One moment, you are breathing in acrid, freezing water, claws at your ankles and wails of the dead in your ears, and the next you are stumbling onto the bank of the island, gasping for air and coughing at the feet of a tall, dark haired boy.
"James!" You manage between breaths, "James! Thank Merlin, my letter must've reached Sirius. I didn't expect you to come for me though -"
And then you look up, and the boy you're thanking looks confused, and terrified, and his eyes are bottle green in the low light, and he's not quite the right height, and -
"You're not James Potter."
He blinks and shakes his head, a jerky movement, and tells you, in the wrong accent, "No, James was my father."
"Your father?" you ask at the same time he says, incredulous -
"You're Regulus Black," and then, worse, "You've been dead for twenty years."
The rest of the day is a blur, you meet a version of Severus Snape with deep frown lines and an air of resentment around James' son and a teenager with white hair and scars on his hands and collar, you're told this boy is the offspring of your cousin and her now-husband, who you know as her boyfriend you never really liked but who didn't give you shit.
You also meet a Dumbledore with deeper wrinkles and no hint of auburn in his hair, and then you watch him die.
It's very late when James' son, this Harry Potter, takes you home. He doesn't talk to you, much, but you understand it. Too much has happened. You're not talkative either.
12 Grimmauld Place appears to you, decrepit and haunted-looking, save the lights on in a few windows. Your chest tightens at the sight.
"Grimmauld," Harry had said, "Your brother."
He'd explained, in tired, halting phrases, about what happened after you'd been trapped in that cove. James and Lily, Peter's involvement, the blame going to Sirius. Twelve long years in Azkaban.
You and Sirius were both sort of like ghosts, in that way.
He'd told you, also, of the Triwizard cup, and the Dark Lord's return, and the reformation of the Order of the Phoenix. He'd mused that the leadership may go to Remus Lupin in the wake of Dumbledore's death.
You are nauseous as you ascend the stairs of the townhouse and are sure you're going to vomit as Harry leads you down the entrance hall.
There's voices in the kitchen and the low bubble of a kettle about to whistle. The scent of a curry supper is fading. The house is warm.
You recognize the exasperated tenor of your sibling before you see him.
His eyes go wide when he looks over Lupin's shoulder.
Neither of you speak.
The kettle starts screaming.
The spell is broken when Lupin turns around. His amber eyes are wide, too, when he sees you standing there in Harry's too-big jeans and sweatshirt, and then his expression softens and he's jumping up, and sweeping you into his arms, exclaiming your name.
He still smells of ivory soap and tea on his breath and the essential oils he rubs on his temples for his migraines. His scruff still scratches your cheek and his shirt is still soft-worn where your hands curl for purchase against his back.
He kisses your head and tells you it's phenomenal to see you again and you see the white at his temples, the new scars, the lines at the corners of his eyes. He's as lovely as ever.
You're just beginning to tear up and smile at him when this spell, too, is broken, by Harry and Sirius' voices in unison.
"Callisto?"
Lupin blinks, as if he didn't even realize he'd said your name, and not the one your mother gave you. He opens his mouth as if to apologize to you, or to explain to your brother, but in that moment, despite not being exactly prepared to have this conversation with Sirius, you decide that surely, twenty years and two wars is enough for him to hear you and maybe accept you.
Maybe 1997 is better.
You take a breath as Lupin gives you an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder and goes to tend to the kettle.
The silence after he pulls it from the flame almost makes you lose your nerve.
"Callisto?" Your brother repeats, and he has this look on his face that infuriates you, tone somehow smug and offended at the same time, a question and an accusation at once.
You don't really mean to explode at him, but you've had a very long day. Just this morning you were writing a mocking letter to the Dark Lord. Just a few hours ago you watched your former headmaster die to a curse you're far too desensitized to.
"Yes! Callisto, you fucking twat, that's my name. The one I chose." It doesn't answer the question you know he's asking, the why, but any semblance of elegance has left your head with his enraging tone of voice.
"I thought your name was -" Harry begins, and you cut him off with a wave of your hand.
"It was."
Lupin's eyes flick up from his jar of honey to the boy beside you, he mouths at him to hush and listen but you don't think Harry sees, because he continues -
"Did the Death Eaters give you a new name or something?" which is frankly funny and nearly makes you laugh.
"No," you shake your head, "No nothing that simple, and even if they had i wouldn't still use it. I defected, Potter, I'd have no affection for something they gave me."
He makes a little face and gesture with his head that you take as that makes sense, yeah.
"Then what? When you defected did you pick something to run away under? Why'd you tell Moony? And why's it a girl's -"
You think you lost your wand in the water or you'd have it at his throat.
Lupin keeps looking at you apologetically. You wish he still lived alone and Harry had brought you to just him.
You wish you'd died in that cave like you planned.
A little bit of you wishes Sirius had died in the war or during the skirmish with Bella and the other Death Eaters at the ministry. Harry told you your brother narrowly avoided a fall through the Veil.
It's terrible to wish, but at least then you could've avoided this conversation forever.
"Because i am a girl, Sirius." You cut him off. The bomb has dropped, the blood is in the water. You hope to God your brother and James' son aren't sharks.
Sirius looks alarmed, Harry, bewildered. That's better than fear or rage.
A cup of hot tea is pushed into your hands. You look down at it, then up at Lupin. At Remus. At Moony. He smiles.
"So you're -" a doll, Remus had called you, when you told him, it was prettier than the words you'd used for yourself, prettier than " - a transsexual?"
Than that. But you suppose it's the correct one.
You nod, feeling too big and too small at the same time. Take a sip of the tea. Too much honey and milk.
He still remembers how you take your tea. It's been twenty years for him, and he still remembers. It makes you feel something you can't describe, peaceful and warm in your chest. It helps the terror you feel, looking up at your brother's suddenly angry expression.
Sirius gets up and you are ready to run.
He walks to the counter with the mugs and the kettle, takes a few long moments to prepare his own cup, and then turns back to look at you and sighs, long and low through his nose. Takes a drink of his tea.
"Why did you tell Remus and not me?"
You don't think you've ever heard your brother call his best friend by his first name. He's upset with him, too.
It's oddly relieving to not be the only target.
You mirror his sigh, "I was afraid."
"Afraid? Why would you be afraid, you knew i was getting with both, why would I care if you were - you know?" He waves a hand at you like he isn't sure how to describe what you are.
"Because," you feel yourself getting angry again, "Because, Sirius, you fucking abandoned me once, you barely spoke to me, why would I tell you something and risk losing you entirely? Why would I be so goddamn stupid as to scatter the ashes of an already burnt bridge?"
Wiping your now-burning eyes, you continue, "Telling Remus was an accident. I let something slip and he asked."
Remus Lupin leans on the wall beside you and makes some corny, raunchy joke involving your smart mouth or backtalk or something.
You go red, scandalized, "i am not that kind of girl, you insufferable - "
You catch the words that fell from your mouth and the warmth across your face spreads to your neck and ears. Your chest tightens and you feel sick, you should run, but you're frozen there.
"Girl?" Lupin asks, looking a little confused, straightening up his posture.
You're crying before you can stop it, and try desperately to backtrack, to explain away your slip of the tongue, to save yourself. You have to shut up when you begin to hyperventilate.
He makes you breathe with him, and once you're not about to faint, he begins asking questions, gently, like you're a wounded deer he might spook.
"Do you want to be a girl, Reg?"
You nod, "Sort of. Yes."
He nods back, looking thoughtful, "Is there another name you'd like to be called?"
"I haven't thought about it yet," you admit, "I'm just barely … coming to terms with the idea."
He hands you a cigarette from a pack hidden in his cloak, twirling one of his own between two fingers. You've never smoked before. He helps you light it off his.
You cough your lungs out, but it sort of helps you feel more clear.
"Does Sirius know?" he eventually asks, after telling you to let him know if you come up with a name.
The nausea comes back, "I don't think so."
"He's gonna throw a fit when he finds out you told me first," he laughs a little, "Like a howler. It'll be so loud you'll hear it in the dungeons."
"Don't tell him."
"I wouldn't. That's your cat and your bag."
You're not sure what the hell that turn of phrase means, but assume it's something he heard growing up in a muggle community.
"I've got a secret, too." He says.
You laugh and cut him off when he starts to tell you he's a werewolf.
"Respectfully, Lupin, anyone with eyes and a brain could figure that out." You gesture at him, his yellow-hazel eyes, his teeth, his scars.
"I had to tell my friends."
"Well we know they all have eyes."
He leans over laughing.
"A dog and a doll," he tosses a long arm across your shoulders, "What a pair."
You blink back into reality when Sirius seethes, "Abandoned you?"
That's what he's focused on?
"Abandoned you, you little -" the mug breaks in his hands from the force he's exerting on it, "I ran for my bloody life, you stayed behind and became fucking HitlerYouth."
You hand your mug to Remus, who nods and takes a step away.
"You know father forced me to join. You left so it fell to me." The tears are coming again, "You fucked off to live with Potter and the responsibilities fell on me, as per usual."
Harry starts to talk but you don't even hear him through the rush in your ears.
"Where could I have gone? Our cousins were being made to join, too. Andy? She already had a kid, she didn't need to harbor me. Most of my friends were in the same boat as me."
"You could've come with me! You could've said anything!"
Remus is steering Harry away from getting physically between you and Sirius. Evidently the kid got his father's idiocy.
"Don't get between Blacks when they have a row. Learned that when I was about Ron's sisters age." He tells the boy as he pushes him out of the room.
"They would've hunted me."
"And they aren't now?" He grabs your arm, pushing up the sleeve to show the tattoo. The brand.
You yank away, "No. Maybe while i was outside but you can't scry on Hogwarts and you can't scry here."
"Besides," you remind him, "they all think I'm dead."
Remus comes behind you, steps carefully around to catch both of your attention, "How did you survive, Cal? What's going on?"
It successfully diffuses the tension between you and your brother, who's clearly wondering the same.
You don't have an answer for them.
"I couldn't tell you. I was drowning, and then i was on the shore with Harry. I don't remember anything between."
"You still look the same," Remus smiles. You do? You haven't gotten the chance to look in more than water or polished stone yet.
"Suppose I'm still 18 then." You don't feel older, but you do feel tired.
"I think your hair's a bit longer, but it'd been -"
"A while." You and Sirius say together.
"A while," he says again, "since I'd seen you."
Sirius cleans up his broken mug and spilled tea and picks ceramic out of his palms.
Remus heats you up leftovers and chatters idly about how they'll have to send to the rest of the Order so as not to shock anyone when they meet you. He specifies that the letters will be that you're alive, and won't go too into detail about your gender, but will call you Callisto, since he isn't sure how the others may react.
Harry needs to go to his aunt's home in Surrey to pick up his things. After the death of Albus Dumbledore, he's decided he won't be taking a final year at Hogwarts, and will instead search for the rest of the Horcruxes. He'll return for Dumbledore's funeral, and then to Grimmauld for good when he's put affairs with his family in order.
He is still 16 for another month and cannot apparate home. He floos to the Weasley household so as not to "continue imposing".
Sirius has trouble speaking to you, which you can't fault him for. His little sibling he thought was dead is shuffling around the house helping his best friend tidy up, his little sibling is transsexual and never told him, even in the letter he received when you "died".
"We'll have to get you clothes," he says after a while of staring at the fireplace, while you're fluffing pillows for something to do, "What's left in your room is probably dry rotted, and mostly school uniforms or those dreadful suits Mother put you in."
"With the Mark, she can't very well leave the house. We'll have to ask around the Order." Remus says from the doorway.
"Ginny, Molly, and 'Mione are both a bit too short, and Molly's would probably be big. Luna's might fit? She's only an inch or two shorter - might be too skinny though." Sirius thinks for a moment, "Fleur? She's the same height and has a similar shape."
"Ooh yeah, then once we've got a size figured out, i can try the charity shop."
You feel your ears heat at all this conversation about you and clothes, "It doesn't - you don't have to exclusively get me girl's things. I'm used to - don't be choosy for my sake. I'm fine. Whatever will fit is fine."
Sirius looks you properly in the eyes for the first time, "Re - Cal. Callie. It doesn't have to be just "fine". You dealt with "fine" your whole life. I can't do a lot for you, i didn't do a lot for you before, let me - let me rally what troops i do have, for you. Getting some… skirts and lipstick, or whatever, is the least I can do."
The next afternoon, you are opening a package from Fleur Delacour, a young woman a year or two older than you who's soon to be married to Arthur Weasley's eldest son. She's left a note in curly French and included a parfum she doesn't quite like that smells of lilac or gardenia, you're not sure. She's also included flowers from her garden and a few hairpins.
The clothes are simple. Very French. Blouses, sweaters, stark jeans, a tweed skirt, a slip dress.
Bill sends along a few plain tee shirts for bands you've never heard of, a fisherman cardigan, and a pair of earrings with what appear to be dragon scales dangling from little chains.
Over the next few days, you receive similar packages from Andromeda's daughter Nymphadora, who you last saw as a toddler and is now older than you, a couple of friends of Harry's, Luna and Hermione, and even an unmarked parcel that you open to find pearl jewelry, a blouse, a turtleneck, and a dark velvet dress, along with a letter from your dear cousin Narcissa, the mother of that nervous blond you'd met in the astronomy tower.
She says to never contact her unless this war ends, but that she's glad to hear you're alive, and even more so to hear you can now live as you always wanted. She was one of the few you told, back then.
The morning of Dumbledore's funeral, Sirius doesn't look you in the eyes as he hands you a bag with Dove soap, dark lipstick, an eyeliner pencil, mascara, a pair of tweezers, a pack of razors, and, funniest and likely why he isn't looking at you, what appears to be a pack of women's underwear and some sort of training bra.
You let out a hysterical giggle.
"I thought it might help you feel more - i don't know!" His face is red, he looks embarrassed and mildly angry, "Don't laugh, Moony also laughed when I gave him the list."
This only makes you laugh harder, "No, no - it's - so sweet. Just…unexpected?"
His expression softens as he also starts to laugh a little, "Yeah I never really expected to be handing you a bag of women's knickers either."
You both laugh, then. He hugs you for the first time throughout this whole situation. For the first time in decades for him, and several years for you.
You think this is how it should've always been.
Remus arms you with a stack of teenage girl's magazines, hair bobs, a few dresses from the charity shop he thought you'd "look pretty in", and a kiss on the cheek before he leaves to attend the funeral.
"I didn't want you to be too bored," he smiles, "Sirius will probably spend the time I'm gone fighting with your mother's portrait in the attic."
He does. While you are studying illustrations of how to part your hair in a zigzag and apply metallic eyeshadow "just like j-lo", whoever that is, you can hear your older brother swearing at the two-dimensional ghost of your mother.
It feels like an odd twist of your original teenagehood.
He does this again on the 20th, while Remus leaves for the full moon.
Ginny Weasley is very proud of herself during an Order meeting when she brings you a box of butterfly shaped hair clips, a pack of swirly chokers, and a few of her favorite records.
She tells you, quietly, that she didn't try to gift you makeup because her mum says only sluts wear makeup. Having seen photos of Fleur, a fashionable young woman who seems to like lipstick, you worry how the new addition to the Weasley family is treated.
You also think that's a terrible thing for Molly to say to her fifteen year old child.
Ginny doesn't have any sisters. You decide to take this place for her as much as you can.
Harry turns seventeen on the 31st and is attacked by your former colleagues. One of the Weasley boys loses an ear.
Fleur's wedding is attacked as well.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione head out to hunt Horcruxes.
The Order starts coming around more often. Some of them practically live in the house, now. It's sort of nice, having people and sound and some sort of joy during what is otherwise an incredibly worrying time.
They do bring incredibly worrying news, still. Muggleborn round ups. Executions. The school being run by Death Eaters.
It all feels far too much like your brother was right with his comparisons.
Ginny Weasley stops sending letters. The school staff reads everything coming in and out.
More and more, Remus is gone on Order business. Sirius says it's just like the first war, except Moony doesn't smoke anymore.
Molly Weasley still calls you a boy, and doesn't trust you due to the Mark on your arm, but she does teach you to knit, and darn, and sew on buttons, and warns you of the "sweater curse", insisting you'll never get married if you make your boyfriend a sweater before he's your husband.
Remus isn't your boyfriend. He flirted when you were in school, and you've loved him irrevocably since the day he learned what you are, but you've never said a thing, and he is not interested, and you think he deserves a proper girl with a proper future who can give him a wedding and a family. Proper, like Nymphadora who looks at him the same way you do, or the Muggle girl at the grocer who gives him extra coupons, or anyone other than you.
You knit him a cardigan for Yule. You spritz it with your perfume, a little indulgence for yourself.
Luna Lovegood goes missing the next day.
When the snow melts, you decide to clear out the back garden. There's unruly remains of your mother's tulips, the house-elves' vegetable garden, an empty, derelict chicken coop, and a million weeds.
Fleur and Molly give you seeds and tips, and soon you're trial-and-erroring a compost pile, a patch of flowers, and a handful of vegetables and herbs you thought you could handle. You've cut back the brambles of berry bushes along the edges of the yard in hopes they'll grow back, too.
You don't even get the chance to harvest early radishes when you finally are called to do something for the war.
You arrive on the grounds of your old school in the early morning. You are surrounded by scared teenagers and a hundred adults who are hiding how scared they are. In the middle, there is hope and love and compassion.
In the light of dawn, you duel former friends, cousins, and colleagues. Few of them recognize you. Few stand down.
You watch new friends die and teenagers be maimed. You hope, selfishly, that Sirius and Remus survive.
You hear Molly Weasley swear for the first time and watch she and Ginny take down Bella.
In all of the fray, you do not catch sight of Narcissa nor her son. Not until Harry is declared dead, and then he is not, and her son, her Draco, throws the Boy Who Lived his wand while sprinting for cover with the Order. Cissy runs to your side, too.
Lucius is executed immediately.
Your dear cousin squeezes your hand, and the battle continues, and you watch Remus be hit with what you're sure is a death sentence. You're hit too, as you run for him, but you don't register the pain because you need to get to him, and cover him, and if he is dead, you need to say goodbye.
Your hair falls in a curtain over him. You're suddenly aware you're crying. Tears and mascara and your blood drip on his cheeks, and you're babbling half-forgotten prayers and telling him how much you love him and have always loved him, how you wish you'd had the nerve to kiss him when you had the chance, how kind he is, how much everything he does means to you. You even tell him about the silly sweater curse.
He gasps, and coughs, and pulls you into his chest. Lord Voldemort dies while you are being soothed and kissed by Remus Lupin.
When the war is over, there are many such kisses. Ron and Hermione, Pansy and Lavender. Luna dips Ginny. Draco grabs Harry Potter as desperately as you'd held Remus.
Among the loved, there are many, many dead. Each one is given a prayer and a burial or a pyre.
When the war is over, you and your brother are finally free. Harry decides he's had enough of the magical world for a while, and chooses to attend Muggle university. Remus is offered his professorship back.
You decide to go home, and keep growing things in your back garden, and knitting, and weighing Remus' poor barn owl down with love letters.
You spritz them with your perfume before sending.