As soon as she could hear her Uncle's heavy footsteps on the stairs, Alice quickly threw her barbie dolls under her bed. That was one advantage to having the closet under the stairs as her room; she could hear him coming at night.

She lay in her bed and pretended to sleep, although it was hard as her heart was pounding fast and she was finding it difficult to slow her breathing. When her Uncle opened the door, she tried her best to look sound asleep.

"Bloody hell, I hope you haven't been doing anything weird again," Uncle Vernon whispered angrily, he didn't want to his wife or son to be woken up.

"No, Uncle" She stammered, "I haven't."

Her Uncle pointed a stern finger, "Dudley heard you talking down here again and I thought you might be playing with inappropriate toys again."

Alice said nothing. She knew this wasn't going to end well.

"How many times have we told you that you are a boy? Not a girl."

Uncle Vernon then slapped her. Alice was use to pain and had grown use to ignoring it.

"I can't believe my sister-in-law could leave us with a freak of a nephew. A freak in more way than one."

She held back tears. Those words really did hurt but crying in front of Uncle Vernon would result in further punishment.

"What's this?" Uncle Vernon exclaimed and pointed under her bed, "That, under your bed."

Uncle Vernon reached under her bed and brought out her dolls.

"Barbies?" He said angrily, "How the hell did you manage to get those?"

"M-m-m-m-Mary Simpson said I could borrow them. She thought I would like them."

"Did she now? Well, let's see what she thinks after her perfect barbie is snapped."

He ripped the head off the barbie and threw it to the floor. Alice was devastated. She reached down to pick up the pieces of the doll and as a result, she was pushed back into her room under the stairs. The door was slammed behind her. She could hear her uncle locking the cupboard door; she would be left in the dark for hours. It would be a long time before she would fall asleep.

For as long as Alice could remember she was a girl, not that she thought she was a girl but really was one. As she grew older she realised that something wasn't right about this, she was physically a boy. But there didn't seem to be any way that she could change that. Despite her protests, her Aunt and Uncle wouldn't allow her to grow her hair longer or to wear the clothes that she liked. They didn't like her playing with the other girls or liking dolls and dancing. Her cousin Dudley teased her relentlessly about it, calling her 'freak', 'gay' or 'faggot'. Sometimes his friends joined in and they would try to catch Alice to use her as a punching bag.

She liked the name Alice, as in 'Alice in Wonderland'. She figured that a girl should have a pretty sounding name. There was nothing really wrong with the name Harry, other than it was a boy's name and it didn't suit her. So she called herself Alice and introduced herself as Alice to other kids.

However, this didn't go undetected by adults. Her teacher (and Dudley's) pointed this out at the latest parent-teacher conference. After commenting that Dudley was disruptive in class, performing poorly and had a tendency to bully other children, Mrs Reynolds began to talk about her.

She recalled what Mrs Reynolds said, "Harry is a does well academically and is close friends with Emma and Mary. I think your nephew maybe transgender. He - she seems to have more typically feminine interests and prefers to be called 'Alice' in the company of friends."

Mrs Reynolds was a nice woman but she was wrong to assume that her aunt and uncle would be nice people too. Alice didn't know what 'transgender' meant, but from her aunt and uncle's reaction she assumed it was something bad.

"We're thinking of getting our nephew therapy," Aunt Petunia said while shaking her head. That was all that they had said about it.

However, that had been last year and Alice had not seen a so-called therapist. It was probably too much money to have a therapist. Her aunt and uncle often complained about money. That didn't matter to Dudley; he still received anything he wanted.

When Alice woke up the next morning, she would find that the doll would be fixed. Sometimes strange things happened when she was happy or upset. Like the time Aunt Petunia tried to feed her Brussel sprouts and they all vanished on her plate or that time she was running from Dudley and she closed her eyes to find herself safely back in her room. She didn't know why these strange things happened, but she didn't know why she was in the body of a boy either.

She would have to learn to suppress the feelings and strange abilities she had. It was not what the Dursleys would consider normal or even allowable.