Survivor

Harry stood in the locker room with the rest of his team, opening his own and taking out the clothes he prepared earlier that week. It wasn’t his usual Slytherin garb, but the casual robes he tended to wear outside of class while wandering around on the weekend. Sure, he had pride in his colors, but he wasn’t part of some kind of hive mind, and many other students had enough individuality to shed their colors as well. He was meeting his friends and family, not competing with the students placed in other houses. 

Shedding his sweaty, dirty quidditch robes, he felt very exposed. Looking down at his chest, he saw the collection of scars littering his body. He knew that his teammates couldn’t see them; no one could, but he disliked the feeling despite his surety of his privacy. Still, going all the way to the castle for a shower would’ve been stupid if he wanted to spend an ample amount of time with the people who came to support him, so he sucked it up and hopped into the shower. 

Flint, Bletchley, Higgs, Fenwick, and Lasiter were getting into their own showers next to him, and he soon found himself tossed into the group antics that he usually missed by not going with them to the locker room.

“We fucking killed it out there!” exclaimed Higgs from the shower next to his own.

“Hell yeah, we did!” shouted Bletchley from two showers over.

“Of course, we did,” Flint said, always the more reserved and analytic of the team. There was a reason Flint was the captain, and there was a reason all of them respected him as their tactical leader. “With the way we play the game, I think we could fly against most teams and compete if they haven’t seen us before. We have an unorthodox formation, an unorthodox defence, and even more unorthodox passes and shots. Now that teams have watched us play, they will start planning around it. I expect our next game against Ravenclaw will be a much harder game to win. Rickett started catching on and countering Potter even without his teammates getting on board after the first goal we scored.”

“Yeah, yeah, Marcus, we know. You can’t tell me we weren’t badass out there though.”

The captain chuckled at their seeker. “We were pretty badass.”

“How’s your hand, Potter? I saw that hit from the hoops, and it looked like it hurt,” Bletchley asked the first-year.

“It didn’t feel good, but I was more angry that he hit me than hurt by it.”

“You’re like half my size, and I cringed when I saw it,” said their keeper.

Harry shrugged even though the stall was closed off, and a small smirk grew on his face. “It really wasn’t that bad. Maybe someone doesn’t have enough power to charge their uniform runes properly.”

Brian, their beater, gave a loud, jubilant whistle. “Potter’s got a spine today, Miles! You gonna take that kind of talk from the firsty!?”

“No, no, let him talk!” exclaimed their keeper in good fun. “We’ll see who's laughing when he has to fly against me with that injured left hand! I have a feeling my save ratio at practice is about to get a lot higher.”

“I shoot with my right band, Bletchley,” Harry informed the boy who was already very much in the know. “That’s more than enough to keep my ratio against you!”

“HA!” Bletchley huffed from across the bathroom, shutting off the shower. “The lip on that kid! You better hurry up in there, Harry, or your head might get too big to jam through the bathroom door!”

Terence, Brian, and Fenwick laughed from their showers, and Harry would almost swear that he could hear Marcus laughing from his stall too. He couldn’t help but smile along with them. He did love his team, even if everyone else might've thought that he was a little bit apathetic from the outside. He didn’t worry too much about it; he had never experienced the kind of camaraderie and support that he ended up receiving from his quidditch team, and he was pretty sure all of them were aware of his feelings despite the closed off nature he possessed most of the time.

Turning off his shower and reaching for his new clothes, he cast a drying charm with the wand he grabbed from a shelf and put on his fresh set of clothing. Only once all of them were done did they all walk out of the locker room together. The door opened up directly into the stadium; both locker rooms were built under the stands in order to give the students easier access to it. 

The field was bright from the afternoon sun, and it shined upon a field filled to the brim with students and parents alike as they conversed or cheered for the victory of their team. Much like school sports in the muggle world, it wasn’t odd for adults to come and support the team if only to spend time with their children afterward or cheer on their old house. Out of everyone there, though, Harry only cared about seeing two at the moment. 

He saw the blonde hair first, and a huge smile grew on his face despite himself. Iris wasn’t necessarily tall, but she certainly wasn’t short either. Combining that with her excessively light hair made her a hard person to miss in a crowd. Harry didn’t quite run to her, but no one would ever mention it again if he closed the distance between them perhaps a few seconds sooner than he would’ve with anyone else, and she was already crouching to pull him into a hug the second he was there.

He accepted it as he always did with the woman who chose to take him in, and he heard what she had to say about his game during the embrace. “Never have I seen more irresponsible flying than I have today, Harry!”

“Are you disappointed in me?” he asked his pseudo-guardian, actually slightly put off that she didn’t sound happy with him.

“I’ve never been prouder,” was her sweet response. “But that doesn’t mean I like it. Did you have to get off of your broom!? I was almost closer to a heart attack than you were to the ground!"

And just like that, his chest was warmer than it had been in months, and he slipped into the comfortable habits he'd managed to grow around Iris in the time he'd spent with her before school. “That’s because you were looking at me, Iris. If you were watching the Hufflepuffs, you wouldn’t be asking that question.”

She pulled back with a smile, and Harry knew he managed to get away with it. “Just because you gave your opponents heart attacks too doesn’t mean it was worth almost killing me and yourself. You at least have your robes protected, right?”

“Of course,” was Harry’s response, and it was accompanied by an almost offended expression. “I could fall from the max chaser height and walk away without a limp. I could probably get out of a dive with a few broken bones at the worst.”

“At the worst,” she mumbled under her breath. “You won quite handily. I can’t recall a wider gap in a game before, honestly.”

A presence of deep, sophisticated, dangerous magic forced the hairs on the back of Harry’s next to rise. His body stiffened, and Iris noticed it, pulling away quickly in the thought that Harry had become uncomfortable.

“... Yes,” came a smooth, eloquent drawl from behind Harry even as he whirled around with his hand in his wand pocket. “I can’t seem to think of one either.”

Harry knew who that had to be as soon as the first word left his mouth, and Harry hadn’t met the man before. Harry knew the Malfoy's son was obviously nothing more than a parrot, but he didn’t realize to what extent the boy copied his father. It went all the way down to his obvious tone of superiority to the way he held his shoulders and performed his stride. The boy was a copycat, and that was why Harry cared little for his thoughts or words. The man he copied, however, was apparently much more capable. 

“Lucius Malfoy,” the man said, extending his hand. “I have heard much about you.”

Harry took the hand with a hidden glare that the man seemed to catch despite how well Harry attempted to hide it away. “Harry Potter… I’ve heard a lot about you too.”

Lucius saw the way the Potter boy glanced pointedly at his son, who was next to him, and he found himself grimacing. It was subtle and well placed for a child, but he understood the meaning easily: his son liked to throw his name around, and Harry Potter was evidently unimpressed. He looked between his son and the Slytherin he had heard so much about in his letters; Draco seemed to miss the hidden insult. 

That was… disappointing.

“You made an exemplary performance with your team today. It was a shock to everyone that a student at Hogwarts managed to follow the boy-who-lived so flawlessly.”

Harry shrugged, but he made sure to add the smallest smirk to his face at the same time. “The boy-who-lived made a team. Everyone in my house was aggravated with the decision to let him join. Apparently, my friends and I were the only ones to use it instead of complaining.”

Lucius’s brow quirked, and a spark of interest lit within him as he decided to play a bit of devil’s advocate. He had assumed, through his contact with Draco, that Potter had joined the team due to his arrogance, but the boy’s words made it seem as if the plan was more thought out than simply barging onto the field and gaining a spot due to his sheer skill and the happenstance decisions of those above him. How could he possibly resist poking for some more?

“Some would say your move was rash. You could’ve lost a lot of face if you tried to follow the boy-who-lived and failed. You would’ve looked a fool.”

“Well,” Harry said with slightly squinted eyes. “I’m on the team, and my critics aren’t.”

Lucius couldn’t help but smile just a little. The kid was bold but not in a necessarily bad way. He could respect a bit of that if it it was regulated.

“Very true," the aristocrat allowed.

Lucius was forced to change his perception of the Potter child, and he was pleasantly surprised by the tentative view he now had of him. There was confidence in there, but enough skill existed too that he wouldn’t consider it arrogance; he had the cleverness to talk around a subject while still getting his point across, and while the boy was obviously intimidated by the power differential between them, Potter refused to allow that to stop him from standing up for himself. 

Impressive…

“Well,” Lucius said to the boy. “As a Malfoy, I had a decent amount of contact with your father. The Potters aren’t noble, but they were important. I wasn’t in school with them outside of my seventh year, but I did watch enough quidditch to know that your father would’ve been proud of your skills.”

“You knew my parents?” Potter asked him, and he soon saw a tiny amount of venom work its way into his green eyes. “Were you on friendly terms?”

Lucius’s brow twitched just a smidge, and his mind was encapsulated by the vivid memory of jagged, green energy spouting from his wand as liquid fire poured over the translucent dome of magical energy created by Nott, his partner. On the other end of that firestorm was a woman with vividly red hair, which was made even more striking due to the fact that it was literally burning with rage, and next to her was a man with roguish, messy, black hair with a devious smile on his face as he pulled over that damned marble golem he always had, allowing it to intercept his killing curse as if he had shot little more than a weak stream of water at it. 

The Potter boy, their son, would not have any knowledge of that, stuck in the muggle world as he was for eleven years. Hell, the boy probably didn’t even know how they'd  really died yet. Still, he would eventually find out, and lying about their relationship or making it seem more amicable than it was would only make things worse.

“We did not like each other, Mr. Potter, no. There was, however, a modicum of… respect… I believe, between us. Your parents truly were quite the duo. Perhaps, though, that relationship could be improved now that a new Potter is close to taking the head.”

Harry looked deep into those grey eyes of Malfoy’s, but he saw less than nothing behind them. The stranger told him that Lucius Malfoy was a very accomplished occlumens, so getting a read on him would be impossible. Still, the stranger also confirmed that the man was most likely stating something with at least a small bit of truth, even if there was a healthy amount of falsehood buried within his words. People like Malfoy, according to the stranger, rarely outright lied. They simply manipulated the truth into something that benefitted them. 

“... Perhaps,” was Harry’s mimicked response, and Lucius Malfoy seemed to accept that. 

With a nod from the blond man and a vague sneer from his son, the two went away, and Harry turned back to see a slightly squinting Iris.

“Is something the matter?” Harry asked her.

“No, not really,” she told him. “Lucius Malfoy is a widely known man in Britain. He has a lot of sway in the Ministry, and he was charged with being a Death Eater in the war. He got off on an imperius defence, but no one really knows what to believe. 

Harry hummed at the knowledge she gave him, but it didn’t change much of what he thought about the man. He'd read all about Voldemort and his little followers, but only so far as they were connected to the boy-who-lived. Once he was assured that the “Dark Lord” was dead, he had no reason to care about him. He knew Lucius probably looked down on him for his blood, but he couldn't honestly say he cared what anybody thought about him, so long as they left him well enough alone. He also wasn't particularly concerned about his potential title as a domestic terrorist.

Lucius Malfoy held the views he had, and they wouldn’t have changed if Voldemort never existed, so his potential connection with the most recent poster boy of such a philosophy was inconsequential. Honestly, he was less annoyed by his possible connection to the deceased Dark Lord than he was about the fact that his son was such a moron. How did the child of a man so obviously lethal in multiple ways turn out to be so… well… that?

Harry’s vitriolic thinking was sliced in half by a red blur coming out of nowhere. She was practically flying, and her hair was whipping along behind her as she jumped around in front of him without care for the stares of the crowd around them. Still, her smile was absolutely radiant, so he had trouble convincing himself to calm her down despite how this made him look to the rest of the Slytherins currently crowding the field. 

“Oh! My! God!” she squealed. “How did you learn to fly like that!? I’ve never seen anything like it; you were like a blur. I couldn’t even see the stuff you were doing half the time!”

Harry chuckled and glanced around him to see that the stares were gradually going away. One glare, however, coming from just a bit away, caught his attention. It was Malcolm Preece, and he looked furious. 

“Yeah,” Harry responded, speaking just loud enough for the git who tossed him down a staircase to hear it. “But it’s easy to look good when the other team sucks.”

Iris quietly admonished him even as Ginevra gave a small giggle.

“You’re kidding me,” the girl said. “Your team looks even better than Gryffindor looked last year.”

It was at this moment that two boys he recognized from the bookshop came up on either side of their little sister, startling her with hands placed simultaneously on her shoulders. Harry noticed that they still had those badgers painted on their bodies, but he sort of respected them more for keeping it. They were rooting for the Hufflepuffs during and before the game, so switching to his side afterward while he was speaking with their sister would’ve only succeeded in pissing him off. 

“Talking bad about us, sis!?” one said jubilantly. 

“Yeah,” said the other. “You’d think she thought our team was bad!”

Harry glanced between the two twins with wary eyes as Ginny bickered with her siblings. He’d heard of those two, and what he heard wasn’t good. Apparently, the two were fond of making life difficult for the general student populace, but they were particularly fond of pranking Slytherins. It’d made him hesitant to approach them, and it put him on guard whenever they were around. Ironically enough, though, it was a group of intermixed Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws that actually decided to go for him, so, in retrospect, he thought that he may have made his judgment on them a bit too soon. 

“I guess, little sister, we will have to wait for our match to see who is better,” one of the two said.

“Rickett might hit a mean bludger,” the second added upon his twin. “But we always found his style of play to be dreadfully dull.”

“I saw you take that hit, Harry,” Iris said from his side. “You don’t need to see the nurse?”

Harry waved her off with his uninjured hand. “It was just a bludger, and I charged by runes before the game. I’ve gotten worse.”

“Are you sure?” a twin asked him. “Even after tha-'' he was cut off by the intense glare sent his way by the young quidditch player. “...aaat tumble you had down the stairs?”

“Wait, wait, what’s this about!?” Iris asked them with a pointed glare at her charge.

Harry cringed to himself but refused to let them make up the story for him. He purposefully kept that information from Iris both to make sure she didn’t keep him from playing and because he didn’t want her worrying about him anymore than she had to already. This was something he could handle himself, and he didn’t want her wasting her time fretting over something that he had firmly under wraps.

“I…” Harry said, still keeping the twins silent with his stare. “Merely tripped on one of those stupid, sentient staircases that infest this castle. I broke my wrist, but it was healed a week before the game, and it wasn’t anything serious enough to notify you.”

“And you played with a newly healed hand!?” she asked him with a hard, intense tone.

That was why he didn’t want her knowing about what actually happened. Just an already healed broken hand triggered the woman's instincts, and that would've increased ten-fold if there was obvious malice behind his injuries.

“Yeah, but I got cleared before the game, and I was totally fine! It was just a trip, no reason to stay off the pitch, especially with Madam Pomfrey there to help.”

Christ, he was glad that Daphne was elsewhere at the moment. If she was here, Harry would certainly be doomed. She would’ve revealed the foul play immediately, and Harry would’ve been ganged up on by both of them at the same time. It took a massive amount of effort to keep what happened private as it was. Professor Dumbledore even offered to allow aurors to come back over and investigate the matter.

Harry, of course, declined under the guise of not wanting to make a huge ruckus. That was partially the truth. His reasons were two-fold. He didn't want the aurors to start marching around any more than Dumbledore did. That would make investigating the third-floor corridor even harder than it was already. They had just left after investigating the first attack, and the stranger suspected that a second incident so close to the first would result in a more permanent stay for the ministry investigators. Secondly, though, making it public would mean that Iris would find out.

Madam Pomfrey didn’t need his emergency contact because the potions were all standard use, and she wasn’t his technical guardian, so reporting what happened wasn’t required. Even still, she wanted to notify the person who was seemingly taking care of him. Apparently, it wasn’t weird at all for students with only muggle relatives to be unofficially cared for by an adult positioned firmly within the wizarding world. Harry almost had to beg her to keep the information to herself, and he had to promise to abide by her every word during his healing on top of that. He did not want the Hogwarts students themselves to ruin everything he worked for so far. 

Ginny, it seemed, was just as unhappy with the way he suppressed his fall as Iris was. Was literally everyone outside of his quidditch team really angry about what he'd decided to do!? He handled the situation, handled it even better than anyone outside of his team knew. He personally thought that the people supporting him should have just a little more faith in him. 

“Anyway," Harry emphasized, attempting to turn the subjects in a different direction. “We have three hours, right? Marcus told me that non-students aren’t allowed in the castle, but you can go anywhere on the grounds.”

"Okay," Iris reluctantly said, allowing the conversation to move away from his injuries. "Where do you want to go?"

Harry decided to take the both of them to the spot he claimed by the Black Lake. It was on the far side of it, lining the Forbidden Forest, and it was extremely peaceful. Students frequented the side closest to the castle. Very few had the determination or desire to walk so far down the lake, but that meant Harry was one of the few who got to enjoy privacy by the water. Everyone else had to share.

Harry had never been good at doing that.

Sitting by the lake, he showed Iris and his younger friend all of the things he’d learned so far. His transfiguration, in particular, was something he wanted to show them. He had yet to do much with Professor Mcgonagall during their few meetings besides light, inconsequential talk. They’ve talked about a few things that Harry wanted to learn, but she wanted to get to know him a little better before designing a personal schedule. 

Still, he had plenty to show them. He kept his snake conjuring charm to himself because Ginevra was still unaware of his affinity for them, and he also didn’t want the information of his prowess with it to come out so soon after he used it to drive his brilliant distraction in the Great Hall. The stranger was still certain that he was under constant watch, so he needed to lay low for a bit and paint himself as nothing more than a normal first-year. 

The inevitable march of time eventually dragged their meeting to a stop, and Ginevra told them that her mother would be getting ready to leave soon. Nodding, he and Iris got up and led her back to the quidditch pitch. The sun was setting over the horizon, splashing various shades of orange and pink across the sky, when the two Weasleys left via the specified apparition points set up before the quidditch match and taken away three hours after the ending of the game.

Harry was forced to endure a hug from Ginevra’s mother because, apparently, giving her his third ticket was something important. He personally couldn’t see it. Iris wasn’t his official guardian, so he had to give one to her if he wanted Iris to get in free, and Ginevra was his obvious second. Besides those two people, Harry knew absolutely no one who wasn’t in Hogwarts already. To whom was he meant to give his final ticket if not the person who had to bring the one he actually wanted to come? 

Either way, he begrudgingly allowed her to squeeze the life out of him before disappearing away, and he was left to have a much less forced departure with Iris. He received the gentle hug he learned to associate with the woman who helped him so much, and she told him that she would be at the train station to pick him up before pulling away and disappearing into the air. 

Looking up at the sky with a small smile, he inhaled a slow, smooth breath. He held it for a few seconds and let it go, feeling a way that he couldn’t quite describe. It wasn’t the intense high of emerging victorious against a particularly angering foe like it was when he initially won, and it wasn’t the cold satisfaction he got from knowing that the ones who hurt him were defeated and somber at the moment. He felt light, like his body was trying to float all on its own. 

Was it some kind of spell?

No, his wand would have warned him if that was the case. He felt pleasant; that was all he knew, so he left it alone and walked back to the castle as the sunset slowly morphed into the twinkling night sky he loved so much. The air was cool, but Harry always did like the colder temperatures. Stuffy weather made him feel trapped, like he did when summers were particularly hot while he was trapped in his thrice-damned cupboard. The cold air made things feel open and unrestricted.

Perhaps it was stupid, but he couldn’t help how he felt about it. The grounds were mostly empty; the castle was too. The Weasleys and Iris stayed quite a bit later than most parents usually did, and the rest of the students were either participating in some kind of party or attempting to rest after an eventful day. Actually, that seemed like a pretty tempting option to Harry.

His arm still throbbed as he walked through the halls of the school, but he was thankful that only his arm got injured. He half expected his stunt after the freefall to mess up his recently healed leg, so a sore wrist was a good deal in his eyes. Finally ending up before the portrait of the ashwinder, Harry could feel the noise emanating from the room beyond.

Of course…

The Slytherins won today’s game against all odds, and Harry was at the center. He managed to escape a good portion of it down by the lake with far more agreeable company, but he was now standing before the entrance to absolute pandemonium. He tapped his foot a few times as he stared into the eyes of the curious ashwinder, and he contemplated his options.

Going into the room was guaranteed to drag him into the party. He wouldn’t be able to escape, and getting stuck in the crowd of Slytherins and immersing himself in all of that noise and chaos made him nervous, and he wasn’t even in the midst of it yet.

“Are you going to enter, speaker?” the ashwinder asked as it slithered to the front of the portrait. 

Harry blinked once, twice, and had to shake himself from his stupor to respond. He was unaware of his ability to speak to a snake in a portrait. He cursed his inability to think forward enough to write Iris about it or ask her in person when he had the chance. 

He understood the ability for a human portrait to talk. It was intuitive. The artist designing the painting and giving it the personality and soul it possessed was familiar with human language, so it made sense for the artist to have the capability to properly imbue a portrait with the ability to speak.

Parsletongue though…

How would an artist be able to give a painted snake the ability to speak a language that they didn’t know and couldn’t comprehend. He did his research on his ability. Parseltongue wasn’t even a learnable language. It was innate and magical in nature. Apparently, speaking with animals wasn’t necessarily a rare skill, simply one with a specific set of magical requirements. An animagus, as it turned out, could generally communicate with members of their own kind. In much the same way, a snake animagus was said to be capable of parseltongue while transformed or if they simply transformed enough of their anatomy as a human to make it possible. 

That begged the question of how an artist was somehow capable of giving such talents to a snake when they were most likely incapable of comprehending it themselves. Was the artist a snake animagus who happened to love magical art, or maybe it actually was a parseltongue who painted the ashwinder. If any painting in the world was to be designed by such a person, it probably would be the school founded by parseltongue's most prominent user.

“No, I’ll be back sometime later,” he informed the ashwinder.

“I will be here when you return.”

Turning around, Harry walked back up to the first floor and continued exploring the castle. It was a big place, and the stranger was adamant that there was more to the school than met the eye. There were supposed to be secrets around every corner, and Harry hadn’t even memorized the stuff that everyone knew about. The upper floors of the castle were generally unknown territory for obvious reasons. It simply felt weird for him to travel so high in the castle when his dormitory was so low. He hoped that feeling would go away as he familiarized himself with the entirety of his school.

He wandered with little intent behind his steps until late into the night. He was exhausted, but he was also wide awake at the same time. It wasn’t until almost the entirety of the castle was asleep that he decided to go back down to his common room. Once again standing before the ashwinder, he spoke the password and was greeted with the silence of a dead common room. 

Everyone was asleep, but he could still see the remnants of the fiasco that went on in his absence. There was green confetti covering the floor, posters and signs of congratulations were hung on walls and across the room, and half-empty drinks were stacked across almost every table in sight. Fire crackled in the fireplace; it always did. Harry assumed that elves kept them full of wood at all times. 

He gave a small breath, glad that the action was over, and began to walk over to his room when he caught sight of one person who had yet to go to bed. Her violet eyes stared at him. They didn’t look upset, but Daphne had always been good at hiding her emotions from him when she wanted. She looked tired; he could tell by the slight sag of her shoulders and the way her posture was unusually lacking in composure. He was originally worried that she might’ve been drunk, but he couldn’t see any of the telltale signs he knew to associate with such inebriated states.

That was good because he was yet to have a good experience with a drunk person, and she was far too young for that anyway. Daphne was sitting on one end of a long couch, so he decided to go over and sit on the other. She wouldn’t have been there for no reason, and the way she looked at him seemed to be asking for a discussion. Once he was comfortable, he gave her a small nod, and she started talking.

“You weren’t at the party tonight,” she observed, sounding tired and morose at the same time. 

Harry wasn’t sure how to take her tone. He obviously knew she was angry, but he hadn’t realized that her anger was also joined with a feeling of sadness, or he would’ve talked to her sooner. Honestly, he had been avoiding her for the past week explicitly because he thought that anger would be the only thing there to greet him. It had been… well…

Lonely.

Which was particularly surprising because he’d never been the type of person to desire company. He was perfectly fine so long as he had Jason. That was, at least, until now. 

“I could hear the commotion from the other side of the portrait,” he told her. “It didn’t sound like something I wanted to join.”

There was a pause that lasted quite a few seconds, and he could tell that she was thinking of what she wanted to say. It made him shift slightly in his seat. As Iris knew very well, he did not like talking to emotional people. Unfortunately, Daphne was not aware of that trait of his. He wasn’t a person who often got emotional; panicked, perhaps, and most definitely nervous or annoyed, but never truly emotional.

Iris, though, seemed to be trying her damnedest to change that lately, so who could really tell? Perhaps a brand change was coming soon. He could go from the brooding badass to the empathetic softy through sheer force of will just to survive living with such a cliché Hufflepuff. Until that time, though, he was most definitely not equipped for this shit.

“I can’t believe you actually played in that game," she told him.

“It was something I had to do.”

She looked distinctly unimpressed with his response. “It was stupid.”

Harry made a face at her insult, and anyone looking closely at his teeth would be able to see the way they sharpened ever so slightly.

“It was necessary,” he shot back.

She scoffed in a manner that was rather uncouth for her usual personality. “How was playing a dangerous game while injured somehow necessary?” 

Harry was decidedly unhappy with her vitriol, and he said the only thing he could think to say back. “You don’t know a damn thing about me, Daphne!”

As if to accentuate his claim, Jason chose that time to rejoin him. The snake stayed in his room, but he obviously heard the commotion. His friend was particularly good at hiding and sneaking around. It was a skill Jason had to learn during their time with the Dursleys, so Harry wasn’t surprised in the least that he snuck out to see him after the quidditch game. Both of them knew that it was a dangerous risk to take, playing while injured, so Jason was probably worried in his own stern way. 

The boomslang wound around his leg until it could bask on the couch between him and Daphne. He saw the way she watched his snake, and he realized that Jason’s presence only seemed to irk her further. 

“Obviously,” she quietly shot at him like a bullet. “You ran off without a single word on Halloween and came back almost dead, you’ve got a familiar that you hid from me for months, you were targeted by students and seriously injured before choosing to play a game right after with no explanation, and your guardian is Iris Garcia.”

“Why does it matter who takes care of me?” he asked, seeing that as the only one of his actions that he could legitimately defend.

“You told me you were raised by muggles.” 

“I was raised by muggles,” he said with a slight scowl at the reminder of his painful beginning. That was behind him now, and he would like it to stay that way.

“And Halloween? You omitted the truth from me then, and look what happened.”

“Hey,” he said, offended by the accusation. “I got out of that alright!”

“No, you didn’t!” she exclaimed. “I saved your arse, Potter! Me and all of your friends saw you at the feast. I was the one who got all of them together and made sure our stories were straight. I was the one who stood up to Professor Snape when he came to question us. I used my family name to keep him from trying to dig too far, and you didn’t even have the decency to give me a heads up in the first place. All of us would be implicated by what you did for covering your arse, especially me, and you gave me nothing to go on and came back half dead to boot!

“Then, just a bit later, you decided to throw all of that away by playing a potentially deadly game while, once again, half broken!”

Well, damn… 

He let her calm down from her rant, and he glanced down at the couch before looking back up at those violet eyes that burned his skin with their ferocity. “You’re right; I’m sorry. Leaving on Halloween was a decision that I made on the spot, and I didn’t have time to tell you about it. It was a do or die situation.”

“Really?” she scoffed. “That’s your excuse? What could possibly be going on with you that would require you to do such a stupid thing?”

Harry warily gazed back at her, and he could tell his expression confused and aggravated her further. She was right though. Daphne did save his arse, and keeping her in the dark while he continued to do risky things for seemingly no good reason was a poor way to repay everything she put on the line. She hadn’t even known him that long, and that, unfortunately for his slowly perishing conscience, made her sacrifice for him even more telling and important. 

Was he really going to do this?

“Don’t give anything for free, Harry. She did save you, but trust is a bad habit to form. You will end up regretting it.”

Harry forcefully shoved the stranger into the back of his mind. This wasn’t something that a possible sociopath could help with. The decision to tell his secrets or hide them away would be his and his alone. He wanted to be free, and that meant doing what he wanted, nothing more or less. He wanted friends, so he would have them. There could have been nothing simpler in the world in his mind.

“Do you truly want to know more about me?” he asked quietly.

She could feel the apprehension and worry hiding behind the expression he wore. Daphne didn’t feel an ounce of trepidation or pity, and she refused to hesitate.

“That depends, Potter,” she said scathingly. “On if I’m supposed to be your friend or not.”

His decision was made in an instant. It was almost laughable that it took most of an entire semester to solidify something that most would’ve clarified in a scarce few days. Amusing as it might have been, this was a big decision for him. All of his friends so far had been… well… different from what he would define as a true friend. Ginevra, arguably his first friend, knew almost nothing important about him, Daphne knew even less, and Natalie was practically a stranger. Funnily enough, the only one who knew anything damning about him aside from Iris was Farley, and she wasn't his friend at all. Their relationship was forged by an unbreakable vow and the looming knife of immediate and severe consequences to her reputation should he be betrayed in any other way. 

The question being asked of him, though, was whether or not he wanted a friend, and that word, as it was being defined, was something he was still completely without unless he included Jason, but his familiar hardly counted considering the boomslang lived with him and cared for him through the lowest moments of his life. This was an offer to give without expecting to take and to receive, with no strings, what was far too expensive to purchase with currency. 

Did he want it?

Of course, but the chance had never been properly presented to him before. Glancing down at the only true friend he’d ever had, he closed his eyes and decided that the only thing left to do was leap. He had nothing to threaten her with or hold over her head, not like Farley. He didn't even have the option to escape like he did with Iris, not if he wanted to keep learning magic. 

“Go over to Daphne, please… but be slow; she might freak out.”

Harry was understandably nervous to look up and see Daphne's reaction. He wasn't afraid of rejection, no, he was long past that, but he did want a friend, and that wasn't going to happen if she thought he was a monster. Plus, there was the little snag that he could end up getting into a lot of people's bad books if she took it badly enough to start blabbing it around. 

"Do not start thinking rationally now," the stranger drawled with an uncanny level of disappointment surging from his tone. "You took the leap, so either trust in your judgement or let me obliviate her already."

Glancing up at her face, he saw one of the most queer expressions he'd ever seen his Slytherin companion wear. Her eyes were wide, as open as they could possibly get, and the strange violet hue her irises possessed were practically glowing with shock. Her mouth wasn't open, but it was completely frozen in place. It made her look like some sort of statue intentionally sculpted to make an indefinitely embarrassing face. One thing that wasn’t on her face, though, was fear; and that knowledge alone allowed Harry to see something within the situation that he hadn’t been able to see in any of the others: humor. 

Daphne Greengrass, the perpetually posh, ever-formal paragon of elegance, grace, and composure was knocked off her game and had no idea how to recover. Harry couldn't help it. A laugh sprung from him against his will, and he had to stifle it into something that was meant to save the poor girl's pride. Unfortunately, that just drew more attention to it, and his rare vocalization of true amusement only further ruined her ability to regain her center.

"Yo-You're a parselmouth!?" She asked in an extremely intense whisper as Jason slowly slithered over to her.

Harry's amused grin didn't fade as he gave a short nod. 

"But how!?" She asked him. "You're a Potter, right!? How did you inherit it!?"

That was an astute question. Harry honestly had no idea. Surprisingly enough, he didn't have anyone to tell him his family history! He looked around his vault to see if any information was left for him, but the place was big, and going through all of it alone was impossible to do without throwing an absurd amount of hours into the task. What he did know was that the Potters were almost certainly unrelated to Slytherin, so he was lost as to how he got the ability.

For a moment, he reluctantly considered the idea that his mother might've been just a tad unfaithful, but he threw it away almost as soon as he considered the possibility. Her family was a bunch of muggles; Petunia's memories about going to Diagon Alley with her proved that to him with adequate efficiency, so he was doubtful that any modern descendent of Slytherin would have her even if she possessed whatever qualities were necessary to cheat on her husband. Besides, the memories he took from Mrs. Weasley confirmed that Harry was practically a carbon copy of his father, so there was little to doubt when it came to his heritage. 

"I don't know," Harry told her honestly with a shrug. "I've had it for as long as I can remember. It's always been natural to talk to snakes. They were around me in my relative's shrubbery all the time."

It was easy to see how hard she was attempting to calm herself. She actually almost succeeded until Jason practically placed his head in her lap and looked up at her with those piercing eyes of his. Daphne looked back, and she seemed quite nervous. Still, fear was not present, and that was all that mattered to him. 

"A-and… your familiar?"

"His name is Jason," he told her. "Don't worry. We've been together for years. He won't hurt you. Actually, he likes you quite a bit. I would've introduced you to him sooner, I swear, but I was worried that you would connect the dots and react badly to what you found."

Hesitantly, she reached her hand out and caressed the top of Jason's head, and she almost leapt all the way off the couch when Jason leant into the touch. The boomslang was certainly not like most snakes. He was independent, of course, but he also enjoyed humans a bit more than most snakes tended to. He personally thought it was directly because Jason spent so much time with Harry while they were locked away at the Dursley's home. 

"When did he have time to decide he likes me?" She asked, seemingly closer to regaining her usual attitude. 

"He's been around you a ton," Harry admitted. "Every day, actually, unless I had to go to quidditch practice."

"You've been bringing him along with you all around the castle!?"

"Well, yeah," Harry said with a nonchalant wave of his hand before tugging on the very loose sleeves of his school robes. "Wizard clothing is open, and Jason prefers to ride along instead of lazing around down here."

"You've been taking a snake to class under your robes," she put together with no small amount of exasperation. "Of course, you'd be taking a snake to our classes under your robes."

"I'll have you know that Jason is perfectly capable of handling himself with decorum. He's almost as uptight as you!"

"This is so bizarre," she mumbled to herself as Jason slinked off the couch to coil up in front of the fire. "But I still don't get it. Why did you leave the Great Hall during the… snake… wait, don't tell me that you were the one who made those snakes, Potter!"

Harry's hand found the back of his head as he gave her a small, guilty smile. "The hounds gave me an opportunity, but I needed to find a way out of the Great Hall. As it turns out, people weren't overexaggerating the kinds of stuff you can do with parseltongue."

Harry could tell that he wasn't doing himself any favors. It seemed that discovering more of his activities was only worsening her ire. 

"And why," She ground out. "Did you do all of that without even telling me you were going!?"

Should he lie? he could still lie…

No, she helped him already, and she wanted to know. He already decided to take the jump, so trying to claw his way back up the jumping zone was off the table. Still, this was far beyond a first-year student, and it was also quite a bit different than trusting her with his secrets. Telling her this could get the both of them in a lot of trouble.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Look, I'm really sorry that I didn't tell you earlier, and I promise that I won't leave you to save me with no information again, but this is something I can't tell you. It isn't that I don't trust you; I told you about my parseltongue, and that could ruin me if it got out. I'm asking you to trust me to handle this."

She stared into his soul for a few moments before letting out a small sigh. "Fine, Potter, I'll trust you with it if you keep me informed. My father will not be so lenient if I use his reputation to get out of trouble for a second time unless it's well thought out and airtight."

"Deal," he acquiesced immediately. 

The two of them remained silent for a decent amount of time as Daphne continued to pet Jason as if the deadly tree snake was some kind of golden retriever. After they processed everything they discussed, she decided to ask the question that'd been bugging her for half the day.

"Your arm. I saw it get hit with that bludger. How bad is it?"

Harry shrugged and tried to keep the cringe off of his face. Lying to Daphne was going to be infinitely more difficult than lying to Ginevra and his teammates, and he couldn't distract her with emotions like he could with Iris. 

"It isn't too bad," he decided to say.

"Let me see it then," she said, calling his bluff.

"Why do you need to see it?" He asked back, attempting to avoid showing his arm by fighting about something pointless instead. The stranger would take care of it while he slept.

"Because I'm not stupid, Potter. I know my medicine, and your arm was already fragile before it got smacked with a bludger. Let me see it."

Reluctantly, he lifted his sleeve and pushed down a slight hiss as the friction aggravated his arm. What they were both greeted with was anything but pleasant. His left arm was colored half purple. It looked swollen and splotchy, and his wrist was even worse.

She stared at Harry's arm for a few seconds before directing her disappointment toward his face instead. "Not that bad, Potter?"

"It would've been fine in just a little. My magic heals me fast."

"Yeah, sure," she said dismissively before reaching into her robes. From the confines of her clothing, she pulled a small vial of magenta liquid. "Here, take this."

Reaching out, he tentatively took the vial. "What is it?"

"This," she said with a glance at the vial. "Is a family potion. It'll help with your bruising, and this," she said as she pulled out an orangish potion to accompany the magenta one. "Will help you with your wrist. It's definitely broken. I don't need a diagnostic charm to show me." 

Harry wasn't sure what to say, so he went simple. "Thank you, Daphne. Did you buy it or something? How did you even get one of your family's potions?"

"I didn't buy it," she answered, looking slightly sheepish. "I made them myself."

"You made them? We've barely brewed a few minor potions so far. Where did you learn to do it!?"

"Oh really, Potter?" she asked with crossed arms. "You kept your parseltongue from me, and you're upset about my talent in potions? My mother has a mastery and runs a business with it. She taught me from a young age. I'm not officially allowed to brew the potions for someone else, but they work, I promise. Just take them."

"You've been holding out on me!" Harry teased with a smirk. "You let me believe that I was the only prodigy here for months. You have to be top of the class or something, right!?"

"Beginner potions are classified as such because they're basic. Once we get into the more advanced potions, yes, I will probably be at the top."

Harry gave an impressed hum at her words before glancing down at her potions. "Are you sure it's safe with all the potions I've had recently? There won't be any reactions?"

Daphne rolled her eyes, but a small grin took away from the offensiveness of the words that came next. "Sometimes, it's very obvious that you were raised by muggles. I would've been very disappointed if Iris Garcia actually raised you and you still managed to be so clueless. Potions aren't like muggle meds. As long as you swallow each separately, they won't interact with each other."

That was an odd thing to accept after spending years with a certain set of knowledge about medicine. How did it matter if they were mixed before taking them yet worked perfectly when ingested right after the other? Professor Snape had yet to cover stuff like that, considering everyone in first-year was still learning how to properly handle a knife and how to contain and separate ingredients to prevent cross contamination. Either way, he gave a nod and downed the both of them. 

He didn't feel too different, but he also didn't feel horrible, so he decided to just let it be. 

"Thanks," he said after getting over the damnable taste of the potions. "I owe you one."

Daphne scoffed with a rare smile on her face. "You owe me much more than one, Potter."

"You're being so cold, Daphne!" Harry sarcastically exclaimed. That was when his eyes lit with lighthearted humor. "You know, if I didn't remember a certain something before my fall, I might've thought you didn't care."

He saw the surprise in her eyes despite the fact that he rarely actually gained anything by looking into them. She remembered too, and bringing it up seemed to embarrass her. He would've felt bad if it wasn't so touching. 

"I don't know what you mean," was her nonchalant attempt to play dumb.

"Oh, please," Harry said with a devilish grin. "I heard it loud and clear. You play the 'proper' act, pretending like everything you do is professional, but I heard you when I started to fall. You said 'Harry'."

"Well, excuse me for trying to get your attention quickly. You were about to get thrown by a rune!" She exclaimed, clearly attempting to minimize her words in order to save face. 

"No, no, that can't be right! My last name is Potter. They have the same number of syllables. It'd be just as quick to use my last name. You chose to use my first name because you do care, don't you?" he teased. 

“I just didn’t want you dying while I was the only one there. How could I have possibly explained that to the professors?” she told him, smirking all the way.

“Sure you did, Daphne,” he said, returning a playful grin, but he allowed her to keep her dignity. “Well, I’m tired, so I’m going to go to sleep while the sun is still down. I’ll see you in the morning.” 

He hissed to Jason, and the snake wound up his arm as he stood up from the couch. Before he left, though, he decided to say one more thing, “Goodnight.”

With that, he and Jason walked away. Harry felt rather good about that entire interaction. Nothing got out of hand, and he wasn’t down a friend. In his books, that was a win, and he took it without complaint.

“Goodnight, Harry,” was said in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

She almost certainly didn’t think he could hear it, but it was hard to hide auditory things from the zouwu. Perhaps it was wrong of him to keep that to himself, particularly after hearing what he just did, but the term ‘baby steps’ existed for a reason. For now, what he gave would be enough, and he went to his private room with a pleasant feeling within him and a small smile on his face. 

Yeah, things could’ve definitely gone worse.