u/BlueAuthorJAFF

I am a sem 3 student in a good private law college (not naming it for doxxing reasons) and the students at my college are extremely close-minded.

Like for example, during the NEET protest recently an alarmingly high number of students were actively against the protest and pro-police/bjp and even posted *in support of* the lathi charge. Also, every on-campus debate I've been to so far has somehow turned into a pro-bjp, anti women/lgbt shouting match and it's really unsettling because for one, it's a good private college and the fees aren't cheap so most students have access to all kinds of facilities and media and foreign trips to form a different, informed opinion. And yet somehow they are still so regressive-minded and I swear people at my government state board school were more progressive than this. Like, atleast I wasn't ever called an ethnic slur at my school....

So I started going to uni a couple of weeks ago and I've had some questionable interactions with a man there.

Some context, this guy is in a few lectures with me and asked me for my contact details on the first day of classes, which I gave because at the time I didn't know he would turn out to be such a creep.

Then, on the third day of classes, he did not talk to me in public BUT when I was nearly alone in the parking lot on the way to my car, he walked up really close, right into my personal space and acted really curious about how I was getting home and where I lived. At this point I was starting to see the red flags and lied obviously (pretty much pointed to the first random grandma I saw at the campus bus point and told him that she was my mum and that she was going to escort me home) just to drive him away.

After this he texted me a few times and although I accidentally texted back once because I honestly didn't realise whose phone number it was, I ignored his other texts. And although I caught him staring at me in public multiple times, he did not approach me in any crowded spaces. I think this is quite important - if he really had good intentions he wouldn't have waited to catch me alone.

Yesterday, however, I once again ended up nearly alone next to him in a stairwell on the way to the library and he once more invaded my personal space, he was nearly touching me and whispering into my face repeatedly asking why I didn't reply. I tried to get away but he leaned even closer and then kept asking me why I didn't want to be friends with him in a really suggestive voice, and I had to physically walk away to blow him off and I was so spooked that I bailed on the rest of my classes and hid out in one of the science labs all afternoon because I share all my afternoon classes with this guy and I really didn't want to run into him again.

Yeah this is a tough prompt to find surprisingly... usually stories tagged with BWL Neville end up being Harry-centric somehow, the closest I've found to what I want is the dirgewithoutmusic 'boy with a scar' oneshot series.

I don't know what to do about this. I'm 20, I've tried to move out and run away before to escape this, but they are wealthy and well connected and I've slowly lost most freedoms except whatever can be done online because they do not understand tech. I do not have access to a vehicle anymore and I'm not allowed to leave the house without them tracking me.

I also don't have control over my finances. I have a bank account in my name but it is currently under my father's control, and because my aadhar card has my mother's phone number I cannot access it or try to open another one secretly. They also have all my legal documents hidden so if I try to escape on foot it will be without money or identity proof.

Realistically, what can I do about this? Is there any legal action I can take? Is it considered a crime for parents to have full control over their adult children's bank account or to keep them at home against their will?

I've always noticed this with my mother for years.

A bit of background, my mother *loves* complaining. She is always complaining about her life and at first she had a reason to be like that, her mother-in-law wasn't the best, but her MIL only lived with her for the first ten months of her marriage, after that they began to live separately and even though it's been over 20 years since my mother and her MIL have so much as been in the same room, my mother still brings up the early days of her marriage every single day.

I'm not kidding, literally every single day for the stupidest and most insignificant of reasons, like my father sharing a simple humorous anecdote about work - she somehow found a way to link my father's little work blunder to his upbringing and by extension her MIL's terrible parenting.

She also uses the mistreatment she faced during the first ten months of her marriage to act like her present life - which is not bad at all btw, she has full control over her sizeable trust fund, does nothing all day since the kids are all grown, has two full time maids and a personal driver and is in constant contact with her maternal family who dotes on her - is some kind of nightmare. And when people obviously confront her and tell her that she has nothing to be miserable about, she *makes* her life miserable.

For example, she's currently having half the house renovated fully and insists that she and my father live in the house *while the renovation is going on*, where they would be in the worker's vicinity 24/7 hearing drill and hammer sounds all day, just because she secretly loves complaining about how her life is so miserable living in the midst of so much chaos.

She also stays up all night on purpose all the time despite being sleepy and then complains about headaches and nausea in the morning to anyone who has the misfortune of being around her for more than five seconds. And she works herself up into a state of panic over nothing and then annoys her adult children with calls and tries to micromanage their lives/ruins their lives by insisting that she be attended by them all day. And she also emotionally abuses her husband - she complains to him about how she's the only one who ever does any work around the house, and then when he offers to help her himself or hire another worker she screams at him, insisting that she doesn't need help, and then she complains more about how her husband is just like her mother-in-law and how she wishes she never got married. But at the same time she also doesn't want a separation.

Is anyone else's mother like this?

Yeah. This. I've recently gone on a bit of a Black brothers fanfiction spiral and the one thing that always annoys me about stories with these two is that they turn Regulus Black into a Mary Sue.

Like, it seems to be a rampant headcanon among the fandom that Regulus Black did nothing wrong and that he was pretty much sacrificed to Voldemort at wandpoint despite secretly being pro-muggleborn or something when that couldn't be farther from the truth in the books. In the books he is shown to have clearly been a longtime Voldemort fan and raging blood purist who got marked willingly because he was a dumb rich kid who probably wanted adventure and didn't realise the mess he'd gotten into. He had a wall full of deatheater memorabilia ffs....

And the 'Regulus Black did nothing wrong' angle can work out in some stories and is well-written sometimes, I agree, but it's annoying when in every Regulus Black story he's a perpetual victim and genius and sensitive little shit all at once while Sirius is somehow the villain for *fleeing an abusive home*?

Like, I want a story where he actually gets more than a slap on the wrist after defecting and the light side holds him accountable for joining a murderer and being complicit in a bunch of murders. Like, not Regulus Black bashing outright but just a more *realistic* reaction to a defector in the ranks. Kind of similar to how Snape is treated by Dumbledore when he first defects.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/87571716/chapters/232027711

Ch1 — Harry and Voldemory role reversal AU

Ch2 — Lily and Petunia role reversal AU

Ch3 — alternate marauders' shrieking shack incident/alternate Harry parentage AU

Spoiler: more Dursley suffering.

----

It was 31st of July, 1926. The consequences of widower Henry Potter's grief-driven mistake made themselves known in the form of a very pregnant Merope Gaunt, who collapsed in the foyer of Wool's Orphanage and claimed that she'd never learnt the last name of the man she'd met in a pub eight months ago.

It was the 31st of December, 1980. As Lily Riddle gave birth to her firstborn surrounded by her family and friends, she knew that she'd made the best decision of her life when she'd rejected both Sirius Black and Severus Snape in favor of muggle boy-next-door Colonel Cecil 'Fubster' Riddle. Now if only there wasn't a war going on. And Lord Potter hadn't made her family a target for god-knows-what reason.

-----

"Devil-child! Devil-child!" Malcolm Rogers the goal-keeper chanted, gesturing to his friends, Tom's cousin Dudley and Piers Polkiss the rat-faced district attorney's son, to tackle Tom to the ground.

Tom Riddle ran. A part of him toyed with the idea of using his powers to make the three of them crash into the flagpole nearby and roll down the edge of the field tangled into a mess of limbs and gore, but a sudden flashback of what happened the last time he tried that made him take that idea and cast it away in the darkest corner of his mind. Tom hated small and dark spaces. His aunt's usual punishments of starvation and chores he didn't mind, since it didn't take him much effort to summon and hide away a few sandwiches from the school lunchroom while the lunch ladies weren't looking, or to discreetly use his powers to get the chores done quicker.

But the punishment for using whatever freakish powers he had in front of Dudley usually involved getting locked in the cupboard under the stairs.

Tom Riddle had always hated the cupboard under the stairs. His aunt and uncle had tried to make him sleep there permanently twice, once when he'd been three and on the verge of outgrowing the crib in the spare bedroom and the second time when Dudley had demanded two bedrooms for his fifth birthday. But both times he'd had a tantrum loud enough to wake up half the street, using his powers to smash apart windows and doors and bone china until eventually, Aunt Petunia had been forced to say no to Dudley for the first and only time in her life. Uncle Vernon had tried using the belt the second time as well, only to quickly learn to never do that again when Tom had turned the belt into a live sand viper that he'd then set at Dudley.

The third time Tom had slept in the cupboard under the stairs had been when he'd been seven and Dudley had run to Petunia screaming about 'the little freak' turning their headteacher's wig blue. The third time, even his usual little fits of vengefulness hadn't deterred his uncle and aunt. They'd kept him there for a week in spite of the mounds of broken china on the floors and the fact that all five of Vernon's best patent-leather belts had turned into cobras and wandered away into the dull grey Surrey streets an hour into Tom's punishment. And for a week Tom had found himself unable to breath because he he had been terrified of the walls closing in on him and the darkness swallowing him whole.

Tom had learnt to tone down his rebellion after that. Sure, he hadn't stopped completely - a boy had to have some outlets, after all - but he made sure to only rebel when there was someone else around to pin the blame on. Or when the cheap metal doors of cupboard under the stairs *mysteriously* flew off their hinges every few months, usually just in time for Tom to traumatise Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who always compared him to some or the other one of her unruly dogs and claimed that his mother should've drowned him when he was born.

Drowning was another one of Tom's fears. As was anything else that could lead to death, ever since he had been nine and the Surrey primary school had held a meditation seminar hosted by some classmate's Indian father, who had told them all that some great minds had once theorized that the afterlife felt a lot like being enclosed in a small dark space, with all of one's senses failing them and leaving them with only their mind and the dark and the claustrophobia as company for all of eternity, and that this particular theory about the afterlife was what made it necessary that one learnt how to clear one's head.

Of course, the teacher had also said that this was a *very* niche theory, mostly believed only by practioners of the ancient art of Vipassana meditation, and that most other philosophers had more optimistic theories about the afterlife.

But the damage had been done. Tom had cried himself to sleep that day praying that his strangers powers somehow made him immune to dying.

Tom Riddle was eleven, and he feared death nearly as much as he feared being locked in the cupboard under the stairs.

Yes, this is my petty little response to all those 'Snape dies in the shack' stories where the marauders still get off lightly because classism.

----

Perhaps history would've gone differently if James Potter had gone over his final plan long enough to remember that while werewolves couldn't turn animals, they could most certainly rip them apart when greatly angered, and therefore it would've been very wise to keep his wand nearby just in case.

Or, the one with Harry Evans and the great mystery of the missing father.

-----

"Look, now! Listen to me, you blubbering oaf — I'll 'ave you know I'll 'ave none of yer' insulting 'Arry's mum in front of 'im, that poor girl doesn't deserve any o' it!" Hagrid all but roared at Petunia Dursley.

Cowering behind the table, little Harry Evans looked up with a look of awe unlike anything he'd ever had before. And it was not just at the prospect of magic being real. Because sure, magic was fascinating and all, but what was more fascinating was the fact that Hagrid didn't seem to hate his mum. Not like everyone else seemed to, whenever aunt Petunia mentioned her sister with a sneer as a means to explain away Harry's miscreant ways and everyone in the room just shook their head in sympathy or gave a matching sneer or murmured something about the forgiveness of god.

He'd never really worked up the courage to ask the Dursleys what exactly his mum had done to be so hated, not after seeing everyone around him agree with the Dursleys and hearing hushed whispers of 'strumpet' and 'tart' and 'slag' and 'thot' intermingled with slightly kinder but still quite vicious whispers of 'layabout' and 'slow' and 'disturbed'. But he had deduced that it had something to do with his father being non-existent when he'd been seven and he'd heard aunt Petunia and her friend Yvonne refer to Mrs Number fifteen's baby grandson who lived at home with just his grandma and his mum using the same colorful language they usually used to address Harry whenever he was in trouble.

But Hagrid didn't believe in any of that.

For the first time in Harry's life he felt a burst of hope swell in his chest. Maybe wizards weren't as mean as muggles. Maybe his mum had been well-liked in their world! Maybe Harry would be well-liked in the wizarding world too!

"You knew my mum?" he blurted out, momentarily forgetting all about his aunt and uncle's rules about not asking questions. For he knew he might never have an oppurtunity like this again.

"Knew? She lived with me, 'Arry! It was such a shame what happened to 'er, poor girl, getting expelled so close to the end an' losin' everyone so quick together, but it was all for the best in the end. I always knew she'd make us all proud in the end, that one — my cottage's never felt the same without 'er!" Hagrid said.

He beamed while he told Harry all about the relatively cheerful months when he'd let a very depressed Lily Evans sleep on his couch after her sister had turned her away at the doorstep (here, Petunia had tried to interject rather rudely only to shut up with a threatening wave of Hagrid's umbrella) and he'd found her hiding out at an inn in London while taking some muggleborn student shopping.

But Harry had only been half-listening since the moment he'd heard the word 'expelled'. So aunt Petunia had been right. His mum really had been a bad person who got in trouble and skived off and broke the rules all the time. Schools didn't expel people unless they really messed up. Even Dudley hadn't gotten expelled yet despite being terrible at everything and getting in trouble all the time and getting the Dursleys called to the headteacher's office every other week.

Privately, he let himself wonder if his father had been a good person, whoever he'd been. Because sure, good fathers didn't leave out of nowhere but maybe he hadn't had a choice. Maybe he was secretly some big important wizarding prince who'd had to leave behind Lily Evans to take his rightful inheritance. Or maybe she had been the one who left, and his father was a good guy who had been looking for Harry for years and maybe he would finally corner Harry when he went to Hogwarts.

Hagrid told him that Lily Evans had loved stargazing too as they rode out into the sea back to the mainland and saw him gazing longingly at the north star. Harry didn't know how to feel about that.

-----

"Who's that professor next to Dumbledore?" Harry asked.

"Him? He's Professor Pettigrew, he teaches transfiguration." Percy Weasley replied with a grimace and no additional comments like he'd made about any other teacher.

Something that Harry took to be a warning sign, because Percy Weasley didn't look like the type of guy to think the worst of any teacher. Professor Pettigrew must be really terrible to warrant such a reaction from the bloke who'd managed a forced smile and a vague 'he's actually very knowledgeable' even for the sleeping ghost-Professor Binns, who was called a great bore by literally everyone else, including the Head Girl for the year whom Percy seemed to idolize because she'd gotten 'eleven outstanding owls', whatever that meant.

Harry amused himself by imagining eleven actual owls pecking relentlessly at Percy Weasley's slicked-back red hair and the Head Girl's blonde plait. Preferably large eagle owls, like the one Draco Malfoy seemed to be so proud to own. And because Malfoy definitely seemed to be type of person who would call his owl an 'outstanding bird' with his chest puffed out. Dudley used to do that too, before he'd grown tired of his canary a month into owning it. And then aunt Petunia had given the poor thing to old lady Figg, where it would be tormented for life by Snowy the persian and Mr Tubbs the tabby.

"Pass me the potatoes, Harry?" another older boy asked, this one was stocky and heavily tanned like one of the athletes at his old school. It made Harry wonder if wizarding schools had football too. He hoped not, he'd had enough of dodging his bullies' well-timed kicks when coach wasn't looking for a lifetime.

"Don't let Perce here fool you, by the way." the boy continued in between loading his plate with heaping spoonfuls of roast potatoes and curry chicken. "Pettigrew's not all bad, really. Kind of barmy sometimes but then again half the teachs here are — oi, don't hit me, Perce — really, the only reason this one here hates him is because he makes you work for a grade. A book's not gonna get you very far under him. He fails more students than Snape does some years."

Percy Weasley murmured something about him deserving more than an acceptable the past term while furiously tearing apart his steak and kidney pie.

One of the Weasley twins laughed. "Last year he gave us —"

"Twice as many outstandings as Perce —" the other twin continued with a grin.

"Ickle Percykins wrote to mum about it!" the first twin said with a roguish snort.

"Thought we were cheating. That was badly done, brother of ours dearest. Badly done, indeed" the second twin said with a mock-offended look, patting Percy on the back hard enough to make the older boy nearly fall flat on his face into his soup bowl.

And as Percy Weasley wiped flecks of pea soup off his nose with a face as red as his hair, even Harry couldn't keep himself from laughing like a maniac.

-----

Harry Potter decided that he never, ever wanted to go back to the muggle world the second the rat that had moments before scared the living daylights out of Draco Malfoy turned into a grinning Professor Pettigrew.

"And let that be a lesson to you lot that things are never as they seem." Pettigrew lectured. "Darkness can lurk in any corner, hiding, impersonating an insignificant object or person or animal. Your new dressing table fished out of the bargain bin at the pound store could in fact be a highly dangerous, fully grown erumpent transfigured specifically to infiltrate your home and then murder you in the dead of the night when the spell finally wears off."

"But of course, you shall not be learning any transfigurations of that stature just now. For your first month, I believe a simple wood-to-metal transfiguration shall suffice." Pettigrew said with a dramatic flourish of his wand arm. "Now, I believe that usually it is standard to begin with matches and toothpicks. But a standardized procedure is not always a good thing, you see. I've always believed myself that a standardized procedure is an unneeded boundary. For instance, take Mr Weasley here —"

Ron blushed a furious red at being singled out.

"I'm not punishing you, Weasley." Pettigrew said with a roll of his eyes, making Ron blush an even more furious red.

"What I meant to say before I was interrupted, Mr Weasley, is that your brothers the twins are prodigies. During their first lesson with me, those two transfigured the entire exterior of my desk to tinfoil. And I would have never found that out if I'd asked them to turn matches into needles instead of asking them to go wild and attempt to turn every wood object in the near vicinity into metal." Pettigrew finished speaking with a twirl of his wand.

Harry and Ron looked in the direction of his movements and saw that he had turned all of Seamus Finnigan's pencils into solid aluminium penknives - including the one the boy was writing with, that was now embedded half an inch into the desk after wearing a hole through the parchment. Pettigrew shook his head bemusedly at Seamus' startled yelp and turned the knives back into pencils.

"Well that was just a little bit of fun. I apologise, Mr Finnigan. Now, everyone, I would appreciate it if you all kindly follow Mr Finnigan's example and put away your own parchments. There will be no foolish note taking in this class. No, you all shall listen to every word I say and memorize it. And believe me, there will be consequences if you don't."

-----

If Pettigrew's first class had been the most interesting class Harry had ever had, Snape's was the least.

Harry found himself tuning out Snape's monotonously dull baritone unintentionally, despite well aware of how rude he was probably being. It wasn't that he wanted to make a bad impression by any means. Not at all - he knew that his newfound popularity at Hogwarts for being the boy-who-lived could evaporate at any second if people began to think he was anything like his mum. But for as long as Harry could remember he'd always had spells of nausea and tiredness every few weeks. It usually lasted for a couple of days at a stretch. Sometimes he felt so weak he could barely cross the length of the room. Other times he saw atars in front of his eyes and had to be carried to the infirmary. And yet other times he was merely cranky and had the sudden urge to bite something or someone.

He had no idea why it happened. Although aunt Petunia had once told aunt Marge it was because 'that freakish harlot' had 'gone on way too many benders' while she'd been pregnant with Harry.

"Evans!" Harry jumped at the sudden voice. Professor Snape smirked and said, "Harry Evans, our newest celebrity. Do tell me, what can possibly be more interesting than listening to what I've been saying for the past ten minutes?"

"Uh — nothing, sir. I'm sorry, sir!" Harry quickly replied.

"What would I get if I added root of asphodel to powdered wormwood?" Snape asked.

Harry blinked. He could see the Granger girl's hand was firmly in the air. The girl was leaning forward into her seat with eagerness. He tried to think about the answer - he was sure he must've read about it somewhere while going through his books before the start of the year - but the corner of his head and his left eye socket hurt like hell and he could see stars at the corners of his eyes. He just couldn't think.

He looked at Snape apologetically. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Hm, clearly fame isn't everything, Evans." Snape said bitingly before moving on to question Dean and Lavender.

Harry blinked in surprise when he was cornered by the other boys after class. Seamus looked at him open-mouthed. "Do you two know each other, Evans?"

He stared at them with an incredulous look "What do you mean? I've told you before, I was raised by muggles — he just hates me for no reason!"

"Hates you? Whatever do you mean? He was positively nice to you —" Dean said, and then seeing Harry's perplexed gaze explained further with an exaggerated gesture of his hand 'You're the only one of us he didn't dock points off of!"

"Well, that doesn't —" Harry tried to say.

"Granger lost ten points, mate." Ron said, casting a disbelieving glance at a very disgruntled and slightly tearful looking Granger, who was haughtily ignoring Parvati Patil's attempts at conversation as she cleaned up the station she'd shared with poor Neville Longbottom.

"You reckon we should go and see Neville?" Harry asked in an attempt to change the conversation, and he sighed in relief when Seamus enthusiastically agreed and offered to introduce him and Ron to the new Muggle Studies teacher - whose office was right next to the hospital wing - who was an old friend of his ma's and always had Mars bars in her office.

Because he did not feel like thinking about Snape's change in behaviour. Not when he felt terrible and he was quite sure that he needed the hospital wing more than Neville but not really because unlike Neville, he wasn't really ill. No, the only problem he had was some unknown illness that no one had ever been able to identify before. Hell, he wasn't even quite sure what his exact symptoms were. And he just knew that Madam Pomfrey would probably kick him out for faking if he really did go to the hospital wing. Adults always did that.

-----

Harry never thought he'd agree with Percy Weasley about anything, but Professor Pettigrew had proved him wrong at that already by being just as insufferable as Percy always claimed he was.

At first he'd been quite enraptured by Pettigrew's teaching. Mostly because Pettigrew didn't assign any homework for the first two weeks of class like that git Snape did. The first two weeks of transfiguration had been a cakewalk, with the first years spending more than half the class on practical magic and listening to Pettigrew narrate the bare minimum of theory required to actually perform the spell in the first ten minutes of class.

Then Pettigrew had asked them to come to the first class on Monday with no fewer than ten wood articles transfigured to completely to metal. And each of them had to be a different metal too. And they had to write a five thousand word report on how exactly they managed each transfiguration and everything they'd been taught about that week.

"Pressure makes diamonds even better than elemental transfiguration does." Pettigrew had said in a sing-songy voice as he let them off for the weekend.

Harry could still remember the very smug smiles that every older student had levelled their way as the disgruntled first years had sulked in the corridors wondering how the hell they were going to do so much homework in so little time. Apparently it was a fun little ritual sanctioned by the professor himself to let the ignorant firsties cruise through the first two weeks of transfiguration without a clue of the horrors to come. A lot of horrors, if Lee Jordan's warning about similar homework every week was to be trusted.

"I told you, you need to work for a good grade in old Pettigrew's class." the fifth year, who Harry learnt was called 'Wood', told them looking very amused. "He always says that any old fool can copy down everything a teacher says, memorize it and get an O. But it takes a lot more work than that to actively listen during class and remember it without writing it down and then applying it and making a report on that."

-----

Before the first years knew it, they had their first flying class. Flying was taught by a grim-looking woman called Hooch, who was the Head of Gryffindor house and seemed to hate anyone with the last name Weasley by default.

"Mark my words, Mr Weasley, every trick your brothers might have taught you has already been intercepted by me." she'd told Ron when she'd handed out the timetables on the first day of school.

They hadn't seen her much after that, though. One of the older students, a second year called Katie who was friends with the twins, had told Harry that Gryffindor didn't really have a real head since the last one had quit in a fit of rage in the seventies. Apparently Hooch had been forced to take the position against her will at the time due to there being no other Gryffindors on the staff, and over the years she'd made her displeasure with the change quite clear by seldom leaving her Quidditch pitch except in cases of dire emergency, and for a few days every couple of months whenever Dumbledore got another complaint about Hooch's negligence from a concerned parent and all but dragged her into the tower and threatened to let Snape - the head of Slytherin - referee the next Quidditch match unless she did her job.

"Everyone knows he curses the day he gave her tenure now-a-days." Katie had explained. "But it means we always get the best slots for quidditch practise so I'm not complaining."

"Now, I for one would be very pleased if she didn't delegate as much work to the prefects. With all the work I'm taking on this year I reckon I'll need to really lock in during the summer to make Head Boy." Percy had mused right before their first flying class.

Which earned him a mocking laugh from his brothers and a sympathetic shoulder squeeze from the Head Girl ('that's Audrey, she's my sister', Alica Spinnet from the quidditch team had whispered to Harry when he'd stumbled over her name at the table the other day after Audrey and the prefects had asked the first years about their classes) that had made him blush and giggle uncharacteristically for the rest of breakfast.

As he left the great hall and walked into the pitch, Harry wondered if his mum had ever played quidditch. Or his dad - Hagrid had told him his mum had been somewhat popular before she'd gotten expelled. So maybe she'd been popular enough to get a quidditch captain's attention too?

There once lived a little girl who never met a soul she couldn't utterly and completely charm.

This little girl was not Lily Evans, and that changed absolutely everything.

----

The Dark Lord's magic oozed through every pore in her skin that first night she left his lair, her first meeting with him a binding agreement and a promise all at once.

She had entered his lair as Lily Evans. She left his lair as 'you there, little mudblood'.

And perhaps in another universe, another Lily Evans who was a few weeks shy of becoming Lily Potter would've scoffed in the Dark Lord's face when he asked her to join him. Perhaps that Lily Evans would've made a thousand canaries shoot out of the tip of her wand to distract the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters long enough to allow her to flee on foot. And perhaps she would've gone home to a worried James who would've told her that he couldn't wait any longer and perhaps she'd have become Lily Potter twenty days too early after a hasty affair at the courthouse involving a few confounded officials and a besotted husband who couldn't take his eyes off her luscious red hair.

But this Lily Evans was nothing like the Lily Evans that could have been, all for the lack of attention drawn by her luscious red hair and dazzling emerald eyes and all the other things that people for ages to come would remember her for.

For who would look at Lily and find her pretty enough when perfect Petunia Evans existed?

Let us tell her story, then. Starting with the story of one Petunia Evans. Because really, how can there be a story about an ugly duckling without a beautiful swan lurking nearby?

Let us tell the story of a slightly different Petunia Evans who learnt how to take care of herself earlier on. This Petunia learnt to stop fighting her curls at an earlier age and to work with them instead and as a result gained a gaggle of admiring preteen girls who would kill for her gorgeous blonde hair on the first day of secondary school. She developed a fascination for the color magenta instead of salmon pink and quickly learnt that it brought out the blue in her eyes. And it suited her just as well too that the sixties brought with them a newfound fad centred around skinny and lanky female body types.

This Petunia turned thirteen with all the confidence and beauty and social prestige that a young teenager could possibly hope for, three besotted boys vying for her attentions and three dozen girls who couldn't decide if they loved her or envied her hanging onto her every word.

Lily remained just Lily, on the other hand. Just wild and short and freckled. Her hair ratty and frizzy from too much time outdoors and her cheeks covered in freckles that made the girls at school call her names when they thought she couldn't hear them. Her clothes all bright purple and magenta and navy hued castoffs from Petunia that didn't suit her complexion at all the way salmon pink would've, because mum was thrifty like that and Petunia grew too fast and needed too much new stuff to leave any spare money to buy Lily a new wardrobe for a change.

She made the flowers in the playground wither the day the Snape boy approached her for the first time, because grandma Evans had just visited and she'd gushed about how pretty Tuney had grown the whole time while conveniently ignoring Lily. And because Dicky Collins from down the street had just laughed at her freckles while Tuney said nothing and because mum's red hair never looked all thin and ratty like hers always did.

"You're a witch." the Snape boy said, and all Lily noticed was how even the greasy oddball went cow-eyed over Tuney while be blabbered nonsense about a world full of kids who could make flowers bloom and wither at will. The poor sod. As if he would ever be good enough for perfect Petunia Evans.

"And you're a good-for-nothing freak in your mummy's blouse." Lily replied in a voice full of vitriol, surprising even herself with how good she felt saying that.

So good that she even managed a genuine smile later when Tuney told her that she was proud of her for sticking up for herself and showing the freak just what an Evans was made of.

There once lived a little girl who never met a soul she couldn't utterly and completely charm.

This little girl was not Lily Evans, and that changed absolutely everything.

----

The Dark Lord's magic oozed through every pore in her skin that first night she left his lair, her first meeting with him a binding agreement and a promise all at once.

She had entered his lair as Lily Evans. She left his lair as 'you there, little mudblood'.

And perhaps in another universe, another Lily Evans who was a few weeks shy of becoming Lily Potter would've scoffed in the Dark Lord's face when he asked her to join him. Perhaps that Lily Evans would've made a thousand canaries shoot out of the tip of her wand to distract the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters long enough to allow her to flee on foot. And perhaps she would've gone home to a worried James who would've told her that he couldn't wait any longer and perhaps she'd have become Lily Potter twenty days too early after a hasty affair at the courthouse involving a few confounded officials and a besotted husband who couldn't take his eyes off her luscious red hair.

But this Lily Evans was nothing like the Lily Evans that could have been, all for the lack of attention drawn by her luscious red hair and dazzling emerald eyes and all the other things that people for ages to come would remember her for.

For who would look at Lily and find her pretty enough when perfect Petunia Evans existed?

Let us tell her story, then. Starting with the story of one Petunia Evans. Because really, how can there be a story about an ugly duckling without a beautiful swan lurking nearby?

Let us tell the story of a slightly different Petunia Evans who learnt how to take care of herself earlier on. This Petunia learnt to stop fighting her curls at an earlier age and to work with them instead and as a result gained a gaggle of admiring preteen girls who would kill for her gorgeous blonde hair on the first day of secondary school. She developed a fascination for the color magenta instead of salmon pink and quickly learnt that it brought out the blue in her eyes. And it suited her just as well too that the sixties brought with them a newfound fad centred around skinny and lanky female body types.

This Petunia turned thirteen with all the confidence and beauty and social prestige that a young teenager could possibly hope for, three besotted boys vying for her attentions and three dozen girls who couldn't decide if they loved her or envied her hanging onto her every word.

Lily remained just Lily, on the other hand. Just wild and short and freckled. Her hair ratty and frizzy from too much time outdoors and her cheeks covered in freckles that made the girls at school call her names when they thought she couldn't hear them. Her clothes all bright purple and magenta and navy hued castoffs from Petunia that didn't suit her complexion at all the way salmon pink would've, because mum was thrifty like that and Petunia grew too fast and needed too much new stuff to leave any spare money to buy Lily a new wardrobe for a change.

She made the flowers in the playground wither the day the Snape boy approached her for the first time, because grandma Evans had just visited and she'd gushed about how pretty Tuney had grown the whole time while conveniently ignoring Lily. And because Dicky Collins from down the street had just laughed at her freckles while Tuney said nothing and because mum's red hair never looked all thin and ratty like hers always did.

"You're a witch." the Snape boy said, and all Lily noticed was how even the greasy oddball went cow-eyed over Tuney while be blabbered nonsense about a world full of kids who could make flowers bloom and wither at will. The poor sod. As if he would ever be good enough for perfect Petunia Evans.

"And you're a good-for-nothing freak in your mummy's blouse." Lily replied in a voice full of vitriol, surprising even herself with how good she felt saying that.

So good that she even managed a genuine smile later when Tuney told her that she was proud of her for sticking up for herself and showing the freak just what an Evans was made of.

So I recently came across a debate on the Severus Snape reddit group about how the books would have gone so much more differently if Harry had looked like Lily instead of James and that got me thinking.... what if Harry came out looking like someone else entirely because genetics are weird like that?

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Now there's a lot of ways this could happen. One possibility is Harry looking like a mix of long-dead Potter relatives and slipping away unnoticed as a result.

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But of course that wouldn't make a very interesting story at all. In fact I'd go as far as to argue that Snape's irrational hatred of Harry was a driving force that indirectly caused half the plot to take place. So then I thought.... which *other* relative of Harry's does Snape hate as much as James?

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And I'm surprised that no one's done this before, really.

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Like, just think of the possibilities! Hagrid goes to the hut off the coast or some other hideout expecting a boy who looks like James or Lily but instead sees a tall, gangly kid with a long neck and a longer face pulled down like a horse's. This kid has watery dishwater-blue eyes and greasy blonde hair and looks eerily like the woman who's currently cowering behind her husband who's got a shotgun pointed at Hagrid. And in that moment Hagrid wonders if Lily and James Potter had outsmarted them all one last time and replaced the real Harry Potter with whoever this was. This ugly little git who couldn't have come from the two finest and most attractive of the witches and wizards of their time.

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Perhaps this Harry Potter got treated better. Perhaps his aunt used the one single kind bone in her body to treat him civilly, if not lovingly, and gave him the bedroom a few years earlier after someone pointed out the likeness between aunt and nephew. Perhaps Vernon treated him just a little bit better because he felt uneasy manhandling a boy who was a spitting image of his wife. A boy who could have been his son, even.

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This Harry boards the Hogwarts express and still sits next to Ron and befriends him because some things never change. Though he treats Ron a little better than his more attractive counterpart would because in this world he's also used to never being enough. Because appearances really do matter and during his first week at school, he'd caught many a housemate wondering out aloud if 'that scrawny horseface git' could really be *the* Harry Potter. Maybe he befriends Neville Longbottom instead of Hermione Granger in this world because he gets how being an underdog feels like.

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As for Snape? This Harry doesn't quite know what to make of Snape. Sometimes he's vindictive and spiteful and yet other times he's merely indifferent. Perhaps this Snape ends up treating Harry slightly better too. Or perhaps he's the exact same because turns out he can hold a grudge against a nosy muggle child just as well as he can hold a grudge against James Potter, and then perhaps after the events of the final battle Harry doesn't call Snape the 'bravest man he ever knew' because while the other Harry had been able to justify Snape's hatred of James Potter, this Harry just thinks that he was a petty arsehole for holding such a huge grudge against a muggle he talked to like thrice when he was a kid.

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And Sirius Black? Well, he's certainly not going to mistake Harry for James this time around. Hell, the events of that year might not happen at all because Sirius can't recognize Harry.....

So I recently came across a debate on the Severus Snape reddit group about how the books would have gone so much more differently if Harry had looked like Lily instead of James and that got me thinking.... what if Harry came out looking like someone else entirely because genetics are weird like that?

​

Now there's a lot of ways this could happen. One possibility is Harry looking like a mix of long-dead Potter relatives and slipping away unnoticed as a result.

​

But of course that wouldn't make a very interesting story at all. In fact I'd go as far as to argue that Snape's irrational hatred of Harry was a driving force that indirectly caused half the plot to take place. So then I thought.... which *other* relative of Harry's does Snape hate as much as James?

​

And I'm surprised that no one's done this before, really.

​

Like, just think of the possibilities! Hagrid goes to the hut off the coast or some other hideout expecting a boy who looks like James or Lily but instead sees a tall, gangly kid with a long neck and a longer face pulled down like a horse's. This kid has watery dishwater-blue eyes and greasy blonde hair and looks eerily like the woman who's currently cowering behind her husband who's got a shotgun pointed at Hagrid. And in that moment Hagrid wonders if Lily and James Potter had outsmarted them all one last time and replaced the real Harry Potter with whoever this was. This ugly little git who couldn't have come from the two finest and most attractive of the witches and wizards of their time.

​

Perhaps this Harry Potter got treated better. Perhaps his aunt used the one single kind bone in her body to treat him civilly, if not lovingly, and gave him the bedroom a few years earlier after someone pointed out the likeness between aunt and nephew. Perhaps Vernon treated him just a little bit better because he felt uneasy manhandling a boy who was a spitting image of his wife. A boy who could have been his son, even.

​

This Harry boards the Hogwarts express and still sits next to Ron and befriends him because some things never change. Though he treats Ron a little better than his more attractive counterpart would because in this world he's also used to never being enough. Because appearances really do matter and during his first week at school, he'd caught many a housemate wondering out aloud if 'that scrawny horseface git' could really be *the* Harry Potter. Maybe he befriends Neville Longbottom instead of Hermione Granger in this world because he gets how being an underdog feels like.

​

As for Snape? This Harry doesn't quite know what to make of Snape. Sometimes he's vindictive and spiteful and yet other times he's merely indifferent. Perhaps this Snape ends up treating Harry slightly better too. Or perhaps he's the exact same because turns out he can hold a grudge against a nosy muggle child just as well as he can hold a grudge against James Potter, and then perhaps after the events of the final battle Harry doesn't call Snape the 'bravest man he ever knew' because while the other Harry had been able to justify Snape's hatred of James Potter, this Harry just thinks that he was a petty arsehole for holding such a huge grudge against a muggle he talked to like thrice when he was a kid.

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And Sirius Black? Well, he's certainly not going to mistake Harry for James this time around. Hell, the events of that year might not happen at all because Sirius can't recognize Harry.....

I recently found a oneshot on ao3 with a similar premise (https://archiveofourown.org/works/43670941) and I'm wondering if more stories with a similar premise exist. As in, stories where he grows up hating Merope instead of Tom Sr. and eventually starts a radical muggleborn revolution where the purebloods are treated similar to the muggleborns in canonverse.