Full Summary: Harriet Potter was twelve when she uncovered the child's skull buried in her Aunt Petunia's garden in a sick twist of fate. It was safe to say her life hadn't been the same since when, upon closer inspection, Severus Snape discovered the skull belonged to Harriet Potter, who had died at age two. Plots, purebloods, and prophecies abound in a world where, on a stroke of luck, a Potter isn't there to fight the good fight. Only a misplaced Malfoy who, really, never suited red and gold as much as she did silver and green. Strong AU. Malfoy-Centric.

Pairings: Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Malfoy. Draco Malfoy/Astoria Greengrass. Bellatrix Lestrange/Rodolphus Lestrange. EVENTUAL Fem!Harry/Rabastan Lestrange. (Nothing romantic at all happens until Harriet is of age).

Harriet Potter's fate shifted with the echo of a clink.

It was a typical Saturday in the Dursley household, during the sweltering month of August that saw a heatwave searing the tarmac roads of Little Whinging. The perfect time to plant pink Primula blooms. Or, in Petunia Dursley's case, the perfect time of year to let her niece out of her cupboard, herd her into the back garden, dump a trowel and a tray of sprouts into her young hands, and demand the task be done by noon.

Harriet didn't mind.

She adored gardening. The crisp scent of spun soil. The errant buzz of an inquisitive bumblebee. The feel of plump leaves brushing the tender skin on the inside of her wrist. Yes, there were, she decided at only twelve, worse ways to spend a Saturday. Worse ways she had spent her Saturdays before. At least she saw daylight that morning, managed to get a lungful of air that wasn't tainted with damp and mould, far away from the oil of the frying pan that sputtered and popped and burned her arms, and felt the glorious rays of sunlight warm her fragile bones.

The trowel made a scoffing sound as it upturned the dirt. A slip, a skid, and a sharp shuck.

If she was quiet, so very quiet, Petunia might forget she was out there.

Petunia may just forget Harriet existed at all.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Perhaps she could live out here, between the violets and pansies.

Drink rainwater and use the old oak by the shed for shade and bed.

Hyacinths couldn't yell at you.

Daisy's couldn't pinch your arms if you accidentally mixed the colours in the laundry and turned Vernon's shirt pink.

Yarrow couldn't hit you up the head if you burnt the morning toast.

And Pineapple Lilies couldn't shove you back into your cupboard when you unwittingly planted the Primula blooms in the small patch of land by the fence, rather than underneath the window as Aunt Petunia had told Harriet to do that day.

Shuck. Shuck. Shuck.

It was too late now, at any rate. Harriet had already planted seven of the sprouts by the time she realised her mistake. Moreover, the Primula blooms would do better with direct sunlight, or so she read on the peeling label of the plastic flower pots. Petunia's rather adamant insisting that nothing be planted by that fence was nonsense.

Utter nonsense.

Why plant the Primula anywhere else when they would only wither and wilt?

Why keep a niece you loathed the very sight of?

Adults were confusing creatures to Harriet. Almost a breed of their own, none more so than her Aunt and Uncle. They smiled often, but then scowled when their backs turned. They got enraged over the oddest of things. Worst of all, they always said one thing and meant another entirely. A trap Harriet had fallen into one too many times for comfort. It was surprising they got anything done.

Shuck. Shuck. Shuck-

Clink.

Harriet hesitated, frowning, patting the soil of her little hole with the rusted trowel.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Another buried stone. Harriet had come across three earlier. Terrible things. They mangled the roots systems of the more delicate plants. Tilting over, she set to work, brushing the top layer of silt from the head of the rock so she could dig around the sides and, if it wasn't too heavy, pluck the stone out.

When the top came into view, Harriet paused. Strange, she thought, how white the stone was.

Indeed, perhaps it was no stone at all.

Harriet had never seen a rock with that type of splitting before, a crack splintering down the middle, a strange little triangular chip towards the upper front.

Rocks, she believed, weren't usually hollow.

Dropping the trowel by her dirt smeared knee, Harriet delved in with her hands, brushing and burrowing.

Maybe it was a toy Dudley had misplaced, and it had unintentionally been trundled in the dirt, lost.

A toy that Harriet could scavenge.

Her first and only toy, twelve years late.

The would-be-toy came away from the hole with a reverberating plunk.

Definitely hollow.

She pulled it up and shook the rest of the cloying soil off, before, under the keen sunlight, she lifted up her prize.

Immediately, she dropped it, scuttling back like a gangly spider, away, slipping on the grass on her hands and knees.

The skull stared back with empty sockets from the bed of Primula blooms.

A skull.

It was a skull.

A small skull.

A human skull.

A child's skull.

"We're out of fertilizer."

Harriet Potter murmured from the crux of the back door, one foot in, one foot out. Petunia, busy at decorating a cake for Dudley at the kitchen counter-top, was humming along to the radio. Harriet's finger's tightened on the strap of her satchel, wringing, threadbare sneakers scuffing on the linoleum as her gaze dropped to the floor.

Aunt Petunia was like a leopard.

To survive an encounter, you should never make eye contact.

"Well, go get some! I want those flowers planted by the time the Jones's come for tea. Lucy has Primula blooms in her garden already."

Harriet's shoulder's sagged, bunching.

"I don't have any money…"

Petunia's head whipped around, as she dashed the icing bag across the granite counter.

"Must I do everything around this house! You-"

She lurched closer, palm raising backwards, knuckles sharp, and Harriet flinched on instinct, awaiting the blow. It didn't come this time, as Petunia caught sight of her freshly manicured hand. She likely didn't want to risk chipping the polish on Harriet's cheek.

Huffing, she dug a bony hand into her pocket, slapping a note on the table beside them.

"Go and buy some, then! Or do I have to do that for you too?"

Harriet said no more as she darted as close as she dared, snatching up the money she crinkled in a tight fist.

The jingling of the back door echoed her silent goodbye as she whizzed away like a dragonfly bustling.

Harriet Potter hated lying.

She, perhaps, hated it as much as she detested cooking.

However, she did need the money.

Not for fertilizer, Petunia still had two bags of that stashed at the back of the shed underneath Dudley's old bike. A bike he had never rode. Nevertheless, train tickets weren't free. She only hoped the twenty-pound note was enough to get her to King's Cross station, preferably before Petunia noticed the large hole she had dug in the back garden, and within the hour, when Harriet had not returned from the hardware store and she realised the girl had strayed.

Harriet wouldn't get a simple smack for that.

No.

She'd get something much worse.

And yet…

Help will always be given at Hogwarts, Harriet, to those who ask for it.

That's what Albus Dumbledore, the smartest man Harriet knew, had told her last year after she had taken on a three headed dog and a mountain troll.

When you found a child's bones hidden in your Aunt's back garden, it seemed help was the least thing you needed.

Her satchel rattled with her bobbing step.

With a dash of luck, no one would look inside until she got to the Headmaster.

Merlin knew what the muggles would do if she upsided her bag on the train and a whole skeleton spilled out.

Severus Snape was having a calm, quiet, enjoyable summer holiday.

All until he found Harriet Potter at the bottom of the Headmaster's office, definitely where she shouldn't be, something the small child was absurdly excellent at accomplishing, squawking for Dumbledore.

Hogwarts had been let out for the summer months, and rather than, as he ordinarily did, retreating back to Spinner's End for some much-needed down time, far removed from the insipid, migraine inducing first and second years, and don't get him started on the sixth years with their blundering hormones, Snape had decided to remain at his teaching post for the holiday.

The potion stock at Hogwarts was better than the apothecaries near Spinner's End, and his recent research into Long-term Polyjuice affects was both sensitive and time consuming work, necessitating only the best of the best ingredients.

By luck, or fate, or by Merlin himself, Dumbledore had been out that sunny Saturday in the Highlands, doing what… Well, only Dumbledore knew what.

It was pure fluke that it was he, Severus Snape, the only man who could possibly make sense of the chaos that would come, unearth it before Dumbledore could go covering up again, who had stumble across the flushed, panicked girl.

His vial had broken, you see.

Shattered from, a rooky mistake for Snape, completely out of character, being placed too close to the lit cauldron.

The Potions store closet took him on a meandering route passed the staircase leading up to the Headmaster's office.

He heard the child shouting before he turned the corner.

"Professor! Professor! Please! It's Harriet Potter! I need your help! Professor! Are you there?"

The foolish chit was shouting at the gargoyle. She startled at Snape's drawl as he sauntered around the bend. Jumping, eyes flashing wide in surprise, as she clutched at the tatty bag slung over her shoulder.

In truth, everything she wore was shabby, outside her school uniform. The trainers, the right one, was held together with a rope of duct tape. Her frayed socks, too baggy for her spindly legs, had rolled down in clumps at her ankles. The dress was… Something else, green print faded with age; the hem crudely stitched to fit a short child.

For a moment, the barest of heartbeats, Snape felt for the child.

He knew what it was like to wear clothes second hand three owners ago.

He knew what it was like to-

He scowled before any shred of sympathy could take root.

Of course his peaceful day would be ruined by a Potter, of all things.

"What are you doing here? How did you get in?"

He barked, as the girl skidded back a step, clasping at her bag, glancing about her like a Dementor caught in the glow of a Patronus.

"I-… I caught the train to King's Cross and then another to Hogsmeade… I walked to the castle."

Severus blinked.

I walked to the castle.

As if the highly warded castle, wards that had not failed in a thousand years, was a place you could simply stroll into when it was locked down as it were during the holidays.

It didn't matter.

How she got in was not the problem currently.

Getting her out again so Snape could go back to enjoying his day, was.

In three long strides, he was beside the shrinking child, plucking up her arm, hauling her away down the hall.

"Well, Potter, you're going to walk right back out again. You shouldn't be here. Whatever issue you have, you can take it up with Headmaster Dumbledore when term starts again. No sooner."

The child fought back, digging her heels into the cobbles of the stone, tugging.

"No! I have to see Dumbledore! I have to show him something! It's important!"

Snape's strides slowed as he glanced down to the girl. She shrivelled underneath his hard gaze.

"Well? Go on then. Show me, if it is of the upmost importance that someone sees whatever it is you've gotten yourself into this time. By the death grip you have on that cheap bag, I assume it's inside?"

She heaved her arm free, and Severus let her go as she clutched the bag tighter to her chest. And then-

Well, she surprised him.

Her nose turned up high into the air, arms folding over her chest, protectively across the bag, and she dismissed him with a sharp, poignant dash of her eye.

Snape, though he would never dare lower himself to actually doing so in front of one of his students, especially a soon to be second year, wanted to laugh.

If the colouring wasn't off, pale silver instead of black, cold grey instead of unforgivable green, the little chit would look remarkably like Lucius when he was offended.

Dimple and all.

"I want to speak to Dumbledore."

And that was the exact same haughty order Lucius was inclined to use.

His humour fled in an instant.

He retook hold of her arm.

"You are out of luck as the Headmaster isn't here currently, and I do not know when he will be back."

Anew, the struggling started up.

"No! I'll wait here! You can't just drag me-… Let go! No! I have to show Dumbledore!"

Sighing deeply, Severus tried valiantly to hold onto any scrap of patience he had.

"Either, girl, you show me or you leave now. You decide."

She eyed him shrewdly. A sweep from toes to hair. It was such an old look for a young face to hold. Split. It almost jarred Snape to see it there, right in front of him now. Almost. Finally, she sighed, fight fleeing her shoulders as she unzipped her bag. Severus let her go as she delved both her hands in.

"I was planting flowers in Aunt Petunia's garden when I came across this…"

Severus Snape expected a rock. Perhaps a pixie the tiny child had become excited over. Knowing Potter, it was a gnome she thought was out to kill her. Something mundane and banal.

What he didn't expect was for Potter to produce a bloody skull between her palms.

So much for a cosy Saturday evening reading in front of his fire while sipping brandy.

"You best come with me, Potter. Now."

"Who do you think it is?"

Snape sighed for the hundredth time as he leant over the skull with a little knife, scraping a sample off the bone. By the size and shape of the mandible, and the partially closed anterior fontanelle, the skull could only belong to a child between nine and twenty-four months.

The Potter child stood beside him, on top a little crate she was using to peer over the table, too short to see otherwise.

"If I knew that, Potter, I wouldn't be testing it with an identification potion, now, would I? Think once in a while. It surely wouldn't hurt you."

The girl had the audacity to huff at him.

If she was anything but the quintessential Gryffindor she was, Snape might have been proud.

Instead, a pounding at his temple began to strike up a beat.

Balancing the bone dust on the edge of his knife, Snape lifted it over the bubbling cauldron.

It fizzled as it tumbled in.

Three turns of the glass stirring rod turned the mauve a shocking red.

Reaching for his pipette, he took a drop and raised it over to the scrap of parchment he had waiting in front of him.

The drop splattered.

Red rolled to black, seeping, morphing-

"Do you think they were murdered? Why else would they be buried in my back yard? I think-"

Snape ignored the rambling as he held the parchment, words forming and-

No.

Surely not?

He darted a glance to the child beside him.

Watched her prattle.

Saw those onyx curls.

Those green, green eyes.

A blind man, surely, would look at that child and know it was a Potter on sight.

She had too many of the features.

Too much of James's defiance.

A little too much of James, honestly.

Almost a perfect copy.

No one would ever question the girl, not with that very-utterly-Potter face, and-

"Are you okay, Professor? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Snape's gaze fell back to the parchment.

The potion had been perfect.

Perfect.

He pocketed the piece of parchment.

"Come with me, Pot-… Girl. We need to go to Saint Mungo's for some… Further tests."

The girls face lit up.

"So you know who it is?"

Snape didn't answer. He didn't think he could right then. He only nodded, as the girl leapt down from her crate to walk beside Snape as they breezed out of the dungeons.

That skull, that child's skull, unquestionably belonged to Harriet Potter, daughter of James and Lily Potter.

And if that was so, and it was, Snape's potion couldn't be faulted…

Who in the name of sweet Circe was the child walking beside him right now?

Thoughts?

NEXT CHAPTER: Lucius Malfoy gets a midnight Floo call from an old friend, demanding to be met at Saint Mungo's…

A.N: I know what you're thinking. What the hell is she doing writing yet another fic while she already has so many unfinished? Short answer? Because I can. Long answer, I'm stuck in quarantine, as most of you lovely readers are, and writing, at the moment, is keeping me sane, and if that involves publishing another story, then, well, here it is lol! On a serious note, I am working on my other fics, for those patiently waiting for updates, and you do have my gratitude for it, but when inspiration hits, I'm going to follow it. Writing is my hobby, something I do in my spare time, if I'm lucky to have any spare time at all lol, and I want to enjoy it as much as possible.

As much as I hope you enjoyed this little taster of Chapter One! Once again, if you have a spare moment, and wish to see more, don't forget to drop a review. I really do love hearing from you guys, and I will hopefully see you soon. Until then, stay safe!