Promises and Lies

Harri woke slowly one early Sunday morning, after dreaming happily for once, to find herself back in the Dursley's cramped, little box room. Estimating by the shadows on the wall that it was around six or seven in the morning, Harri sighed and began to get up. She been waking up in this place for the last two weeks and could already feel her spirit leaving her. Her second year at Hogwarts had ended on high. The petrified students were cured, Ginny was saved and Lockhart couldn't even remember his own name, let alone teach for another year. In the privacy of their dorm and away from the disapproving gaze of Hermione, Harri and the boys had a small celebratory party that was supplied by a very joyful Dobby, in part for Ron and Harri saving the school, but mostly for Lockhart's impending stay at Mungo's. However, with a heavy heart, Harri had told her friends not to write to her within the first month of their summer holidays, expecting the elder Dursley's to still be bubbling about her escape last year. While she was right to do so, as Vernon had been glaring at her with barely suppressed rage and disgust since she came home, she still regretted telling friends not to write. The lack of favourable human, if not wizarding, contact was beginning to drive her demented and was slowly making her more depressed as the days wore on.

Shrugging on her clothes, Harri was about to slip quietly downstairs and begin breakfast when something caught her eye in the mirror. Turning to see herself properly she gazed at the shape of her body in the mirror and gave a slight frown. There was something wrong with the way she looked but she couldn't put her finger on it. She looked healthier than any other time she had spent at the Dursley's, due to Dobby providing her three meals a day in spite of her relatives attempts to deny her food. Dobby had explained that her friends had privately asked him to look after her while they were away from Hogwarts. He had also passionately stated that, while he was working at Hogwarts, mentioning in a reverent tone that he was being paid, he was loyal only to the "young mistress Harri Potter". She soon gave up worrying when it became evident that Dobby was not going to stop or get her in trouble any time soon, so she simply started thanking him for her meals and instructing him to be as quiet as possible, all with a small, fond smile on her face.

Ignoring her wandering thoughts, Harri continued to inspect her reflection, searching for an answer that her instincts were screaming at her to find. Her emerald eyes finally widened in horror when she realised that her gigantic, thread bare t-shirt which still hung off her shoulders, wasn't creased in the right places. While flat and loose on the upper chest, there was a near noticeable space beneath that was not as flat as a "normal" boy's was. Fearful eyes franticly scanned the rest of her upper body, looking for any other evidence to show that she was anything but a boy. Her fear doubled when she saw her t-shirt wasn't falling as straight as it normally did, instead choosing bunch up around her hips and give an exaggerated illusion of curves. In a desperate attempt to fix it, Harri pulled the material down over her jeans properly and covered her chest with her arms by bending them into a tight praying position. Then she tried crossing her arms over and under her slowly maturing chest. The beginnings of tears began to sting her eyes as she found that each position only seemed to make her predicament worse, the last one even going so far as to draw attention to her admittedly small chest. Harri was not stupid, whatever Draco Malfoy would like to believe. Her intelligence was greatly improved by her desire to survive. It was after all one of the reasons the Sorting Hat would've liked to put her in Slytherin, had she actually been a boy. Unlike most other pre-teens, Harri was very much a realist and she knew logically that her two male relatives wouldn't notice anything amiss at the moment as the changes to her body were, quite honestly, very small. However, as a realist, Harri knew that if she could notice them now out of the corner of her eye, it would only be a matter of time before others began to notice as well.

In a final attempt to help the situation, Harri grabbed another cast off. Fearfully hoping it would work, she pulled on the zip up hoodie and checked the mirror again. While the hoodie seemed to hide her growing hips, it did nothing to hide her chest. Biting her lip, Harri debated zipping it up, knowing it would fix her problem temporarily, but also create a new one as it wasn't actually cold enough to need a cardigan or a jumper, never mind to zip one up.

Her indecision did not help the stinging in her eyes, so sat on her bed and took a couple of deep breaths to calm her frazzled emotions. She had given up on crying when she was small and was not going to get into the habit of it again no matter what her hormones wanted her to do. All movement froze however when she heard footsteps in the hall and took little to no comfort from the fact that they were her aunt's footsteps. The footsteps paused momentarily outside her door before continuing on down the hall to the stairs. Harri waited two minutes to see if her uncle would make an appearance, before rising slowly and following her aunt to the kitchen.

Harri hesitated in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her aunt make her cup of tea. Quietly shuffling into the room, she gripped the countertop for support and caught her elder's attention with a soft; "Aunt Petunia?"

The elder woman glanced at her sharply, but continued to make her tea. There was silence as Petunia finished going through the motions and finally turned to face her niece with a cup of tea in hand. She gave a stiff nod to show she was listening. Harri nervously licked her lips and tightly gripped the end of her t-shirt, inadvertently stretching the material. Petunia's eyes narrowed at the action and slowly put down her teacup. Harri looked down and seeing what she had done hastily released her grip. The damage had been done, however and when Harri looked up through her fringe at her aunt, the woman was looking at her with a blank, unreadable look on her face, silently waiting for an explanation. Looking down again, Harri wished, not for the first time, that she really had been born a boy.

"I can't hide them, Aunt Petunia," she whispered mournfully.

She looked up at the sound of her aunt's sigh to see her eyes closed in defeat. Harri watched cautiously as her aunt's hands curled into fists at her sides. There was another moment of tense silence before Petunia released another defeated sigh and relaxed her fisted hands.

"Let me get my coat and keys" was all she said before leaving Harri alone in the kitchen.

Moments later the pair were driving into London, the radio making the only sound you could hear in the car. They found a parking space easily enough and Petunia began to lead her niece through the cubby holes and backstreet alleys of London at a pace that had Harri jogging to keep up with her and clearly indicated Petunia wanted to get home before either Vernon or Dudley woke up. It occurred to Harri, as the pair stepped into a colourful looking costume shop, that her aunt must have been expecting this and thinking about it for a while. Marching straight up to the cashier at the till, Petunia explained that her niece had been chosen for a very serious part in a play where her character was one of the male leads. As such there could be no indication of her gender while on stage. Petunia also mentioned that Harri was a very serious actress and wanted to get a feel for the role by constantly being in character. The cashier, while surprised, quickly selected several comfortable chest wraps and took Harri behind a screen to show her how to secure it properly. As Harri gazed into yet another mirror examining her now slightly thickened but very obviously flat chest, she wondered at her aunt's ability to lie when she needed to. Of course, she wasn't really surprised by her aunt's ability to lie. Not only had her aunt lied to her for a solid ten years about her parent's death, but it was also from her aunt that Harri had learned her own skills at lying. Harri simply wondered if lying came as easily to Petunia as it did to herself.

Within minutes, their purchases were in bags and the pair were on their way back to the car. The drive home was infinitely more uncomfortable than the drive into London, purely because within minutes of leaving the parking space Petunia had turned the radio off with a huff of annoyance at the presenter's cheerful demeanour. Just as they were pulling into Privet Drive, Harri felt the urge to say something.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia".

Her aunt said nothing as she pulled into number four. Harri looked down and waited a moment after the car had stopped before moving to get out.

"Harriet".

Harri turned to face her aunt, surprised by the use of her full name. She froze in apprehension when her aunt caught her chin so she could look directly into her eyes. The longer Petunia looked into her niece's eyes the more defeated and down trodden she seemed to become. She closed her eyes and sighed for the third time that morning. When she opened her eyes again they were steeled for what she was about to say. Releasing Harri's chin, Petunia began to speak.

"I'll be honest and blunt, I truly dislike you. You know this and I won't deny it. My reasons for disliking you are personal, but, to put it simply, you represent everything my sister had that I didn't. I think I may go so far as to say I hate you for that, but I won't dwell on that. It is petty and immature, but frankly I don't care and I won't change for your sake, especially since I believe it's better for each of us in the long run to stay this way. However, as much as I dislike you, I would not subject you to Vernon's idea of punishment if he found out you were a girl, as I've already told you in the past. I'd like to think my husband wouldn't do that and that he and Dudley would know better, but the fact of the matter is, I don't know and frankly that isn't good enough. I'm not sorry that you're pretending to be a boy because, quite simply, it will be easier for all of us to cut ties when you become a woman and you will. There's no question. The truth cannot be hidden forever. So, while you stay with my family, you will hide your gender and when you turn seventeen, you will leave my house and never come back. Do you understand?" Petunia asked firmly, looking into Harri's eyes. It was all Harri could do to nod, but it seemed Petunia wasn't finished. Petunia's eye's softened and her shoulders slumped.

"Harriet, when you turn seventeen, I want you to become a beautiful young woman like your mother. I want you to live a long and happy life and I want to never see or hear from you again after that, so I can live my happy life. I want you to never call or write or visit, so that when you turn seventeen, when you leave, I can pretend that my niece died with my sister. I can pretend that I fostered some horrible little runt of a boy, who deserved all the horrible things he received from my family. I can pretend that I didn't make my own flesh and blood miserable," Petunia looked to be on the verge of tears as she explained all that she wanted to happen in the future. She looked away to compose herself and Harri took the chance to look away. Gazing down at her hands which were clutching her newest secret, she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that, while her aunt seemed to regret treating her niece as she did, she really just wanted to pretend that Harri had died with her parents.

"Harriet, promise me one thing and nothing else," her aunt said suddenly, still looking out the front window of the car. Harri regarded her aunt cautiously and with suspicion, not knowing what she could possibly want or be thinking after sharing what she did. When her aunt turned to look at her however, Harri knew she would do this one thing her aunt asked, simply because of the myriad of emotions she displayed in her eyes and face.

"Promise me, when you turn seventeen, you'll become a beautiful young woman and enjoy every minute of your life from then on."

It wasn't a question, but it was said with such hope that it may as well have been. Harri looked at her blankly but found no real reason to deny her this request.

"I promise."

And though Harri knew, as the realist she was, that it wouldn't be either that simple nor that easy, she knew she would try. The years of pretending to be a boy would simply be forgotten at the flick of a switch, but she would try not only for her aunt's promise, but also for her own sake. Because her aunt was right, the truth could not be hidden forever and she would have to accept that. Harri was comforted by the reminder that she had time to prepare. Time to ready herself for the change, time to organise herself for living on her own and also time to learn how to defend herself. Her aunt may have forgotten but it didn't slip Harri's mind that she would always have her aunt to protect her from her uncle and cousin. She wouldn't always have her dorm mates to protect her from Malfoy and she most certainly wouldn't always be in the wizarding world nor have her wand.

So, as the two women, one old, one young, entered number four to the relieving sound of rumbling snoring, Harri made another promise. Hiding her new chest wraps in her trunk, she promised to begin learning everything she needed to know from how to be a girl, to how to defend herself. Even when she blew up her insufferable "Aunt" Marge and promptly ran away in the weeks following, she never forgot her promise to herself. Though she did admit, as she sat on the cold curb beside her trunk, she was probably going to need more than a little help from Hermione.

I've been in bad shape for the last couple of days, so without any academic assignments to do, I decided to type this up. That said, do let me know if you see anything grammatically wrong with it, because I have just typed it up and shipped it out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just continue to type out my wandering thoughts. Hope you enjoyed it!