I own neither Harry nor the mane six. Or the rest of the franchises.
A just-turned ten-year-old Harry's Aunt Marge had visited one day, and the boy had been pushed even harder than usual. He didn't find the chores too much; they gave him something to do, and there were far worse things to deal with.
Like the shouting, for instance. Everyone yelled at Harry, for one reason or another. The Dursleys belittled him with comments of freakishness and laziness, the teachers were disappointed at his lack of progress in school, and the bullies saw him as an easy target.
Today, Harry had looked away from the pan for less than ten seconds, and when he turned back to the simmering bacon, it was too late. Vernon had noticed the minuscule difference in shades between a 'normal' piece of bacon, and the ones that Harry had cooked, in a truly obsessive manner.
Petunia had thrown him out of the house and into the back garden, where he spent the next three hours in the burning sun, and only a small birch tree for cover. It was one of those rare times when he was grateful for his small body, as he could easily fit into the trunk's skinny shadow.
If Dudley hadn't gotten bored of his brand new video games, none of this would have happened. As it was, the whale of a boy somehow managed to sneak up behind the emerald-eyed boy, no doubt breaking the laws of physics in the process of staying on his toes, and aimed a punch straight into the square of his back.
As Harry's spine curved backwards, unbelievably not snapping like the twig it resembled, he heard the barking of Aunt Marge's dog. He watched in minor disinterest as the four-legged incarnation of Death bored down upon him, snarling madly.
Harry had always ignored things like pain; near-starvation hurt enough that he had been forced to in order to survive on a day-to-day basis. This was the same. It hurt Harry as his left foot was torn to shreds in the mutt's jaws. At the same time, though, it really didn't bother him. This was just another creature to put on his 'list of revenge targets', as he called them. That name would be crossed off, along with the Dursleys', in less than two hours.
Harry grinned evilly as the Dursleys utterly failed to react in any way, simply walking silently back to the house and ignoring their blood-coated nephew. Marge had the decency to call Ripper back to her, but that was probably just to give him a dog-treat. The raven-haired boy pulled off his tattered belt in a sudden frenzy, realising his blood-loss situation, and tightened the length of worn leather around his shin, slowing the blood flow to the wound.
Their downfall had already begun, even as he dialled 999, pressed the call button, and held the device to his ears.
A feminine voice answered him. "Which service do you require?"
Harry paused, considering. He could get the police here, but an ambulance would serve the same purpose, as all he really needed out of the former were eye-witnesses. "Ambulance, please."
The operator seemed to pause at the youth of the voice, as well as the obvious pain it seemed to be in. The gap was hardly noticeable, however, and she quickly got the required service on the line.
Harry didn't give the new person a chance to ask questions, instead calmly telling them his location. "Hello, I'm in the back garden of number four, Private Drive, but I don't know the Postcode, so I hope that won't be much of an issue. The patient's name is Harry James Potter, and he was born on the Thirty-first of July, 1980."
Harry could hear a pitying tone in the man's voice as he asked, "What's your name?"
"Harry Potter, Sir." Just breathing was getting harder and harder for Harry, and his vision blurred even under his broken glasses.
"Well, Harry, I'm sure you're-" The man cut off, and Harry heard a shuffling of paper, as though he had made the connection between patient and caller. When he continued, his voice seemed even more sympathetic, though Harry would rather use the word 'infuriating'. "Do you know what happened, Harry? You seem perfectly fine, after all." Apparently this man couldn't read voices quite as well, or he would have noticed the frankly quite hard to miss strain under his voice.
Harry struggled to give a suitable answer, the world gradually darkening around him. All he said was "Blood loss," before he dropped the phone with a thud.
Harry Potter was lost to the world that day.
She groaned as she spotted a pink pony off in the distance. She really didn't like meeting anypony, much preferring the company of books, but she didn't exactly have a choice. Without any memories of this place, or any other place, for that matter, she would need to ask for directions to the nearest library. She walked slowly towards the pony, who was now bouncing around hyperactively, and took a deep breath. Without an obvious reason to start conversation, she felt incredibly awkward.
"Hello, I'm, uh." She cursed to herself, only now realising that she didn't have a name. She quickly made one up on the spot, one that somehow felt right. "I'm Twilight Sparkle, and I was wondering if there was a library in this place?"
Looking around, Twilight realised that said place was a barren, white void. Well, not quite. On the floor were scattered bushes, flowers, grass and a few trees. Several buildings occupied each side of the village road, towering above the sparse trees, but everything was white. Even the birds soaring overhead blended almost perfectly into the sky only shadows giving an indication as to their existence, and Twilight was somewhat unnerved by the sight.
"Harry? Are you awake?"
Both Twilight and the strange pony jumped at the voice, the latter forgetting to answer Twilight's question, while the former forgot that she had asked it.
Twilight's mind went to overdrive. This place didn't exactly seem realistic, and that voice all but confirmed her theory that she was dreaming. It was strange, though, that the pink pony had heard it too. It would only make sense that only one pony would be aware of the outside world.
Making up her mind, Twilight steeled herself. "Hello? I think I might be dreaming, so just pour water on me or something!"
"Bwah!"
The less than intelligent noise coming from Twilight's mouth had her blushing a little as she rubbed her eyes.
The first thing she noticed was her strange sleeping position. She was lying on her back, of course, like anypony was wont to do in a bed. However, her front legs lay beside her body, pointing in the same direction as her feet. She knew dragons, or baby dragons at least, slept in this way, but for ponies it was extremely uncomfortable. Except that this wasn't uncomfortable. It was like her front legs were supposed to stay that way. 'Arms,' a hyperactive voice in her mind helpfully supplied, and she nodded in absent agreement.
It took a while to realise that she was soaked to the fur, but she couldn't care less about that at the moment.
Twilight had read about humans, or at least that was what her lack of memories allowed her to assume, and with the extra mini-limbs coming from her... hands and foot, the strange, rather thin clothes, and the complete lack of fur, she abruptly realised that she had become one of the mythical creatures.
Wait, foot? Why was that singular? Twilight wrenched open her eyes, blinked a few times and began to take in her surroundings. At this point, a rather unpleasant smell washed over her, certifying her location. Namely, that of a hospital. She glanced around at the few paintings on the white walls, the empty vase on her bedside table, and the two human doctors next to that, on her left. It wasn't lost on her that the male-looking one carried a rather large bucket, and wore an expression similar to the sheepish grin sometimes found on ponies.
Twilight's legs just felt wrong. There was something missing from one of them, something important. The probably-female doctor sat on the edge of her bed, and gave her an apologetic grimace. "Harry, I am so sorry. We couldn't save your foot, it was infected by that dog so we had to take it off you."
Twilight, or 'Harry' as she was apparently called here, gulped audibly and nodded, not remembering what happened but understanding the signs of amputation. She closed her eyes and flung the covers off her body, then opened one eye.
The right leg was exactly what she had expected; it looked just like a younger, less angular version of the human leg she thought she had seen in an ancient tome. The left one, however...
"Wait a minute," Twilight finally spoke up, after more than five minutes of staring. "How long was I out, for the stump to heal so well?"
Indeed, Twilight's leg, instead of ending in a bloody mess or a metric tonne of stitches, simply... stopped just above the ankle, as though somepony had cut it off, then sealed it with a perfect circle of skin. No stitches were in sight, and she didn't believe this sort of perfection possible, even with alicorn magic.
The male doctor shifted into a somewhat straighter position, coughed uncomfortably, and answered in a strained voice. "We don't know. We've had doctors from around the globe come in to have a look, but nobody has come up with any ideas. I'm beginning to think that strange fellow was right about it being magic, but i guess we'll never know for sure."
The female human took over, pushing the male towards the door. "You've been sleeping for a week, now, and a lot has happened. For a start, those Dursleys," she spat the word out like it made her sick, "have been arrested on charges of neglect and child abuse, after some of your bruises turned out to be from belts. You don't have to go back there, now, but that also means to don't have a place to stay."
"Who are the Dursleys?" Twilight asked, curious but also dreading the answer.
If the doctor was surprised, she didn't show it. "They have been your guardians since almost nine years ago, when your parents died in a car crash."
Twilight was grateful to this woman; she was the only person who spoke to her as a person, rather than a filly. She actually gave useful answers, rather than 'maybe when you grow up'.
"Why do you think I don't remember anything?"
The doctor gave a helpless grimace. "I don't know, Harry. It might just be from the shock, you could have hit your head at some point, or it might have been an unconscious decision on your part." She rubbed her temples and sighed. "A week ago, on July the Thirty-First, you called the emergency services. After calling, you told the ambulance your location, said something about blood loss, and passed out." She paused, as if to let it sink in. "We later found, thanks to spying neighbours, that you had been attacked by a visiting Aunt's dog, and left to die by your relatives. The dog was put down, your Aunts and Uncle were arrested, and your cousin was taken in by a nearby orphanage, separated from you after we found signs of bullying."
Twilight goggled. "That doesn't sound like a nice family at all! I guess the neglect is why I'm so short." A question popped up in the back of her head, and she couldn't see a reason to not ask it, so she did. "Why do you keep calling me Harry, anyway? My name's Twilight, isn't it? Anyway, I don't know your name yet."
The other participant in this strange conversation giggled. "I'm Amanda Baker, but don't you think Twilight's a strange name for a boy?"
'Colt,' Twilight's mind supplied in that strange sugar-rushed voice, and twilight blanched. She didn't even want to ask right now.
"I wouldn't know, I named myself less than twenty minutes ago," Twilight told the woman, deciding to opt for some of the truth. "I don't really care if it sounds girly, it's my name now, since I don't remember being Harry."
The conversation was interrupted by the male doctor from before, who had just tripped over a bin in his haste to appear next to the woman. Slung over his shoulder was a black drawstring bag, which he set on the bed next to Twilight, gesturing for her to open it.
Wrenching the mouth of the bag open, Twilight reached inside and carefully grasped a strange object. Pulling on it, her mouth fell open.
She knew instantly what it was, of course. A prosthetic foot. A flat piece of metal, forming a strange approximation of an actual foot, proved that. The metal bent upwards, then forwards, to keep the centre of gravity where it would be in a real foot, and a spring attached to a rotating joint helped to simulate a loose ankle. At the top was a sort of shallow cup or a socket, where she supposed the stump should go.
Hesitantly, Twilight pulled on her left leg, bringing the stump closer to herself. She brought the top of the fake ankle towards it, and jumped when the two pieces snapped together. Amanda rushed forward and pulled the prosthetic back off. Twilight thanked her profusely; the foot had given her stump a rather uncomfortable pinching sensation.
The man laughed a little sheepishly, then rummaged in the bag, finally pulling out...
"A sock?"
"A sock," he confirmed, and shoved it onto her leg. "The prosthetic is held on using magnets that we managed to get in your stump, and the pinching was because they're too strong. Just wear a thick sock, and you'll be fine."
Twilight tried the foot on again, and this time it didn't hurt. She carefully got out of bed and put her tiny amount of weight on the foot, then stepped it up a bit and began to hop.
Hours of practising later, Twilight finally settled down alone in her bed, and drifted off to sleep.
"Oh, you're back! You just disappeared and started talking with the other voices, and I didn't get to tell you that my name's Pinkie Pie, or at least I think it is!"
Twilight groaned.
You're probably going to see lots of plot bunnies on my account, with almost none actually finished. I lose interest in things really quickly. If something stops being interesting for me, I'll abandon it, to return as and when I feel like it.
Feel free to adapt my stories into something new, but make sure to give me a link- I'll want to read it, after all.