deadcatwithaflamethrower:

widow-tracer:

shanastoryteller:

shanastoryteller:

shanastoryteller:

oh, oh do i

you see, the thing is, everything would have been different if harry was a girl. do you know how i know?

lily potter.

harry didn’t do anything. he was a baby, they call him the boy who lived, because that’s all he did – he just didn’t die. and that’s not on him, that’s not because he was some extremely powerful one year old. no. it’s because of lily potter, because of her love, or something, because i very much doubt she was the first woman who loved her child enough to die for them. but whatever it is she did, that’s what killed the dark lord.

harry didn’t defeat voldemort. lily did.

and no one cared.

so when little harriet survives the killing curse, no one cares. because it wasn’t her, it wasn’t anything she did.

it was james potter!

james potter, who died, but saved his daughter and defeated the dark lord! and it doesn’t make any sense, but neither does lauding a baby as the defeater of darkness, so when has the wizarding world ever needed to make sense? harry survives, is marked as an equal, by voldemort, and no one cares.

but do you know what that means?

harry doesn’t go to live with dursleys, because why would voldemort ever be after her – she didn’t do anything, she was just there, it was all james potter. and maybe dumbledore knows better, and tries to put his foot down, but – no one cares. she’s james potter’s daughter, the daughter of the man who killed voldemort, she’s not going to be sent to live with some muggles!

and the next safest place is hogwarts, but none of the professors can raise a child, they’re all either too old or busy or snape, so who raises little harriet potter?

why, rubeus hagrid of course!

and people aren’t happy about this either, but it’s better than the muggles, and it seems right, to them, that the daughter of james potter grows up in hogwarts.

so hagrid builds an addition to his little cabin, a nursery that will one day be a bedroom, and harriet potter grows up. she knows the forbidden forest like the back of her hand, knows all those creatures in the forest as her best friends. firenzes somehow ends up babysitting her, multiple times, and he never knows how it happens. she rides unicorns and thestrals and hippogriffs, and is good friends with aragog, and all sorts of other creatures.

she grows up in the forbidden forest, really, and it knows her, it loves her

the kids adore her, and she has hundred and hundreds of older siblings. she’s james potter’s daughter, and a cute kid, and “i was playing with harriet!” is an excuse that works with almost all the professors for a large array of misdeeds. by the time she’s eight, she’s helping kids study for their owl and newts in care of magical creatures.

oh, and herbology, of course, because a forest is not just animals, it’s plants too. and she loves her forest, so she’s constantly getting underfoot with professor sprout. and all the other professors care for her too, and by the time she’s eleven they’re all internally fretting about what she’s going to do in class, because they’ve already taught her most of it.

she meets draco malfoy, and they should hate each other, they should. but draco understands what it’s like to grow up in your father’s shadow, to always be the child of someone instead of just your own person, and harriet can’t help but be friends with him, they become friends seemingly against both their wills.

and harriet’s in gryffindor, of course, with that reckless courage she can hardly go anywhere else. and she knows the weasleys of course, they’ve all been her friends, and she’s delighted now that she gets a weasley of her own. which is what she tells ron on the first day of classes, who was warned about her by all his brothers, and has in fact met her before on multiple occasions, so he just rolls with it.

and harriet adopts hermione and brings into the group, because just like her father, just like hagrid, she can’t stand someone being alone and upset without trying to help, that’s not who she is, it’s not how she was raised.

so she has her friends and her experiences, and she’s james potter’s daughter, which is fine, she likes her life, and her friends.

but nothing good can stay. voldemort returns, and he doesn’t even target her, why does he care for her, it was her father who did this (he was there and still he goes along with the narrative, it couldn’t have been lily, couldn’t have been harriet, no, it had to be james) but somehow harriet and her friends keep on foiling his plans, keep on getting in his way, and for the first time –

she’s not james potter’s daughter, not rubeus hagrid’s daughter –

she’s harriet potter, and she’s in voldemort’s way, and she’s not planning to move for him. she wasn’t raised to bend, and if that breaks her – so be it.

@necer0s added these fabulous tags to their reblog, and i adore them, they are op approved:
in the last five minutes i have developed some very strong opinions about this au first of all harriet discovers adopts and is adopted by the basilisk at the age of five so jot that down second of all harriet discovers the weasleys through charlie weasley harriet and charlie and hagrid spend A Lot of time Talking About Dragons harriet’s life goal is to crossbreed dragons and basilisks                          hagrid and charlie are 100% supportive of this goal  everyone else is 100% not
   third of all harriet inherits both hagrid’s cooking abilities and his lack of awareness re: said cooking abilities  which wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t so adorable that nobody can refuse her gifts  fourth of all harriet becomes an animagus not for any of the obvious reasons (following in her father’s footsteps or for clandestine purposes or anything)  she’s not even that advanced in transfiguration when it happens mcgonagall has no idea how she managed it  (it was dumbledore. he thought it would be funny. he was right.) also i have no idea what her animagus form would be except that it would be Large and Terrifying and not a doe  last of all harriet has no less than three (3) items of plant or animal detritus on her at all times usually it’s just sticks and leaves in her hair and poop on her shoes but fairly often it’s something super rare and expensive  scales stuck on her robe could either basilisk dragon or common garden snake  there’s just no telling 

i was planning on letting this au lie, but these tags are great so

bill is the first weasley, right okay? and his first year of hogwarts is also the same year that harriet comes to live with hagrid. and he’s homesick and alone, the only weasley who will attend hogwarts without any of their siblings, except for ginny right at the end for seventh year. and he’s walking alone at night, because his dorm room is too quiet, he’s not used to quiet, and he hears a baby crying. that is a sound he’s used to. so he follows it to hagrid’s cabin and he looks in the window and sees hagrid waggling a rattle in the baby’s face and is like “you gotta rock her!” and hagrid panics because a first year is out of bed! but also he could use some help

bill is excellent help. he has six younger siblings, including a brother harriet’s age and a freshly born little sister. he’s got baby stuff On Lockdown. so bill is just, so ready to throw himself into helping take care of this baby, because it’s what he does at home, so why not? and hagrid is very grateful and lets bill get away with a ton of crap other students don’t, like being out after hours, and taking him on personal tours of the forest, and whenever bill gets detention, instead of doing boring work in the forest, he gets to hang out at hagrid’s hut and play with harriet.

so molly gets letters from hagrid, saying how much of a huge help bill is being, and she’s so charmed by it. and the thing is, bill becomes really attached to that baby? like his siblings have his parents, and each other, but harry only has hagrid! who is so gentle and good and loves her so much – but it’s not the same. and the summer comes and bill gets freaking separation anxiety, to the point that the first day back for his second year he runs down to hagrid’s hut and is like “can i see harry?” and his second year goes much the same way. you’d think this would make bill the mom friend, but outside of harriet he has no hesitation, no fear, and he gets a lot of detentions. he’s a Troublemaker, but he’s charming, and everyone loves him.

charlie starts his first year when bill starts his third, and harry is three at this point, she’s like a little person, and charlie thinks it’s hilarious how obsessed bill is with this kid. but pretty quickly he picks up on it, because he hangs out with his brother, and his brother spends a lot of time at hagrid’s cabin, so he does too. and already at three harriet is unphased by dangerous creatures and other such dangers. charlie really likes hagrid because he likes creatures, so he starts spending even more time around his cabin, and therefore around harriet.

next is percy, who’s prim and proper and actually really glad not to have little kids underfoot. but he gets roped into helping babysit, which he has plenty experience in, and harriet is six at this point, it’s impossible to overstate the amount of trouble she gets in all the time

she’s seven and bill’s graduating, he’s got a fabulous apprenticeship all set up in egypt. but he has a half dozen mental breakdowns that last semester, because – harriet’s his, just as much as of his other siblings, he’s helped raise her, he loves her, and now he’s leaving, and its not like his other siblings, it’s different, she’s part little sister part daughter and it’s all very messed up and confusing and he can’t deal with any it

he’s crying on graduation day, and he doesn’t want to be. harry’s arms go around his neck and she kisses his cheek and then she presses an envelope into his hand. he looks at it and it’s his name in a splotchy childish scrawl, and she says proudly, “daddy and aunt minnie’s been teaching me to write! so we can write each other.” she frowns, and asks a little watery, “you won’t forget about me, will you?” and that’s the stupidest question he’s ever heard. he picks her up and swings her around and presses kisses all over her face.

he does write her, always eagerly reading her simple, childish sentences that get better and more complex as she gets older. also his younger brothers send him harriet updates, because they know he’s a crazy person.

then the next year later come fred and george, and whoo boy, they love harriet, and they especially love how throwing this eight year old at a professor is almost a 100% guarantee to getting away what they were doing, so she starts getting involved in their pranking at first just so she’s there in case they get caught, but then just because they like her, she’s funny and knows all the hiding spots and has a great poker face

it’s with the twins she discovers the chamber of secrets, and the basilisk, and they both reach to cover her eyes, but strange hissing leaves her mouth and she looks that basilisk straight in the face and doesn’t die, because she’s a parseltongue and it’s closed it’s eyes for her.

they go to hagrid, of course, and harriet insists it’s just lonely, it doesn’t want to kill anyone, and hagrid discovers the truth of what happened so long ago, and how it wasn’t him, wasn’t anything he brought to this school, and he’s always known that, but has he, really? because that’s been his truth for so long, and now he knows it’s a lie, has the proof in the real slytherin’s monster

except it’s hagrid, so he agrees an ancient and powerful basilisk has to be protected, and also agrees that they can’t tell anyone because they’d kill it, and killing it would be wrong. so the twins do some research, and find out a way to blind the basilisk that can be reversed later. except none of them can cast it, obviously, so they go to charlie. who has a heart attack just hearing about, but agrees, because of course he does.

and the chamber just … ends up being this hangout place for he weasleys and harriet? it’s just this place? and they clean it up and make it some place they actually want to be, and the great basilisk is grateful to have people looking after it properly again. hagrid gets big things of real meat for it, so it doesn’t have to live on rats. and it only eats once every couple of months now that it has real food, instead of just constantly eating rats, and is a much happier snake. and now that hagrid knows harriet can talk to snakes, he gets her bunches and bunches of them. little corn snakes to keep in her pocket, and a ball python for her room, and giant boa constrictor that lives in the forbidden forest but is still hers. the basilisk is too intelligent and old to really belong to one little girl, except it totally does, it loves her.

the twins and charlie take bill aside when he visits the summer after and tell everything and he goes white and puts his head in his hands, and of course the second he’s gone she manages to start doing things even more worrying than riding the backs of giant spiders and climbing trees to the branches and jumping across them, until she’s faster in the trees than she is on the ground. this girl is going to turn him grey.

which is to say by the time ron arrives and harriet actually starts school, she’s been firmly adopted by the weasley clan, and has ten years worth of weasleys jumpers. ron knows her through all his brothers, and he’d been worried they wouldn’t get along, actually, that he’d be like percy who loved harriet but didn’t like her all that much. but he’s wrong, because they’re instant best friends, being her friend is the easiest thing in the world. and ginny comes along, and harriet is like yes! a girl! except she’s kind of awful at being a girly girl, even though she’d like to be, and ginny ends up teacher her and taking her under wing when it comes to that stuff, because merlin knows it’s not hermione’s specialty either

also harriet’s animagus form is a brown bear, and it’s cute when she’s younger, a little fluffy cub. but an adult female brown bear is like seven and half feet tall and three hundred pounds of claws and teeth and terror. so, you know, that’s fun

so i’ve gotten a bunch of people asking what the deal is
with harriet’s ~romance~ situation, so here we go:

first, there is draco.

they’re in fourth year, and the war is just starting to loom
over them, and it just makes sense.
draco is exceedingly handsome, and harriet is beautiful, and they’ve been such
good friends for so long. harry, the wild child, the uncombed and untamed
daughter of james potter. and draco, refined and restrained, the son of lucius malfoy.
so when harry is fretting about who to take to the ball, and hermione says, “what
about draco?” she says yes, brilliant.

she asks draco to go out with her, and he says yes because
it makes sense to him too, and rita skeeter splashes their dramatic love story across
the prophet. draco buys her a dress that she looks perfect in, and she makes
them corsages from rare, beautiful plants from the forest, and they have a
great time. but, slowly, they realize they’re having such a good time dating
each other because they’re such great friends, and not because they’re in love.
there’s no nervousness or butterflies, or any of that, and they don’t get
farther than some intense makeout session before they figure out that is really
isn’t going to work out. draco says harry’s too in the public eye for them to
break up yet, so they plan to break up after the triwizard tournament is
complete.

then voldemort comes back and everything is a nightmare, and
awful, and having an amicable break up for the public is the last thing on
their minds.

that summer harriet is furious. they have the nerve to drag
her away to grimmauld place, away from her forest and her animals and her dad.
she has her godfather, but it’s not the same. no one’s listening to her, or paying
attention to her, and what has to say is important
and no one cares.

she’s furious and stomps away to the library where she finds
percy, working on something silly and boring. and he offers to let her have the
library, but silly and boring sounds exactly like what she needs, so she asks
him about it, and they get to talking, and it turns out percy is funny. not
laugh out loud funny like his brothers are, but in a dry, acerbic way she’d
never have been able to pick up on before becoming friends with draco.

and she’s fifteen and frustrated and angry and just has no
way to channel all of it in this old house in the middle of nowhere, and here’s
percy, boring and oddly funny, and handsome, because he’s a weasley, of course
he’s handsome –

this would never happen with any of the other weasley boys.
she grew up with them. they’re her brothers and her best friends, but percy
didn’t do that. he was there, of course, but he didn’t hang out with her much
as a kid, and she used to be sad that he didn’t feel like her brother.

but now he’s got his mouth and hands on her, then they’re
sneaking around the old house and getting naked in every dark corner they can
find. he’s older than her and he’s done this before, and it ends up being her
pushing, her that takes off her clothes and tells him what she wants, because
this is what was missing with draco. she’d liked kissing him, but she hadn’t
wanted him, not like how she wants percy. “just so you know,” he tells her
seriously, right at the beginning, “i used to be jealous of you, how you got to
do all those things with my brothers that i didn’t.” “well,” she says, throwing
off her bra and watching percy lick his lips, “i never did this with any of
them, so we’ll call it even, ye?” he doesn’t answer, but he does render her
unable to form coherent sentences, so she takes that as agreement.

it’s not serious, they’d known as soon as they began that
this had an expiration date for the end of summer. so harry makes it count, and
percy doesn’t seem interested in telling her no. her first time, percy sneaks
onto the roof where no one will think to look for them and casts a privacy
charm and harriet loves that he cared enough to have her first time be under a
blanket of stars.

so they spend that summer sneaking around and having sex,
and then that summer ends and they move on.

fifth year is busy, and she manages a few dates with cho and
had a memorable afternoon with dean thomas, but that’s all. then in sixth year
the damn breaks and everything is ginny, ginny, ginny. one of her best girl
friend for so long, but now harry wants her to be her girlfriend. and she’s
nervous and clumsy around her, even worse than she was with cho, and she just wants
the world to open up and swallow her constantly.

then they get together and it feels like the balance harriet
has been missing. it’s the friendship and comfort she shared with draco, and
the passion she’d found with percy, and harry and ginny spend their time
laughing, and talking, and fucking, and she’s so certain that this is what
falling in love feels like. and they stay that way, through the war, and after.
but eventually, after a few years, it starts to grate at them. they both burn
so bright and so fast that it feels like they’re constantly setting each other
on fire. and it hurts, because they still love each other, but they don’t think
it’s best for them to be together anymore, not like they are.

but they have to be careful, oh so careful, because harry is
as much part of the family as ginny is, and they don’t want anything to be uncomfortable
or awkward, they don’t want to have people picking sides. so that happens, and
it’s awful, but it’s the right call, even if it hurts.

and ginny starts dating neville, and that relationship goes
from zero to a hundred real quick. and harry dates a lot of people, quidditch
players and potions mistresses and rugged aurors, but no one feels right.

then one day she’s hanging out in luna’s kitchen, and they’re
planning another nargle hunt, because harriet isn’t sure if nargles exist, but
she like exploring strange forest as much as anything, and she especially likes
exploring them with luna. luna, who never gets scared of the animal friends she
makes and who listens when harry waxes on about different plants and who laughs
at her and makes her laugh, and when she’s with luna everything feels right,
she can forget the war and the nightmares and the way so many people still call
her james potter’s daughter. luna, who’s nothing like hagrid but reminds her of
her dad anyway, and hagrid loves luna, he loves it when harriet brings luna
over and they all walk in the forest together in the sun, and it’s the happiest
harry feels possibly ever. when she’s with luna, she feels – she feels – she feels
–

“oh,” she says softly, staring at luna in surprise. “you
feel like peace.”

harry had almost forgotten what that felt like, since the
war, since growing up as james potter’s daughter.

luna’s quill falls from her slack fingers, and her mouth
drops open, and her face slowly goes red. “harry?” she says uncertainly.

harry doesn’t answer, but she does cup luna’s face in her
hands and kiss her. softly, at first, then less softly, and soon it gets to the
point that it’s really good that luna lives alone, because it’d be really
awkward if someone walked in on them now.

a year later, harriet and luna get married. draco makes a
toast that’s just him congratulating himself on dating harry first and
therefore securing her for his cousin, since apparently once someone gets a taste
of malfoy they never go back. luna’s father is horrified and says that this is
why he doesn’t talk to that side of the family anymore. hagrid, bill, and sirius
are just outright sobbing for the entire ceremony. “you know she’s not actually
your daughter, right?” charlie asks his brother, doing his best not to laugh. “shut
up,” bill answers, blowing his nose.

and they live happily ever after.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

Owie, my Feels.