Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. I am not any of the writers who worked with J.K. Rowling on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child either, and I do not own that.

Note:

The following piece is a one-shot and consists of a few short scenes sketched out and set in a version of the Harry Potter universe where Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange were both killed in the 1970's. Bellatrix resumed her maiden name of Black (or never married in the first place) and had a daughter by Lord Voldemort a generation sooner than she did according to the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play. Other changes spread out from there.

Rating: This piece is rated 'T'.

"Idiots." Harry Potter heard the girl next to him in the reptile house hiss under her breath.

"Absolutely." he heard the snake on the other side of the glass hiss back at her.

Ten year old Harry Potter almost fell over in surprise.

In a life of occasional unusual happenings, this was at the odder end of the scale of things. The girl with silver-blue hair had said something to the snake – not unusual in and of itself, since children at zoos often said things to animals – and the snake had said something back.

Harry studied the girl standing a few feet away from him with interest. She was oddly dressed, but in a way which made him think she was here in fancy dress for a birthday party; Harry was here with his cousin, Dudley, and his aunt and uncle and with Dudley's friends today as a treat for Dudley's birthday.

The girl was taller than Harry, but just looked as if she might be about Harry's age, still, and there was a glimpse he had of some sort of gold chain around her neck, before she moved slightly and it disappeared from view.

"My mother brought me here today for our annual 'remind you what they're like' trip. Muggles, I mean." the girl said to the snake.

"Almost all humans are the same to me." the snake replied. "Apart from the ones which bring me food. I do not think that I have met one which could hear what I was saying, before, though. That is much more interesting than what usually happens around here."

The girl seemed indignant for some reason.

"Have you not heard of the great Salazar Slytherin? I am his descendant over many centuries. I am not like other humans."

"How would I have heard of a human who lived that long ago?" the snake replied. "I bet that many of your fellow humans have not heard of him either. Take the boy over there with the eye-protectors, and ask him who this Salazar Slytherin is?"

"He is a muggle as stupid as the others; of course he will not have heard of Salazar." the girl responded, starting to sound cross.

"Err, what exactly is a 'muggle'?" Harry asked.

For some reason, the girl's eyes widened, enormously.

"You speak it? You speak it too?" she said.

Harry wasn't sure what she meant for a moment, and then he was disturbed by Dudley running by shouting:

"Hey: Mum! Dad! Come here quickly! There's a freaky girl, and she's hissing at Harry!"

And at that point things got more confusing, because the girl looked positively furious, instead of confused, and the glass in the snake case blew out, somehow, the shards mostly going for Dudley and his friends, and then there were men and women waving wooden sticks around and the girl saying 'Not that one; he's one of us.' and a woman with wild eyes removing the girl from the scene and in the midst of it all the snake escaping with a "Thanks, amigos." hissed at the girl and Harry on the way.

And then the glass was somehow fixed, although the snake was still gone, and Dudley was complaining about having fallen over and nobody remembered anything about the girl and the glass somehow.

Harry's aunt and uncle assumed that Harry had pushed Dudley over, and locked Harry in his cupboard, when they got back to Privet Drive, though.

The next time that Harry saw the girl with silver-blue hair, was a couple of months later, on board the Hogwarts Express.

"Delphini. Delphini Black." she introduced herself to Harry. Her eyes went to Ron who had already been in the compartment with Harry before she arrived; Ron scowled at her, and she scowled at him, and Harry thought Delphini might have said or done something else, had Ron not been present. She'd looked annoyed at Ron being there, even before Ron had scowled, and had hesitated a moment before speaking to Harry.

"She's a Black." Ron said. "They're all evil. Mum says so."

"And you're a Weasley. You're all evil. My mother says so." the girl with silver-blue hair snapped back.

"We're not!" Ron protested, going red in the face.

"Prove it!"

"You prove it first!"

"No: you first! I said it first!"

"And I said you were evil first!"

"And I bet my mother said Weasleys are evil before your 'mum' said it!"

Harry had seen several playground arguments like this, and it looked to him a lot like Ron was losing. The girl was much cleverer than Ron and it was taking Ron several moments longer to think up his replies than the 'Delphini' girl. At some point Ron would have to either give up or just hit her…

Unless of course, a distraction walked in, and it was at this point that the blond boy from the robes shop showed up in the door.

"Oh look." the blond boy drawled. (Harry tried to remember what the boy's name was; had it been something like 'Dragon'?) "It's my poor cousin, and a redhead who looks dirt poor and so who must be a Weasley. Have you two been kissing and arranging to get married or something? You could both have lots of no money together."

"Are your parents going to be happy, do you think, Draco, when you get sorted into Gryffindor?" the girl smiled nastily back. "You've got that right sort of charge-in-without-thinking way of thinking, and now that we're going to Hogwarts I don't have to be nice to you any more."

(Yes: 'Draco' had been the boy's name and he had seemed very unpleasant to Harry then, and wasn't seeming any better now.)

At this point though, Draco went very red in the face after Delphini's comment and ordered to the two boys who were accompanying him: "Get them!"

A general fight broke out.

It expanded when the bushy-haired girl looking for the kitten from earlier returned and got dragged in, when she tried to lecture them about 'not fighting' and it was only broken up by the arrival of a prefect, who turned out to be Ron's older brother Percy.

Somehow, in the midst of all the fighting, Draco's wand had gotten snapped, everyone involved had acquired cuts and bruises, and 'kitten girl' had acquired the beginnings of a black eye.

Ron's pet rat, it subsequently turned out, had slept right through it.

"Blimey." Ron said, as Draco retreated, staring in horror at his broken wand. "That was you, wasn't it? Who got his wand?"

"No." said the girl loudly and very carefully. "Of course I didn't snap his wand."

She said it very loudly and carefully in a way, Harry thought, meant to indicate that actually of course she had, but that there was no way she was going to say so in front of witnesses – let alone a prefect who was still present and treating 'kitten girl's' black eye.

Several hours later, Harry had arrived at Hogwarts, and the 'Sorting' was under way, being conducted by a singing, talking, rather old looking hat. Harry knew that Hagrid had said that all evil witches and wizards came from Slytherin, but obviously things were changing and evil witches and wizards were in Gryffindor now too, because that was where the idiot Draco Malfoy ended up.

And the Delphini Black girl had gone into Slytherin earlier, so she was probably evil, but it was the right sort of evil, which you probably wanted to have on your side.

('Kitten girl' ('Hermione Granger', her name was, it turned out) had gone into Hufflepuff and gave a 'thumbs up' sign to Neville Longbottom (of the famous auror parents) when he joined her there, too.)

But anyway, it was with very confused thoughts, that Harry Potter went to meet the Sorting Hat and to discover his immediate fate…

"Who are you writing to?" Harry asked Delphini, heading to the corner of the common room where she was seated at a small table, with quill, ink, and parchment out before her. The Sorting and the feast after it were over, and Harry had ended up in Slytherin. The sight of Draco Malfoy in Gryffindor had just been too much for Harry when the Hat had offered Harry a choice of Gryffindor or Slytherin.

"My mother." Delphini said. "I have to tell her about my cousin Draco's wand. My cousin is probably writing to his mother at this moment about it as well, and to blame me for him getting sorted into Gryffindor also if I know him at all. Whoever gets their version in first will be more believed." She smiled. "Draco worries a lot about how he looks; he got his owl because it looked impressive. I got my owl because I was told by the shopkeeper that it was fast."

Several days into Harry's first term at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy arrived at the flying-on-broomsticks lesson when it was already halfway through, having been taken shopping in Diagon Alley that morning for a new wand by his head of house.

Draco glared at Delphini when he finally made it to the lesson, and she smiled and waved back.

The broomstick lesson otherwise passed without incident, although several of Harry's fellow Slytherins complimented him on his skill on a broom, and they seemed to being genuine about it as far as Harry could tell. A lot of Slytherins seemed to be trying to either suck up to him, or to avoid contact with him, or to be eyeing him nervously.

"What is it?" Harry asked.

Harry was meeting Delphini around the back of the glasshouses, at her request, after their first herbology class, and it was just the two of them there.

"Do you know what Parseltongue is?" Delphini asked.

"No." Harry said.

Delphini pulled a book out of her bag, flipped through it, and presented it, open, to Harry. There was a very realistic picture of a snake on one of the pages.

"Concentrate on the snake. Imagine that you're talking to it. And then say 'hello' to it." Delphini said.

Harry did so.

"Hello." he said. His voice sounded a bit odd to him, as he did it, and Delphini looked very pleased.

"That was Parseltongue." Delphini said, her voice sounding unusual in a way which reminded Harry of her conversation with the snake in the reptile house at the zoo. And then she snapped the book shut, and tucked it away, and sounded 'normal' when she next spoke. "It takes a bit of trying to be able to use it when you want to use it – and not at other times. You need to be careful with it though. It's something which only a few witches and wizards can do, and some witches and wizards will not like you at all if they know that you can do it. It just sounds like random hissing sounds to most people, and muggles don't know anything about it at all which was why I thought it was safe to talk to that snake the day we first met."

"What happened with those… witches and wizards… who showed up at the zoo?"

"They were obliviators. I got a bit angry with that fat boy, and blew out the glass by accident. When muggles see magic, obliviators show up and make the muggles think they saw something different or forget it altogether. Adult witches and wizards can get in trouble if they do magic stuff that muggles see, but children do things by accident, so the obliviators don't mind that so much." She paused. "Harry: my mother asked around, after that day at the zoo, and she thinks that you may have been raised by muggles. Is that right?"

"Yes. You probably saw them." Harry said. "My aunt and uncle, and the fat boy at the zoo was my cousin, Dudley. I think my aunt knew my mum was a witch, but she doesn't like magic very much and she's told me nothing. She lied to me even, about how my parents died."

"Right: well there are probably a lot of things which you don't know about the wizarding world which you don't know, but which you need to know." Delphini said. "We'll have to arrange meetups, so I can explain them to you." She paused. "And make sure you read up on potions before Friday: Professor Snape, the potions professor, hated your father, and even though Professor Snape is our head of house, he may look to see if you do anything wrong so he can punish you for it. You look a lot like some statues and pictures I've seen of your father."

Apparently the defence teacher, Professor Lockhart, was famous in the world of witches and wizards. Harry hadn't heard of him, but Professor Lockhart had most certainly heard of Harry. Professor Lockhart spent the first defence lesson re-enacting a scene from one of his books, and he insisted that Harry come out to the front of the class to help him.

Harry hoped that all the lessons with Professor Lockhart weren't going to be like this.

On Friday morning, an owl delivered a letter in a red envelope to Delphini in the great hall at the breakfast table. It was smoking, and Delphini looked pleased to get it.

She took it from the owl, opened it, and a woman's voice started shouting at her from the piece of parchment that she pulled out, about what she'd been doing with her cousin.

It was a very loud voice, and Delphini beamed at Harry:

"It's my mother."

The shouting letter sounded like it was supposed to be telling Delphini off, but it talked about Draco a lot as well, and from the way that Delphini was smiling, she thought it was a lot more embarrassing for Draco than for her.

Harry glanced across at the Gryffindor table in time to see Draco crawling under the Gryffindor table to try to hide.

Then the shouting stopped and the parchment went up in flames.

"That was a howler letter." Delphini said to Harry.

Several of the Gryffindors were pounding their table as they guffawed, and some of them were actually crying with laughter onto their breakfast plates.

A couple of them got down from their benches, and went looking under the table – to probably try and coax Draco out.

In potions class, Professor Snape checked the names of all pupils present, then gave a speech which was slightly creepy and slightly fascinating. Then he paused in a dramatic fashion, his eyes moving backwards and forwards, as he surveyed the pupils present.

And then his gaze locked onto Harry.

"Potter: asphodel and wormwood are ingredients not uncommonly used in potions, but very rarely in combination. Tell me the name of one potion which might feature them both."

Harry could remember nothing at all about wormwood in this moment, but he remembered reading about asphodel because it was a sort of lily, and Lily had been his mum's name.

Still, he couldn't remember the names of all the potions the book had mentioned asphodel might be used in, and the ones he could think of might not ones that wormwood was used in as well.

"Draught of Living Death, sir?" Harry guessed the name of the potion he was most certain of getting at least the name of right.

Professor Snape's eyes met Harry's, and for one horrible moment, Harry was certain that his guess had been wrong.

And then Professor Snape's lips twitched a fraction – it was unclear if he was supressing a smile or a grimace.

"The Draught of Living Death is at least one such potion, Potter, and I trust that you will pay attention in my classes."

Then the professor's gaze was roaming elsewhere.

"Finnigan: What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

Seamus Finnigan, Gryffindor first year, gulped and froze, a look of panic on his face. Then he took a guess:

"I don't know professor; is a monk's hood what the Fat Friar wears, and maybe wolfsbane is another ghost's sword or axe?"

Harry tried not to wince. Monkshood was one of the endless flowers Aunt Petunia had had in her garden a couple of years ago, and the other one was probably some sort of flower or plant too…

"Monkshood" Professor Snape told the class "and wolfsbane are different names for the same plant – also known amongst other things as 'aconite'. It has particular applications in potions concerned with lycanthropy – as you would know, Mr. Finnigan, if you had bothered to open a newspaper of late and noticed reports of the work of Damocles Belby. A point from Gryffindor, Mr. Finnigan, for not just failing to open your school textbooks, but for not even paying attention to some of the most important potions research work being carried out at present."

Harry remembered that lycanthropy was something to do with werewolves, and what Professor Snape had just said sounded interesting. He wasn't quite sure how to spell 'Damocles Belby', but he got his quill out to do his best to make a note about it. A couple of other pupils also had quills out, too.

"Malfoy." Professor Snape's voice was a purr now. "In what sort of emergency would a bezoar be useful and where do potions ingredient suppliers obtain such items from, before they make their way into storage jars?"

There was a pause, and then Draco answered, sounding slightly uncertain.

"A bezoar is used to calm a boil cure potion, if it is heated too much, and it comes from the stomach of a goat."

"Only partially correct Mr. Malfoy; you are confused, perhaps, as to the properties of a bezoar since we are indeed to prepare a boil cure potion today, as anyone who has looked at the blackboard behind me will have seen. A bezoar is in fact an antidote to most poisons, and shoving one down the throat of a poisoning victim in all cases in which it is efficacious will almost immediately prevent any further damage and often negate any ongoing effects such as trembling, vomiting, and heart palpitations – although induced physical weakness may linger for some time. You were right that they are retrieved from the stomachs of goats, although by no means will they be found in anywhere near all goats. And by the way, class: there will be a spelling test at the start of the next potions lesson, and 'bezoar', 'asphodel' and one of the names for 'monkshood' will all be in it. Points will be deducted from pupils unable – with this advanced warning – to spell any of those correctly."

Harry, who had been in the middle of trying to write down about bezoars, gulped, and did his best to add a reminder about the promised spelling test, and drew a big circle around it.

Meanwhile, Professor Snape had moved to front of the class, picked up a stick to point with, and launched into a commentary on the recipe detailed on the blackboard, tapping away at points as he went.

He spoke at a speed which anyone who had difficulty writing with a quill would find very difficult to keep up with taking notes with.

Author Notes: (subject to update, depending on early reviews)

I've covered a few scenes which have gone differently from canon, but a lot of the other events (such as Harry's life at 4 Privet Drive, the attempt by the Dursleys to escape Harry's Hogwarts Letters, and the trip to Diagon Alley) have gone the same as in canon, or with minor differences. Neville's parents are still alive and sane in this universe though (since there are no Lestrange brothers alive in 1981, and Bellatrix was too busy at home looking after Delphini to go out auror interrogating or to subsequently get exposed and arrested) and as a result of which Neville got a kitten instead of a toad as his pet and subsequently sorted into Hufflepuff (although Neville's kitten still escaped on the Hogwarts Express as his toad wandered off in the books.)

Hermione Granger sorted into Hufflepuff in this piece on account of her experience searching the train for Neville's kitten with a different-from-canon Neville.

Bellatrix has occasionally dragged her daughter to various parts of Europe to look for Lord Voldemort, but has always ended up somehow missing him (even if they were actually in the same area.) When the zoo visit which opens this piece takes place, and Bellatrix hears that someone who looks a lot like Harry Potter is a Parselmouth, Bellatrix jumps to the conclusion that perhaps Lord Voldemort is possessing Harry Potter but he has forgotten who he is; clearly she and her daughter must help Harry Potter (and eventually help him to remember who he 'really' is.)

For the sake of narrative convenience Delphini happened to be at the zoo at the same time as Harry and Dudley; likewise Quirinus Quirrell is assumed not to have gone anywhere near Lord Voldemort in 1991, meaning Lord Voldemort is not in the school during the 1991-1992 school year trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone (and Gilderoy Lockhart has been lured into the school by Albus Dumbledore in the hope of exposing him a year earlier than in the books.) If I were to expand this piece, I think Sirius Black would break out of Azkaban on Hallowe'en, 1991, to provide excitement for the rest of the 1991-1992 school year.

Ron Weasley is assumed to have sorted into Ravenclaw in this piece (because Draco was already in Gryffindor by the time that Ron sorted and Ron really didn't want to be in the same house as that annoying ponce.) Draco sorted into Gryffindor because by the time he got to Hogwarts it was occurring to him what an incredibly stupid thing he had done in annoying his cousin (he knows she's a prodigy with spells, even this early) and he really didn't want to be in the same house as her, least of all when he would be without a wand of his own for several days. (And 'Black' (Delphini having her mother's maiden name) comes before 'Malfoy', alphabetically, and so Delphini sorted into Slytherin before Draco got anywhere near the Sorting Hat.)

Other than Bellatrix and Delphini (and Lord Voldemort himself) nobody knows who Delphini's father is. Bellatrix claims to others it was 'a mysterious foreign pure-blood' who was in the UK briefly on a mission. The Malfoys probably know that Delphini is a Parselmouth and might make some guesses as to her parentage but are sworn to secrecy. Albus Dumbledore is assumed not to know who Delphini's father is as of the autumn of 1991 (or to know that she is a Parselmouth.)

Lord Voldemort's horcruxes are assumed to have been distributed slightly differently from in the books, given how his relationship with Bellatrix was progressing in the 1970's in the absence of Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange. Delphini is wearing Slytherin's Locket, although it is assumed to have minimal detrimental influence on her as she wants to protect it and adores the father she hasn't ever really known. (Probably Hufflepuff's cup ended up in the cave where the locket was for a time stored in the original books.)

As a reminder, this piece consists of a few rough sketches and is a one-shot. Maybe it will inspire others to write something much more polished on similar lines!