“Harry?”
Harry looked up at Bonbon. “Hmm?” he prompted.
Today was the day that most of the school would be going home for the holidays- and as usual, he understood, Bonbon’s face betrayed nothing about whatever she wanted from him. He couldn’t imagine what it might be- it was hardly fifteen minutes before most of the school would be leaving the Castle for the train, alongside Hermione but not the Weasleys. He’d come down to watch them go.
“A word?” she requested.
He tilted his head. “Sure?” he asked.
She led him a few strides away, before turning into an unused classroom- there sure seemed to be a lot of those at Hogwarts, even with so many students- and closing the door behind them with a snap. Harry once again found himself envious of the swishing ease with which all the girls in the school carried themselves, which he couldn’t quite acquire for himself when he was Hailey. As much as he liked his skirts- he actually missed their sweeping, comfortable embrace whenever he was Harry- he just couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was an imposter whenever he was Hailey.
Finally, she turned to him, evidently satisfied that they were alone. “Harry. I’m sorry I have to offer this to you, but you’re all that’s left.” She sighed. “Are you up to an Instructor Assignment?”
Harry scowled at the thought. An Instructor Assignment… would be another section of the day he’d have to make it through each week as Harry. “It… depends,” he muttered.
She nodded, pulling a single page of paper from her bag. “Here’s the details,” she told him. “We’ll need an answer, one way or the other, when we get back from the holidays.”
Harry looked down at the page and scowled; it was Potions, and he already disliked Snape, the Slytherin head of house and the school’s Potions master. “Right,” he mumbled, opening his own bag- which he had with him purely so he wouldn’t have to explain to anyone why he was carrying The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection by Quentin Trimble around, and slipping it in.
“And one more thing,” Bonbon told him. “Do you know anything about Hailey Potter?”
Harry looked up at her. “... Why?” he asked.
She shrugged. “We’ve got something to offer her.”
He studied her, trying to judge whether he could trust her. He’d only met her a few times, after all. “What is it?” he asked.
She tilted her head curiously. “I want to offer her a spot as well,” she told him. “And in case you’re wondering, as the head of the Student Instructor Program, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Promise?”
She nodded. “Promise.”
He flipped the defense textbook out of his bag, folded the softcover book about in half without creasing it, and slapped himself on the forehead. The soft tingle of the transformation had long become very familiar to him, as had the sharp slap of the clothing spell Hermione had invented for him, instantly swapping out his male clothes for the female outfit of his choice, straight from his trunk upstairs.
When he lowered the book back towards his bag, Bonbon was staring at him, and he could almost hear the gears turning in her brain.
“Well,” she eventually muttered. “When you got that broom of yours, you used the Impediment Jinx, a fourth-year charm that even Twilight hasn’t mastered yet.” She looked up at him. “Is that unique to this shape, or can you do it as a boy as well?”
He shook his head. “No, Harry can’t. I’ve tried.” He scowled. “Same for the silencing charm and blasting spell, even. Yet I- as Hailey- used both of those, at various times.”
“Alright,” Bonbon said, scowling as she thought. The silence held for a few seconds, before she seemed to make her decision, and opened her bag again, this time drawing out a good sized packet of papers. “I think… I think we can probably forget about that other one, then, unless you really want to take it,” she told him. “And we’ve got this for you, if you’re willing. And you can take as much time as you want to read up on it and come up with your decision.”
Harry accepted it, scowling in confusion, and looked at the top sheet.
Then he gasped.
“You want to make me the Head Student Instructor for Defense Against the Dark Arts?” he asked incredulously.
“There’s no denying that you’re qualified for the job,” she told him. “Especially since I’ve got nearly forty eyewitnesses that Hailey never has any trouble with any spells.”
He reached up to scratch the back of his hair nervously. “... Yeah. I’ve noticed that myself, actually- even the ones that don’t just come to me are much easier to learn- and perform- as Hailey. But this…” He looked down at it. “I haven’t even taught a single class yet, but you want to make me the head instructor?”
She nodded. “I know.” She pulled out a chair to sit in; Harry picked one nearby and sat down as well, facing her. “And that’s where the difference comes in. Our Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors are pretty clueless about what to look for, what to study, what to teach. Yet you seem to know at least some already.”
He tilted his head. “Wouldn’t they get it from Professor Quirrell’s classes…?”
She shook her head. “No. His classes have been nothing but a joke- totally useless. Attendance is down to an all-time low of flat nothing. Speaking of which, if you accept, you will be on his student roster, but- and I have Dumbledore’s explicit permission to tell you this- you will not actually attend his classes. We… have reason to believe that he will attack you if given the opportunity. Or at least, he will attack Harry.”
Harry tilted his head. “Is it possible he’s the one that attacked me at that Quidditch match?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Not likely. Nobody knows that you are Harry.”
“Professor McGonagall figured it out,” Harry told her immediately. “Said something about ‘transgenderism’, no idea what that’s all about. And Snape either figured it out or randomly saves Gryffindor lives.” He scowled. “I still don’t know why he was trying to save me.” Then he looked up. “And Voldemort definitely figured it out, or he wouldn’t have tried to kill me during that match in the first place.”
She stared at him. “How?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. If…” He sighed. “If you write Harry’s name while I’m Harry, or Hailey’s name when I’m Hailey, it’ll change to reflect whichever one I am. That’s how McGonagall found out… and, I assume, how the other two did, as well.” He grinned. “And how Hagrid found out, back when he brought me my Hogwarts letter.”
She scowled. “Alright. We don’t know what agenda Quirrell has against you, but it is entirely possible he is working for Voldemort. Try not to meet him, then?”
“Consider me warned,” he nodded. “Probably a good thing I keep my wand with me at all times already.”
She nodded. “Probably. But let us know, okay? If you take it, you’ll be in a bit of a unique position, even relative to our other HSIs, since you’ll be basically replacing Professor Quirrell for the purpose of our Student Instructor program.” She rose, bowed to him, and left the room.
“I’d give anything for one of these,” Ron told Harry, mentally trying to estimate the value of the Invisibility Cloak that Harry had just unwrapped.
Harry raised an eyebrow at him. “Anything?” he asked.
He looked up at Harry, values forgotten. “Of course,” he began. However, his mind immediately began filling with things he would not want to trade for an invisibility cloak. His sister, his parents, his brothers (which actually surprised him), Hailey… Harry, he noticed with some trepidation, was not on the list. “Well…” He tilted his head, and tried coming up with things of value that he would trade for an Invisibility Cloak… but all he could think of was his wand- but that was only because the inevitable replacement would have to be his very first brand-new item… aside from any invisibility cloaks, of course. “No,” he finally told Harry, who merely smiled before returning to his own inspection of the cloak.
He watched as Harry ran it through his fingers. “Strange,” Harry muttered. “It’s… It’s almost like it’s made of water. Which…” He unfolded it, and swept it over his shoulders, making his upper body disappear. Then Harry looked at it again, as invisible as it was. “I wonder how it decides when it should be visible or not…?”
Ron scowled. “I… I don’t know. Hermione might, though. Or Alastor.”
“True,” Harry agreed, and swept the cloak off of himself.
Ron’s scowl deepened, as he was reminded of something. “Um, Harry…”
Harry paused, looking up from where he was picking up a note that seemed to have fallen from the cloak’s folds. “Hmm?”
“Are… Are you a girl?” If he was entirely honest with himself, he didn’t believe that Hailey was the same person as Harry.
Harry looked at him incredulously. “Do I look like a girl to you?” he asked.
“Well no,” he answered quickly. “It’s just… Hailey was saying-!”
“Ron,” Harry said, very seriously, and reached over to his nightstand to pull a book from it- The Dark Forces, A Guide to Self Protection by Quentin Trimble.
“What?” Ron asked.
Harry held the book in both hands in front of him. “Do you see me?” he asked.
Ron nodded. “Uh… Yeah?” he muttered.
Harry swept the book up and whacked himself in the face with it. There was a bright flash of white light, and when the book came back down, Harry had been replaced by Hailey- fully clothed and everything, and sitting exactly how Harry had been moments before. She lowered the book back to the same position Harry had held it in moments before. “And do you still see me?” she asked.
He nodded vaguely. “I… I think I get it now.” He paused. “How do you turn back?”
Hailey shrugged. “I go to sleep.”
He scowled. “Then… don’t you worry about people seeing your underwear when you fly?”
She let out a small giggle. “Nope. Quidditch uniforms include pants- even for the girls. Besides, for as much as I like these skirts-” she stuck one leg out, so her skirt was visible in the gap in her robes- “they would just be cumbersome in the air.” She dropped her leg back down.
There was a sudden bang as the dormitory door was thrown open. Ron jumped- but Hailey, as usual, seemed to have precognitive reflexes or something. She wasted no time whatsoever in throwing the Invisibility Cloak back over herself, hiding her entirely from view.
Fred and George marched in. “Merry Christmas!”
Dumbledore looked calmly down at the girl on the bed in front of him. Madam Pomfrey was standing next to him, and neither of them could think of any way to save her- or even to stabilize her for transport to St. Mungo’s.
The fluffy pink-haired girl had somehow managed to remove her entire left arm, turn the left half of her face upside down, and move her left leg from her hip to the side of her head, where it had replaced her ear- which had found itself back down where her leg had been before. It didn’t exactly help that the missing arm was spreading- when she’d come in, it had just been her hand, but now it was all the way up to her shoulder.
On the other side of the bed were Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy, all tearful and holding Pinkie Pie’s hand whenever they could.
There was a sudden bang from the door into the Hospital Wing. Dumbledore looked up, just in time for-
“Pinkie!”
He jumped. He could swear that young Hermione Granger had not been at the foot of the bed, in her nightgown and holding a toothbrush, two seconds before.
“I figured it out!” Hermione continued unbidden. “Wiggle the lurgid up and down!”
Pinkie sputtered something incoherent. She hadn’t been able to form words since she had been brought in, thanks to the damage to her mouth, but the surviving portion of her face looked doubtful.
“It only unfreddles the gruntbuggly,” Hermione continued, apparently having understood. “But when you wiggle the lurgid sideways, knowing how plurdled the gabbleblotchits are, it refreddles the gruntbuggly for you!”
“What are you talking about?” Twilight asked her.
Then, out of nowhere, Pinkie fairly leapt out of bed… leaving her injuries behind. It was a very peculiar appearance, while the girl- completely normal-looking once again- hugged Hermione. “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!” she streamed. “It worked! I can tell how plurdled they are!”
Hermione chuckled, hugging her back. “You’re welcome. Just don’t hurt yourself like that again, okay?”
Pinkie giggled. “Oh no, I can put myself back together now, don’t worry. All I have to do is know how plurdled the gabbleblotchits are!”
She chuckled again. “Alright. We can party, um, maybe when everyone gets back from the holidays? I really should be headed back, I don’t want my parents to wonder why I’m taking so long.”
Pinkie stepped back and waved. “See you, then! And look forward to it!”
Hermione grinned… and very suddenly, wasn’t anywhere.
“How sure are we that she hasn’t ascended?” Rarity asked Twilight.
Rainbow stood to tackle-hug Pinkie from behind. “Welcome back, Pinkie!”
Twilight shrugged. “As far as I know, she’s not capable of ascending. But at this point, I wouldn’t put it past her.”
Draco sighed, wandering the castle in the middle of the night. He didn’t usually do this- but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to. On the contrary, he knew by now that the Sorting Hat had been dead right. His ‘Alastor’ persona fit in in the Gryffindor common room better than he did in the Slytherin one.
Rather, it was because he generally wasn’t able to- that was to say, he was never the last one to go to bed.
This time, he was. He had managed to convince Crabbe and Goyle to go home for the holidays- so he was both the first and the last British Slytherin to go to bed each night, as the only one left in the castle. Most of the foreigners had, as a huge wave of girls (and boys, he knew, but they all seemed to be girls at first glance), gone home as well; the rest went to bed and got up early.
Naturally, he didn’t go unprotected. He had taken his fully invisible form- which, ever since he’d spent a day in the Hospital Wing after Halloween, felt… different than it usually did. He didn’t know what the difference was, though, being unable to see it himself, only that there was one. He was still completely invisible and completely silent, almost no matter what he did in that form- even still mute. It was actually hard to get detected without running into someone or something… or changing forms. But if he did that last one, he wouldn’t be able to go back for about a quarter of an hour.
As for what he was doing, he was walking around with a “Dry Erase Marker” some Muggleborn had left in the Great Hall some weeks before and, after realizing it wiped right back off again, was drawing smiley faces and funny messages on all the suits of armor he could find. For as long as it was in his hand, the marker was invisible with him, and also wouldn’t squeak- so it wasn’t like anyone could catch him. He’d even found Peeves trying to do the same with a stick of chalk, and no success.
Very suddenly, while approaching a lonely suit of armor, he froze. Someone was talking nearby, but he couldn’t see them.
“My feet are freezing.”
It took him a second, but he recognized it as Ron Weasley. Where was he? Why was he invisible?
He heard Harry’s voice next- interesting that it was Harry, rather than Hailey. He usually liked to be Hailey, to the point where, in the various times he had been with them, Ron frequently asked where Harry had gotten to. “It’s here,” he said.
Draco didn’t pay much attention to their words past that point, more focused on flattening himself against the wall next to the suit of armor while he wrote “I’ll be back” on it’s back, and on figuring out where the two boys were.
This was made easy when a door moved not six feet away- and when he crept in after them, he saw them take off what looked like an Invisibility Cloak.
He stood next to the door and watched while they argued in front of a strange mirror for a couple minutes- at which point he noticed Mrs. Norris, through the door, coming around a distant corner.
He glanced forwards, at Harry and Ron- she was about to catch them, and was hurrying towards the room to look.
Then, he lifted his marker, and threw it out the door, so it banged against the wall behind her. She jumped, pausing to look back at it… then resumed her dash.
Fortunately, the noise also warned the two boys and bought them just enough time to get themselves invisible once again.
Mrs. Norris stood in the door, searching the room for the speakers, then turned back to investigate the marker, evidently having decided she wasn’t going to find anything here.
“This isn’t safe,” Ron muttered- and, a minute later, Draco felt a slight breeze as the two boys left the room.
He looked outside, then walked up to look at the mirror.
He let out a completely inaudible gasp of surprise.
He scowled at his reflection, then looked up at the inscription.
Erised… He knew he’d seen that somewhere, and was pretty sure he even remembered where, but he didn’t remember anything else about it.
He scowled at his reflection again, and headed for the Slytherin common room. He could look it up in the morning, or during the day.
Albus Dumbledore smiled to himself from his vantage point on one of the desks in the back of the room as Harry appeared for the second night in a row. Judging by what Harry had told Ron the night before, he had actually been here on Christmas night as well- and just hadn’t removed his cloak.
He watched the boy sit on the floor in front of the mirror, and smiled, drawing his wand to cancel his invisibility.
He was about to perform the necessary magic when, quite suddenly, there was another boy in the room, stepping up behind Harry.
Draco Malfoy.
“Back again, Harry?” Malfoy asked.
“Wha-!?” Harry asked, whirling around in alarm. “You?” he hissed.
Malfoy nodded. “Me,” he sighed calmly, almost sorrowfully. Harry didn’t move as he sat down next to him and folded his legs. “I trust you’ll forgive my… bullying, I guess? I don’t like it any more than you do, but I am a Malfoy, and Malfoys have appearances to maintain. No matter how hurtful they are to those around them… or to themselves.”
Harry stared at him. “Appearances?” he asked.
He nodded. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay?” he sighed. “We can be… secret friends or something, if you like. Still antagonistic in public, but friends in secret.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Like that’s going to work,” he said.
Draco shrugged. “It’s working well enough with Alastor, and a couple others I won’t name,” he said.
“With-!?” Harry asked.
He nodded. “Yes. I’ve actually been a bit of a source of information for him, just as he has for me.” He sighed. “The point is, I actually quite like you. And, funny story, the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Gryffindor.” He shrugged. “I probably should have let it, in the end.”
Dumbledore leaned forward, studying Malfoy’s back. He was reasonably certain the boy was telling the truth- and that meant the Malfoy the world knew… was merely a persona, not the real person behind it. And when he considered just how much of his plan relied on that persona to continue to be exactly who Draco really was- well, more than half of his plans would have to be reworked… but before that, he would have to discover the true nature of Harry’s archnemesis.
Harry sighed, and stared forwards, into the mirror, for several seconds. “The Hat… wanted to put me in Slytherin,” he muttered slowly. “But I… I asked not to go there.” He sighed. “It was like… ‘you sure? Okay then, better be Gryffindor’.” He looked at Draco.
“It didn’t want to put you in Slytherin,” Draco told him. “If it accepted such a request so readily, it might have been close, so it was having difficulty deciding exactly where you should go. But in the end?” He laughed. “You’d look like a clown in our dungeon. Much too… well, Gryffindorish. And the only reason I don’t is because I hide it.” He shrugged. “I mean seriously. I argued with the Hat for five minutes. It was determined to put me in Gryffindor, but I wouldn’t let it. I couldn’t let it, for no Malfoy can ever be seen in the so-called ‘House of the Blood Traitors’.”
“Blood traitors?” Harry asked, appalled.
He nodded. “A vulgar slang term used by the high-born pureblood supremacists to describe pureblooded wizards that fraternize with muggles. So, like the Weasleys. And there isn’t a single ‘blood traitor’ alive that wasn’t in Gryffindor. The rest just… I don’t know. Maybe they’re afraid of what the nobles will do to them if they do, or maybe they’re just not curious enough to try? And of course all those nobles have always been Slytherins.” He looked forwards, at the Mirror, and sighed. “Except me. My reflection is wearing Gryffindor Quidditch robes.”
Harry looked at the mirror as well. “Which position?” he asked, curiously.
Draco shook his head. “Can’t tell. Damn Quidditch Cup is hiding the badge, and the entire current team- including you- standing behind my reflection doesn’t exactly simplify anything. Maybe a reserve?”
“Me?” Harry asked.
“Well, your other you,” Draco shrugged. “Hailey.” He looked at Harry. “What do you see?”
Dumbledore, his memory jogged by the name, looked at the piece of parchment lying- perfectly visible- on the table next to him, which told how Harry had been turned into a boy named Harry. He had also scrawled “Harry is Hailey” across the bottom on Christmas morning- but it now read “Harry is Harry”, as it had the night before.
“I…” Harry looked into the mirror. “It shows me my parents,” he said. “Though I do indeed look like Hailey.”
“So why don’t you?” Draco asked. “Did your book get lost or something?”
Harry looked at him. “My-! How do you know?”
He shrugged. “I have my ways. But seriously- this Mirror of Erised won’t always show us stuff that is even remotely possible. For example, we both know your family is dead, and that I’m never going to get onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team, no matter how hard I try.” He looked at the mirror. “Though of course it does show me something that’s at least theoretically attainable, but is it really?” He sighed. “So why not seize the chance while you have it, and make it true while you can?”
“Mirror… of Erised?”
He nodded. “Looked it up last night. Do you know what it does? What it shows us all?”
Harry stared into the mirror. “No,” he finally muttered. “It… It seems to be random, so far.”
“If you read the inscription backwards, and judiciously move the spaces around, it reads ‘I show not the truth but your heart’s desire’.” He looked at Harry. “So… According to the literature, the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. Which obviously isn’t all it shows, since it shows such ephemeral things as Hogwarts Quidditch robes and trophies.”
Harry scowled, bunching his Invisibility Cloak up in his hands. “Then why does it only show me my family?”
“And Hailey,” Draco corrected.
He rolled his eyes. “And Hailey, yes.” He whipped himself with the wadded Invisibility Cloak- and in a brilliant flash of white light, he had been replaced by a girl with long, flowing black hair. “But it still only shows my family.”
Dumbledore looked down at his note.
It now told the story of how Harry had been turned into a girl called Hailey… and at the bottom, in his handwriting, it read “Harry is Hailey”. He smiled. So that was what it was.
But then, how did it change the written words? How did it know which ones to change?
“Come to think of it,” Draco muttered, looking at Harry- Hailey’s- cloak. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an invisibility cloak as fine as yours.”
Hailey looked down at it. “It was my father’s,” she said. “No idea who sent it, though.”
“Your father’s?” Draco asked. “Didn’t he die, some ten years ago?”
She nodded silently.
He stared at her. “... Okay then,” he said, slowly. “That cloak is probably actually literally priceless- even the best ones money can buy still have a shelf life of only five years.” He looked at her very seriously. “Don’t tell anyone that it’s that old, okay? Especially in the noble circles. You do not want to be killed in your sleep over your father’s cloak, and I can name at least a dozen people that would gladly do just that to get it if they knew.”
Hailey shuddered. “That’s… Scary,” she decided, then looked up at the mirror. “Where did you even get it, Dad?”
Draco looked as well, and they sat silently for a few seconds. “I’m… curious,” he muttered, eventually. “Does his reflection answer you?”
She shook her head. “Only smiles,” she answered. “They look like they’re all posing for a photograph, albeit with… sometimes differing emotional states. Mom’s usually crying, but it looks like a happy cry.”
Draco let out a small sigh. “I’m sure she’d be happy to see you and what you’ve become,” he told her. He took a deep breath, and let it out. “Now then, we’d probably better be headed to bed before the august personage seated behind us has to chase us there.”
“The-?” Hailey asked, turning to look. She froze. “Professor Dumbledore!” she gasped.
Dumbledore resisted the urge to drop his jaw as he froze still. He was still invisible, right?
Draco twisted around to look at him. “Right, Professor?”
Dumbledore was unfortunately forced to conclude that he must’ve forgotten to maintain his invisibility spell, and had become visible. Just to be sure, he deliberately cancelled it. He smiled. “Mr. Malfoy has taken all my lines,” he told Hailey cheerfully.
Malfoy scowled, confused. “I- Sorry, Professor?”
He chuckled. “You’ve already said just about everything I was planning on telling…” He trailed off as he looked at Hailey, unsure of which name to use. Was this why Minerva had, ever since Hailey had joined the team, always corrected him to ‘Potter’ whenever he said ‘Harry’, and never applied a ‘Mr.’ to the name either? And why she had even used the gender-neutral ‘they’ and ‘them’ pronouns when referring to him? “H… Hailey,” he decided, slowly.
Hailey’s soft, involuntary smile was all it took to tell him he’d chosen correctly.
He tilted his head. “How do you turn back?”
She shrugged. “I go to sleep for a few hours. I wish it was at will- it’d make it much easier to maintain the separation between Harry and Hailey.”
“Ahh. Well, you two should probably know this Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, and I ask you don’t go looking for it. So why don’t you put your father’s admirable cloak back on, or… or whatever you do,” he smiled at Draco, “and head back to bed?”