James Potter’s Daughter

Harry laid in her bed, staring up at her ceiling, fidgeting with the necklace laying on her chest.

“Harry?” Sirius stepped in Harry’s room, his voice soft and nervous. “You have to take your potion.”

Harry knew she didn’t have to say anything, Sirius would set it on her nightstand and she could ignore it just as she had the last six days. As long as—

“Harry Leo Potter, sit up and take your potion,” Remus said, his voice much louder and more demanding than Sirius’ was.

“Why?” Harry asked bleakly. “It’s not working.”

Remus called it an ‘emotional distress potion’, but Harry heard Snape on the first day of summer when he brought the crate full of vials, it was just the magical version of an antidepressant.

And there weren’t enough potions in the world to keep Harry from being depressed.

“Because I am your parent and I said so,” Remus said. He lifted Harry up by her shoulders and slid on the bed behind her. “Drink, Harry.”

Remus put the vial in Harry’s hand and lifted it to her mouth, not yielding until she tipped the bottle back and swallowed it.

“Good job,” Remus said, pressing a kind kiss to the back of Harry’s head. “Sirius is in charge for a couple of hours, I’ll be back.”

Harry despised when Sirius was in charge, he never stopped talking and all Harry wanted to do was sit in silence and replay her memories over and over.

Sure enough, Sirius spent the next few hours nattering on about the garden he was growing, how Remus’ transformations were essentially painless thanks to tweaks in the Wolfsbane potion, and about the muggle cooking classes he’d been taking at the nearby town.

Harry even closed her eyes, picturing grey eyes and golden curls, and feigning sleep and Sirius still kept talking.

“Sirius, love, go away,” Remus ordered, finally relieving Harry of listening to Sirius’ chatter.

“And you, quit faking sleep!”

Harry huffed when a heavy and familiar weight landed on her stomach. She opened her eyes and saw Elise grinning at her from above.

“You dyed your hair,” Harry said blankly, looking at Elise’s long blonde pigtails.

“And you got your heart broken,” Elise said. She rolled off Harry’s stomach and cuddled in her side. “Again, my poor baby.”

Harry hadn’t cried since the day of Cedric’s funeral, she really tried to not be an emotional burden to poor Remus and Sirius who had to deal with everything, but when Elise snuggled up to Harry and smelled familiar and had known Harry since neither of them had front teeth, Harry just broke.

Elise held Harry as tightly as if her heart was shattered as well and the two of them laid in bed and cried together until Harry fell asleep in the first dreamless sleep she’d had in over a week.

“Elise’s mother said that she is sorry for your loss and that we are welcome to keep Elise until August first,” Remus told Harry the next morning when she finally left her room.

Elise was still sleeping in Harry’s bed, snoring and starfishing across the queen mattress but Harry had smelled bacon and cinnamon and she went in search of Remus.

Harry sat down next to Remus, scooting her chair right next to his so she could lean her head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, truly meaning it. “Are you and Sirius going to make it six weeks without magic?”

Remus chuckled and made a point of reaching across the table, grabbing the kettle of tea, and pouring Harry a cup by hand.

“Dear, I used to live as a muggle for the longest time. You’re old enough to stay home alone on the full moons and- and I’ll hide Sirius’ wand,” Remus said. “It’ll be good for you to have a friend here. Someone to force you to shower, Harry, good Lord, you stink.”

Harry took a sip of her tea and then stole a strip of bacon and gave Remus a fond peck on the cheek.

“You’re the best father in the world,” she assured him. “Thank you.”

“Best father in the world she called me,” Remus told Sirius smugly while Harry showered and the two of them shared breakfast.

“She hates me,” Sirius whined. “You get to be ‘dad’ and I’m that annoying bloke shagging her dad.”

“Best. Father. In. The. World,” Remus repeated. “Me.”

As much as Harry didn’t enjoy sharing her bed with someone who kicked and snored, it was brilliant having Elise around. It truly did force Harry to have to leave her bed, something she did begrudgingly at first and then found easier to do each day.

“He’s so handsome,” Elise said, looking over the photos that Harry had of her and Cedric. Remus had thoughtfully charmed them to stay still so Harry could show them to her best friend.

Harry ran her finger over one of them, Harry and Cedric at the Yule Ball. Cedric had on his dress robes and a golden tie while Harry had her arms wrapped around his neck and one of her heels popped up coyly.

“He was,” Harry corrected her quietly, blotting away a tear when it fell on the photo. “He was the most handsome boy in the entire school and he loved me.”

“It’s so sad that he’s gone,” Elise sighed. “I didn’t even get a chance to threaten him about breaking your heart.”

Harry smiled sadly at the photo. “He did break my heart. He was my truest love, Elise. I’ll never love anyone like I loved him.”

Elise hummed and handed Harry back the photo of Harry and Cedric in Puddifoots.

“Just because you’ll never love anyone like how you loved him doesn’t mean you won’t love anyone again,” Elisa said quietly. Harry looked at her, surprised, and raised her brows questioningly.

“I read it in a book and it sounded like a good quote to use,” Elise said, grinning crookedly. “Oh, shut up. Just tell me how you two met.”

Harry was telling Elise her entire - too brief - romance with the truest of love. When Harry was describing the Yule Ball, making sure to make it sound just as romantic as it was, Sirius interrupted them.

“Hey, girls,” Sirius smiled and Harry rolled her eyes at Elise’s blush. Sirius was not cute, no matter what Elise said. “Harry, you’ve got a friend here.”

“Oh?” Harry watched when Sirius backed up and Ginny came barreling in the room full force and knocked Harry back on her bed.

“Harry!” Ginny hugged Harry tightly, squeezing her hard. “We’ve been so worried!”

Harry looked over Ginny’s shoulder and saw the twins filtering in, both of them looking curiously at the blonde in a tank top and shorts on Harry’s bed.

“Gin, Fred, George, this is Elise,” Harry said when Ginny finally released her. “Elise is my friend from primary,” she stressed.

Sirius winked at her and gave her a thumbs up before he left the five of them alone.

“Which one is Fred and which one is George?” Elise asked brightly, looking between the twins.

“I’m George,” Fred said immediately.

“And I’m Fred,” George said with a bow.

“Which means it’s the opposite,” Elise laughed. “Harry’s told me allll about you two.”

“All bad, I assure you,” Harry said drily. She collected her photographs and carefully put them in her nightstand drawer with the Triwizard winnings that the Diggory’s gave her.

“There’s nothing bad to say about us,” George said, plopping on Harry’s bed beside Elise. “Our Harry’s kept you quite the secret, I’m afraid.”

“No she hasn’t,” Fred disagreed. He sat cross-legged on the floor beside Ginny, looking at Harry with sad eyes even when he smiled. “This is your best friend, right? The one who loves strawberry ice cream?”

“It is,” Harry said, pleased that Fred remembered. She started to smile and then a wave of guilt and grief hit her.

“I- I’ll be right back,” Harry stammered, getting up and stumbling just a little. “Loo,” she lied.

Harry tripped down the stairs, finding Remus and Sirius on the sofa together.

“Harry, what is it?” Sirius asked, getting to his feet and reaching for her.

Harry shook her head, her chest feeling tight. “I…”

“You smiled, right?” Sirius grabbed Harry’s shoulders and stared at her. “Or laughed? I bet you smiled at something stupid and then thought you shouldn’t smile. I know, kiddo.” Sirius pulled Harry in and hugged her tightly until Harry felt like her head made sense.

“You know what I remind myself every time I look at you and smile or laugh?” Sirius whispered. “I tell myself that James and Lily would be smiling with me. Don’t lose your smile, Harry, Cedric wouldn’t want you to.”

With Sirius’ advice in her head competing against Harry’s horrible guilt, Harry returned to her room in time for everyone to fall silent.

“Are we talking about how I used to pretend to be a boy or how my boyfriend is dead?” Harry asked, taking her place beside Elise. She looked around at everyone and raised a brow. “Well?”

“Dead boyfriend,” Elise answered in a sarcastic drawl. She smirked at Harry. “And also I was telling them about how you had your dad call me when you couldn’t figure out how to use tampons.”

“ELISE!” Harry yelped and did the first logical thing she could think of, which was to snag a pillow beside her and whack Elise as hard as she could with it. Elise scoffed and grabbed the pillow right out of Harry’s hands and swung it back at her, knocking Harry’s glasses from her face.

Nobody said anything for a few beats of silence and then—

“PILLOW FIGHT!” Ginny shrieked.

Harry got all sorts of visitors the next couple of weeks.

Pansy came over during the weekend of the full moon and Elise, who had gotten her drivers permit in January, drove the three of them to the closest city so they could go shopping and go out to eat.

They had fun picking out fancy dresses to wear to dinner, and Harry avoided getting a purple one as it looked too similar to the one she wore to Yule, but they all found cute dresses anyway. Harry had to quietly help poor Pansy who looked terribly confused with her muggle money; thankfully Sirius had thought ahead and gotten Harry muggle money.

The three of them went to dinner and Elise flirted with their waiter while Pansy bat her lashes at the hostess and Harry stayed quiet. The waiter and the hostess may have been attractive, Harry didn’t know because all she could see was Cedric.

Draco came over one day, though he brought Theo with them and they didn’t stay long once they realized they were unable to keep from discussing magic.

Elise had giggled that night about how cute Harry’s rival was and how he seemed sooo concerned about her, but Harry shut her down fast.

“Stop, please,” Harry told her while they laid in bed together. “I can’t… I can’t talk about boys being cute because I…” Harry held up her ring from Cedric and felt her eyes well up with tears again. “I love Cedric,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Elise said. “I won’t say again how very cute all your male friends are. Or how terribly jealous I am of your super secret legacy school.”

“Thank you,” Harry said. “I love you, you annoying little twat.”

“And I love you, you depressing little bitch.”

Three days before Elise left, two days before Harry’s birthday, Harry had an unexpected visitor.

“Hi,” Andy said, waving awkwardly when Harry opened the door. Andy looked terrible, his face was so pale and drawn that it made his blonde hair look dull as well. His blue eyes that used to sparkle so happily during meals at the Hufflepuff table were flat in a way that made Harry want to cry.

Harry adored Andy, he was Cedric’s best mate, and Harry wished so desperately that he wasn’t standing on her doorstep.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked, feeling suddenly faint.

Andy sighed and ducked his head. “I- I just wanted to check on you. C-Cedric would have wanted me to.”

Harry would have sent him away, asked him to never return, but then Elise popped up behind her.

“Hi!” Elise said brightly. “I’m Elise, and you are?”

Andy blinked at Elise’s face over Harry’s shoulder.

“Andy,” he said. “Andy York.”

“Come inside, Andy York,” Elise said. “Remus just made lunch.”

Harry resigned herself to eating lunch with Andy and listening as Remus and Sirius asked him about his plans - apparently Andy was going to university to become a teacher - and Harry tried to not think about Cedric.

Cedric whose father wanted him to join the Ministry, but Cedric wanted to go to school for law first.

Cedric who was going to be forever seventeen while Andy turned eighteen and got to graduate and move on.

Cedric who planned on going to university with Andy so Andy, who was a muggleborn, could introduce him to muggle culture while they were roommates and got their degrees together.

But now Andy was going to university alone and Cedric would never get to graduate Hogwarts or have a university experience.

“Andy, it was lovely to see you, but—”

“But I never want to see you again?” Andy said, stealing the words straight from Harry’s mouth. The two of them were sitting on the porch swing alone for a moment before Andy left to go back home. He must have lived close by, he drove a little motorized scooter type of thing that was sitting in the driveway beside Remus’ green truck.

“Yeah, but I never want to see you again,” Harry said. She tilted her head to Andy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, it… I woke up this morning and it took me ten whole seconds before I remembered he was gone. And now you’re here and- and…”

“And I’m a painful reminder that he’s not here just like you are for me,” Andy said. He tipped his head down to Harry’s for just a moment. “If you ever need anything, Harry, call me, okay?”

“You do the same,” Harry said. She watched Andy leave and then sat outside a while longer, wishing that it had been Cedric who drove a little motor scooter to see her.

“No heartbreak this year,” Elise said.

“No more one night stands,” Harry said.

“Drink more milk, someone in my dorm said it’ll help you get bigger boobs.”

Harry grinned at her. “I can’t, I’m football captain now, remember?”

It had been a brilliant surprise, one Harry expected that Angelina would have gotten. Harry privately suspected that she only got the quidditch captain badge because Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Be-A-Girl with the dead boyfriend, but it was still brilliant to receive.

“Football captain or not, you’re too skinny,” Elise grimaced, poking Harry in the ribs with her sharp pink nails. “Okay, try to remember to actually write me this year, Harry. You’ve got stamps and envelopes, so no excuses.”

Harry laughed at the reminder of the gift from Elise. It was a rather passive aggressive gift set of stationary with a card telling her to write that year ‘or else’.

“I will,” Harry promised. There was a mailbox in Hogsmeade, Harry could drop a letter once a month.

Elise hugged Harry tightly and Harry hugged her just as tight.

“Thank you for coming,” Harry whispered. Elise had a knack for making her feel so blessedly normal.

Elise pecked Harry on the cheek and smiled. “I’ll always come when you need me. Next summer it’s my turn for a meltdown, okay? You bloody drama queen.”

Harry would be all too happy for Elise to be the one with a meltdown next summer.

As thrilled as Harry had been to get the quidditch captain badge, she’d been less thrilled to find out that Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley received the prefect badges for Gryffindor.

Draco and Pansy found Harry before she made it to her compartment on September first and told her they were selected as the Slytherin prefects, Ron and Hermione for Gryffindor.

“If it had been you, then we could patrol together,” Pansy pouted.

Draco rolled his eyes. “As if Potter would be chosen for prefect. She’s the entire reason we need prefects.”

“That’s true,” Harry allowed. She puffed her chest out and smirked. “I’ll be rather busy anyway, with running the quidditch team, you know.”

Draco looked positively furious and it made Harry’s new appointment all the much sweeter.

“You prat!” Angelina whined when Harry found her friends on the train and Angelina saw Harry’s badge pinned to the front of her robes.

“How the hell did you get it?” George asked, flabbergasted.

Harry shrugged and squeezed between the twins, pleased that there were no extras outside of their usual group present for the ride.

“Dead boyfriend pity,” Harry quipped. She stared deadpan at the others who fell silent at her comment. “Oh, I’m sorry, was that not what we were all thinking?”

“I certainly was,” Lee said with a grin and a quick wink. “I think McGonagall wrote down all the horrible things that happened to all of you and chose the most pathetic.”

“That’s me,” Harry said with forced cheer. “The most pathetic Gryffindor quidditch captain in history.”

“What’s the youngest seeker in a century when compared to that?” Fred joked.

Angelina sighed and tossed a chocolate frog to Harry. “I’m not calling you captain,” she warned her.

“We will,” Katie offered. Her and Alicia snapped their hands to their foreheads then saluted Harry. “Captain, oh captain!”

Harry smiled and she felt guilty for smiling, but still she smiled.

“Any word on the new defense Professor?” Alicia asked after they’d been on the train for an hour. She looked hopefully at Harry. “Is Remus coming back?”

“No,” Harry pouted. “Sirius’ cousin just finished auror training and I guess she took the job.”

“Sirius has a cousin?” George asked.

“Is she pretty?” Lee asked.

Harry laughed and shrugged. “I’ve never met her. Oh! You lot might have, Nymphadora Tonks?”

Nymphadora had graduated the year before Harry started, but everyone else in the compartment was at least a year older than she was- the twins, Angelina, and Lee were all seventh years, Katie and Alicia were sixth years.

At once, the six older students positively howled with laughter.

“They made Tonks a teacher?” George laughed.

“They let Tonks be an auror?” Fred snickered.

Harry was rather bemused, Sirius talked about his cousin as if she were a brilliant and powerful witch.

“What’s wrong with Nymphadora?” Harry asked.

“First off, don’t ever call her that,” Lee grimaced. He shuddered and shared a look with Angelina. “She likes to be called Tonks.”

“Or she’ll jinx the hell out of you,” Angelina said with a bob of her head. “She’s a metamorphmagus.”

“I never could find her, she always looked like someone different,” Katie said thoughtfully. “She’s rather clever.”

“And clumsy,” George said. “Remember when she fell down the stairs and broke her leg?”

Harry listened while the others swapped memories of Nymphadora Tonks and wondered what kind of hiring criteria Dumbledore used.

“Harry, I just wanted to say—”

“Get the hell away from me or I will scorch your skin off your bones,” Harry said hatefully, already regretting not convincing Remus to homeschool her.

“But, I just—”

“What did she say?” Fred asked, spinning around to glare at where Hermione Granger hovered behind Harry, wringing her hands. “Go away, Granger.”

“If you ever want to talk,” Hermione offered quickly before going to sit with Ron and Lavender further down the table from where Harry sat with her friends.

“Everyone is staring at me,” Harry moaned, ducking her head.

“And gossiping about you,” George added, super helpfully.

“Which is why you should sit up, flip your hair over your shoulder, and remind everyone that you are the baddest witch around,” Ginny said with a glimmer in her eyes. “Don’t let them see you looking all mopey and weak, Harry.”

“Gin’s just saying that because she wants to be on the team,” Fred said. “But she’s not wrong.”

Harry looked up and down the table, seeing the furtive looks and the whispers behind hands. When she looked across the packed hall, she saw the same thing.

So Harry lifted her head and haughtily flicked her hair over her shoulder and dared everyone to talk about her. Just because she was the girl with the dead boyfriend didn’t mean that she wasn’t also the girl who would ensure anyone whispering about her had to spend their first week of classes with glow in the dark neon skin.

“Miss Potter.”

Harry sighed and gave McGonagall a tired smile the next morning at breakfast. McGonagall was handing out schedules and Harry should have known that even her Head of House wasn’t immune to ‘checking on her’.

“Morning, ma’am,” Harry said politely.

McGonagall peered at Harry over her glasses for a long moment with her lips pursed.

“Is your bed and your belongings in the proper place?” she finally asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said. And none of the other three Gryffindor fifth years had said a single word when Harry slept in their dorm for the first time ever. It had been discomforting and Harry hated it.

“Very well,” McGonagall said curtly. “See that you use it.”

Harry already planned on sleeping with Ginny that night, but she lied and accepted her schedule anyway.

“Defense first,” Harry said, looking up at the Head Table. Sirius’ cousin, Professor Tonks, made an amusing image with her teaching robes and pink hair beside the more stoic Professor Snape.

“Let us know how it is, I bet it’s a lark,” Fred snorted. “Tonks will probably have you all planning pranks or something in her classes.”

“Speaking of which, brother of mine, we’ve got some things to take care of before class,” George said with a grin.

The twins quickly left and Ginny rolled her eyes.

“That joke shop of theirs is never going to happen,” she muttered. “Mum’s going to force them to join the ministry with Dad and Percy.”

“That would be a tragedy,” Katie said while Harry nodded in vehement agreement. “The twins weren’t made for desk jobs, they were made for jokes.”

“We’re going to have side-by-side shops,” Harry told them bashfully. “Cedric’s Sweets and Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, we’ve already discussed it.”

When Harry’s friends became uncomfortable, Harry scowled and grabbed her bag.

How could she ever be Harry and not just the girl with the dead boyfriend?

“Morning! My name is Tonks and that is what you all will call me!” Tonks said. She hopped up on her desk and looked around as all the fifth year students were in her classroom. It was a tight fit, but the lack of desks made it easier.

“I bet you’re wondering why I asked to have your class combined in one,” Tonks grinned, swinging her legs. “It’s partially because I’d rather only see you all twice a week, which makes my job so much easier, and also because this year is when you all get to become aurors.”

Harry exchanged looks with Pansy and Draco, none of them wanted to be aurors.

“Excuse me, Professor Tonks?” Hermione Granger raised her hand. “But why are we becoming aurors?”

“First off, one point from Gryffindor because you called me Professor when I clearly said to just call me Tonks,” Tonks said with a crooked smile. “And take another point from Gryffindor because you’re not going to be real aurors, but I’m going to treat you like you’re going through the program because that’s what I know.”

“But- but our OWLS?” Padma Patil asked, raising her hand high. “Don’t we need to study?”

“You do- not in my classroom,” Tonks said brightly. “I’m free Thursday evenings if you ever have questions. OWLS are a test, I’m giving you the hands on experience to understand the theories. So, if there’s no more annoying questions?”

Tonks waved her wand and a list of all their names appeared on the blackboard behind her when nobody else said anything.

“Whoever comes in first at the end of the year gets a fantabulous prize,” Tonks declared. She jumped off her desk and smiled at them all. “Who’s ready to duel? And, all the pressure, I will be evaluating you every single second of our classes for the ranks.”

“I might love her,” Pansy breathed when Tonks shooed everyone to the sides of the classroom so there was an opening in the middle.

Harry would have teased Pansy about having a girl-crush on their Professor, but then Tonks called on Harry.

“I need someone to be volun-told to showcase a duel with me,” Tonks said. She looked around slowly and then her amethyst colored eyes stopped on Harry and she smiled widely. “Tada! Harry, you’ve just been volun-told to come fight me.”

Harry, who had been living with Remus for years, Remus who was a brilliant professor and owned more books on defense than one soft-spoken man seemed like he would, perked up and stepped forward with her wand drawn.

“First, we bow,” Tonks said. She bowed to Harry and Harry did a silly curtesy.

“Our goal is to disarm only, but do whatever you need to get my wand from me, got it?” Tonks asked.

“Got it,” Harry said.

“GO!”

Harry sprung in action immediately and began using as many flashy and distracting spells as she could to trick Tonks so she could disarm her. The problem was, despite how clumsy everyone else claimed Tonks was, Tonks was devastating in a duel. She was focused and willowy, making the spellwork look as beautiful as waltzing.

Tonks waved her wand around in precise movements and she dodged Harry’s charms and jinxes like a professional.

Which, Harry supposed, she was.

Their duel was filled with colorful spells, smoke, and more than a few snakes being sent after Tonks in an effort to trip her up, but in the end, Tonks got Harry’s wand from her.

“Amazing!” Tonks laughed. She gave Harry her wand back with a wink. “Twenty points to Gryffindor. Now! Everyone, let’s pair off!”

Harry might have been bested by Tonks, but she’d gotten to best Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbott before class ended.

“Tonks?” Harry waited for everyone else to leave before she approached where Tonks was making notes on a parchment. “I just wanted to properly introduce myself, I’m Sirius’ goddaughter.”

“Harry Leo Potter, both a Gryffindor and an actual leo, which is perfectly fitting. Guardian is Remus Lupin, who is dating my cousin, Sirius Black. You’re the Boy-Who-Lived who transitioned to female in your fourth year. Gryffindor quidditch captain, you made seeker in your first year even though it was against the rules. You were dating Cedric Diggory before he was killed by an acromantula and won the Triwizard tournament as a corpse.”

Tonks squinted thoughtfully at the parchment she wrote on and then grinned up at Harry.

“Did I forget anything?”

Harry gaped at how callously Tonks just melted Harry down to five sentences.

“My favorite color is yellow and I enjoy long walks on the beach,” Harry spat.

Tonks laughed as if Harry were joking and not boiling with anger.

“I’m just repeating the gossip I heard before class today,” she said with a cheeky smile. “And you know what they’ll say now?”

Harry quirked a brow, silently asking her the question.

Tonks leaned across the desk and Harry wondered if amethyst was a natural color or a choice she made to match the pink.

“Now they’ll be saying that you got to duel me and that you kicked arse,” Tonks said. “So you’re welcome; now piss off, I’m busy.”

When Harry got to her next class, charms with the Hufflepuff’s, she found that Tonks was right and the other students were more interested in asking her about dueling Tonks than they were whispering about Cedric.

“YES, MY BOYFRIEND IS DEAD, I AM SOO VERY GLAD WE ESTABLISHED THAT!” Harry yelled across the quidditch pitch the first weekend she was able to set up tryouts. It seemed as if all of Gryffindor was on the field while all the other houses were filling the stands.

And Harry doubted if everyone showed up just because they wanted to be the new Gryffindor keeper.

“IF YOU ARE HERE FOR GOSSIP, TELL EVERYONE THAT I HAVE CRAMPS, A HEADACHE, AND YOU GET TO FLY FIRST IF YOU BROUGHT CHOCOLATE!”

Immediately, Ginny dove forward and handed Harry a fistful of chocolate with a grin.

“You keep sleeping in my bed, we were bound to sync up,” she winked while most of the quidditch hopefuls were snickering about Harry’s shouts.

“ALRIGHT, YOU LOT! FIRST FOUR PEOPLE TO GRAB THEIR BROOMS CAN JOIN GINNY IN A RACE AROUND THE PITCH, GO!”

More to appease Angelina’s ego than any desire to truly make it a team decision, Harry stood with her teammates and let them all make comments on the fliers.

Ginny was excellent, Dean Thomas was good. Collin and Dennis Creevey were surprisingly not inept. Ron missed every quaffle thrown at him.

Cormac McLaggen was irksomely impressive, but he kept hitting on Harry so she jinxed his broom in the air and had Crabbe and Goyle come down from the stands and take him to the Hospital Wing after he crashed.

Lee Jordan was terrible at flying, but excellent at showcasing the twins’ new nosebleed nougat from twenty feet in the air, which Harry suspected was his plot the whole time.

“I vote Ginny,” Angelina said at the end when they’d narrowed it down to five.

“Gin makes a better chaser, let’s do Dean,” George suggested. “Next year Gin can take Angie’s spot and you can get the Creevey brothers to start practicing to be beaters.”

“Or add Ginny now, get her used to the practice drills as keeper, then she takes over for Ang next year, the Creevey brothers take our spots, and we’ll kick Dean’s arse in gear so he can play keeper,” Fred said quietly.

Harry rubbed at her head, a horrible headache creeping up on her. “I’m not thinking about next year,” she scowled. “I don’t want to think about losing half my friends, I want to think about Gryffindor winning the cup this year and filling Oliver’s damn shoes!”

The others fell silent and Harry sighed heavily.

“I’m beat,” she said as way of apology. “Ginny was the best and I don’t like Ron or Dean. Let’s add Ginny and I’ll tell the Creevey’s to start coming to practices so they can get used to the bats.”

Ginny was ecstatic to be added to the team and Harry was ecstatic to slip away from the screaming Gryffindor’s with her Slytherin friends who waited on the edge for her.

“Pain reliever in exchange for you never screaming about cramps again,” Draco said, scrunching his nose in disgust.

Harry gratefully accepted the potion and the bottle of butterbeer that Pansy gave her to wash away the terrible taste.

“Don’t be such a boy,” Harry teased Draco while the five of them walked across the lawns together. “They wanted something to talk about, I gave it to them.”

“They’re saying that you’ve gone soft and crazy,” Theo said with a smirk. “You’re acting like a Gryffindor about the whole thing.”

“Oh?” Harry looked around at her Slytherin friends. “And how would a Slytherin handle it?”

“By showing them that you’re more than the girl with a dead boyfriend and ugly scar on her head,” Draco sniffed. They went to the tree that they claimed as their own and Draco grabbed the lowest branch swung himself up easily.

Harry glared at Draco and grabbed the branch and swung herself up just as easily. They sat on the branch and began shoving each other, never giving their constant battle to be the best up for a second.

“So prank everyone?” Harry asked. She shoved Draco especially hard and then grabbed his shoulder to keep him from toppling off the branch.

“You could.” Pansy leaned against the trunk and watched Harry and Draco wrestle with a small grin. “It would have to be brilliant though.”

“And just a tad bit cruel,” Blaise drawled. He raised a challenging brow when they all looked at him. “What? People used to be afraid of Potter and now they’re whispering about her over tea. I vote she fucks them all up.”

“Seconded,” Theo said.

Draco shoved Harry and laughed at her when she hit the ground. “I agree,” he said, crossing his legs around the branch and leaning down to offer his hand to her.

Harry grabbed his hand and yanked him hard enough that he fell off the branch and hit the ground right beside her.

“The motion is passed,” she said. “Operation F.T.A.U. is in play.”

“I’d like to buy out your stock of puking pastils.”

Fred and George glanced up from where they were working on what looked like a supply list with identical looks of confusion on their faces.

“Why?” Fred asked.

“And you couldn’t afford it,” George snorted.

“None of your business and I’m a trust fund brat with a rich godfather who has me as his sole heir,” Harry said waspishly. “Name your price.”

It took some haggling, but Harry did talk them down to two hundred and seventeen galleons in exchange for all but one of their puking pastils.

The plan couldn’t be put in motion until Halloween though, so Harry focused on the only two things of importance before then: defense and quidditch.

Quidditch practice ran seamlessly with all of them already being friends and working together flawlessly. It was a sorely missed tradition that Harry was more concerned with.

“Welcome to the first ever team building exercise under my rule,” Harry said to her teammates one night. They all met in the common room and the twins scared away a few younger students who had been there.

“Team building exercise?” Ginny asked curiously. “At nine o’clock?”

“Yep.” Harry grinned at them, pleased with herself for finally bringing back the exercise. “We’re doing classic hide and seek tonight, but I’ll have something much more original next month. And since Ginny’s the newest member, she’s it first.”

“No map or cloak!” Fred told Harry firmly.

“Fine,” Harry agreed. She inched slowly toward the portrait hole and smiled brightly. “I’ll still win, GO!”

The team all split up and Harry went to the back staircase, taking every hidden passageway she could. There was a brilliant hiding place at the third floor landing- a tiny little crawl space where Harry could just squish herself in and nobody could find her.

Once Harry squeezed herself in there, she started giggling quietly to herself. She’d spent last year looking for places just like that one, knowing castle-wide hide and seek would start once quidditch did. And the day Harry found that spot had been an accident- she’d tripped on the stairs and when she landed, she saw the crawl space just before…

Just before Cedric helped Harry up and threatened to cover her in cushioning charms so she couldn’t get hurt.

Suddenly, Harry felt like she couldn’t breathe. She started sliding out, making horrible gasping sounds that she couldn’t control.

All day, all day long, Harry had forgotten. Harry had forgotten that Cedric was dead and he was the one she’d been with when she found the crawl space.

Harry finally freed herself and curled in over herself, putting her head between her knees and hugging her legs while she cried.

What kind of person was she? Worrying about games when- when Cedric was dead? How could she forget about him for even a minute when she still wore his ring around her neck?

“Whatcha doin’?”

Harry jolted and looked up, mascara streaked down her face and her eyes swollen and puffy from tears, and saw Tonks standing in front of her with a puzzled frown.

“Playing hide and seek,” Harry said hoarsely, fighting to not sound terribly vulnerable and weak.

“You’re not very good at it,” Tonks said casually. “If the obvious lump on the landing didn’t give you away, the loud crying would.”

Harry wiped at her face with her sleeve. “I hoped it would make the seeker so uncomfortable that she’d avoid this area all together.”

Tonks laughed and held a hand down for Harry. “It’s past curfew and I’m a teacher.”

Harry grabbed her hand and let Tonks pull her to her feet. Harry was pleased to see that they were nearly the same height, though 5’7” wasn’t really a height to brag about.

“Are you going to give me detention?” Harry asked.

“Nope,” Tonks said, popping her lips loudly. “I’m going to take two points from Gryffindor then show you an excellent hiding spot, come on.”

Harry was so caught off-guard by the extreme level of brilliant unprofessionalism of Tonks that she let the woman pull her along up the stairs until they got to the seventh floor.

“Can you keep a secret?” Tonks asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Yes,” Harry lied.

Tonks laughed quietly and then began pacing until a door popped up behind her. “Come on,” Tonks said, opening the door. “Best hiding spot in the castle.”

Harry stepped through fearlessly and looked around a familiar and cozy looking room.

“The Hufflepuff common room?” Harry asked, her chest aching at the memories it brought.

“Ooh, take another two points for being so wrong,” Tonks laughed. She jumped on the sofa and stretched out across it. “This is the Room of Requirement, best kept secret of Hogwarts and discovered by yours truly in my second year.”

“How does it work?” Harry asked, interested despite herself. She walked around the room, inspecting how precisely it matched the Hufflepuff common room while Tonks explained.

“You just tell the room what you want and it gives it to you,” Tonks told her. She stuffed a yellow pillow beneath her head and grinned at Harry. “I saw you, you know? At Cedric’s funeral. He was a good guy, we used to be housemates.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Harry said coolly. She held up a little golden badger statue that was on the fireplace mantle and turned it in her hands.

“You’re right, better to pretend he never existed and then remember when you’re in the middle of a game past curfew,” Tonks said seriously. “I can see nobody was exaggerating about your brilliance.”

“I am brilliant,” Harry said, spinning around and glaring at Tonks. “I am incredibly brilliant and I am sad, Tonks. Cedric is gone and I can’t even play a team building game with my friends without thinking about him because all my memories of him are in these halls! So excuse the bloody hell out of me for not wanting to chitchat about him with you.”

“Maybe it’s time you made new memories in these halls,” Tonks said, unbothered by Harry’s anger. “You know, pranks and games and mischief and fun. Something to make you look fifteen again.”

“Oh what do you know?” Harry scowled, turning away from her again. “You’re just some witch with pink hair who doesn’t assign essays because you’re too lazy to grade them.”

“Michael Owen was my best mate when I was a fifth year, what? Three years before you came here? Anyway, we’d been best mates for years. We grew up close to each other and we went on our first dates together. He was my first kiss too, but it was just for practice. We did everything together, I used to make myself look like him sometimes so we could say we were twins.”

Harry turned and leaned against the fireplace, watching Tonks while she talked about some bloke Harry didn’t know.

“When we were fourteen, Michael got diagnosed with depression over the summer,” Tonks went on, her smile tricking Harry into thinking it was a happy story. “His mum got him potions and so we didn’t talk about it. And that winter, while I was studying for my OWLS, Michael hung himself from the rafters of the owlery and he died.”

Harry gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Right?” Tonks nodded and Harry finally saw there was a shadow of grief that still lingered in her eyes. “And every bloody day I was stuck here felt like hell. We grew up together here, we laughed here, we played games here. Michael was my best friend in the world and there wasn’t anywhere I could go where he wasn’t haunting me.”

Harry moved to sit beside Tonks, drawn in by the horrible and familiar story. Tonks pulled her legs beneath herself and turned to Harry with an uncharacteristically solemn look on her heart-shaped face.

“The new memories won’t wash away the old ones,” Tonks said quietly. “I can sit here with you and tell you this story and still remember the time I sat here with Michael and we fought over who got to ask out Caliope Sanders. And, for the record,” Tonks sadness washed away and she smiled widely, “I’m going to assign a twelve inch essay next week and tell everyone it’s because you called me lazy.”

Tonks did exactly that, but she also ranked Harry in first place for the dueling unit of the year with Draco and Hermione just behind her, so Harry didn’t mind much.

“Sir? May I bother you?”

“You bother me every moment you are in my presence,” Snape drawled. He glanced up from his desk and raised an eyebrow at her. “What is yet another encroachment on my time and space?”

Harry smiled, taking that as the permission she was pretty sure it was meant to be, and moved closer in his classroom.

“Sir, I wanted to thank you for those potions over the summer,” Harry said respectfully. “I didn’t appreciate them at first, but I think maybe they kept me sane.”

Snape snorted. “I doubt if you have ever been sane, Miss Potter.”

“Fair enough,” Harry grinned. She sat across from Snape and steeled herself for what she wanted to say to him. It was a risk, he could throw her out of his classroom, but Harry had a sneaking suspicion that he might not.

“I- I also wanted to thank you for the memories you sent me a couple of years ago,” Harry said quietly. “Before those memories, all I knew of her voice was her begging Voldemort to spare me.”

Snape flinched and the quill in his hand snapped in half. He looked up at Harry and she saw a small measure of unease in his dark eyes.

“Who told you?” he asked quietly.

“Nobody,” Harry said honestly. “I just pieced it together. Is- is that why you’re nice to me? Because you were friends with my mum?”

“I despise you, Potter,” Snape said evenly. “However… I was rather fond of your mother.”

Harry settled in her chair and smiled. “Will you tell me about her, sir? I hear about my dad a lot, but nobody besides you knew my mum when she was a kid.”

Snape looked suspiciously at Harry then. “Is this a ploy to alibi yourself while some horrendous and asinine prank is pulled during the Halloween feast or a genuine request to hear me share memories of your mother?”

Harry’s smile grew to something bright and charming, “Both, sir.”

Snape snorted again. “Very well, twenty points from Gryffindor and a week of detention next week for whatever stunt you have pulled. When I first met your mother, we were on a playground…”

Harry would have traded the detentions and point loss just for the three hours she spent listening to stories of her mum from Snape. But when McGonagall came looking for her, screaming about all the students in the Great Hall throwing up all over the place from no known cause, Harry knew she got off very lightly.

“How’d you do it, Harrikins?” Fred asked that night when Harry made it back to the common room.

All of Gryffindor looked pale and shaky, side effects from throwing up for hours, and Harry raised her chin and smirked at them all.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Harry said coyly. “But, if I had taken your candy and turned it to a potion and convinced the house elves to put it in everyone’s food, then I’d shut the hell up about Cedric Diggory.” Harry looked around at them all and smiled. “Luckily for you all, I didn’t do it. Goodnight.”

“Potter’s back,” someone scoffed behind Harry, causing her to smirk the whole way to Angelina’s dormitory.

Potter was back indeed.

And Harry was only gossiped about with the usual amount of ferocity after she totally kicked Draco’s teams arse in the first quidditch match.

“Look at your rankings,” Tonks said in November, waving her wand to the board. The defense students all jostled to see their names after their last unit, stealth and tracking, had ended.

“Sucks to suck, Potter,” Draco said smugly. He’d knocked Harry from first place, taking her spot and leaving her just above Hermione Granger.

“I hate you,” Harry whispered to him petulantly.

“Hates an awfully strong emotion,” Pansy breathed with a smirk. Harry stepped on her foot and shook her head irritably, trying to listen as Tonks explained the next unit.

“We’re going to be doing concealment and disguises,” Tonks said. Everyone clapped politely when Tonks shifted her appearance to suddenly look like Neville, who had been standing closest to her.

“Unsurprisingly, I scored top of my class in it,” Tonks said. “But since none of you are metamorphmagi, you’ll have to work harder than I did.”

“Tonks, can people learn to do it?” Theo asked after raising his hand.

“It is more rare to learn to be a metamorphmagus than it would be to banish your organs and live long enough to make it to St Mungo’s on time,” Tonks said. “So, for the first time ever since my lazy arse had to grade all those horrible essays, you lot have homework! Come to class next week with your best methods of concealment in the field and we’ll discuss them and I’ll totally rank you all based on it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Draco immediately told Harry, shouldering her roughly. “It would be cheating.”

Harry beamed, already knowing she had the winning method of concealment in her trunk. “Poor Draco, all your daddy gave you was pretty hair, mine just gave me top scores in concealment.”

And Harry had gotten the top score in that unit.

“This is amazing,” Tonks said, looking awed when Harry showed off her cloak in class. She looked at Harry and smiled so brightly that Harry felt breathless for a moment. “Do you know how rare this is, Harry? Priceless, really!”

“It’s impervious to summoning or most spells too,” Harry bragged. “I can show you after class if you’d like?”

“Yes, please,” Tonks said eagerly. She gave Harry her cloak back and Harry blushed when their fingers brushed against each other.

Hermione looked at Harry for a long moment afterward and Harry scowled at her. She was clearly jealous that her disillusionment charm would never be as effective as Harry’s cloak.

“I would kill to have this in the field!” Tonks laughed after she sent half a dozen jinxes and harmless hexes at Harry after class.

Harry popped the hood of her cloak off and grinned. “The only way you’d get it is by killing me,” she teased her. “And I’m very hard to kill according to Voldemort.”

Tonks laughed and hopped up on her desk, letting Harry sit beside her.

“The Boy-Girl-Who-Lived,” Tonks said, pressing a hand to her heart. “Lived to be a pain in the arse,” she added with a snicker.

“Envy doesn’t suit you,” Harry sniffed. “I’m beautiful, famous, and have a cool cloak from my dead dad; everyone wants to be me.”

Tonks turned and grinned at Harry and even if it took Harry a moment to realize it, her beating heart immediately realized how close their faces were to each other.

“You’re the most annoying student in this school,” Tonks said. “Do you know how often I hear kids saying that they’re scared to eat sweets or pudding because they think you’ve poisoned it?”

“First off, I have never poisoned anyone,” Harry said, admiring the little curve in Tonks’ upper lip. “Secondly, the sweets are because of Fred and George, they’re planning to open a joke shop next year and they’re testing products out on the students.”

“Brilliant,” Tonks laughed. She leaned back on her hands and swung her legs around. “Are you going home for the hols? They’re coming up soon.”

“Nope, Sirius is planning to surprise Remus with a trip to the states, I think he’s going to propose,” Harry said happily. “He offered to let me come, but I see enough of their bare arses over the summer, I don’t want to be the third wheel on a proposal-cation.”

“Ooh, Mum’s going to be so happy that Sirius is finally proposing!” Tonks squealed joyfully. “She’s been nagging him about becoming an honest man for years.”

“What about you?” Harry asked her. “Are you going home to your… your…?”

“My empty flat? Nope,” Tonks grinned. “I am going to stay with my parents for a week and then I’ll be back here on Boxing Day. Try not to do anything hilarious while I’m gone, alright?”

“We’ll see,” Harry quipped. She hopped off Tonks’ desk and gave her a shy smile. “Thank you, Tonks, for… for everything.”

Tonks’ smile definitely took Harry’s breath that time.

“Hey, Harry! Go put on your new sweater and come fly with me?”

Harry hesitated on the bottom step of the girls dorm, suddenly feeling a bit guilty. Fred had clearly been waiting for her, he had on his newest Weasley sweater - a bright yellow one that brought out the blue of his eyes - and had a smile on his face and his broom in his hands.

“I can’t,” Harry said, unsure why she felt so badly. “I- I told Dray that I’d go fly with him, it’s… it’s tradition, for us. We always fly together on Christmas.”

And Draco had thought they wouldn’t that year, he’d mentioned it in passing when they were in Hogsmeade last weekend and Harry was the one who had to assure him that she’d been planning to fly together from the get-go.

It wasn’t terribly obvious, but Harry hadn’t realized that Draco never went home for holidays and if her favorite rival wanted to chase the snitch together then Harry would be happy to.

Or, she was happy to, until Fred’s face fell and became surly looking.

“You call Malfoy your rival, but you fancy him, don’t you?” Fred asked softly, kicking his trainer on the floor.

“What?” Harry reared back in surprise. Draco was perfectly fanciable and he’d gotten tall and handsome recently, Harry would have to be blind not to notice how fit he was, but Draco was… he was Draco.

“No, I don’t fancy him,” Harry said. Her heart throbbed and she instinctively grabbed the ring she wore. “I- I don’t fancy anyone,” Harry said, thinking of Cedric.

Fred looked up at her and there was something soft and sad in his eyes. “No one?” he asked.

“No one,” Harry said firmly.

“Malfoy fancies you,” Fred said. He leaned against the wall and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Everyone knows it.”

Harry laughed and made Fred scowl. “You’re mad, Fred!” she howled with mirth. “Draco hates me, we just like to fight. I’m- I’m the Boy-Girl-Who-Lived with the dead boyfriend, people don’t fancy me.”

“You’re blind, Harry,” Fred said flatly. “You’re so bloody blind.”

Harry watched Fred walk away with a peculiar feeling in her stomach, something that felt a lot like disappointment.

“Fred’s lost his mind,” Harry told Draco cheerfully when they finally landed from their flight. The field was covered in snow and Harry and Draco were both flushed, worn down and shivering from their flying that turned into a snowball fight.

They were walking toward the changing rooms, planning to service their brooms together, make sure they were in top shape for their next respective practices.

“Did he finally ask you out?” Draco asked in a drawl, raising a brow at Harry.

“What?” Harry laughed, just as surprised by Draco as she’d been by Fred. “Fred doesn’t fancy me, Dray. Fred is my best mate.”

Draco grabbed Harry’s wrist abruptly, pulling her to a stop so he could look at her for a long moment searching her eyes and her face for something.

“What am I?” Draco asked, his voice quiet while snow fell in his messed up blonde hair. “If Weasley is your best mate, what am I?”

Harry hesitated, caught off guard by the intensity in Draco’s grey eyes and taking a moment to admire his sharp features.

“Dray, I… I… I don’t fancy anyone,” Harry said, feeling regret while Draco looked so vulnerable in front of her. “All I can think about is Cedric, we- we had a whole future planned.”

Draco twisted his hand, lacing his fingers through Harry’s instead of holding her wrist. “What am I to you?” he asked again, his voice a whisper.

Harry smiled and gave him the only thing she could, “You’re my favorite rival.”

Draco smirked and dropped Harry’s hand. “You better not have other rivals, Potter.”

Harry smirked right back at him and poked him in the back of the knee with her broomstick. “Even if I did, you’d be my favorite.”

While quidditch was on hold and the winter weather had a strong hold on the castle, Harry was able to dedicate herself firmly to the contest in defense.

Harry had a plan, a good plan, a brilliant plan, and being an auror wasn’t a part of it. But Harry had to get the top spot in the rankings. She just had to. Harry had to show everyone that she was more than just a brilliant prankster and more than a baby famous for having dead parents and a girl with a dead boyfriend, Harry could win the whole contest.

Or, she could, until Tonks started being curt and cold to Harry in class while they moved on the History of Dark Arts unit of the program.

“Tonks, did I do something?” Harry asked after class when she’d lost six points during class for what seemed to be tiny infractions. Six points weren’t very many, but Tonks only ever took two points at a time, so Harry thought getting in trouble three times had been a bit much.

“You did.” Tonks sat behind her desk and folded her hands on the desktop. “You sent me a Christmas gift.”

Harry shifted from foot to foot, wondering how she’d messed it up. “I did,” she said slowly.

“Why?” Tonks asked.

Harry blinked at her. “Because we’re friends and I thought you’d like it?”

It hadn’t been anything major, just a little golden badger statue she nicked from the Room of Requirement and engraved the name Michael Owen on. She thought Tonks would like it, like Harry had liked the photo and engraved frame that Amos and Ruth sent her of Cedric. Clearly Harry had miscalculated.

“That’s why it’s inappropriate, because we aren’t friends,” Tonks said solemnly. “You’re a student and I’m your teacher.”

Harry tried to grin, “Remus said yes to Sirius, so maybe think of it as a gift from your future second-cousin-in-law?”

Tonks’ frosty exterior melted then and she returned Harry’s smile, even if it wasn’t as warm as usual. “As long as you know that I’m the adult teacher while you’re the minor student, then… then thank you,” she said softly. “It meant a lot to me.”

Harry left the classroom with a pep in her step and a true smile on her face.

“You talk about Tonks like you have a crush,” Ginny snickered when Harry told her about her and Tonks’ conversation that night. Harry had decided to sleep with Ginny even though it was technically her night to sleep with Katie.

Ginny was just a better listener.

Harry kicked her and laughed. “I don’t fancy Tonks,” she said. “What is with everyone thinking I fancy anyone? I just- she’s brilliant, right? And powerful.”

“And pretty,” Ginny smirked.

“And twenty-three,” Harry said, rolling her eyes. “She’d never be interested in me.”

Ginny quit laughing then and looked unreasonably hesitant. “Uh… Harry, love, don’t you mean that you’re not interested in her? Because what you said…”

“That’s what I meant,” Harry said smoothly. “Tonks is a teacher and I love Cedric.”

“Be careful, Harry, you’re walking a tightrope,” Ginny warned her. She grinned then and wiggled her eyebrows. “But let’s talk about Dean now because I think I’m going to shag him this weekend when we go to Hogsmeade!”

Harry squealed and was pleased to have the conversation drift away from her tragic love life and move on to Ginny’s thriving one.

Pansy and Harry were walking down the streets of Hogsmeade, shivering and sharing gossip from their respective houses, when a cold snowball hit Harry in the back of the head.

“Oi!” Harry spun around and looked for the attacker. She saw Fred and George a few paces behind them, looking much too casual. “What was that for?” Harry asked.

“What was what for, Captain?” George grinned.

Harry narrowed her eyes at them. “If I get hit with another snowball, I’m going to bury you two in snow.”

Fred grinned sharply at Harry and waved his wand, silently summoning a pile of snow and shaping it in an attack ball. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Pansy said at Harry’s side.

Fred flung the snowball right at Harry and the war was on.

The four of them spent hours chasing each other around Hogsmeade, paying no mind to the students or citizens they shoved or accidentally hit in their determination to make the others give in.

Harry scaled up a dumpster and grasped on a roof ledge to get up high, looking for familiar red hair she could pelt snowballs at. Pansy was lurking behind an oak tree, looking for the Weasley twins as well.

The first familiar head of hair that Harry saw wasn’t red, but pink. And Harry acted without thinking it through first; Harry just levitated a snowball from the pile on the ground down beneath her and flew it directly to the back of Tonks’ head.

‘You moron,’ Pansy mouthed across the road from her, looking shocked at Harry’s audacity.

Tonks spun around slowly and it only took a moment for her eyes to see Harry laying on the roof with a smirk on her face.

“Really?” Tonks yelled up at her. “You attacked a teacher?”

Harry shrugged. “What are you going to do? Take points?”

Tonks grinned, just the reaction Harry hoped for, and shook her head. “Nope, but I will do this!”

Harry squealed when a large pile of snow landed on her head from no where.

“How did you do that?!” Harry shouted as she shook snow off herself. “You don’t even have your wand!”

“I’m a brilliant, powerful witch,” Tonks laughed. “Maybe I’ll teach you one day.”

“I’m going to report you.”

Harry scowled at Hermione, who was sitting in front of her and Pansy in potions class. “For what?”

Hermione spun all the way around in her seat and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re cheating in defense,” she said. “It’s inappropriate and it’s illegal.”

Harry and Pansy exchanged bewildered looks.

“How am I cheating?” Harry asked Hermione. “You’re just jealous that I’m kicking your arse.”

“And I hardly think even if Harry was cheating that it’s illegal,” Pansy scoffed. “Merlin, Granger, you’re deranged.”

Hermione’s face turned a dark shade of red at their blithe comments. “I’m talking about you and Professor Tonks,” she hissed. “I’ve seen you two and you- you flirt with each other! It’s inappropriate, it’s cheating, and it’s illegal!”

Harry had her wand in her hand and clenched it tightly. “We do not flirt,” she said hotly. “God, you’re so jealous that you’re losing that you’ll find any excuse to complain, won’t you?”

“Or she’s jealous because she wants you to flirt with her,” Pansy drawled rudely, smirking at Hermione. “What’s wrong, Granger? Decide you wanted Harry back and she won’t give you the time of day?”

“As interesting as I am certain this conversation is, end it, immediately,” Snape snapped, walking up to their desks and glaring at the three of them. “While you are in my classroom you will focus on brewing lest you find yourself outside of my classroom with a troll on your OWLS score, is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the three girls said.

Harry waited until Snape was on the other side of the classroom to send a hex at Hermione’s stool, cracking one of the legs and causing Hermione to fall.

“Whoops,” Harry said airily with a sweet smile. “Better be careful, I’d hate for you to get badly hurt next time.”

The way Hermione paled was tremendously validating, the way Pansy pulled Harry away for a private chat afterward was not.

“Tonks is cute,” Pansy said as soon as she got Harry alone in a classroom. “Right?”

“Hermione’s so full of—”

“I might ask Tonks out.”

“You’re not even gay!” Harry said, shocked. “And you can’t date Tonks!”

“And neither can you,” Pansy said, grabbing Harry by the shoulders and shaking her. “Harry, darling, you know I love you. I do, you’re my best friend and you are the only person I can be myself around. So when I say this, I say it with love, okay?”

Harry clenched her jaw and nodded.

“You look at Tonks sometimes like you used to Cedric,” Pansy said quietly. “No, don’t roll your eyes,” she snapped when Harry did just that. “Everyone fancies a teacher sometimes, I’d like nothing more than to let Professor Snape bend me over a cauldron—”

“Eww!” Harry squealed. “You’re disgusting!”

“The man has hands that make me want to die,” Pansy moaned, fluttering her eyes up at the ceiling. “And his voice? Oh, sometimes I wait for you idiot Gryffindor’s to mess up in class so I can hear him scold you.”

“Snape’s an old man,” Harry laughed. “And I don’t think about Tonks bending me over.”

“But do you think about Tonks?” Pansy asked quietly. “I won’t judge you if you do.”

Harry felt her eyes well up and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. “She makes me feel normal,” she told Pansy. “She- she gets it, you know? And she’s funny…”

And smart, powerful, brilliant, and…

“Oh, no…” Harry looked up at Pansy, horrified. “I fancy Tonks.”

“That’s fine,” Pansy said soothingly, pulling Harry in a hug. “I won’t shag Snape until graduation and you won’t shag Tonks until then either, okay?”

Harry wasn’t concerned about shagging Tonks, she was concerned about Cedric.

“He’s only been gone for seven months,” Harry cried, burying her face in the crook of Pansy’s familiar and comfortable neck. “He’s been gone for seven months and I- I’m flirting with a teacher! What kind of person am I?!”

“A normal one, darling,” Pansy said, holding Harry tight. She ran her hand down Harry’s hair, just how she knew Harry liked. “Darling, it’s normal. And- and Cedric wouldn’t want you to be unhappy forever, Harry, he just wouldn’t. But…” Pansy pushed Harry away so she could stare hard in her eyes. “You cannot move on with Tonks, okay? Just- just go out with Draco or Fred, they’ve fancied you for ages. Personally, I vote for Draco, please.”

“I wish you’d be a lesbian for me,” Harry sniffled, ignoring Pansy’s order that Harry date Draco. “I love you, Pans.”

“And I love you,” Pansy said. She smiled at Harry, “But I daydream about seeing if Snape’s cock is as talented as his fingers, not your vagina, no offense.”

Harry laughed and pushed Pansy away and then she did something horribly, terribly, wonderfully, stupid that night.

“Come in!”

Harry stepped in Tonks’ office and shut the door behind her. “I thought you’d be in for the night,” Harry said calmly even while her heart was pounding in her chest.

“I’m tweaking the unit on resilience training,” Tonks said. She waved a paper around and rolled her eyes. “I can’t treat you all like Mad-Eye treated me, so I’m trying to find a middle ground.”

Harry licked her lips and nodded while she moved closer to Tonks’ desk. “You’re a great teacher,” she said thickly. “An excellent teacher.”

Tonks looked at Harry and smiled. “Thank y—”

“So teach me.” Harry dropped her robes and stood before Tonks, clad in nothing but her best set of lingerie and her boots. She’d shaved her legs, done her makeup, and made her hair shine in wavy curls down her back.

“Teach me,” Harry repeated. Tonks said nothing, she just stared at Harry in the eye, her face blank except for a pink dusting on her cheeks.

“Harry, this…” Tonks shook her head. “I’m—”

Harry walked around the desk and put her finger on Tonks’ lips, acting much more brave than she felt.

“I fancy you and I think you fancy me,” Harry whispered. “I know you’re older, you’re a teacher, and I’m going to eventually be your second-cousin-in-law, but… but I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

Tonks pushed Harry’s finger off her mouth and stood up. “Harry, you’re a student…”

“So?” Harry said brazenly. “I… you make me forget everything else. I want to be with you, I want to be like you… so… teach me.”

“I’m going to hell,” Tonks breathed.

Harry thought that sounded like victory and she grabbed Tonks by the shoulder and pulled her to her, crashing their lips together in a heated kiss that Harry felt clear to her stomach.

And it was good- it was a perfect kiss. It was even better because Tonks didn’t taste like Cedric, she didn’t feel like Cedric- it was so different.

Harry woke the next morning in an unfamiliar bed and was almost immediately ripped from the dreamless sleep she’d had to a horrible reality that involved Tonks pacing around her bedroom anxiously.

“I’ve ruined my life,” Tonks said. Her hair was long and pale white and she was pulling on it as frantically as she was pacing. “I’ve ruined my career, my entire career.”

“What?” Harry yawned and stretched before sitting up. She had on Tonks’ old Hufflepuff quidditch jersey and it made her nose pinch for a moment before she determinedly looked away and back to Tonks.

“One moment of stupid weakness and I have ruined my life,” Tonks said, not even really looking at Harry.

“You sure know how to make a girl feel special,” Harry drawled.

“I’m going to be fired from teaching, fired from the auror corps, and I’ll be lucky if I’m not sent to Azkaban!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Harry climbed out of Tonks’ bed and walked over to her to interrupt Tonks’ pacing with her hands on Tonks’ arms. “Why are you so upset?”

“I am upset because YOU MADE ME RUIN MY LIFE!” Tonks yelled, shoving Harry’s hands off her. “YOU CAME AT ME WITH YOUR SAD, BEAUTIFUL, LOVELY EYES AND YOUR NAKED BODY AND YOU MADE ME RUIN EVERYTHING I HAVE WORKED SO HARD FOR!”

Harry’s throat swelled and her eyes were brimming with tears. “I didn’t have a wand to your head, Nymphadora. I just… I thought you fancied me. And you make me feel happy and last night was—”

“A mistake,” Tonks interrupted her. She glared at Harry and Harry felt her stomach clench at the way Tonks’ pretty amethyst eyes flashed red before going back to the dark purple. “It was a mistake and it will never happen again.”

“Don’t say that,” Harry pleaded, reaching out for her. “Tonks, please, I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

“Go.” Tonks turned and summoned Harry’s robes wandlessly. She threw the robes at Harry. “Go, please.”

“Tonks…”

“GO!” Tonks yelled.

Harry pulled her robes on and ran clear to the Gryffindor tower, leaving a trail of heartbroken tears behind her.

“You moron. You unbelievable, idiotic, unforgivable, moron,” Pansy whispered. “I cannot believe you, Harry. I truly can’t.”

“What?” Harry hissed from the corner of her mouth, her eyes tracking Tonks at the front of the classroom. They were supposed to be working on resiliency, but all Harry could think of was Tonks’ lips and her eyes and the way that Tonks was acting as if Harry was invisible.

“You did something with her, didn’t you?” Pansy whispered to Harry. “That’s why you look like a kicked krup and she won’t even look at her favorite student.”

Draco’s head snapped up from the other side of Pansy and his eyes narrowed sharply when they found Harry’s guilt filled ones.

“Did you shag her?” Draco asked, much too loudly. A few nearby students looked at them in interest and Harry fingered her wand threateningly until they looked away.

“I cannot talk about it,” Harry whispered. “You have to be quiet.”

“You did!” Draco said. Harry felt her stomach sink when Draco stood up straight from the part of the wall he’d been holding up and glared so hatefully at her.

“What happened to you couldn’t fancy anyone?” Draco demanded, yelling and causing everyone to truly stare at them. “What happened to you needing time?”

“Dray, please, shut up,” Harry whispered, glancing anxiously where Tonks was frozen in place in the front of the classroom.

“Screw you, Potter,” Draco sneered. “I guess you’ll just spread your legs for anyone, won’t you?”

Harry’s blood drained from her face and the whole classroom was silent when Draco turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

“He’s always been jealous of me,” Pansy said loudly, flicking her hair back and smirking while she wrapped an arm around Harry’s waist. “Silly boy.”

“I- I have to go,” Harry breathed, shaking under the weight of everyone’s stares. “I…”

Pansy pushed Harry to the door, Ron Weasley opened it for her, and Harry bolted on shaking legs.

Where could she go?

What had she done?

What the hell was wrong with her?

“Miss Potter, I am in the middle of—”

“It’s an emergency, ma’am,” Harry told Professor McGonagall hoarsely. She knew it was a risk to interrupt the transfiguration class, she could see Fred and George’s curious looks over her shoulder, but Harry couldn’t worry about any of that.

“Please, I need to floo my dad, please,” Harry told Professor McGonagall. “Please, ma’am.”

McGonagall looked hard at Harry and nodded curtly. “Go through to my office and use my floo,” she said, opening the door for Harry. “If you need me, I will be available once this class is over.”

“Thank you,” Harry said before running through the class and practically slamming McGonagall’s door shut behind her.

“Harry, love, what is it?”

Harry shook her head at Sirius, tears slipping down her cheeks as she did. “I need Dad, please,” she begged him. “I’m sorry, I- I just…”

“It’s fine, hold on. REMUS! Come quick! It’s Harry.”

Harry knelt on the ground in front of the floo, her shoulders strained while she waited with her head in the fire for Remus to arrive.

“Harry, dear, what is it?” Remus took Sirius’ spot quickly and the sight of his face so concerned made Harry break.

“I messed up, Dad, I messed up so bad,” Harry sobbed. “I messed up and I can’t fix it, and I need you to- to tell me how to fix it!”

“Hush, hush,” Remus said. “Where are you? McGonagall’s office? Alright, back up, I’m coming through, Minerva won’t mind,” he said when Harry nodded.

Harry waited until Remus came through to fling herself at him and cry in his chest that smelled like home.

“I messed up so bad,” she cried. “I- I’ve ruined Tonks’ life and Dray hates me and I need you to fix it, please, because- because I don’t know how!”

“Sh… calm down,” Remus said softly. “Calm down, dear, then tell me what happened. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

And Harry was sure it was a thousand times worse than whatever Remus was imagining.

“Oh, Harry, dear…” Remus sank down in one of McGonagall’s chairs in front of the fireplace. “Harry… what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Harry moaned. She sat down too and stared miserably at Remus. “Do you hate me? You can, every-everyone else does.”

Remus reached over and grasped Harry’s hand tightly. “I will never hate you,” he said firmly. “I love you more than anything, but I will not lie to you, Harry, this is very bad.”

“Can you fix it, Dad? Please?” Harry asked him tearfully. “That’s what dad‘s do, right? They fix things?”

“I… I don’t know how we fix this,” Remus said. “I’m less concerned with Draco being unhappy with you than I am by the fact that my daughter’s adult teacher had sexual intercourse with my underage child.”

“You can’t say anything,” Harry implored him quickly. “Please, I promised her I wouldn’t and now- now- now Pansy knows and Draco knows and—”

“And your father knows and in about five minutes when Minerva’s class ends, she will know,” Remus said, gentle but firm. “Harry, I could not be more serious right now, I want you to go to that floo, go home, and wait for me there. Do you understand?”

“Dad—”

“Now, Harry Leo, right now.”

Harry got up and stormed to the floo, flinging the powder in and all but screaming ‘Lupin Cottage’. As soon as she was in her home, she flung herself across the sofa, face down, and laid in silence, too tired and scared to even cry.

She ruined Tonks’ life. She wanted someone to make her forget Cedric and she ruined Tonks’ life.

Harry was a plague.

“Harry, are you hungry?” Sirius asked softly, crouching down beside her. “I can get you a—”

“I’m fine,” Harry lied, her voice muffled by the cushion she was facing. “Please, I just… I just need quiet until Dad gets home.”

“Alright, I’m just going to sit and you let me know if you need to talk- or… or eat,” Sirius offered.

Harry doubted that Sirius would actually be quiet, he seemed genuinely incapable of being quiet, but he was then. For the longest wait of Harry’s life all she could hear was a clock ticking and her heart hammering.

It took ages, Harry knew it took ages. Longer than an hour, certainly, but finally the floo flared to life and Harry looked up to see Remus solemnly step from the fire.

“Harry, we need to go to Minerva’s office and talk,” Remus said gently. He offered Harry his hand and shook his head at Sirius when he jumped up.

“I’ll tell you later, Pads, but this will be easier without you right now,” Remus told him. “Harry, come on.”

“Am I being expelled?” Harry asked Remus with a sick swoop in her stomach.

“No.”

Harry exhaled and grasped Remus’ hand, trusting him to help her get through the mess that she created.

It wasn’t only Professor McGonagall who waited for them, but also Professor Snape and Headmaster Dumbledore.

Harry suddenly felt like a very small, very stupid, child.

“Miss Potter, please have a seat,” Dumbledore said, waving Harry in a chair. Harry sat beside Remus, facing the three professors shamefully.

“I do not believe I need to press how truly serious this situation is,” Dumbledore told her while Harry looked at her lap.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Harry whispered.

“You were not the adult, as much as you may see yourself as one,” Snape snapped harshly.

“You are the foolish child with the recent trauma who made a poor decision that was exacerbated by an adult who knew better,” McGonagall cut in. “Miss Potter, do you believe you are the only student to ever harbor an inappropriate feeling toward a teacher?”

Harry very determinedly did not think about Pansy or Snape.

“You are not,” Dumbledore assured her. “I believe the saying is that it takes two to tango.”

“Nymphadora has been suspended, effective immediately,” McGongall said, causing Harry to look up in horror.

“Ma’am, please, I- I made her, she didn’t want to…”

“Oh?” Snape raised a brow at Harry. “You put your wand to the trained auror’s head and forced her to have intimate relations with you?”

“Well, no, but I—”

“You are the child and she is the adult,” Snape said firmly, glaring Harry down while Harry squeezed Remus’ hand.

“It is partially my fault,” McGonagall sniffed. “I did see how the two of you behaved and I presumed your familial connection was the cause. Had I known…”

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “Regardless, Miss Potter, until further notice, Remus has agreed to finish the year in the defense post and you will be attending weekly counseling sessions until the end of the year. Is that understood?”

“I’m…” Harry looked around at the four adults slowly. “I’m not expelled? Suspended? Off the quidditch team?”

“Harry,” Professor McGongall reached over and put her hand kindly on Harry’s open hand where she had been gripping the armrest tightly. “While I abhor speaking this hypothetical scenario, I need you to hear me. Had you came to my rooms and disrobed, flung yourself in my lap and began- what do you children say? necking? I would have immediately called for another staff member and informed Albus.”

“You made a foolish choice, Nymphadora committed a crime,” Dumbledore said sternly. “Since you are the child, you will learn from this. Since she is the adult, she will be appropriately punished.”

Harry looked at Remus and bit her lip at his soft look of support. “Sirius…?”

“Will understand and not blame you,” Remus assured her swiftly.

“I believe you should get to dinner, if you feel up to it, Miss Potter,” Dumbledore said. He got to his feet and looked from McGonagall to Snape. “Come along, we have another duty to fulfill today.”

The trio of teachers paused by the door and Dumbledore turned to look at Remus.

“Remus, will you be pressing charges?”

“No,” Harry cried, miserable at the idea of Tonks being fired, let alone arrested. Harry pulled on Remus’ hand until he looked at her. “Please, please, don’t.”

Remus stared hard at Harry for a long tense moment before answering Dumbledore.

“I will not be,” he said. “Please inform her that if Sirius or I see her within one hundred meters of our daughter that I will kill her,” he said with perfect calm.

Snape was the one who nodded his head at Remus with a tiny smirk of approval. “Happily,” he sneered. His dark eyes snapped to Harry then. “Wednesday’s at seven, Potter, don’t be late.”

Harry swallowed and looked at Remus after they left them alone in McGonagall’s office.

“Are you- are you going to send me back to the Dursleys?” Harry asked quietly. “I- I know I made a mistake.”

Remus sighed and stood up to hug Harry tightly. “I will never send you away. I love you, Harry, I do. You go to dinner, go to your sessions with Severus, and—”

“Wait!” Harry pulled back and gaped up at Remus. “The weekly counseling is with Snape?”

“He volunteered,” Remus said. “He’s an intelligent man with a decent grasp on trauma and… and Severus has a rather unique view on losing someone you love. I think it’ll help, but if you’re uncomfortable with it, I can find someone else.”

“No, it’s fine,” Harry assured him. She liked Snape most of the time, when he wasn’t being a greasy git. “But… but I feel like I did something horribly awful and I’m not being punished at all.”

Remus cupped Harry’s face in his hands and smiled at her. “That’s because you think you’re an adult and you are a child,” he said, not unkindly. “Go eat, dear. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“Harry! Where have you been?!” Ginny pulled Harry to a seat between her and Fred when Harry walked in the great hall that was buzzing with loud whispers. “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” Harry asked dully, shocked by how badly she ruined everything. Only Hagrid and Sprout were present at the Head Table and Harry felt as if Sprout kept glaring at her.

“Tonks was fired!” Katie whispered, leaning across the table. “I heard someone say Dumbledore was calling the aurors!”

Harry paled and thought she was going to be sick. She looked across the hall, searching for Draco, but he was glaring at his plate where he shoved food around while Pansy talked to him.

“I’m going to bed,” Harry said, truly feeling ill. She waved her friends off when they all began speaking. “I just… I’m tired,” she said feebly.

“My beds empty,” Ginny offered, her brown eyes sympathetic when she looked at Harry. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll walk you, I’m done,” Fred said, getting to his feet. He put his hand on Harry’s lower back and guided her from the great hall. “Do you want to go to bed or did you want to get away from everyone?”

“I wanted to get away,” Harry told him honestly. “It’s… it’s loud in there.”

Fred hummed quietly and led her up the staircase, both of their feet automatically guiding them to the Gryffindor rooms. It was quiet in the common room and Harry sat on the sofa, enjoying it while it lasted.

“It was you, right?” Fred asked Harry after a few minutes of silence. “They’re saying Tonks slept with a student; was it you?”

Harry looked over at him and could only nod, guilt consuming her alive.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Fred, I’m so bloody sorry.”

Fred moved from the recliner he’d been on to sit beside Harry on the sofa. He wrapped a long arm around her shoulder and pulled her in his side.

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Do- do you love her?”

Harry knew the truth clear down to her soul. Harry knew it before she went in that office.

“No.” Harry said it again, “No.”

Fred was a warm presence at Harry’s side when she cried over giving something away to someone she didn’t love just to get over the person that she loved and lost.

Harry felt even worse when the fifth years all arrived for their next defense class and Remus regretfully told them that Tonks’ competition had ended.

“Who won, sir?” Justin Finch-Fletchey asked. “Who was in first?”

Remus glanced toward Harry and cleared his throat. “Miss Potter was in first when the contest was ended. Now, if you’d all stand back, I’m going to add desks and we can begin revising for your upcoming OWLS.”

“So Harry fucks a teacher and now we all get punished,” Ron muttered with a dark look toward Harry.

“Say that again and I’ll slit your throat,” Pansy hissed.

Harry glanced toward Draco, but he didn’t say a word for or against her. And, when Remus managed to cram enough tables in the room for the fifth years to all sit down, Draco sat with Crabbe and Goyle instead of with her, Pansy, Theo, and Blaise.

“He’ll come around,” Blaise murmured sympathetically. “Though I’m quite irritated to be stuck on book work for the remainder of the year.”

Harry sent a sad look to her favorite rival in the world and thought that she would rather do book work for the rest of her academic career than have Draco treat her so coldly.

When February rolled around, so did career advisement sessions. Harry put her name down and went to McGonagall’s office at her appointed time.

“Please, have a seat,” McGonagall said, just as professional as ever with Harry. Truthfully, despite some of the students believing Harry was the reason Tonks was fired, none of the staff had treated Harry any different despite all knowing for sure that Harry was the cause of it.

Perhaps Professor Sprout didn’t engage as much with her in class, but Harry would only keep Herbology for a few more months anyway.

“So, Miss Potter, your grades are average across the board with higher scores in potions and transfiguration,” McGonagall said, her voice sounding mildly pleased. “Have you put any thought in what you’ll be doing post-Hogwarts?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said. She came prepared and she pulled a folder from her bag and sat it on the desk between them. “Fred Weasley has been helping me make plans and things. I want to open a shop, a sweets shop.”

McGonagall took the business proposal that Harry had painstakingly worked on for the last week with Fred. It was a good proposal, one Harry was able to mimic from the twins’ with tweaks here and there.

“I see,” McGonagall said neutrally. She peered at Harry with her brows furrowed for a moment. “I believe with your skills and talent that you could do anything, are you sure this is what you want to do?”

“Cedric’s Sweets is what it’s going to be called,” Harry said evenly. “I’m going to make people happy and it will make me happy.”

“Very well.” McGongall smiled then. “Let’s go over what classes you may want to pursue for NEWTS then…”

Thankfully, Harry wouldn’t have to continue Herbology.

Counseling with Snape turned out to be peculiarly painful.

“You are someone who has known tremendous loss in your life,” Snape said during one of their sessions. “As young as you may have been, it impacted you deeply to lose your parents. All the more so that your only true memory of your mother is her screaming for your survival.”

“But I have Remus and Sirius now,” Harry said. “And they’re brilliant, truly. They treat me just like I imagine most parents treat their kids.”

“I do not doubt that,” Snape said, which was rather big of him since Sirius never had anything nice to say about Snape. “And when this incident with Tonks happened, did you worry at any point that they would no longer care for you?”

“I…” Harry blinked uncertainly. “Don’t- I mean…”

“Do you believe that when Fred Weasley was expelled in your second year that he at any point worried his parents would stop loving him, caring for him, because of it?”

Harry shifted in her seat and took a sip of tea to stall. “No,” she finally said, not very confidently, when Snape seemed determined to force her to respond.

“And yet, despite your belief that Remus and Sirius love and treat you as a daughter, you did,” Snape said. “Let’s discuss that.”

Harry didn’t think that Snape could truly make her cry, but she cried during that session and Snape called it a breakthrough.

Then he told her to go cry on Remus because her time was up and he was not a handkerchief so Harry was smiling when she left his office.

“If you came to call me a slag, say you hate me, or ask how I feel about ruining someone’s life, let me answer now.” Harry cleared her throat and looked up through the sparse frozen tree branches to the cold grey sky. “I know, I deserve that, and bloody horrible.”

“I came to apologize.”

Harry looked down so she could see Draco better. She’d been sitting in the tree for over an hour after having her weekly session with Snape and the last thing she expected was for Draco to come apologize when Harry was the idiot.

“Can I come up?” Draco asked.

“Sure.”

Harry waited until Draco scaled the tree easily, just as athletic and nimble as Harry, and he sat on the branch beside her.

“Remember when you fell and broke your leg?” Draco asked her. “You called yourself the king of the castle and then you broke your stupid leg because you are an impulsive, brash, Gryffindor who does stupid things without thinking.”

“This is truly the greatest apology I’ve ever gotten,” Harry drawled.

Draco rolled his eyes. “I am saying that you have always been an impulsive and brash idiot and I apologize for expecting you to not act that way before.”

“So you’re… you’re forgiving me based on me always being stupid?”

“No.” Draco sighed and closed his eyes. “I- we aren’t anything, Potter. You and I, we aren’t anything. I was jealous of Tonks. I was jealous that you went for her. When… when I’ve always been here.”

Harry was caught by surprise, shocked by the plaintive way Draco seemed to speak so honestly.

“Dray, I… I don’t know what to say,” Harry said when it felt like it was her turn to speak. “I just…”

“I’m not asking you out, Potter,” Draco said wearily when Harry trailed off. “I’m saying that I was jealous and I was wrong. That’s all.”

Harry sat in the tree until it was pitch black out, long after Draco left, just thinking.

“I miss you, Cedric,” Harry whispered. She brought the ring around her neck to kiss it before she climbed down and went inside.

March brought back quidditch matches and an increased workload for the fifth and seventh year students.

Or, more accurately, an increased workload for the fifth and seventh years that weren’t Harry or the twins. The twins were working hard on their prank shop items, trying to build up the inventory they’d need to open and find employees through ads in the paper.

Harry was mostly being lazy, not too fussed over exams.

Plus, it was much more interesting to her to bother the fifth years she didn’t care for - Hermione Granger, Zachariah Smith, Ron Weasley, and Daphne Greengrass - anytime she saw them studying.

“Go away, Potter,” Daphne snapped when Harry found her in the library one evening, studying with the Ravenclaw fifth years. “We don’t have time for pranks. Some of us need to pass our OWLS.”

“Maybe I came to study,” Harry said innocently.

“Maybe you came to shag Madam Pince,” Mandy Brocklehurst muttered.

Harry had actually went to the library to find a business textbook that Remus recommended she read, but she was so bloody sick of the snide comments born of gossip that she decided it was an excellent time to test a product for the twins.

“The U-No-Poo is causing constipation past the forty-eight hours,” Harry told Fred a couple of nights later when the two of them were in the common room together much past curfew, making separate lists for needed office supplies for their separate businesses.

“Is it?” Fred looked up at her curiously. “How do you know?”

Harry shrugged and added a computer to her list, she’d just need to find a way to make it work around magic.

“Because Mandy Brocklehurst and Daphne Greengrass are in the hospital wing still and I gave it to them five days ago.”

Fred chuckled and then leaned over so he could see what all Harry wrote, stealing her idea of post-it’s to put on his own list.

“I love you, Harrikins,” Fred said casually.

Harry gave him a peculiar look, but then Fred asked about computers and the moment slid by.

“We got the space!” Fred howled when he came running on the quidditch pitch for practice. He grabbed Harry and swung her around in a joyful hug while George bent Katie backward and snogged her in celebration.

“You got it?” Harry laughed, feeling light for the first time in a long time. “It worked?”

“It did!” Fred said with a blinding smile. “Apparently a recommendation from Harry Potter put us up at the top of renters!”

“Brilliant!” Harry said. She grabbed her broom and beamed after Fred put her down. “Let’s kick practices arse so we can go celebrate the new location of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes!”

The team flew flawlessly, they flew so good that it made Angelina cry.

“That cup is ours!” she said tearfully when the team was all celebrating with desserts and drinks in the kitchens. “We have to win, guys, we just have to!”

“We will,” Ginny assured her confidently. “We’re going to win the quidditch cup, we’re going to kick arse on exams, and this is going to end up the best year yet!”

And as much as Harry hadn’t wanted to return to Hogwarts that fall - as much as she made a terrible mistake that winter - spring turned out to be the best season for her that year.

“You’ve really helped a lot,” Harry told Snape politely at their last session for the year. They were ending it early with exams coming up and Harry’s team making it to the finals. “I… I think I’m going to miss these meetings next year.”

Snape scoffed at her. “Miss Potter, you are a mess of trauma, insecurity, and irrational thinking. I am afraid that I will still be seeing you next year.”

Oddly, that felt like good news to her.

Gryffindor won the quidditch cup on the one day anniversary of Cedric’s death and Harry was sobbing when she accepted the cup for her team.

“Did you do this for Cedric?” Fred asked Harry in the common room that night when they were celebrating their win. Everyone was laughing and dancing and Harry had sat at the edge of the common room so she could take a few moments to sort through her mixed emotions.

They felt raw that day, all pulled to the surface and exposed. She’d survived a whole year while Cedric was gone and on that day it felt just as bad as it had the day he’d died.

Harry considered Fred’s question while she fingered her ring from Cedric that she knew she would always wear.

“No,” she said, surprised at how sure she was. “I… I think I did this for me.”

“I’m glad,” Fred said. He smiled in Harry’s eyes while he clinked his glass to Harry’s. “You… you’re a good person, Harry, you deserve to be happy.”

“I’m really going to miss you,” Harry told him honestly. “You were my first ever best friend.”

Fred put an arm around Harry’s shoulders and hugged her to his side. “I’ll always be your best friend.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Harry felt lighter when she rode the train home. She made some bad choices, Snape said she behaved self-destructively, but Harry survived the year without Cedric.

Although, having a final train ride with Fred, George, Angelina, and Lee felt truly terrible and Harry didn’t know who cried more during their last trip.

“Come work with us this summer,” Fred told Harry. “Gin’s helping us too.”

“We’ll pay you!” George said. “We’ll pay you extra if we can tell the Daily Prophet that Harry Potter is working at our shop.”

“I’ll ask Dad about it,” Harry said, appreciating the offer. “But we’re going to the States this summer so they can get married.”

“Oh, I love weddings,” Katie sighed. “Can we come?”

Harry looked around the compartment of her friends and felt so terribly fond of them all.

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll ask Remus if I can bring a few friends to the wedding.”

A Las Vegas wedding and vacation would be much more fun if Harry could bring along a few of her friends.