This story will probably cover all seven years of Hogwarts and will follow the big events from Canon but in general will be AU. First of all, this is a FemHarry story. In this story Holly Potter(FemHarry) will attend Hogwarts in disguise as Regulus Black's daughter. Nobody - except for Sirius and maybe Remus - will know that she's in fact the girl-who-lived. How does she fool everyone? Because in this story Holly is in fact, Regulus' biological daughter but nobody knows. Everybody at Hogwarts will know her as 'Electra Black' and she will be in Ravenclaw, not Gryffindor. Sirius will be freed from Azkaban before her first year at Hogwarts and he will become her guardian since he's in fact her uncle. Well, I hope you like it.

BTW, this story is kind of a translation of my Italian story called 'Un Diverso Destino' - the main character was Harry though, not FemHarry - but as things go on it will diverge more and more from the original version. This Italian story is WIP and actually horribly written. I started it years ago, when I had just begun to try my hand at writing. I decided that since the plot was pretty good, why not try to re-write it - hopefully I'll do a better job than I did - but in English this time?

Well, I'm done now, don't worry. Please Read and Review!

A CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCES

Summary: Holly Potter, the girl-who-lived, was left on the Dursleys' doorstep that particular Halloween night. But it's only when she's five years old that things really start to diverge from the story we all know. When the cupboard under the stairs becomes too small for her, Holly is moved to the basement and that's where she found her mother's - Lily Potter - old trunk. Inside - besides her old school books and a bunch of other amazing things - there's a letter when Lily explains that Holly Potter is not in fact a Potter at all, but she's instead, Regulus Black's daughter and the name on her birth certificate is 'Electra Black'. Ravenclaw!FemHarry(but with a hidden Slytherin personality), Manipulative!FemHarry, Dark-but-not-Evil!FemHarry, Metamorphomagus!FemHarry.

Main Pairing: FemHarry(Holly/Electra)/Severus(eventually). Mentor!Snape for now since when Holly meets Severus for the first time, she's only eleven.

Other Pairings: Draco/Hermione, Ron/Daphne, Neville/Luna.

Warnings: Mention of child abuse and attempted rape(not too graphic though).

A little bit of Dumbledore bashing even if it's Canon that he's a manipulative bastard!

Disclaimer: I'll say this only once.I don't own the Harry Potter series nor do I make money by writing this.

09/28/2014. IMPORTANT: So sorry to the people who wanted Holly with Tom or with both of them, but I thought about it and I decided to make this story a Severus/Holly one, because I just like better the direction the story would take with the two of them together. I had a plan with Tom Riddle in the story but the plot I have in my mind works better with no Tom Riddle but only with Voldemort as the main antagonist. Sorry, I hope you'll like my story anyway and that you will continue follow it.

Prologue

Little Whinging, in Surrey, was an extremely ordinary and normal area. Its houses were all the same, all kept clean and tidy, its lawns green and well-mowed. Privet Drive, like every street that was part of the area, wasn't much different.

A house in that street, however, was different from all the others, even if you couldn't notice it just by looking at it.

Number 4, Privet Drive housed a secret, something that the Dursley family wanted to keep hidden at all cost.

The Dursleys had lived in Privet Drive for many years and during all that time, their main goal had been to appear completely and utterly normal.

Something had happened, however, to disrupt their perfectly normal lives. The night of the 31 of October, a baby girl had been left on their doorstep, a baby that - they knew - would have ruined their extremely ordinary existence forever.

That baby - Holly Potter was her name - was the only daughter of Petunia's sister, a sister that she hadn't seen or heard from in years nor she had any intention to see ever again.

The little bundle was no more than one year old, a tuft of black hair on her head and bright, emerald green eyes. But more than anything, the peculiar characteristic of this baby was the strange-shaped scar on her forehead, a scar that resembled a lightning bolt.

Holly was a quiet baby, a little, dark-haired angel who never cried nor did she ever complain. For the Dursleys, however, she represented the worst disgrace imaginable.

Petunia and her husband Vernon had also a son, the same age as Holly. His name was Dudley. He was a big, blond mass of fat, almost double the size of Holly. He was also an extremely spoiled baby, spending all his time screaming and crying to catch his parents' attention.

In the Dursleys' eyes, however, Dudley was the most wonderful and precious thing in the world and they knew that a baby as beautiful and special as Holly - even if they would never admit such a thing aloud - could represent a danger for their only son. They didn't certainly want a freak such as that one to overshadow their beloved Dudley.

Holly was the living example of everything that the Dursleys considered abnormal. From her appearance: eyes too lively and clever for such a little baby, to the fact that she never cried. Not to mention her parents...who were what they were.

The Dursleys never talked about it but they knew that Holly, exactly like her parents, had magic. But 'magic' was a word that was absolutely forbidden in that house.

Holly was, to make it simple, the exact opposite of Dudley and that in and of it itself was proof enough that she was abnormal.

In the end, the Dursleys decided that the little freak wouldn't even deserve a room of her own and they were both in agreement to the fact that the cupboard under the stairs would be more than enough for her.

The freak certainly didn't deserve new clothes and the only thing she would be allowed to wear were Dudley's hand-me-downs. And they certainly couldn't waste good food on her, the leftovers would have been more than enough for her.

As the years went by, the Dursleys decided that they had been too generous with her and if the girl wanted to stay, she needed to earn her keep. She was then forced to clean and tidy up the house and even cook once she was tall enough to reach the stove, height that she was able to reach when she was only three.

No matter the little food she had to eat and the enclosed and dark space she was forced to live in, little Holly grew up fast. She was pretty tall for her age and this fact only served to make the Dursleys even more angry.

When then, at the age of four, she started to manifest her first magical abilities - precocious age for sure but of that the Dursleys had no idea - was in that moment that things for Holly went from bad to worse.

Vernon decided that the only way to free the girl from her freakishness - namely, her magic - was through beatings. Of course he wasn't able to obtain any result, on the contrary, every cut and bruise Vernon caused her had already healed by the next morning.

It's superfluous to say that this fact helped in infuriating Vernon even more until the beatings became so terrible that she began to faint every single time. The worse the beatings though, the faster her wounds healed, without leaving any scar on her skin.

However things for Holly were about to change.