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Harry is five when she learns her name. It's a nice name, really. Not as ridiculous as her cousin's but not as posh as the boy down the lane's. She knows three different boys with the same one in her class, which is weird because Dudley doesn't share his name with anyone. He's selfish like that, she figures.
Harry James Potter.
Perfectly normal, her Aunt would say. There's no sort of funny business about her name, nothing but her last name to suggest anything off about their home.
Aunt Petunia still doesn't like it. And, honestly, neither does she.
She still learns it. Still tucks it between her ribs and dutifully writes every letter, lets her teacher praise her for it despite knowing her cousin isn't going to be pleased she got the attention instead. But, outside school, it doesn't really stick. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia still call her boy in the house and break out freak for when she's being unreasonably bad, but she's used to those. Being Harry is new and she quickly associates it with school and Dudley finally finding a name for his favorite game.
She is six when she learns there's a difference between boys and girls and the teachers very firmly put her in the boy category.
It doesn't bother her, at first, not when her Aunt and Uncle only really care about whether or not her chores are done and don't care to separate the two. But school is a different hedgerow altogether and she doesn't particularly like it. She doesn't like that she has to share a bathroom with people who think it's funny to make a mess of the floors, nor does she like being separated into lines to get anywhere in the school.
Harry doesn't particularly want to be a boy, not when it means she'd have to be like her cousin and Uncle. She doesn't mind it but it sounds tiring and she's more like her Aunt, anyway. Still, she keeps her mouth shut and her head down, watching the divide grow wider and wider until it feels like an ocean between them and all she can do is struggle to keep her head above water. It's surprisingly hard to learn.
She spends the most time with Aunt Petunia so it's easier to watch her than the teachers or her classmates.
Harry sees her straight back, her perfect manners, and determination to make a good housewife. Watches her Aunt gossip with the neighbors after lunch, listens to the soft, indulgent tone she takes when speaking with Uncle Vernon. So she learns to copy it. She practices her balance at her desk during lessons with her back straight and shoulders square despite how much it hurts afterward and carefully keeps her grades at an acceptable level below her cousin, until the teachers stop looking at her with expectations she can't meet.
But Harry's voice is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Her voice is wrong and her clothes are wrong and she grows to hate the way her Uncle only calls her boy like she doesn't have an actual name. The older she gets the more she resents it, the more it digs under her skin, until she lashes out and earns a week in her cupboard for the trouble. Still, she practices. She whispers to herself despite how much she loathes her voice, practicing the correct tone, and sits up straight in her little cot no matter how much she wants to curl into a ball and never get back up.
"I'm not a boy, please don't call me one." She tells her Aunt afterward. Uncle Vernon's left for the day and Dudley is playing his games upstairs with the newfound freedom summer holiday gives them. Aunt Petunia sends her a sharp look but the windows are drawn, leaving them alone in the kitchen with Harry up to her elbows in dishwater.
"Please." She adds again, softer.
"Get back to work." Her Aunt glowers at her over a vase of dried roses, her dainty hands snipping thorns from the flowers like they personally wronged her by being there. But she also doesn't call her boy again, so Harry counts that as a hard-earned win.
She doesn't help her with anything related to being a girl, though, leaving her to figure everything out by herself. But she doesn't try to cut her hair again after the disastrous attempt at a bowl cut that somehow grew back overnight longer than it had been before. Aunt Petunia also doesn't teach her how to put her hair up into the neat bun she wears, but she does correct Harry's messy braid that keeps slipping free.
That Christmas, Harry even gets a small bag of elastics on top of the cold leftovers from dinner.
She's ten when she decides she wants a different name. Harry James is nice and all, but it's a very boy name and her Aunt hasn't called her one of those in years. She goes through her options with the same care she gives to just barely passing her maths tests. The library's encyclopedia is under her tender care for a week, marking down her options on a pocket-sized notebook she'd filched out of Dudley's school supplies years ago. She likes flower names, she decides, and she wants something as normal as her old name.
After throwing out names like Chrysanthemum and Foxglove, she's left with a respectable amount of pretty sounding flowers and the bubbling dread that comes with presenting them to her Aunt.
They're alone again. Dudley's out wreaking havoc with his minions and Uncle Vernon won't be home for another hour or so, her Aunt sitting at the kitchen table with the finances in one hand and a clunky calculator under the other.
"Would you consider calling me by a different name?" She asks. Aunt Petunia looks up with a scowl, but she doesn't say no. Harry waits a moment more just to make sure. She smooths down her borrowed apron and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear before she works up the courage to speak.
"I'd like to be called Lil-."
"Not Lily!" Her Aunt spits out immediately. Harry's jaw snaps shut, taking a half-step back. "I'm not calling you by your wretched mother's name, girl."
Oh.
That explains why she likes the name so much. Harry takes the name, pulling it close to her heart without listening very hard to the insult. Getting such a thing out of Aunt Petunia is like pulling teeth, but she'll respect her Aunt's wishes about it. It would be weird sharing a name with her mother, after all.
"Not Lily." She agrees, watching Aunt Petunia's shoulders inch back down. There are more names, she didn't only come with one. "What about Ivy?"
Her Aunt sniffs, giving her another scowl before going back to her work. Ivy takes that as a yes.
She, unfortunately, still has to be Harry most of the time. There's no way she can change her school records and she's not stupid enough to give her cousin something else to pick on her with, nor does she risk her Uncle's wrath by asking him to do anything.
She is a week away from eleven when the letter comes.
It calls her Harry James instead of Ivy in bright green ink and burns in the fireplace once her Uncle catches her with it. She is not allowed to have mail and that's that, tumbling back into her cupboard and almost catching her braid in the door. Then another comes the next morning, and the morning after that, until she's being packed up into a little rowboat toward an island in the middle of a storm.
When she meets Hagrid, he calls her Harry and tells her that she looks just like her father, with eyes like her mother's. Ivy personally thinks he's playing them with an elaborate ruse but he also gives her a squashed birthday cake and a pat on the head so she can let the name slide, just this once.
Only he keeps doing it and the people in the pub recognize her old name, crowding around her like she was some sort of celebrity. It sets her teeth on edge the entire time, leaving her with a bitter taste in her mouth when everyone keeps staring even after they get into Diagon Alley itself. Everything is strange and not-normal beyond the brick wall but Ivy sets her shoulders against the world and bland smile on her lips against a world that refuses to keep its distance.
And then she meets a boy in the robes shop who reminds her of her Aunt, indulges in a bit of polite conversation that meanders in directions she doesn't know. He calls her probably a Hufflepuff and pretty for a muggleborn before actually asking her name, leaving her with his own before running out the door.
The thrill of introducing herself as Ivy doesn't leave her the rest of the day, no matter her Uncle's rage and her fear that she'd be locked in her cupboard until after the school year started.