the girl who lived (again)
dirgewithoutmusic
Summary:
Peeves, though he was nasty about everything else--ickle firsties and orphan girls--got it immediately. For all six years of Harry's Hogwarts tenure, he dropped water balloons on the heads of anyone who misgendered her.
Professor Binns never quite figured it out, but he didn't know any student's name. Nearly Headless Nick gallantly and somewhat awkwardly called her lady and tried to hold open doors for her, despite the fact that he couldn't open them.
Snape called Harry "Mr. Potter" for all seven years that he was in Harry's life. Around year three, Ron stopped counting the detentions he got for his increasingly sarcastic responses to this.
Work Text:
Hermione went to the library, when Harry first confided in her. Whatever the faculty, the administration, or the Ministry believed or didn't believe, the Hogwarts library gave the children what they needed and always would.
Hermione came back with books and books on gender in wizarding history, on the spells and words wizards had used for centuries or decades or mere years, and she and Harry bent their heads together and figured out what words Harry felt best told her story. From her hometown library, after that first summer, Hermione brought back memoirs and brightly-colored pamphlets that Harry read through instead of finishing her Potions homework.
When Harry looked in the Mirror of Erised, she still saw her mother, her father, all her gathered, lost kin. The specter of her father gathered up her hands in his. Her mother pushed back the long dark hair Petunia had always made her cut short and she called her beautiful.
When she looked into it again, after Devil's Snare and winged keys, giant chess and Ron lying prone on the floor, Hermione wringing her eleven year old hands in the potion riddle room-- When Harry looked into the Mirror again, she saw herself, just herself. The girl in the mirror winked and smiled and slipped the Stone in Harry's pocket. No matter what other wishes and want laid on her narrow shoulders, at the end of the day the thing Harry wanted most was to help. Harry brushed one hand over the lump of rock in her robe pocket, and then brushed her other over her mess of hair, which was feet shorter than the girl in the mirror's.
She woke up in the hospital wing, bedside table piled high with candy.
Once Harry and Hermione had sussed out between them what the words were for what was going on here, they had explained it to Ron. Harry didn't come out to anyone else until partway through second year, though, at the height of the Heir of Slytherin nonsense.
She was fed up, then. She just wanted to be left alone, and this wouldn't help with that, but they were all already staring. Keeping this to herself felt like a vice around her chest. Hogwarts was supposed to be better.
After, Ron came almost to blows with anyone who goggled or sniffed or rolled their eyes. Seamas learned to swallow his tongue. Draco Malfoy didn't. Hermione wrote up an explanatory note about appropriate pronouns in her best penmanship and then copied it with flicks of her wand. With Harry's embarrassed permission, she gave it to every professor Harry had or would ever have.
Colin Creevey stopped her in the Great Hall with a tug on her sleeve. She turned, shoulders rising, and the kid said in his piping voice, "You're still my hero."
That was better than it could have been, but she wasn't sure she liked the "still."
Peeves, though he was nasty about everything else--ickle firsties and orphan girls--got it immediately. For all six years of her Hogwarts tenure, he dropped water balloons on the heads of anyone who misgendered her. Professor Binns never quite figured it out, but he didn't know any student's name. Nearly Headless Nick gallantly and somewhat awkwardly called her lady and tried to hold open doors for her, despite the fact that he couldn't open them.
