One thing that Harry thought was very interesting was that, for once in their lives, all three Dursleys seemed to be pleased to see him when he walked through the archway off of Platform Nine and Three Quarters. However, he didn’t walk straight towards them.
The youngest Weasley waved timidly at him, briefly, when he, Ron, and Hermione approached the Weasley family, who were waiting not too far away, before turning back towards the barrier to watch. Harry didn’t remember what her name was.
“Busy year?” Mrs. Weasley asked.
“Very,” Harry answered her promptly. “And thank you for the fudge and sweater.”
She looked at him weird- which reminded him, she had sent them to Harry, and he was thanking her as Hailey- but his Uncle Vernon picked that moment to intervene. “Are you ready, Hailey?” he asked, in far nicer of a tone than Harry had ever heard from him before. It still wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was a far cry from the terror and fury he normally displayed. And, Harry noticed, he was wearing a smile. It looked forced, but Harry had never seen him manage even a forced smile in front of him.
Mrs. Weasley looked up. “You must be her family,” she greeted.
“In a manner of speaking,” Vernon answered her stiffly, though he almost sounded embarrassed. “She’s… Well, she’s our niece, but her parents died, so…” He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he spoke, and shrugged, before turning to Harry. “Meet us at the car?” he asked, gesturing towards the exit, where Harry could see their car parked right up by the entrance.
Harry shrugged as well, then Vernon took his trolley, wheeling it towards the car for him.
Harry watched him go, and turned back towards Ron and Hermione. “See you over the summer, then,” he told them.
“I hope you have, uh… A good holiday,” Hermione muttered.
He chuckled and looked back after Vernon, where he and Dudley were struggling to get his trunk into the trunk while Petunia set Hedwig’s cage in the middle of the back seat. “Honestly, that was shockingly nice,” he told them. Then he shrugged. “But even if they go back to the way they’ve always been, I will be having a good holiday- they don’t know we’re not allowed to use magic at home.” Then he looked down at the youngest Weasley- who wasn’t that much shorter than he was, actually. “Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.
“Harry Potter is coming,” she answered simply, without taking her eyes off the throng of foreigners emerging from the barrier.
Harry looked up at the barrier as well. “Oh, Harry won’t be coming though there,” he told her.
“It’s the only exit from that platform,” Ginny informed him. “He’ll have to.”
Ron glanced at Harry. “Um, Ginny? Hailey’s right. Harry won’t be coming. He… His family, ah, disapparated.”
Ginny looked at him with a calculating expression, studying his face. “You’re messing with me,” she accused, and went back to staring at the barrier.
Harry raised an eyebrow at Ron. “No, he didn’t disapparate,” he told them. “He lives with muggles, remember? But he left the platform some five minutes ago, so he won’t be coming now.”
Ginny groaned. “He must’ve been hidden in the crowd,” she grumbled.
Harry shrugged. “Something like that, yeah,” he told her.
When Harry reached the Dursley’s car, Uncle Vernon held the door for him. Harry, confused, checked for who else he might be holding it for before accepting the offered courtesy. “What… What changed?” he asked, once Vernon had gotten in as well.
All three of them looked at him, then turned silently back forwards as Vernon started the car.
His question went completely unanswered.
Harry jumped awake at the sound of a knock on his bedroom door. A quick glance at his alarm clock told him it was one in the morning- which, he glanced down to verify, wasn’t long enough for him to revert to his male form. It took five hours of sleep for that to happen, according to the ‘sleep studies’ he’d done with Hermione fairly early in the year, and he hadn’t gotten to sleep until ten.
Which meant that he got to wake up as a girl for the third time in a row- which was also the third time ever. He was wearing his pajamas- specifically, the ones Hermione had helped him find and owl-order before Christmas, that would fit him decently in either form without discomfort. He sat up, and looked towards the door.
Whoever it was, they knocked again. It sounded tentative.
He slid his blankets off and hopped out of bed to open the door.
It was Aunt Petunia… looking very vulnerable and clutching a pillow. “H-Hailey?” she asked, very softly, and timidly- but also relieved at the same time.
Harry pulled the door wide, bewildered by her extremely uncharacteristic appearance. “Is- Is something wrong?” he asked, keeping his voice down as well. “Did something happen?”
Petunia didn’t answer, instead stepping forward and hugging him desperately.
Vernon Dursley took a deep breath, knocked, and entered Harry’s bedroom. As he did, Hailey looked up, from where she’d been doing something at her desk- doodling, perhaps?- and he let out a small sigh of relief.
It was almost a full week after the girl had come home from Hogwarts- but he had found his wife in this room, desperately hugging Hailey while she slept, six times already. And on not one but two of those times, including the morning before but not that morning, he’d glanced back as they left in time to see Hailey melting back into Harry in her sleep… and, both times, felt a sudden, inexplicable rush of irrational fear and rage wash over him. Both times, he had refused to let on to his wife what had happened- and despite knowing it was irrational, that it wasn’t like him to do so, he’d been forced to give in to the rage; it took just over a full day to fade.
He wordlessly strode over to the witch’s owl, inserted his key into the padlock, and removed it from the cage. Finally, he stepped back, let out a much deeper sigh of frustration, and turned to look at her. The owl- he didn’t remember its name- watched him tiredly.
She was watching him apprehensively, though there was more than a little bit of confusion in her expression as well.
“H-Hailey,” he began, while he tried to decide how to go on.
She nodded her head politely, in a gesture for him to go on.
He filled his lungs, changed his mind, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind again, and let it out in a sigh.
“I worry Petunia might snap if she sees me change,” Hailey muttered, seeming to understand his difficulty. She looked up at him. “She… She hasn’t, has she?”
He shook his head. “No, she hasn’t. But I have.”
She winced. He wasn’t sure if it was at his tone or something else.
He let the silence stand for almost two seconds before he broke it. “How do you do it?”
“I don’t,” she told him simply. “Something to the face- only works if I’m the one swinging it- makes…” She gestured downwards, at herself. “But it only takes five hours sleep to…” She sighed. “To fall back, for lack of a better term.”
“Why do you do it?”
She looked up at him. “Why?” she asked. “Because everyone seems to like it. Except Dudley, but even he…” She trailed off, scowling at her desk.
Vernon wanted to smile at her comment, but he was far too tormented inside. It was true, Dudley was afraid of girls, of all shapes and sizes, that were in the same age range as he. But even so, Dudley had confided in him at least three times over the last week, he vastly prefered Hailey- despite being deathly afraid of her- over Harry, who he liked to punch. He hadn’t been able to explain it- but Vernon had understood. It was the same reason he preferred Hailey, despite being eternally nervous around her, over Harry, who he ordered around and abused almost habitually.
“Then don’t,” he told her simply- even though he knew he was going to hate himself for saying this. “Don’t do it just because we like it. We’ll live.”
She looked up at him, amusement flitting across her face. “But I prefer Hailey too,” she said.
He stared. “You’re… You’re joking,” he accused.
She shook her head. “If I could make it permanent, I would,” she told him. “I much prefer being Hailey. Doesn’t exactly hurt that she’s not nearly as famous as Harry, either.”
“As famous?” he repeated, surprised.
She nodded. “I’m… something of a prodigy, I guess. And one of the best Quidditch players anyone’s seen in a long time.” She sighed. “But that’s still better than being famous for getting attacked by a mass murderer.”
He let out a small snort of laughter in spite of himself, at her derisive reference to Harry’s fame. Then he paused, and voiced the question her answers had created- even though he knew it would make him sound judgemental, but he had to know. “Are you… transgender, then?”
She tilted her head curiously. “What is… ‘transgender’?”
“Where’s Dobby at?” Lucius Malfoy asked suddenly.
“Donno,” Draco told his father. “He’s seemed… I don’t know. Detatched, somehow, for the last week or so- but I wasn’t going to make him explain unless he messed something up, which he hasn’t yet.” He shrugged. “And he still appears when you call for him, right?”
Lucius scowled. “Yes… but I’m used to seeing him around the house quite a bit more than this. Especially while you were at Hogwarts.” He sighed, then looked at Draco. “So, how’s your little… project going?”
Draco sighed as well. “Failure, so far,” he said. He knew his father was asking about his attempts to get the Malfoy Family Form Spell to turn him into a girl, even temporarily. He had successfully coaxed it into giving him things he didn’t have- but anything beyond scaling and strengthening caused the safety interlocks to kick in. “I can’t get it to use the rest of my body as a reference, so it keeps puking on the changes.”
Lucius sighed. “Good luck, Draco.”
He let out a laugh, but it was a hollow laugh. “Yeah, I’m going to need it, won’t I?” He tilted his head. “Do you think some Felix Felicis might do the trick?”
Lucius scowled. “I don’t know that luck is what you’re missing, though.”
“Hey Mom?”
Emma Granger raised an eyebrow at her daughter, who had just paused in the middle of explaining the adventure she’d had at the end of the year. “Yes, Hermione?”
“There… In that chamber, there was the Mirror of Erised- which shows you your heart’s desire rather than your actual reflection.” She looked up.
“What did you see in it?” Emma asked, keeping her tone light, even as she dreaded the answer.
“I made it a point not to look,” she muttered. “But Draco saw a girl in it.” She tilted her head. “What might that mean?”
“Was she, perhaps, his girlfriend?”
She shook her head. “No. He said that that mirror was the first time he’d ever seen her- or, even, heard of her.”
She shrugged. “Is he trans as well?”
Hermione paused. Before she had launched into the explanation, she’d asked about her close friend Hailey- and Emma had gladly explained the entire LGBTQ community to her. “I… That’s a good question, actually.” She looked up. “I don’t know.”