no.
"Then better be GRYFFINDOR," it said and the red and gold table burst into noise.
There were five beds in the first year girls' dormitory in Gryffindor Tower. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, both from good wizarding families, bonded immediately over Lavender's sparkly purple nail polish.
Hermione's hair was as bushy as Harry's was a rumpled mess. "You could keep birds in there," Parvati giggled to Lavender.
Nevy Longbottom was short, with rounded shoulders, rounded cheeks, plain brown hair. Her grandmother expected her to be good, but not brave. When the Hat had fallen over young Miss Longbottom's eyes, it had sat even longer on her head, arguing silently with her small clenched fists. "Hat stall," Ron had told Harry sagely in line, just as the Hat shouted out GRYFFINDOR.
