239: Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL - Chapter Eight

Title: Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL
Author: Immortal Wolf Lover
Media: Television / Movie / Book
Topic: Harry Potter / X-Men Evolution
Genre: Drama / Family
URL: Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL – Chapter Eight
Critiqued by Ghostcat

Hey, guys – remember back in December when I was riffing that terrible Harry Potter/ X-Men crossover that I fervently hoped had died a quiet and unremarkable death? Well, it looks like the universe hates me because the author updated with a new chapter titled With Jade and her true friends.

O [insert name of favorite deity here], why have you forsaken me?

If you don’t feel like wading back through the Archives to find the first seven chapters, here’s a run-down of what has happened so far.

Ororo Munroe, a.k.a. Storm of the X-Men, is both a mutant and a Potterverse-style witch. She married Lily Evans and the couple produced a child somehow. The author doesn’t go into great detail as to how this happened, but I’m a big fan of my Build-A-Baby Workshop theory. It is revealed via flashbacks that James Potter, who had been downsized to the friend zone, was staying with Lily and baby Jade while Storm was out of town. Voldyshorts arrived and things go about the same as they do in the books, but for some unknown (and as yet unexplained) reason when Jade was retrieved from the house she was turned into a boy named Sue Harry by Dumbledore before being dumped at the Dursleys instead of being turned over to his/her surviving parent (who was unaware that anyone had survived despite how famous the Boy Who Lived became.)

Flash-forward to the time period of Order of the Pheonix and within seconds of Storm revealing her Potterverse witch powers to the X-Men for the first time, Sirius Black Apparates to the exact same spot where she is to tell her that the daughter she thought was dead is actually alive – only “she” is now a “he” but is turning back into a “she” and that Umbridge is now at Hogwarts so Harry/Jade could be in trouble because Umbridge hates mutants. It’s never fully explained why Harry/Jade’s spontaneous sex change would cause Umbridge to assume that s/he is a mutant or what sort of “trouble” she could get him/her in. Storm instructs her house elf Flipsy (who talks like Gollum) in how she wants Harry/Jade’s room decorated, and then she and the X-Men race to Hogwarts to save the emotionally fragile and confused child (who has just threatened to remove Sirius’ reproductive organs with a wooden spork) from Umbridge and imminent danger.

If that doesn’t really make any sense, you should read the original. I had to do a massive amount of editing and revising just to form something that resembles a linear story.

We start off with a short Author’s Note/ Disclaimer.

A/N don’t own and why not

Because “No” that’s why not. I’m all for playing “What if?” but there are some things you should keep to yourself. I know it’s hard for some kids today to understand, but it is possible to have a thought and not instantly share it with the entire world. I blame Twitter and Facebook for this.

The last chapter ended with Storm, who has been the focus of the fic thus far, reminiscing about her time at Hogwarts while on her way to Scotland in the X-Men’s jet. As the author has been fairly good with her continuity, I’m sure that’s where this chapter will pick back up.

“Okay. Anyone know why I’m suddenly a girl? There’s nothing wrong with being a girl I’m just not used to it yet.” Harry, or Jade as I will be officially calling her now, asks adding the last part quickly when the girls in the group glared at her.

:headdesk:

I guess the scene has shifted from the Formless Void surrounding Storm to the Formless Void surrounding Harry/Jade, which looks … pretty much exactly the same since nothing is described – at all. It’s entirely possible that Harry/Jade and his/her friends were just spat out of the situationally-dependent quantum flux into the back of the X-Men’s jet somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

:THWACK!:

I assume that bit between the commas is supposed to be another Author’s Note, in which case…

:THWACK!:

You deserve two for that.

The author has been pretty good at referring to Harry/Jade in the masculine even after it was stated that s/he had already changed teams, but if the author is going to have scenes with the gender-switched character in them and s/he is physically a female now, it makes sense to switch to the feminine. That doesn’t excuse tucking an Author’s Note into the narration, though.

“Well the most likely theory is that you were hidden under a few glamours and they finally wore off.”

:headdesk:

It is hard to believe that there could be so much wrongness in so few words.

I can name three things off the top of my head that are more likely than “Harry/Jade has been under the effects of a spell for most of his/her life and it is just now wearing off”:

1. Someone slipped him/her some Polyjuice Potion and s/he has taken the form of an unknown female
2. The gender switch is the result of a curse or hex from an enemy
3. The Weasley twins are testing out a new gender-switching sweet and slipped some to Harry/Jade

And the list goes on. This is a world where magic is a very real thing and it is not unheard of for characters to change physical forms, so the list of what could be causing this is quite long. Hogwarts is a school packed with teenagers who can cast spells and at this time don’t particularly care for Harry/Jade; chances are at least one of them would find this situation funny as hell. (I know I would.) If I were in the character’s place, I’d want to know where Draco Malfoy and his Slytherin goons were when the change occurred.

Next up – “glamours.” A glamour, or glamourie if you want to get fancy, is a magical illusion - one of the definitions of the word is “a spell affecting the eye.” If the spell turning Jade into Harry was a glamour, then s/he would have girl bits that only looked like boy bits but were still physically girl bits.

If that’s the case, this child is going to need so much therapy.

 Draco Malfoy, who was only her enemy to those not in on the secret and was actually like an older brother and protector to the younger girl, said immediately.

… WHAT THE HELL?!?

That was Draco Malfoy speaking just now – the massive douchecanoe who loathes every single thing about Harry? And he is like his/her brother?!?

:headdesk:

Draco is Harry/Jade’s enemy – the two despise each other! I can’t think of any character who would be less of an “older brother” figure, unless Snape took an anti-aging potion. Malfoy would be much more likely to go the Big Brother route and secretly spy on Harry/Jade.

Given Draco’s history of being untrustworthy and mildly evil, surely one of Harry/Jade’s real friends will shoot down this nonsense and suggest some more reasonable alternatives.

“Sounds right I went to Gringotts

Oh, I am going to hate this so much.

 with Gram the other day and found out that your real parents’ names are Lily Munroe-Potter nee Evans and Ororo Munroe.

:headdesk:

I was right.

Mrs. Potter-er- Lily was blood adopted by James Potter as his sister so you’re still technically a Potter you’re just a Munroe too.” Neville Longbottom said confidently and without stuttering since he was around people he knew he could trust if only because he knew Jade trusted them.

And all this information is relevant to Harry/Jade’s current predicament … How, exactly? In what parallel dimension does this confirm Draco’s hypothesis?

I don’t recall if Neville is ever described as having a chronic stutter; a little clumsy and forgetful, yes, and he would often stammer when he was nervous or stressed, but I don’t remember a stutter. Frankly I’m surprised he could remember all this irrelevant personal information about one of his classmates that some careless bank employee (who was hopefully fired and/or set on fire) casually mentioned an unspecified time beforehand.

“Okay. How are we gonna hide this from Umbitch?” Jade asks taking what she had just learned in stride, she was used to seemingly impossible things happening to her by now.

Okay? OKAY? You are just going to blindly accept this? Fuckity-fuck-FUCK!

:screams incoherently:

Just picture the kittens, Ghostie – fluffy little kittens frolicking in a field of sunflowers …

:deep breath: Okay, I’m good.

This is what the above conversation boils down to;

Harry/Jade – “Where did my penis go?”

Draco – “I bet it was just an illusory penis.”

Neville – “That’s reasonable, because your parents aren’t exactly who you thought they were.”

Harry/Jade – “Sounds good. Anyone have a spare pair of socks I can stuff in my pants?”

It just makes no frickin’ sense. I don’t care how accustomed you are to impossible things happening, a spontaneous gender change is going to put a major kink in your hose.

:rubs forehead:

I miss that know-it-all Hermione; this fic desperately needs her bookwormish voice of reason.

“Mom and dad are in the Great Hall right now ‘evaluating’ Umbitch and the school.

… Who?

Toad face can’t do anything too you as long as they’re here and if we show that you know them and are close to them then she’ll be too scared to even think about laying a finger on you.” Draco said with a malicious grin that was copied by a Hufflepuff named Susan Bones.

The Malfoys are there to protect Harry/Jade? That’s just so … wrong.

Why are the Malfoys, neither of whom are Ministry officials, there evaluating Umbridge and the school – and why is “evaluating” bracketed by apostrophes? Are they actually evaluating her or are they just faking it to hassle Umbridge?

“Aunty’s here too and she has just as much if not more power over the toad as the Malfoys.” Susan added while the rest of the group snickered at the plan that they came up with on the spot.

Okay, that’s slightly more feasible - Amelia Bones is the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, so she might visit the school if there have been any reports of laws being broken. (Which is unlikely given the stranglehold Umbridge has on the school.) I don’t recall anyone in the Bones family being an especially close friend of Harry’s, but they weren’t openly hostile towards him either.

“Oh yeah, how did you guys know that we needed to meet when I didn’t call for you over the coins yet?” Jade asks as she led the way towards the Great Hall with the rest of the group falling into step with her.

Seriously? Of all the plot holes in this fic, this is the one you choose to address? How this still-unspecified number of children got together is the least of the problems I have with this thing.

It does help narrow down who is there with Harry/Jade as only members of Dumbledore’s Army would have the fake Galleons, but that still doesn’t tell the audience how many are there or even where they are before they head towards the Great Hall. Normally I’d assume they were in the Room of Requirement, since that is where the DA regularly met, but anything is possible at this point.

Harry/Jade did tell Sirius to meet him/her in the Great Hall, but as he wouldn’t be expected for some time so I don’t know why they are headed there right now. As there have been no indications as to the passage of time, I assume Harry/Jade just finished his/her mirror-call with Sirius before asking his/her invisible friends if they knew what was going on. No definitive time is given for Sirius’ arrival at the X-Men’s mansion, but as class hadn’t started yet I’d put it around six-thirty or so in the morning. Adding some time for the endless interior decorating talk and the five hour time difference puts Harry/Jade’s current time somewhere around noon – lunchtime, when the students and faculty would be gathering in the Great Hall to admire the decorations for the Hallowe’en Feast being held that evening.

I sense trouble.

“We could hear you screaming at Sirius from in the dungeons and I’m pretty sure the people in the states could hear you too.” Draco teases messing up Jades pure white hair before running like the hounds of hell were on his heels, which was pretty close to the truth.

Hogwarts is a frickin’ castle – a great big sprawling mess of a place with massively thick walls made of frickin’ stone. Harry/Jade would need lungs like an air raid siren to be heard farther than a room away. Draco runs away from him/her as if he expects him/her to overreact to a little gentle teasing. Surely no one would be that sensitive to something that barely qualifies as a joke, especially a character that is normally descrbed as having “messy hair” anyway. (Unless Draco literally teased his/her hair, which can be a pain in the ass even when it’s done properly.)

“Get back here you bastard!” Jade yelled racing into the Great Hall after the laughing blond and ignoring all of the other students and teachers looking at them intrigued along with the senior Malfoys and Amelia Bones.

Or s/he could react completely out of proportion to the offense and run straight into the one group of people s/he is trying to avoid. That works, too.

“No way! I’m not stupid enough to actually listen to that, Potter!” Draco shouted back making everyone not in the know feel their jaws hit the ground.

:headdesk:

No one expects you to actually turn around, go back, and let him/her beat you up just because s/he told you to, dumbass – not even Harry/Jade. That’s why s/he is chasing after you and not patiently standing in one spot waiting for you to return for your ass-whooping. Dumbass.

I’d like to be “in the know” too, since I have no idea what I’m supposed to get from that. What part of this conversation doesn’t sound like two enemies trying to severely injure one another? It’s odd that they would behave like this in front of professors who could remove house points and assign punishment duties, though. Draco, being a boot-licking toady, usually only bullies other students when there isn’t an adult around to catch him.

“Worse for you then!” Jade shouted back as she tackled him and pinned him against the Hufflepuff table where Hannah Abbot quickly handed the white haired girl a bowl of eggs as if this were an everyday thing.

What is a bowl of eggs doing in the Great Hall at this time? Are they having breakfast in the middle of the afternoon? It’s likely that the author has made one of the classic blunders – getting involved in a land war in Asia failing to factor in time zone differences.

If all the students are gathered for a meal in the Great Hall, the absence of all of the members of Dumbledore’s Army is going to look incredibly suspicious. And if Draco wasn’t using hyperbole and he really could hear Harry/Jade in the dungeons, then all of the students and faculty now assembled in the Great Hall could probably hear him/her as well.

 Jade quickly took the eggs with a smile of thanks at Hannah before messing up Dracos hair and smearing the eggs in it.

That could be either a brother/sister thing or a sworn-enemies thing, it’s hard to tell. It does seem awfully one-sided, there’s no mention of Draco resisting him/her at all.

There’s also no mention of how the eggs are prepared (or even if they are) so the audience is left to guess at the circumstances of this impromptu scalp treatment. I normally would assume those eggs have been cooked in some fashion, it makes no sense for a bowl of raw eggs to be in the Great Hall, but so little of this fic has made sense there’s no point in it starting now.

Jade then dumped the whole bowl on him and put it on his head like a hat before jumping off of the enraged blond and hiding behind Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, who were trying to smother their snickers and giggles at the scene.

:headdesk:

The Malfoys are giggling – frickin’ giggling. That is just so absurd that it defies words.

I call bullshit, and not just on the giggling. Narcissa Malfoy is a stereotypical overprotective mother, you have a better chance of seeing her doing the macarena in the middle of Diagon Alley dressed only in her knickers and a smile than to see her stand idly by while someone rubs unborn chickens into her precious son’s hair.

Why is everyone allowing this to continue? Nearly every adult and child in that room has a frickin’ wand and can do magic. Someone, preferably a recently gender-switched someone, should be getting their ass turned into a jack-o-lantern right about now.

“Draco.” Narcissa begins trying and failing miserably at stifling her giggles as she looked at her egg covered son.

So. Much. Bullshit.

“Haven’t you learned by now not to mess with Harrys hair?

Why is she reprimanding Draco? He’s the one picking hen-fruit out of his coiffure.

Speaking of which, what do we call you now that you’re a girl Harry?” Narcissa asks directing the second question towards the giggling girl behind her.

:headdesk:

In the canon, Harry is a pale-skinned boy with dark hair and green eyes. Very little description of Harry/Jade has been given other than a passing remark that s/he looks like Ororo, which would mean s/he has very dark skin and long white hair. As a mixed-race child s/he is probably lighter than Ororo, but still much darker than a pasty English schoolboy. In fact, it would be very hard to pick two characters that would look less alike - but Narcissa knows instantly that this white-haired girl her son only referred to as “Potter” is the same person she knows as Harry Potter.

“Apparently my name’s Jade.” Jade said still giggling into her hand as Draco removed the bowl from his head and was trying to attack the white haired girl.

I went back and checked over the single conversation Harry/Jade has with Sirius and at no time does he tell him/her that his/her name is Jade. Not once. As far as I can tell, Harry/Jade hasn’t been called by that name since his/her parents’ death, when s/he was eighteen months old. The only way s/he would know his/her name without being told was if s/he remembered it, which is highly unlikely but not completely impossible. However, if s/he remembered his/her name was a girl’s name, then why wouldn’t s/he remember being a girl?

I could throw a Mack truck through all the plot holes in this fic – sideways.

“DRACO LUCUIS MALFOY! What do you think you’re doing attacking a girl? Have I not taught you any manners at all?” Narcissa roars at her son who was now frozen in his steps staring wide-eyed at his mother like a deer caught in the headlights of an eighteen wheeler in the middle of the darkest of nights.

So it’s okay for Harry/Jade to behave like an asshat and physically assault someone with a bowl of eggs, but Draco so much as attempts to fight back and he gets yelled at? He’s not one of my favorite characters, but damn – cut the boy some slack.

Nice overly-dramatic visual, though.

“Ouch! That hurt my ear aunty Cissa!” Jade moaned rubbing her ears while glaring lightly at her so called ‘aunt’, to many peoples shock especially Umbridges and the Gryffs that weren’t in the know.

“Aunty Cissa”?

:headdesk:

Bloody hell.

Who are these “Gryffs” the author is referring to? Members of the House of Griffyndor are referred to as “Griffyndors” not Gryffs. It sounds like a noise a cat makes when it’s coughing up a hairball.

:THWACK!:

Stop using the phrase “in the know”! No one is “in the know” because you bloody well haven’t told anyone anything! Nobody knows what the hell you are talking about! GAHHH!!

The kittens aren’t going to be enough this time; it’s time to deploy the emergency photo of a baby owl in an adorable hat.

“I’m sorry dear. Does that feel better?” Narcissa asks as she immediately healed the girls’ ears and began to fuss over said girl.

Narcissa just blythely performed a healing spell instead of checking to see if there was any actual damage or if Harry/Jade was being a typical overreacting teenager. S/he’s probably going to have hearing like a bat now.

What about her son? Anyone remember him, the ferrety blond boy with the yolk in his bangs? Might be a good idea to check up on him instead of coddling his assailant.

Jade smiled innocently and happily as she nodded before she happily skipped over

That’s a lot of happy for someone in his/her situation. I wonder if it will set off …

:sirens blare:

Yep. I hope the DRD brought those parmesan-garlic knots I like.

:sounds of screaming:

I probably shouldn’t have left my collection of Lethally Sharp Glass Shards spread across the floor. Oh, well.

  to hug an amused and worried looking Amelia Bones all the while ignoring the gaping students and faculty and Draco trying to burn a hole in the back of her head with his glare.

:headdesk:

So we’ve abandoned all attempts at subtlety and stealth, have we? What happened to avoiding Umbridge so she doesn’t see your changed appearance and waiting for Sirius to rescue you? Instead you’ve run head-first into the one group of people you needed to avoid and are now SKIPPING AROUND THE ROOM!

It’s official - s/he has lost his/her damn mind.

“What exactly is going on here?” Umbridge demands glaring darkly at the back of Jades head.

Lady, I have been asking myself that since I started reading this thing.

This seemed to be the wrong thing to do however since the toad like woman was then on the receiving end of dark glares from all of Jades friends and honorary family.

What’s with the Death Glares? That is a perfectly reasonable question given the circumstances; in fact, it’s the first reasonable thing any character has done in this fic.

 Umbridge ‘eeped’ slightly under the weight of the glares from several very powerful members of the Wizarding World and backed up a step or two.

:headdesk:

In previous chapters of this fic, Umbridge has been repeatedly invoked as some sort of bogeyman who has the potential to seriously harm Harry/Jade. The whole reason Sirius contacts Storm was not because of Harry/Jade’s imminent transformation, but because Umbridge was at Hogwarts and could [mumblety-mumble bad stuff or whatever], making her a major threat to him/her. That’s why Storm is in such a hurry to reach her son/daughter; not because of the sex change or because she just found out her child was alive, but because of the ill-defined threat from Umbridge. The fact that the Big Bad is cowed by nothing more than a harsh look is just really disappointing.

“I had a glamour placed on me when I was a baby to make it look like I’m James Potters son when he’s really my uncle cause he blood adopted my mama, Lily Evans at the time, as his younger sister.

:headdesk:

Harry/Jade has figured out exactly what happened to him in the space a few minutes based solely on Draco’s theory and Neville’s non-sequitor about his/her parents. S/he should change his/her name to Sherlock Holmes.

 The glamour finally dropped so I decided to be myself.” Jade said smiling widely at the toad bitch while the other female teachers nodded in agreement, proving that they knew of this the entire time.

Despite his/her freak-out in a previous chapter, s/he now seems perfectly fine with what has happened to him/her. I suspect Harry/Jade is in very deep denial. If I were in the room with him/her, I would not be standing around smiling and nodding like an idiot – I would be hiding all the sharp objects and working out an exit strategy.

There’s no way s/he can “be myself” – s/he has no idea who that is. Almost every single thing s/he has been told about his/her past is a lie! There are constant comparisons between Harry and his father in the books, even Harry’s Patronus takes the shape of his father’s Animagus form. With the author’s “creative” restructuring of the character’s family history, all of those little things that helped the character feel connected to his family are simply freak coincidences. This is the sort of deep psychological trauma that causes people to fashion clothing for themselves out of human skin.

And to make things that much weirder, all of the female teachers seem to be in on the subterfuge. That means all of the women professors (but not the men) knew the entire time that Harry/Jade was really a girl but never told him/her. Did everyone except Harry/Jade and Storm know about this?

“If James Potter is not your father then who is?” Snape asks sounding startled that he had been hating a girl that he thought was his arch enemies son and instead turned out to be said enemies niece.

“Dammit, I’ve been hating you for all these years for the wrong reason! Now I’m going to have to rewrite my Enemies List!”

How does Snape not know that Harry/Jade is Storm and Lily’s child? He would know that Lily and James were never in a romantic relationship – he was invited to Storm and Lily’s wedding, for gods’ sake! If anything, the sudden appearance of a child who is supposedly the son of Lily and James but is the same age Lily and Storm’s daughter should have made Snape all kinds of suspicious. Women very rarely give birth to two children with two different fathers/whatever-the-hell-Storm-is at the same time. He’s not a complete idiot.

“I don’t have a father. I have two mothers.” Jade said with a smirk just before the doors banged open.

:headdesk:

How in blinking blue blazes does s/he know that? Neville does tell him/her the name of his/her parents, but unless Harry/Jade is familiar with Arabic names, there’s no way s/he would know that Ororo is the name of a woman. Since none of the characters seem to associate the name with the X-Men’s Storm, it is possible that they aren’t even aware that Ororo Munroe and Storm are the same person.

Storm and the X-Men had arrived for the Weather Witches daughter

:headdesk:

Lily wasn’t a “weather witch” but right now I don’t care. Just take him/her!

This author has absolutely no concept of time. The fastest commercial flight I could find takes almost ten hours to make the trip from New York, where the Xavier School is located, to Scotland. Even if the X-Men’s jet could shave some time off of that, there is still the time difference to take into account. The whole chapter has been one giant timesquiggle; Storm & Co wouldn’t arrive at the school until well into the evening, no matter how dramatically cliched it would be for her to arrive at this moment.

The chapter ends with that “cliffhanger” – it’s possible the author is trying to build up some dramatic tension, but since the “villain” can be discouraged with a scowl I just don’t see that happening.

I would like to point out that Sirius Black, a wanted felon, was with Storm and is presumably storming :snerk: into the Great Hall where Amelia Bones, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, is standing. If this fic is continued, I predict one of two things happening; the two characters will never mention Sirius’ status as an escaped criminal, or Madam Bones will somehow be a part of the conspiracy to keep him out of Azkaban.

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