Rhiannon Black

**Rhiannon Black** is the central character of the Hogwarts Reimagined series. Formerly known as Harry Potter, she is growing into herself and her abilities while keeping her stigmatised lycanthropy a secret from the prejudiced wizarding world.

## Description

### Appearance

Short-statured and lightly built, it would be easy to underestimate Rhiannon's strength on a purely physical level. But as a competent Quidditch player and now a werewolf, her thin frame conceals a surprising wiry strength - so much so that it can at times overwhelm the physical limits of her lycanthropically-strained joints.

In colouration, Rhiannon takes after her father with freckled olive-brown skin and a mass of curly black hair shot through with reddish-brown highlights. Even her eyes are lent some of her father's appearance, Lily Evans' bright green darkening to a deep green-hazel with a gold ring around each pupil. But a more insightful observer - or one more open to seeing a trans girl's femininity - would see that in build and features, Rhiannon very much more takes after her mother aside from the slightly crooked, ascetic nose that is all James. The set of her eyes and chin, the red in her hair, the wiry muscle - she resembles her mother enough that too many see her as a small copy of Lily Evans rather than her own person in full.

As many werewolves are, Rhiannon is covered in scars. Hers stand out pale silvery-pink against her comparatively dark skin, and most are raised and ropy in texture. While for now Rhiannon keeps them glamoured so as to not reveal her lycanthropy, she thinks of them as a mixed blessing - amongst them, the branching lightning scar on her forehead is somewhat concealed. The original bite was located in the trapezius muscle of her left shoulder and to this day that shoulder remains weak and easily re-injured - wolf jaws crush as well as puncture. Aside from the original bite and her lightning scar, Rhiannon bears many others as memories of her first traumatic full moon and the time she turned without wolfsbane. These scars run down the sides of her neck, around behind her ears and under her hair, as well as her throat, belly and chest. Her forearms bear wolf-bite scars from these turns, and buried under them and coating her lower legs are older dog-bite scars, memories of her abusive Aunt Marge's dog Ripper. A lighter scattering of scars blanket Rhiannon's cheeks and cross over her nose, which is visibly crooked at the bridge where it has been broken several times, and over her back old belt and burn scars are scattered in pale stripes.

Because of the heavy scarring and the nature of its origins, Rhiannon prefers to wear clothing that leaves very little skin exposed - turtlenecks, jerseys etc. She struggles with this in summer, balancing the desire for coverage with the practical need to stay cool, and formalwear is even more difficult to find. As a result her style is very basic for the moment - either loose jeans or a skirt and solid stockings, with a turtleneck or high-necked button-up shirt on top, paired with her favourite leather lace-up boots and the stim jewelry given to her by Hermione's family.

### Character

As any child from an abusive home would be, Rhiannon is at first glance shy and cautious. She wears her fame like an ill-fitting coat, preferring to blend in amongst the other students and make friends rather than bask in any admiration her past brings her. Having a secret such as her lycanthropy only heightens the need for caution, but since the polyjuice accident in her second year it's been well-known amongst her friend group - which has grown surprisingly large since first year and includes students from all five houses.

Despite lycanthropy necessitating caution, Rhiannon is social in her own clumsy way and makes friends with the other oddballs of Hogwarts with relative ease. In part this tendency stems from her lycanthropy itself - she is naturally a pack creature and seeks to bond with those around her she feels are like her in some way or another. If she examined it closely, she would see that particular part of lycanthropic bleedthrough as a blessing - her shyness is still very much a stumbling block when dealing with media or hero worship, but the heightened gregarious nature has helped her to make more friends and overcome this shyness amongst her peers faster than she ordinarily could have been able to.

Although lacking any formal diagnosis, Rhiannon displays many clear traits of being autistic and has been intentionally written as such. She doesn't mind large groups of people so long as they're all her friends, but they have to be gathering outside and spread out or she feels overwhelmed. Under stress she goes nonverbal, and she has a persistent stutter that impedes her ability to verbally cast some spells. Rhiannon struggles to recognise her own limits, having faced so many life or death situations in her life so far she's become accustomed to pushing through extreme levels of discomfort or exhaustion to stay alive and it often takes crashing completely for her to realise she's doing too much. This is in no small way exacerbated by her masking intensely except around her friends.

### Abilities, Disabilities & Quirks

Rhiannon is red-green (deuteranomalous) colourblind roughly half of the time, as a bleedthrough side-effect of the lycanthropic cycle.
As a side effect of surviving a deadly curse in infanthood, Rhiannon experiences episodic neurological blindness and/or deafness when exposed to strong sources of Dark magic (from Dementors to Horcruxes and many more besides), when under stress, or when she is burnt out or unwell. Hermione encourages her to learn braille but she prefers to just listen to text read aloud, she does begrudgingly fall back on the braille when her episodes include temporary deafness as well as blindness.
Rhiannon has a deep-rooted, debilitating fear of fire that triggers dissociative shut-down panic attacks. Sometimes the only way for her to function at all through this is to disable some of her senses.
As a werewolf, Rhiannon is inhumanly strong - and as a *turned* werewolf, sometimes too strong for the limits of her own body. She can pull off feats of strength and daring unthinkable to ordinary humans, but there is a price to pay in pain and fatigue after the fact.
## Life/Biography

Rhiannon was born Harry James Potter to James Potter and Lily Potter (née Evans) in Godrics' Hollow, on the 31st of July 1990. Her birth parents were killed by Lord Voldemort when she was not quite a year old, leaving her scarred - both visibly and not - and orphaned. Under Albus Dumbledore's instruction she was placed in the dubious care of Vernon Dursley and Petunia Dursley (née Evans), to be raised alongside their own biological son Dudley.
The Dursleys were viciously abusive, leaving Rhiannon a scarred, closeted and thoroughly traumatised waif by the time she came of magical schooling age. Shortly before she was due to start at Hogwarts, Rubeus Hagrid came by to check on her and take her to purchase school supplies, when he discovered how badly she was being treated and refused to return her to the Dursley home. Rhiannon, then still going by the name of Harry, spent the remainder of the summer holidays with the family of another girl starting Hogwarts that year, Hermione Ndiaye-Granger, and the two became close friends.