Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Unlikely
The Girl Who Flipped Out
2 reviewsHarry is in Ravenclaw. Harry is in Hufflepuff. Voldemort is many, Riddle is triumphant. There are more worlds than one, my friend, more histories that could have been, and two of them are about to ...
1Predictable
A/N Okay... So here's how it's going. This... is definitely not my best work. I'm a little more than halfway through this and there are a number of things that are bugging the crap out of me. About the biggest one is that I underestimated chapter lengths in the outline, which made me cut out some material in places and still usually left me with longer chapters than were optimal (and definitely not chapters that were going to be consistent in length). It also left the chapters leaning more to the infodump-y side of things in some cases. I'd like to blame getting the stomach flu for this but... No (it may have made a few things worse, but it definitely isn't the sole reason for the stuff that's irritating me).
Unfortunately, I just don't have the energy to go back and give this thing a complete overhaul. I barely have what it takes to get through and finish this up, so I thought that what I'd do is put this before my loyal readers and leave it up to them. Read this through, tell yourself that this is about the level of the writing, give or take a star, and then tell me if you want to read another nineteen chapters. You've got till the 31st.
Chapter one: The Girl Who Flipped Out
April 6th, 1997
"Shit."
Her eyes were open, but Harry wasn't really seeing. She wasn't comprehending. Her brain was receiving information of a visual nature but wasn't doing a blessed thing about it.
This was because her brain was a little more caught up in the waves of nausea rolling over her body. It was as if, any moment now, she was going to start vomiting. But that moment never came, not even long after she reached the point where sicking up would have been a mercy if only it could have relieved this feeling that had sunk into her bones.
"Harry?" someone said, and she suddenly became aware that they had been speaking to her for a couple of minutes now.
"Fine," she muttered. "Go to sleep." And then she paused, because she started to process something. She whipped her head in the direction of the voice. There was a figure her, around her age, with a lumos-litten wand. That was alright. That was as fine as she was pretending to be.
But it was a boy.
Her wand went out to match his, leveled on him in an Austrian halfway-grip stance. "You. What're you doing?" She gagged. "Here."
"Harry?"
Another male voice, this one from another direction. Harry spun out of her bed, executing a move that she had performed flawlessly a thousand times before for situations where she had been caught prone. It looked like the Headmaster had sent another nighttime ambush for her. And was this sickness the result of a potion slipped to her in her nightly pumpkin juice, meant to simulate a general physical disadvantage?
Well, it had been about time to take it up to the next level.
But all that practice had done her little good, it seemed, because she wound up flat on her face. Her timing or her movements had been just a hair off or something, and all she had to show for her practice was a dull ache in the arm that she had landed on.
She swore again, and then she really finally threw up.
"Sorry Headmaster," she muttered.
She turned over slowly. It was uncharacteristic for them to be giving her a breather like this but whether this was in the plans for tonight or they were too spineless to attack her, she was going to take the opportunity.
The first thing that she really saw was all of the blue. It was a little hard to tell at first, but more students had woken up and flashed their wands on since she took her fall, and her eyes were starting to adjust.
That wasn't right. Blue. Not that there was anything wrong with it, she supposed, on some inherent level, but…
Well, okay, so she had been abducted. And placed here. Evidently given a potion or been enchanted or something of the sort, unless she had just simply had the bad luck to drink some spoiled milk or something the day before some unscheduled wit-sharpening exercises. And the other students, who were all talking amongst themselves, definitely sounded male to the last one of them.
So why had she been put in the Ravenclaw boys' dorm in her sleep? What kind of messy training experience was the Headmaster hoping to get out of this?
Sometimes she wondered if he was just messing with her half the time.
Harry stood, but the quick movement that she attempted was so awkward that she almost fell down again. She grabbed her bed with one hand for balance and pointed her wand at the nearest boy.
Sixth years, they looked like. Well alright then. But why was Boot here?
If the Headmaster wanted her disoriented then he had done a bang-up job.
"Professor Malfoy," she says as calmly as she can. "I want to talk to Professor Malfoy right now, boys."
The idiots just stared at her.
"Get your head of house right now!" she shouted. She nearly fell again as she started to gag again. "I want to see Malfoy right this instant."
It was another moment before anybody responded, but then one of them— she didn't recognize him, but Harry didn't fraternize with the Ravenclaws very much so that was to be expected— slowly raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Head of house?" he said, almost as if he was unsure what she was saying. "We can do that. Come on, Harry."
She kept her wand leveled as they left the dorm, and she reflected on how, well, how blue everything was. Even Hufflepuff didn't stick to its house colors so obstinately, but then again she didn't imagine that yellow had as many interesting shades to work with as blue evidently did.
It was a little hard to walk, as if all her proportions had been messed up. It just all felt so wrong. And in the back of her mind there was something that was tying it together, but she told it to shut up and keep its conclusions to itself. She didn't need to have any other eggshells thrown on her while she was still cleaning up the yolk from the last barrage.
But she had a bad feeling that she was going to develop an aversion to polyjuice as soon as she had a chance to check the equipment downstairs. She was also going to hold an extreme annoyance with the Headmaster. Harry would have thought some things off-limits. But that had probably been silly of her, she admitted to herself.
Harry dismissed the other student as soon as they came to Malfoy's door. She hoped that he wouldn't mind being woken in the middle of the night but dammit, she was going to make use of all the tools at her disposal and if he didn't like that then he could take it to the Headmaster.
The door opened as soon as she knocked and she half-walked, half-stumbled past the threshold into the professor's front room. "Professor Malfoy, s-sorry to wake you," she said as she shut the door behind her.
No reason to leave her back open.
"Not at all," he said sleepily from behind his bedroom door. He sounded strange for some reason, but she saw why as soon as the door opened. It wasn't Malfoy at all.
"Filius!" Well, that was a surprise. And by the look on his face, he was surprised too. Not that he didn't deserve to be. Harry doubted that he had expected to be woken at this time of night. "Is there something wrong with my Gringotts account?" She paused. "I-I mean, Professor Malfoy's? Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I'm the only person you manage accounts…"
She shut up for a minute and looked him over.
He was wearing night clothes.
"Oh my God," she moaned. "I…" A look of horror struck her face. "N-not that there's anything wrong with that of course." She gave an awkward chuckle. "Just… I didn't need to know. Things students don't need to know about their professors, right? Ha ha…" She sunk to the ground and stared at her knees. "Oh my God, I'm never going to pass History of Magic again…"
She felt Filius' hand on her shoulder. "It's quite alright, my dear. I'm sure that… your History of Magic professor won't take this personally. In fact, I'm sure that he won't ever find out. Our little secret, alright?"
Harry looked up at him and took his proffered hand to stand again. "Thank you, Filius. They should really give you a raise. I'll… tell them I'll withdraw my account if they don't. Yeah."
The door opened again and she resisted the urge to turn so quickly that she would fall down again. Filius had her back enough that she could take it slowly.
She didn't recognize the sneering, beak-nosed man standing in the doorway.
"Professor Flitwick?" he said, after he had looked back and forth between her and Filius.
It took a second for the words to process but then she stared at Filius too. "Professor Flitwick? But… Did you change jobs? But how did you…"
Filius hushed her as he guided her to a couch and helped her sit down.
"This is Headmaster Snape," he said. He looked amused at the scowl she adopted at the title. He looked at the man. "It seems that I am an employee of Gringotts in another universe."
"Indeed?"
"Can you do anything but ask questions?" Harry said.
"If I were to say that Severus Snape was the Headmaster of Hogwarts," said Filius, "that I was the Charms Professor and had been since before you were born, and that there had never been a Professor Malfoy, of History of Magic or any other class, since 1756, you would not think that this was business as usual. Am I correct?"
She nodded, and Filius continued. "We can give you a more detailed explanation later, complete with diagrams, but imagine for the moment that there were a vast number of worlds, some similar to each other and others very different. A world where I was Charms Professor, and another where I… work for Gringotts, it seems." He still looked incredibly amused at the prospect, and his casual delight was a little infectious and calming for Harry.
"And I somehow went from one to the other?" It was all horribly outside of her experience, but she could connect dots quickly enough and it was at least as plausible as any other explanation that presented itself.
"Our Harry was working on a method to pluck information from doubles like you that lived in other worlds. I don't know what's happening in your world but we're fighting a war over here, and he was looking for worlds where that war had been won so that we could apply their experiences to our situation. Instead of learning what you knew, it looks like your minds were switched. Or…" He paused, and looked troubled. "Or that your mind totally overwrote his and that, rather than inhabiting your body in the other universe, he's as good as dead."
"He?" she questioned.
"He," Filius confirmed. "You're not, I take it."
"Oh." She shook her head and resisted the urge to confirm the revelation. "Well," she said a beat later. "How do we fix this?"
"We're not sure," Filius said. "Our Harry didn't share all of his research with us. We'll need to go over his notes to figure out where he was before we can discover what went wrong. We can conduct some tests to try to how the process affected you to begin with— that is, if our Harry still exists— and go from there."
Harry let this wash over her. "Okay. I can handle that. I hope that there was a switch," she said. "Not just because, you know, I hope that I didn't kill your Harry. But if he's in my world then there's probably a conversation like this one happening over there, and that's probably the best thing that we could have going for us. I mean, I don't want to insult you, but… Headmaster Riddle, he's probably the greatest sorcerer in any world."
Filius and Snape looked like somebody had killed their cerberus.
"What's wrong?"
Unfortunately, I just don't have the energy to go back and give this thing a complete overhaul. I barely have what it takes to get through and finish this up, so I thought that what I'd do is put this before my loyal readers and leave it up to them. Read this through, tell yourself that this is about the level of the writing, give or take a star, and then tell me if you want to read another nineteen chapters. You've got till the 31st.
Chapter one: The Girl Who Flipped Out
April 6th, 1997
"Shit."
Her eyes were open, but Harry wasn't really seeing. She wasn't comprehending. Her brain was receiving information of a visual nature but wasn't doing a blessed thing about it.
This was because her brain was a little more caught up in the waves of nausea rolling over her body. It was as if, any moment now, she was going to start vomiting. But that moment never came, not even long after she reached the point where sicking up would have been a mercy if only it could have relieved this feeling that had sunk into her bones.
"Harry?" someone said, and she suddenly became aware that they had been speaking to her for a couple of minutes now.
"Fine," she muttered. "Go to sleep." And then she paused, because she started to process something. She whipped her head in the direction of the voice. There was a figure her, around her age, with a lumos-litten wand. That was alright. That was as fine as she was pretending to be.
But it was a boy.
Her wand went out to match his, leveled on him in an Austrian halfway-grip stance. "You. What're you doing?" She gagged. "Here."
"Harry?"
Another male voice, this one from another direction. Harry spun out of her bed, executing a move that she had performed flawlessly a thousand times before for situations where she had been caught prone. It looked like the Headmaster had sent another nighttime ambush for her. And was this sickness the result of a potion slipped to her in her nightly pumpkin juice, meant to simulate a general physical disadvantage?
Well, it had been about time to take it up to the next level.
But all that practice had done her little good, it seemed, because she wound up flat on her face. Her timing or her movements had been just a hair off or something, and all she had to show for her practice was a dull ache in the arm that she had landed on.
She swore again, and then she really finally threw up.
"Sorry Headmaster," she muttered.
She turned over slowly. It was uncharacteristic for them to be giving her a breather like this but whether this was in the plans for tonight or they were too spineless to attack her, she was going to take the opportunity.
The first thing that she really saw was all of the blue. It was a little hard to tell at first, but more students had woken up and flashed their wands on since she took her fall, and her eyes were starting to adjust.
That wasn't right. Blue. Not that there was anything wrong with it, she supposed, on some inherent level, but…
Well, okay, so she had been abducted. And placed here. Evidently given a potion or been enchanted or something of the sort, unless she had just simply had the bad luck to drink some spoiled milk or something the day before some unscheduled wit-sharpening exercises. And the other students, who were all talking amongst themselves, definitely sounded male to the last one of them.
So why had she been put in the Ravenclaw boys' dorm in her sleep? What kind of messy training experience was the Headmaster hoping to get out of this?
Sometimes she wondered if he was just messing with her half the time.
Harry stood, but the quick movement that she attempted was so awkward that she almost fell down again. She grabbed her bed with one hand for balance and pointed her wand at the nearest boy.
Sixth years, they looked like. Well alright then. But why was Boot here?
If the Headmaster wanted her disoriented then he had done a bang-up job.
"Professor Malfoy," she says as calmly as she can. "I want to talk to Professor Malfoy right now, boys."
The idiots just stared at her.
"Get your head of house right now!" she shouted. She nearly fell again as she started to gag again. "I want to see Malfoy right this instant."
It was another moment before anybody responded, but then one of them— she didn't recognize him, but Harry didn't fraternize with the Ravenclaws very much so that was to be expected— slowly raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Head of house?" he said, almost as if he was unsure what she was saying. "We can do that. Come on, Harry."
She kept her wand leveled as they left the dorm, and she reflected on how, well, how blue everything was. Even Hufflepuff didn't stick to its house colors so obstinately, but then again she didn't imagine that yellow had as many interesting shades to work with as blue evidently did.
It was a little hard to walk, as if all her proportions had been messed up. It just all felt so wrong. And in the back of her mind there was something that was tying it together, but she told it to shut up and keep its conclusions to itself. She didn't need to have any other eggshells thrown on her while she was still cleaning up the yolk from the last barrage.
But she had a bad feeling that she was going to develop an aversion to polyjuice as soon as she had a chance to check the equipment downstairs. She was also going to hold an extreme annoyance with the Headmaster. Harry would have thought some things off-limits. But that had probably been silly of her, she admitted to herself.
Harry dismissed the other student as soon as they came to Malfoy's door. She hoped that he wouldn't mind being woken in the middle of the night but dammit, she was going to make use of all the tools at her disposal and if he didn't like that then he could take it to the Headmaster.
The door opened as soon as she knocked and she half-walked, half-stumbled past the threshold into the professor's front room. "Professor Malfoy, s-sorry to wake you," she said as she shut the door behind her.
No reason to leave her back open.
"Not at all," he said sleepily from behind his bedroom door. He sounded strange for some reason, but she saw why as soon as the door opened. It wasn't Malfoy at all.
"Filius!" Well, that was a surprise. And by the look on his face, he was surprised too. Not that he didn't deserve to be. Harry doubted that he had expected to be woken at this time of night. "Is there something wrong with my Gringotts account?" She paused. "I-I mean, Professor Malfoy's? Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I'm the only person you manage accounts…"
She shut up for a minute and looked him over.
He was wearing night clothes.
"Oh my God," she moaned. "I…" A look of horror struck her face. "N-not that there's anything wrong with that of course." She gave an awkward chuckle. "Just… I didn't need to know. Things students don't need to know about their professors, right? Ha ha…" She sunk to the ground and stared at her knees. "Oh my God, I'm never going to pass History of Magic again…"
She felt Filius' hand on her shoulder. "It's quite alright, my dear. I'm sure that… your History of Magic professor won't take this personally. In fact, I'm sure that he won't ever find out. Our little secret, alright?"
Harry looked up at him and took his proffered hand to stand again. "Thank you, Filius. They should really give you a raise. I'll… tell them I'll withdraw my account if they don't. Yeah."
The door opened again and she resisted the urge to turn so quickly that she would fall down again. Filius had her back enough that she could take it slowly.
She didn't recognize the sneering, beak-nosed man standing in the doorway.
"Professor Flitwick?" he said, after he had looked back and forth between her and Filius.
It took a second for the words to process but then she stared at Filius too. "Professor Flitwick? But… Did you change jobs? But how did you…"
Filius hushed her as he guided her to a couch and helped her sit down.
"This is Headmaster Snape," he said. He looked amused at the scowl she adopted at the title. He looked at the man. "It seems that I am an employee of Gringotts in another universe."
"Indeed?"
"Can you do anything but ask questions?" Harry said.
"If I were to say that Severus Snape was the Headmaster of Hogwarts," said Filius, "that I was the Charms Professor and had been since before you were born, and that there had never been a Professor Malfoy, of History of Magic or any other class, since 1756, you would not think that this was business as usual. Am I correct?"
She nodded, and Filius continued. "We can give you a more detailed explanation later, complete with diagrams, but imagine for the moment that there were a vast number of worlds, some similar to each other and others very different. A world where I was Charms Professor, and another where I… work for Gringotts, it seems." He still looked incredibly amused at the prospect, and his casual delight was a little infectious and calming for Harry.
"And I somehow went from one to the other?" It was all horribly outside of her experience, but she could connect dots quickly enough and it was at least as plausible as any other explanation that presented itself.
"Our Harry was working on a method to pluck information from doubles like you that lived in other worlds. I don't know what's happening in your world but we're fighting a war over here, and he was looking for worlds where that war had been won so that we could apply their experiences to our situation. Instead of learning what you knew, it looks like your minds were switched. Or…" He paused, and looked troubled. "Or that your mind totally overwrote his and that, rather than inhabiting your body in the other universe, he's as good as dead."
"He?" she questioned.
"He," Filius confirmed. "You're not, I take it."
"Oh." She shook her head and resisted the urge to confirm the revelation. "Well," she said a beat later. "How do we fix this?"
"We're not sure," Filius said. "Our Harry didn't share all of his research with us. We'll need to go over his notes to figure out where he was before we can discover what went wrong. We can conduct some tests to try to how the process affected you to begin with— that is, if our Harry still exists— and go from there."
Harry let this wash over her. "Okay. I can handle that. I hope that there was a switch," she said. "Not just because, you know, I hope that I didn't kill your Harry. But if he's in my world then there's probably a conversation like this one happening over there, and that's probably the best thing that we could have going for us. I mean, I don't want to insult you, but… Headmaster Riddle, he's probably the greatest sorcerer in any world."
Filius and Snape looked like somebody had killed their cerberus.
"What's wrong?"
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