Chapter 3
Daphne sits on the window seat alone, picking her manicure to death. Bits of her nails litter the stone floor. Two of her fingers are bleeding. She scared off Myrtle long ago by giving a lengthy, impassioned account of fucking Harry Potter in the prefect’s bath. The lie had so distressed the ghost she went screaming down the u-bend some forty minutes ago. Daphne has been waiting in silence since. In that time her anger has cooled to vicious resentment. Anxiety rapidly rises to accompany it, which she takes out on her nails.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Potter huffs as he comes jogging through the bathroom door, stuffing something into his back pocket. ‘Couldn’t get away. Hermione wants us to get all our homework done before Christmas for some reason, I don’t…’ He looks at her carefully. ‘What happened?’
‘So sorry to drag you away from tweedledum and tweedledee,’ she replies acidly.
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Want to try that again? Because I can leave.’
Daphne sighs. ‘Thank you for coming.’
He walks to her side and sits down. There is no moon tonight. She has conjured a small flame in a jar. Its flickering light casts out over the floor by their feet. The darkness is a comfort. Perhaps he will not see the redness in her eyes.
‘Can’t say I was expecting your note,’ he says gently. ‘Could have done without finding it under my pillow. How did you do that?’
She starts picking at her thumbnail. ‘Paid a house elf.’
‘Great. So what happened?’
Her deep breath burns in her chest. ‘I am sorry to have dragged you away. I didn’t know who else to talk to that would…sympathise. Other people could understand, of course, but- No, they couldn’t understand. It is so black and white where it needs to be grey.’ He waits patiently for her to collect herself. She takes another breath and blurts it out. ‘I’m engaged to Malfoy.’
His eyes boggle, his mouth drops open and he stares at her in horror. ‘What?!’
At least he gives her the reaction she wants.
‘Not officially,’ she adds in haste. ‘There’s no ring. It hasn’t been announced. And it won’t be until we’re old enough. But the letters have been exchanged. His parents agree, my parents agree. They’re negotiating the contract now.’
‘Slow down. Hang on. This is insane. First of all, how old is old enough?’
‘Most likely the summer after we leave Hogwarts. Might be able to stretch it longer since Mrs. Malfoy loves a winter event.’
‘And didn’t they talk to you about this? What about waiting for the Malfoys to declare their allegiance?’
‘That’s the point.’ The nail cracks and she seizes hold of the ragged end. ‘My parents are doing it before the Malfoys declare anything so they can claim ignorance later on.’ She rips it from the nailbed. The pain bites all the way up her arm.
‘Stop that.’
Potter’s hands close over hers. He clasps them tightly, like a freshly caught snitch. Daphne holds her breath. Quite suddenly she wants to cry. Something about his touch makes her want to heave up the sobs brewing in the depths of her soul. The sobs she has been suppressing all day. The sobs she will have to suppress tomorrow when she takes the Hogwarts Express home for Christmas, the sobs she cannot let Astoria see under any circumstances.
But the shreds of her pride hold out. She will not cry about this in front of anyone, not even Potter. She takes shaky breaths until they even out. He sits with her in silence. Eventually he folds back one hand to examine the damage. Her blood is smeared on his palm. He takes out his wand and performs a series of episkeys. Once healed, he gives her hands back to her. Daphne folds them in her lap.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asks.
‘Resign myself to becoming Mrs Malfoy.’
‘No, what are you going to do to stop it?’
She looks up at him. ‘There is no stopping it. Once the contract is signed it’s done. The best I can hope for is that I’ll get to redecorate my rooms in that wretched manor.’
‘Then how can you stop them from signing it?’
She glares at him in annoyance. ‘There is no stopping it.’
He gives her a baffled look. ‘Then why am I here?’
‘What?’
‘If you are just giving up then why am I here? Don’t you want help? Isn’t that why you asked me to come here?’
‘No,’ she scoffs. ‘I need to vent about it to someone who won’t tell me how lucky I am. I need someone who will rage about it with me. That’s why I asked you.’
‘So you’re just totally giving into this future that you don’t want? Just like that?’
‘What else would you have me do?’ she hisses. ‘This is a game with rules. I cannot do whatever I want, I cannot move in diagonals here. I am stuck. Checked. I lost.’
They look at each other. In the warm light his eyes are a darker shade of green. She is trapped there by his calculating gaze. They sit closely on the window seat, leaning in. Her breath is still a little uneven in her chest. After a minute he concludes something to himself.
‘Nah, I’m not having that,’ he announces. ‘You’re not marrying Malfoy.’
Daphne shuts her eyes and hangs her head. ‘Potter…’
‘If you just wanted a shoulder to cry on you came to the wrong person. We’re getting you out of this. Hey, listen.’ He seizes either side of her face in his gentle grip. She jumps in surprise but does not resist as he lifts her face to meet his eyes again. ‘You are not marrying him.’
‘Foolish, bleeding heart!’ she snaps, ripping her face out of his hands. ‘What don’t you understand? If I refuse then Astoria will have to marry him! I won’t do that! I can’t do that! I can take it, but Tori? She won’t be able to hack it. It would crush her. I can take being Malfoy’s wife. I can pump out a couple of kids and develop functional alcoholism and start shagging the gardener on the side! I can take it - she can’t!’
‘And is that what you want out of life? Alcoholism and infidelity?’
‘No!’ She leaps to her feet. Her hands curl into fists. The recently healed nails still ache. ‘Of course I don’t! But that choice was taken from me!’
‘Then take it back!’ he yells. ‘And take your sister back with it! What would stop them? What would stop Malfoy from marrying either of you?’
She seethes at him, spitting her answer. ‘If his family were publicly Death Eaters.’
‘Right. The whole world basically knows they are anyway. How can we force them to reveal it?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Well, think! How do you force someone to do something?’
‘Blackmail, that’s how. Are you advocating blackmail now, Potter? Tough shit because you can’t blackmail Malfoys. They’re far too rich and far too powerful.’
‘Fine. How else?’
Her shrug is helpless. ‘Fuck, I don’t know! Short of having their manor raided there is nothing we can do. If we leak it to the press they’ll just deny it. I can’t publicly accuse them, I’ll be eaten alive not only for having no evidence but for being the Greengrass that took a side.’
‘Get some evidence.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ she mocks. ‘I’ll just waltz into Malfoy Manor and take a photograph of Lucius with his Dark Mark out. Be realistic.’
‘Fine. Is there anything else that would stop the marriage?’
‘Oh Merlin, I don’t know. I suppose if my family was found lacking.’
‘Lacking how?’
‘If our fortunes were depleted or our magic was weak. If we were not pureblooded. If our reputation was tarnished.’
‘Right well, I can’t see you suddenly going broke or losing your magic or blood status. So do the last one.’
She blinks at him. ‘You want me to tank our reputation? On purpose?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re looking at me like that’s an obvious solution.’
‘What’s the worst that could happen? You don’t get to marry the great ferret?’
She cannot help gaping at him. It would not simply need to be her own reputation that she ruined, but her sister’s too. An inexcusable crime between siblings. Her parents would never forgive her, nevermind poor Astoria. She can’t do it. She shakes her head.
‘I cannot do that to my sister.’ She grits her teeth. ‘And I won’t do it to myself. If anyone is going down it’s Malfoy.’
Potter grins. ‘Yes! He’s definitely up to something. If we can catch him in the act-’
‘We?’
‘Of course.’ He looks at her like she’s daft. ‘We have a common goal here. That ferret’s been up to something all year, I just know it, so let’s combine our resources.’
‘My resources being significant, and your resources being what?’
He raises his eyebrows at her again. ‘My resources being not giving up at the first sign of difficulty.’
Daphne gives him a hard stare. ‘Alright, I’ll let you have that one.’
‘So what’s our plan?’ He sits forward, looking at her more intently than ever.
She blinks at him. ‘Funnily enough I don’t have a master plan up my sleeve to alter the entire course of my life. Let me think for a minute.’
‘Fine, but the Hogwarts express leaves in less than twelve hours so we don’t exactly have a lot of time to hash this out.’
‘And where are you going that an owl cannot reach?’
‘Somewhere I should not be receiving letters from Daphne Greengrass.’
She clicks her tongue in annoyance. To his credit he no longer flinches whenever she raises her wand in his presence. Daphne conjures a sheet of parchment and a quill. She scribbles a few runes, leaning on their window seat for purchase. She holds it up to him.
‘Can you read this?’
His eyes dart over the page. ‘I’m a moron.’ As predicted, the words slip from his mouth in Parseltongue. He scowls at her. ‘You’re very rude for someone who needs help.’
‘These are Parselrunes. No one else will be able to read them. Problem solved.’
He takes the parchment, squinting at the letters. ‘It looks like English…sort of…wait. It’s like fading in and out. Why can’t I see it properly?’
‘It takes time and practice.’ She taps the sheet. ‘This is a fairly new attempt at turning an entirely spoken language into a written one. My great-grandmother developed it. I have always wondered if you’d need to first learn the runes to be able to read it, but it seems not.’
‘I won’t be able to write back to you in this.’ He shakes his head in either surprise or disappointment.
‘That won’t make a difference anyway, both my mother and sister can read it. However, I am allowed to receive letters from whomever I like.’
He wrinkles his nose. ‘Wish I could though.’ Ah, it is jealousy he feels.
Daphne snatches back the parchment. On the opposite side she writes out the runic alphabet and holds it up for him. She explains the phonetic alphabet based on the twelve common sounds in Parseltongue and that once he learns these building blocks he can write almost anything. She does not bother to explain grammar or punctuation (the grammar being instinctive and the punctuation being a product of her ancestor’s pedantry). She will understand well enough without his writing being perfect. He looks at her with piercing, focussed eyes. She hands him the parchment. He studies it harder than she’s ever seen him study anything in classes.
‘So if I wanted to write hello, I would use this one and this one?’
‘Yes, but with a gap since it is two words.’
‘How do you know it’s two words and not one word with two syllables?’
‘It can be hard at first but you’ll notice the difference the more you look for it. Take goodbye - one word. Hear how it runs together faster? How it’s harder to separate out the sounds?’
‘Yeah, actually. And do you write it like normal sentences?’
‘Just write the way you speak, don’t try to translate from English word by word. Let it come naturally.’
She makes him repeat the alphabet back to her, correcting him when needed. Potter seems surprisingly enthusiastic about this. She never pinned him for the academic type, despite how well he’s currently doing in their shared potions class. Perhaps this year he has decided to finally use his brain. Maybe it will prevent him from running headlong into danger.
‘Why don’t you take runes?’ she asks.
He shrugs. ‘The choice in third year was between runes and divination. Divination is an easier grade.’
‘Contrary to popular belief you don’t appear to be a complete idiot. You could have taken runes.’
‘Oh god, you sound like Hermione.’
‘Granger is pretty good at runes,’ Daphne muses, ‘but she’s too literal. Ancient runes are poetic, metaphorical in their descriptions. Watching Granger translate is like watching someone cut a steak with a sharpened spoon. It gets the job done but it is so inelegant.’
Potter snorts out his laughter. ‘Oh, I wish I could tell her that.’
Daphne examines him carefully. ‘Are you telling me she doesn’t get a full rundown of our accounts? Her and Weasley?’
He snorts. ‘Absolutely not. I have a reputation to maintain as well.’
Her heart wriggles at that. She is glad for the darkness as it may hide her blush. It makes her braver, makes her sit down close to him. The light flickers at their feet.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been someone’s dirty little secret before,’ she says softly.
‘Get used to it,’ he murmurs back. ‘I shouldn’t be fraternising with the enemy.’
‘Fraternising. Is that what we’re doing?’
‘Honestly? I have no idea what we’re doing.’
She understands him immediately. In one way it is obvious what they are doing: colluding to take down a common enemy. In another way - a way which permeates the atmosphere with a certain weight - it is as clear as mud. All she knows is that it makes the thing in her chest purr like a great cat. It makes her want to reach out and touch him in the dark. She wants to study those green eyes for every facet of every emotion that flits so obviously through them. Potter is fascinating. Her eyes catch on the scar that marks him as a target.
Fascinating and, perhaps, ephemeral.
‘Do me a favour,’ she whispers.
‘Sure.’
She shakes her head at his blind agreement. ‘Do that selfish thing over Christmas. As a present for me.’
‘Will you do something selfless?’
She rolls her eyes a little. ‘If the opportunity presents itself, I will try my best. You have my word.’
‘Don’t marry Malfoy though,’ he adds hastily. ‘Not that.’
She laughs softly. ‘I will not marry Malfoy over Christmas.’
‘Good. I don’t need a broken heart on top of everything else.’
His tone is light, unserious and teasing, but it does alarming things to her. Daphne has to suppress the urge to giggle. Instead she presses her lips together to hide her ridiculous smile. She rises before she can do something stupid like touch his face. Or press her cheek to his.
‘I will write to you,’ she says once her voice is under control.
‘Looking forward to it.’
He sits back, resting his weight on his hands. His eyes shine in the dim light as he studies her. Daphne takes a few steps backwards towards the door. The rubber band between them threatens to snap any moment. She gives him her flattest, most unimpressed look. He smiles back. He is harder to disconcert these days, and she is less inclined to do so. Yet she cannot quite bear the thought of him believing he has the upper hand. She must give him pause.
‘Thank you, Harry.’ She watches the shock wash over his face. She turns and walks away.
How sad that gratitude is so foreign to the Boy-Who-Lived.