And now our strong female protagonist is introduced to yet another wondrous cliche of modern games as it is horribly applied in real life. Enjoy! In answer to FreidenShmi, Jasmine/Harry did not choose the "magical core" trait so their magic is based off Endurance and Conviction as with all their other actions, and not off Conviction and Fate. Smaller pool, but with fewer key abilities and without the fanon cliches of 'boosting magic', 'binding magic', or 'stealing magic'.
Disclaimer: Did any muggle character play any neutral or positive role in the series willingly? If not, I do not own Harry Potter. It belongs to JK Rowling and this story is free and for fun.
xxxx
The muggle doctor a frantic Petunia Dursley called in the next day had no idea what had caused the extremely painful Doxy bites. Luckily, muggle medicine still worked to counter the low-end magical poison in them and Jasmine didn't have to stay in bed more than a day. The worst of it was the constant feeling of exhaustion that accompanied the pain, which was powerful enough to leave Jasmine mostly paralysed. An entire day of music and dancing practice, schoolwork, and refining her magic lost thanks to a single silly household pest! On the other hand, she knew just how lucky she'd been to escape before the other Doxies could attack. It had occurred to her that losing about a third of her "health" and all of her "energy" in that fight had been worse than most of the crazy encounters she'd had in the previous life as Harry. She was eight years old, with no weapons, and hardly any magic; a Doxy was to her as much a danger as a fully-grown Acromantula would have been to her previous incarnation. She really had to be more careful.
Speaking of previous incarnations, an entire day of being out of action had given her time for some much needed thinking. He might have been Harry once, but she was Jasmine now; she was reminded of that every time she went to the bathroom. Thinking as two people or even acting like it was a good first step down the road to craziness, as the Game had reminded her. Harry might be terribly uncomfortable in this new body, he might have far longer, far more numerous experiences as a boy, but none of that made this reincarnation as Jasmine any less true. So unless they wanted to grow up with a serious personality disorder a decision had to be made... Harry or Jasmine? The name didn't matter that much; accepting the new body as their own did.
The last living Potter stayed awake late that night, taking on a problem worse than many a dark lord or monster; the issue of identity. In the end, she could come to no real decision. Harry had never been good in thinking things through and Jasmine was an eight year old, for Merlin's sake! They'd at least make an effort to accept the new situation and see where that got them. With that thought, the last Potter finally slept.
xxxx
The fallout from Jasmine's misadventure with the Doxies was both more and less than she'd expected. There was no obvious parental disciplinary action, no shouts or arguments, no being locked into her room without food as Harry had half-expected even after years of living in a much more tolerant Dursley household. On the other hand, Jasmine had now gained an unwanted escort; Dudley followed her pretty much everywhere, keeping an eye on her on Petunia's orders. It wasn't very obvious in school where her 'brother's' budding gang simply played near enough Jasmine's group that Dudley could keep her in his sight, or in all the classes they shared. But being always escorted by an enormous, overweight, land-bound cetacean to and from school, her dance lessons, or any time she went shopping was quite embarassing. Especially when the role of chaperone was taken up by Vernon rather than Dudley. Jasmine had her revenge though; she went shopping twice as often after the incident, and she was twice as indecisive. She even got a point of Presence out of it for acting in-character as well as social skill increases, proving the perversity of the Game and the universe in general.
Several times, Jasmine contemplated the pros and cons of using magic to give Dudley the slip. Unfortunately, whatever control she had of her magical abilities did not allow her to erase memories and vanishing into thin air wasn't something her cousin was likely to forget. Sooner or later though, the somewhat alarmed Dursleys would return to their loving but inadvertently neglectful selves and then she'd be free to act. Until that happier time however, she had a lot of work to do. Just because events conspired to give her ample of supervised downtime did not mean she could slack off. That had been Harry's mistake in the past timeline. With the exception of his first year and the hunt for the Philosopher's Stone and his fifth year with Dumbledore's Army, he'd given the looming shadow of Voldemort so little attention it was criminal. Now that she had a visual representation of her abilities and skills, Jasmine could appreciate how much effort was needed to become truly good at something. If the Game's numbers were to be trusted, one needed to perform an action as many as a million times to truly perfect it, or work on improving a broader, more complex skill for as long as ten thousand hours. And that was actual work, not just coasting on what you'd already learned. About a thousand hours of hard work under Oliver Wood coupled with talent had made Harry a good Quidditch player, though not on the level of high-end professional players. How could less than sixty hours in the DA ever prepare people for a war?
This time things would be different, Jasmine vowed. That personal resolution had not been decided upon on any specific time; it just was. Whatever bizarre changes this second chance had brought, she was sure Voldemort just vanishing would not be among them. In Hagrid's unforgettable words, he was not nearly human enough to die... and everybody else was far too frightened of him to do anything about it. But such concerns, although inescapable, they were still years in the future. For the moment, Jasmine could barely survive an encounter with a Doxie and that wasn't a state of affairs that could be allowed to persist.
First order of business; running. Nobody stood still or took leisury strolls in combat unless their name was Dumbledore. Thus Jasmine started running to and from school every day, and in all other activities and situations she could get away with it. Then came a very useful discovery; Rope Skipping, a game rather popular among the girls at school, increased her Dodging skill with practice, not just her Children Games one, especially if the session was both high speed and the girls swinging the rope intentionally tried to trip her up. Dodgeball improved Dodging faster but a girl skipping rope for hours drew less attention than one trying to become the school's dodgeball champion. Climbing, something Harry had been very good in once, was the first major hurdle in her new training schedule. Jasmine wasn't any weaker than Harry had been at her age, but she was much healthier... and thus heavier. She simply couldn't lift her own weight, not at first. She had to cheat with a bit of levitation magic until finally, after over a month of effort, her physical strength had increased by a point and made climbing viable once more.
Training her magic without anyone noticing finally became a possibility when she picked up the trick of changing the colour of objects. Shifting the tiny eraser at the rear of an old pencil through various colours went unnoticeable even during class; Dudley and Piers played Hangman in class all the time and the teachers didn't mind anyway - not even when Dudley got angry if he lost. If Jasmine didn't mind getting exhausted, she could usually perform the change a couple hundred times in the first fifteen minutes of classes, then recover her energy over the day and repeat the attempt before the final bell rang. Forcing herself to read and do schoolwork when exhausted might not provide the better results, but her skill in reading, memorization, and various academic subjects actually improved faster in that way, possibly because she was pushing herself more. Music practice and dancing were far more demanding than her academic workload, and both things that couldn't be done while exhausted. Far from seeing such hours as lost though, Jasmine loved learning to move in new and fascinating ways or flick her fingers over the piano at great speeds. Besides, improving her Agility was something that helped with just about every part of her life, not just art.
A month passed, then another and another. As the school year came to a close and the pitifully easy end-of-term tests scared the slackers (except for Dudley) into finally doing that long-delayed revision, Jasmine found out she was rather satisfied with the results of all that effort she'd put to all her activities, and the Game itself confirmed it. No longer needing to expend effort on it at all, she brought up her mental character sheet.
JASMINE DURSLEY ?
Age: 7 Gender: female ? Hair: Red ? Eyes: Hazel ?
Concept: Half-Blood Witch ?
Trouble: War Orphan
Benefits: Accidental Magic, Inheritance, Quick Recovery, Happy Family, Uncanny Awareness, Harmless and Cute, A Thousand Faces
Drawbacks: Enemy of the Dark, Unsubtle and Quick to Anger, Doing the Right Thing, I Need to Know, Trouble Magnet, Loyal Friend, Cautious
Strength: 8 Agility: 55 Endurance: 20 Intellect: 54 Conviction: 77 Presence: 51 Destiny: 0
Health: 100/100 Energy: 1463/1540
PHYSICAL SKILLS
Tier 2 Athletics: Running rank 30, Children's Games rank 49, Climbing rank 23, Dancing rank 35
Tier 1 Combat: Brawling rank 7, Dodging rank 15, Ignore Pain rank 61, Ignore Physical Penalty rank 70
Tier 1 Subterfuge: Stealth rank 7, Search rank 6
Tier 2 Housework: Cooking rank 21, Gardening rank 32, Basic Repair rank 21 , Cleaning rank 31
MENTAL SKILLS
Tier 2 Academics: Speed Reading rank 17, Information Search rank 23, Memorization rank 35, Basic English 42
Tier 3 History/Culture: Magical Britain rank 50, Muggle Britain rank 25, Magical World rank 10, Muggle World rank 10
Tier 1 Science: Basic Math rank 32, Basic Physics rank 21, Basic Biology/Chemistry rank 21
SOCIAL SKILLS
Tier 3 Interaction: Rapport rank 32, Empathy rank 20, Persuasion rank 22, Inspiration rank 25
Tier 3 Performance: Ad-Lib rank 51, Impersonation rank 47, Deception rank 23
Tier 2 Art: Music rank 23, Dancing rank 21, Singing rank 10
MAGICAL TALENTS
Tier 1 Magic Lore: Accidental Magic rank 45, Sense Magic rank 15
Tier 3 Dueling: Aiming rank 31, Ignore Magical Penalty 30, Ignore Mental Penalty 50
Tier 3 Divination: Strange Senses rank Max (quest advantage)
Tier 1 Inborn Ability: Shift Colour rank 0 (restricted), Alter Features rank 0 (restricted)
Nearly a year of life with the Dursleys and steady, determined preparation for the future had brought about small but considerable changes. The greatest was, of course, Jasmine's controlled underage magic. While not holding a candle to what the average wizard could do with a wand, it was more than most wizards managed without, possibly due to how hard it was to improve it. Months of hard work had finally allowed her to do something useful with only a couple of seconds of effort, and even though she'd mastered fewer effects and less reliably than a first-year in Hogwarts, she was finally a witch in more than name. The other, perhaps just as important change, was Jasmine's increased stamina. Harry, after countless hours of chores and running away from Dudley and his gang had never had problems putting in effort in things that really mattered. Jasmine had never had such a hard life but with practice she'd managed to push her limit up to half an hour's worth of intense effort before she collapsed. Running nearly five miles straight was not quite a marathon... but it was four and a half miles more than most people her age or even many adult city-dwellers could do. Improvements in other areas were smaller, but in the end just as important.
For the first time after the Doxy fiasco, Jasmine felt a bit more confident about trying to explore the old house again.
xxxx
Losing Dudley during an afternoon in the park was as easy as she'd expected. She'd have preferred to get out during the night, but even months after the incident Aunt Petunia carefully locked down the house after sunset, and checked that both she and her cousin were in their beds several times every night. However much of a problem that might be for her plans though, Jasmine couldn't blame her aunt; for the first time in either Harry's or Jasmine's stay in Number 4 Privet Drive, Petunia Dursley had nightmares of her precious children dying from some strange disease in their beds. Thus the late afternoon walk.
She'd enter the old house under cover of her basic concealment charm, and greet any Doxy showing its ugly insectoid-fairy mug with a magical blast to the face. Fair fights were for idiots and dead people, as Harry had learned to his loss. Unfortunately, as soon as she saw the hastily boarded up back door to Mrs Figg's old home, her legs refused to move any further. Intellectually, she knew that she was far more prepared for the potential dangers now than she'd been last time... but her body strongly believed otherwise. The familiar wave of dread Harry had felt every time he dwelled on his near-death experiences kept her rooted to the spot. It didn't matter that Harry had died twice and still gotten another chance. It didn't matter that she knew nothing bad would happen this time. Her body was convinced she was about to commit suicide by magical pest and was having none of it.
"Oi Dudders! Told ya your sis was up to no good!"
The sudden shout from behind her made Jasmine yelp and leap at least three feet, to the amused laughter of several boys. Feeling as if Aunt Petunia's extra-strong vacuum cleaner had just sucked up her guts, she turned around to see the budding gang approaching. Dennis, Malcolm, Piers and, of course, Dudley. Oh Merlin... Dudley had told his friends to keep an eye on her too? That wasn't creepy or anything...
"What are ya doing here, Jas?" her cousin asked angrily, his round face trying to simultaneously scowl, express surprise, and do a watermelon impersonation. "You were supposed to be in the park! Mum's gonna be furious!"
"What is to you, Dudley?" she barked back, using anger to play for time and cook up some good excuse that would not see her grounded for several more months. "I'm obviously OK, as you can see perfectly well. No need to run after me all the time."
"I'm your brother, ya bloody maniac!" Dudley could do exasperation exceedingly well. Who knew? Then again, all that acting practice with Aunt Marge to get the best possible presents had to be worth something. "And mum's afraid you'll fall sick again, or something. I can't let you go do crazy girl things!"
"Crazy girl things?" I asked, my tone becoming slow and dangerous as I worked around the meaning of that insult in my mind. "Tell me Dudders..." I took a threatening step closer "What, exactly, do you mean by that?"
"You sure she's your sis, Dud?" Dennis helpfully interjected. "You two are arguing like me ma and pa." Oh no, he didn't! Such words required instant retaliation, even if he was unknowingly half right. Jasmine stalked forth with every intent of putting her rank 7 Brawling to good use with some subtle assistance from her rank 45 accidental magic when another of the stupid boys interrupted yet again.
"Hey, look at that, fellas... is that crazy Mundungus' old place?" Piers asked, indicating the boarded up back door. "Cause if it is, I know what the half-pint was here for." Damn. Jasmine had forgotten how perceptive that annoying boy could be. He'd been the one to notice Harry's first use of Parseltongue in the old timeline too.
"It sure looks like it." Dudley said with a pensive frown, looking from the dilapidated building to his apparent sister and back. "Hey boys... what do you think about exploring?"
No, no, no, no, no, no! He couldn't possibly be suggesting...
"I'm in!"
"Sure!"
"Yeah, man."
"It'll be awesome!"
And just like that, the five-idiot band had crashed Jasmine's party uninvited... Merlin and Morgana, she hated her luck. As the excitement mounted, she scrambled for a way to avert disaster before it was too late. "Dudley, I don't think I want to go in that house."
"Nonsense. It'll be great fun." Her cousin stared at her suspiciously. "Didn't you want to go in there a few moments ago? You got something in there you don't want us to see?" Several somethings, all winged and poisonous. Not that Dudley would believe her if she told him, or be smart enough to care.
"Look, I want to go home now." She whined as only a young girl could. It was highly effective; more than one boy winced and started looking for an excuse to step back without looking like they were fleeing. "Mum wouldn't want us to be late." Unfortunately Dudley, big gang leader he, was made of sterner stuff... or had been frequently inoculated against sisterly complaints.
"There's six of us, Jas." He smirked. "And ol' man Mundungus was just a nutter. His house should have interesting stuff, but not dangerous." Not if that was the same Mundungus from Harry's previous life it wouldn't; the man had once stolen a Horcrux and sold it to the Ministry for Merlin's sake!
"Naah, I reckon she's chickening out." Piers said nastily, glowering at her as soon as Dudley's back was turned towards him. "Wanted to have some big adventure, 'cept she remembered she's a girl." Dennis and Malcolm laughed at that, and Dudley smiled but didn't quite join in. Piers laughed louder than anybody else; he was still holding a grudge from the time Jasmine had beaten him up, apparently.
"Don't worry, Jas." Dudley said firmly. "We'll have our adventure and be safe too. If you're scared, hide behind me." And with that, he pulled his apparent sister along by one arm, strong enough to manage it despite her protests as long as she didn't use magic... which she couldn't, in the presence of muggles. Accepting defeat she followed, until she was interrupted by one of the Game's messages;
You have joined the party "Dudley's Gang". Your handle is "Fateless Witch". Other members as follows;
BIG D
Strength: 11 Agility: 36 Endurance: 17 Intellect: 41 Conviction: 35 Presence: 52 Destiny: 50
HP: 85/85 Energy: 595/595
Posh Boy
Strength: 8 Agility: 58 Endurance: 11 Intellect: 60 Conviction: 50 Presence: 30 Destiny: 27
HP: 55/55 Energy: 550/550
Tall M
Strength: 10 Agility: 40 Endurance: 16 Intellect: 45 Conviction: 40 Presence: 30 Destiny: 21
HP: 80/80 Energy: 640/640
Little D
Strength: 9 Agility: 55 Endurance: 15 Intellect: 50 Conviction: 45 Presence: 34 Destiny: 23
HP: 75/75 Energy: 675/675
G-Man
Strength: 10 Agility: 41 Endurance: 16 Intellect: 46 Conviction: 40 Presence: 35 Destiny: 22
HP: 80/80 Energy: 640/640
What the hell had just happened? Party? What party? Jasmine didn't see any cause for celebration, except for any potential magical predators that were about to have five hundred pounds of bacon delivered to their doorstep. She didn't have time to think things through however, because Malcolm and Gregor were already pulling off the inexpertly nailed wooden boards and opening the door.
It was days like this that made Jasmine hate her life.