The Unwanted by Lemon Curd
Summary: When Harriet Potter starts Hogwarts, Severus Snape notices she is unusually quiet and withdrawn. Thinking that she might be sick, he takes her to Madam Pomfrey. What he learns is much more disturbing than a simple sickness. With the ever-optimistic Albus Dumbledore being no help whatsoever, Severus decides that desperate measures need to be taken.

On Halloween morning, Harriet Potter receives a letter from the Half-Blood Prince
Categories: Teacher Snape > Professor Snape, Healer Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required)
Snape Flavour: Canon Snape
Genres: Horror
Media Type: None
Tags: Girl!Harry, Incognito!Snape
Takes Place: 1st Year
Warnings: Emotional Abuse, Self-harm
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 11 Completed: No Word count: 26033 Read: 24921 Published: 26 Sep 2021 Updated: 08 Feb 2022
Chapter 7 by Lemon Curd
Harry woke up when she stood in knee-deep in the snow on a forest clearing.

The last thing she could remember was Hermione telling her she would go to the library.

Before that … breakfast. There had been no letter from the Half-Blood Prince again. Harry had hoped he would apologize.

He had not. Of course not. Why would he? He had never cared about her in the first place.

She felt hot tears well up in her eyes, quickly cooling off as they rolled down her cheeks. Her throat constricted.

There was no adult in the whole world who cared about her. Being a celebrity didn’t change that.


“Why so sad, darling?”


“You are not wanted at the castle.”

“But we want you.”

An ominous cackle followed those words.

Harry saw them advance towards her. Most of them looked like extremely ugly old women, but there was something off about them. Even the two who looked beautiful at first glance were … wrong, somehow, in a way that made her shiver. Somehow, their mouths were too large, their jawbones too wide ...
Some were dressed in rags, some in expensive garments. Hags. They came from all directions, seven of them.

She reached for her wand, then realized she had left it back in her dorm.

Her fists were here only weapon now, but try as she might, her arms would not move fast enough. It was as though she was swimming through syrup.

They dragged her to a fir tree and bound her there, hands behind her, pressed to the rough, cold bark, the hemp rope cutting into her wrists.


Then they started a fire in the middle of the clearing, and one of them brought a cauldron.

A very large cauldron.

“Yes, this is for you”, a hag said, winking at her. “A nice hot bath.”

Several hags cackled at that, and Harry thought she heard some whisper about what a delicious meal she would make.

A cold shiver ran over her, even though she was so cold already. They would really eat her. Everything she had written in that stupid essay for Snape had been true.


It was about lunch time when the water begun to boil. Harry felt hungry, and for a brief moment thought of her friends who by now would be having lunch in the Great Hall. Would they? Or would they have gotten worried and told someone she was missing?

Surely they would come to her rescue. That thought gave her a little hope.

If only they arrived before she became lunch herself ...

“Isn’t she ripe yet?”, one of the hags grumbled.

“Not yet. Too much hope left. She will be ready in the evening, at the latest.”


Hope. Was that what kept them from eating her?

“My friends will be here before the evening”, she told the hags.


“Your friends?”, one taunted. “Tasty little witches and wizards? We will be so very pleased to meet them, won’t we?”

They howled with laughter.


“I have adult friends, too!”, she threatened. She would just have to pretend … hoping it was enough …

“The friend you told you hate him?”, a hag with yellowish white hair and yellow teeth taunted.

“The one you mocked for the fact your mother didn’t want to be friends with him anymore?”, one who looked younger than the others and wore a nice dress added.

“You really hurt him. He’ll never forgive you.”

“She was his only real friend, you know?”

How could they know all this?

She had not meant to hurt him. Not really. Just … just enough so he would feel sorry for telling her no.
If she had known he didn’t have any other friends … just like her …
It was hard to hold back the tears.

Of course he would never forgive her. She herself surely wouldn’t, if she were him.

Relentlessly, the hags taunted and mocked her.

When one told her that gummy bears were made from bone, and that they would use her bones for just that, and perhaps feed them to her unsuspecting friends, she felt something wet and warm on her leg.

She had peed herself.

Biting her lip, she resolved to tell herself that it was just because she hadn’t been able to go to the toilet, bound to a tree as she was.

It wasn’t that she was afraid.

Only … she was.



Hours later, the sunlight began to fade.

Harry was shivering with cold. Cold, not fear, she told herself. The only reason she had not frozen to death was the large fire in front of her.

The fire they would cook her on.

By now, the hags had moved on to talking about the Dursleys.

“No wonder your aunt didn’t want you. You’re such a crybaby.”

“Crying like a girl!”



Harry tried to swallow down the sobs that wanted to escape her throat. She would not give the hags another reason to make fun of her.

Briefly, she thought of her mother. Her brave mother who had died so she could live.

“I’m sorry, mum”, she whispered. The sacrifice had been in vain.

All just because she had been so stupid and made a deal with a hag. Even though aunt Petunia had told Dudley time and again that he was not to talk to strangers.
Not that anyone bothered to tell Harry such things. But she had known it was good advice, because it had been for Dudley, and she had gone and talked to the hag anyways. Because Hagrid was a stranger, too, and she’d been so sure everyone in Diagon Alley was nice.

By now, she had a headache and was feeling dizzy from not eating or drinking anything since breakfast.
Her teeth were chattering with cold, her hands were numb.

The scene before her, hags gathered round a fire, looked like something out of a nightmare.

And by now, she had no hope left whatsoever.

It was dark and no one had come. No one would come for her. Now she felt more sad than afraid. Perhaps it didn’t matter so much when she died. No one would miss her. They clearly didn’t miss her enough to come save her. Or perhaps they had tried. Hermione and Ron might have tried and then been killed by one of the monsters in the forest, and it was all her fault.
That thought felt even worse.


“Oh!” A hag with the ugliest warty face of them all and green skin sniffed the air. “She’s ripe now.”


They advanced on her, and Harry was sure she would die, her bladder disobeying her once more.

When the hags suddenly stopped, she hoped they were put off by the smell, but that was not it.

“Someone is coming”, one whispered.

“He again”, another said sullenly. “We will have to do something about him.”



A hooded figure stepped onto the clearing, not very tall for a man, but rather too tall for a woman. He was wearing a cloak that shimmered silvery, hood drawn deep in his face, so it was not even visible in the firelight.

And he had his wand out, pointing it at the hags.

Hope blossomed in Harry’s chest. This was not one of the Hogwarts teachers, and not Hermione or Ron, but it might, just might, be the Half-Blood Prince.


“I have come to retrieve what is mine”, he said. His voice sounded familiar, strangely enough, but Harry could not quite place it.


“You don’t want the ungrateful brat”, the leader hag, the one with the yellowish hair, said. “Didn’t she say you didn’t deserve a friend?”

“Don’t forget she mocked your poverty. Trying to bribe you.”

“And she hates you.”


“Be that as it may”, the hooded figure replied, voice trembling. Perhaps he was trying to not sound angry. “You have taken what is mine, and I want her back.”


“She will hate you if she sees your face, you know?”

“Ooooch, or if she sees what you hide under your sleeve.”


“You claimed she hated me already”, the man stated calmly. “Now, untie her and give her to me, I am not going to repeat myself.”


“Get her yourself! But be warned, you can only take one of them.”


One of them?

Harry looked around. To her horror, she saw that next to her, there was another Harry. And on her other side, too.

She counted six other Harrys.

Not all of them looked like her.

There was one who had long auburn hair.

One who had black hair and a bob cut that made her strangely resemble Snape.

The one on her right side looked just like her, and the one on her left side was a boy with tame blonde hair, just like Dudley’s.


“Save me!”, they all cried.


“Oh, the classic riddle. If I find the real one, you will let me take her?” The hooded stranger, who Harry hoped was the Half-Blood Prince, now sounded more bored than anything else.


“Choose wisely”, the hags cackled. “We will not hinder you from taking the first one you touch.”


The stranger walked to the beginning of the row, which was out of Harry’s sight.

She waited with bated breath until he appeared again. He took one look at the version of her with a bob cut, then moved to the one with the long auburn hair.

He looked at her for quite a long time. Did he seriously believe Harry had made her hair grow while bound to a tree?

“I knew you would come to rescue me”, the girl breathed. “I was so afraid I would die before I could tell you I have a crush on you.”

The stranger recoiled.

“What kind of man do you take me for?”, he spat in the direction where the hags had gathered. “Disgusting.”

Did he think Harry was disgusting? Or just that version of her?


He moved on to the one next to Harry, the one who looked just like her.

“Thank you, thank you! I’m so sorry for the nasty things I wrote! I was so stupid! How could I ever be so arrogant to think I deserved to be a boy! Please, please save me, I know I don’t deserve it, but please!”

“Seriously, are you hags even trying?”, the stranger muttered.

He huffed and moved on to Harry, sparing her only a short glance.

Her heart sank when he moved on to the Dudley-like boy.

“The hags turned me into a boy! I can be your apprentice and help you with your research and become just like you! I’m strong, not like those whiny girls.”

Another huff. “You are strong? So what? Do you think that makes you better than Harriet? So sorry to disappoint you, but my days of bowing to power are over. I do no longer believe that might makes right. As for becoming just like me – I certainly hope no child ever becomes just like me.”

The stranger turned to look at Harry once more. Even with his face turned directly towards her, it remained in the shadows of his hood. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

She stared at her feet and bit her lip. If she were him, she would probably have rescued the boy. Or the girl who had apologized. “I’m the real one”, she croaked, throat raw from crying.


“No, I’m the real one!”, the girl next to her cried.

They all began to protest that they were the only real Harry.


Just as she was losing hope, a hand touched her shoulder. Then, the rope fell from her hands as though it had been cut.

She staggered forward, then fell on her knees. Her legs felt so weak, and her head was all dizzy.

Arms lifted her up, settling her face against a shoulder covered in silvery fabric. The wool felt warm against her cold skin.

“You told me to never write you again. You never said I could not come visit”, the stranger said, and Harry knew for sure who he was, then.

“I’m sorry”, she mumbled, hiding her face in the warm fabric that had the same woolen smell like her school uniform cloak.

He did not reply to that, but he held her pressed to his chest while he walked through the silent forest, snow scrunching under his feet.




When she woke, the first thing she saw was two kindly blue eyes behind half-moon shaped glasses.

Dumbledore. She was angry with him … or was she? He had been right about the hag thing, after all …

Looking around, she realized she was in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey was standing on the other side of the bed, and next to the doors, Snape looking at the potions cabinets.

“How are you feeling, Harry?”

She felt warm, comfortable and … very thirsty and hungry.

“Okay, I guess. Could I have something to drink?”

Dumbledore conjured a glass of water for her. After that, Madam Pomfrey made her drink a potion that made steam come out of her ears.

“Professor Snape found you in the Forbidden Forest”, Dumbledore explained. “Can you remember what happened before that?”

Harry hesitated. “Snape found me?”

“Professor Snape”, Dumbledore corrected her gently. “Yes.”

“There was someone who freed me, but it wasn’t Professor Snape. I … the hags were planning to eat me.”

The Headmaster nodded sagely. “Why did you go into the forest, Harriet?”

“I didn’t … I didn’t mean to. I don’t even remember. One moment I was talking to Hermione, and the next I was there in the forest.” He probably thought she was lying.

“Ah yes. You must have been under their influence. I should have been more watchful.”

How could she have been under the influence of anyone outside the castle? And why hadn’t her friend carried her all the way back?

“Where did Snape – Professor Snape – find me, sir?”

“Just at the edge of the wood. It appeared as if someone had left you there for him to find. You were wrapped in a silver blanket, which vanished the moment he touched it.”
To be continued...


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