"And what exactly did you say, when Ms. Greengrass offered to teach you the summoning charm?"
Harry frowned, thinking hard on Dumbldore's question while not entirely sure what the big deal was. It wasn't expected that he would befriend a Slytherin, but it wasn't like the rest of the student body had jumped forward to help a fourth year survive the TriWizard Tournament. Well, Daphne had, presumably because she was bright enough to realize he was telling the truth and thought she'd score points with the Boy-Who-Lived while his stock was low. But frankly, he didn't really care...
"I dunno, exactly. I was in the library, looking for spells and you know, just trying to get inspiration of what I was going to do against a dragon when Daphne popped by. She said she believed me and was willing to help, and I said something about how I doubted she would be much help against a dragon. Then, um, she suggested that I fly on my broom and then I mentioned I wasn't allowed to bring anything but my wand, and she said I could summon it."
"Then we looked up the summoning charm, and spent an afternoon learning it. I thanked her, left, and we've been meeting on-and-off ever since."
Harry fidgeted as Dumbledore looked at him with tired eyes, before turning his attention slowly to the witch to Harry's right. Daphne Greengrass looked wholly unconcerned with her current location, one flawless leg crossed over the other, arms resting behind her head as she stretched languidly in the wicker chair the headmaster had conjured for her. Her hair, so lightly blonde it bordered on silver, and perfectly coiffed for the Yule Ball, fell below her neck in sheets that reminded Harry oddly of a snow flurry.
In a final display of calculated insolence, she was twirling one impossibly tall high-heeled shoe from the tips of her toes, and Harry was absolutely certain that the fact that her posture and robes hinted just enough of the swell of breasts beneath was no accident.
Harry wouldn't have believed it a month ago, but he really wanted to be at the ball dancing with Daphne, not stuck up here explaining their relationship to Albus Dumbledore.
He snapped out of his thoughts as Daphne gave a tiny little smirk – a cruel expression of pink lips playing on a pale, flawless face – and anticipated Dumbledore's next question with a tinkling giggle.
"I'm afraid Harry left out a few details. He didn't thank me. He said, 'Yeah – summoning charm, that's brilliant. I owe you one.'"
"That's really a pretty important omission, don't you agree, Headmaster?"
Dumbledore let out a tired sigh, though Harry had known the man long enough to know it was mostly for affect – world weary, disappointed Dumbledore was a front for about-to-do-something-very-devious Dumbledore.
And again, now was the perfect time to have Daphne pressed up tight against him while some song he'd never heard of crooned in the background, not sitting in the Headmaster's office playing mindgames.
"It's a figure of speech," Harry jumped in, trying to hurry everyone along. "So I said I owe you one, right, and then we got onto the summoning charm. We've been meeting up twice a week ever since, and then I learned about this bloody ball, and figuring I couldn't possibly piss off the school any more that I did with my name coming out the bloody goblet or everyone thinking I was the Heir of Slytherin or losing half the house points in one night trying to smuggle a dragon... anyway, I asked Daphne to go with me. She said yes, we should be there right now, and that's all there is really."
"No, Harry," Dumbledore replied sadly, "I don't believe it is. Ms. Greengrass, can you tell me word-for-word how Mr. Potter offered to escort you to Yule festivities." There was no inflection suggesting any doubt whatsoever that she could do precisely that.
"Of course, Headmaster," she replied in a tone of perfectly polite obedience. "Harry came to our next meeting and informed me that as a Champion he was forced to bring a date to the Yule Ball, and I replied that as he owed me any number of favors, I would wipe the slate clean and that I would allow him the privilege of being my escort. I might," Daphne conceded, "have done so in a tone that suggested I was being playful."
"Your exact words, Ms. Greengrass," Dumbledore interrupted curtly, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Very well," Daphne sighed. "I said I would allow him to be my Champion come Yule night, and Harry replied that he would. I said 'Do you promise me, Harry James Potter?' and he said that he did."
Something was very wrong – Dumbledore's wand hand was visibly twitching – if ever so slightly – and the fire within his eyes had dulled down to despair. "I don't suppose you gave a time when he would cease to be your Champion," he pressed.
"My dear Headmaster," Daphne replied with a cutting laugh, cruel and cold and piercing. "I think we both know the answer to that question."
Daphne turned towards Harry, stretching her arms out now in front of her and looking very self-satisfied. She leaned forward ever-so-slightly, looking Harry straight in the eyes. As she did so, her hair shimmered slightly, turning just the slightest shade of blue and her pupils lengthened, giving them a feline look.
It was, Harry decided, as unusual as it was arousing.
"I have many names," Daphne exclaimed in a tone that could only be described as regal. "Daphne being the one I have used these past four years. I am Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, Of the Unseelie Court, The Midwife of the Winter Fae, Keeper of Dreams, Majesty of the Winters that Are, Lady Over All That Lies Beyond the Waning Solstice."
"And for the past four years, most amusingly, the Ice Princess of Slytherin."
Harry was slowly coming around to the idea that possibly, there was a chance, slightly, that he had been bewitched in some way. It wasn't normal to listen to your date brag to your headmaster that she had titles that seemed rather impressive for a fourteen year-old student, magical or no. And it probably wasn't exactly normal that he could recognize this, but not galvanize himself to really care about it.
Daphne hadn't ceased her triumphant declarations. "And so, in the name of Winter and Bound by the powers that connect the Fae to the Magicians of your mundane plane, on this night of Yule I name Harry Potter as Champion of the Unseelie Court. Until I have obtained my satisfaction, he shall serve as the Knight of Winter."
There was a... a tug, at that, as the magical contract sealed. Harry's head cleared in the next instant. He turned to Dumbledore, speechless as the gravitas of his predicament began to settle upon him.
"This certainly complicates things," Dumbledore deadpanned.
Daphne – no, Mab, let out another cold and clear laugh.
"Oh Albus, as if you have never dabbled in the realms of Fae before," She narrowed her eyes as she turned away from Harry to look the Headmaster squarely on. "This room absolutely reeks of Summer," she sniffed the air once, gingerly, before scrunching her face into one of pure disgust. "How is that little strumpet, these days? Did she beg off, hinting another burning day was on the horizon. One day I'll pluck every feather off that nasty little plume of hers and make myself a nice pair of phoenix-skin gloves."
"Fawkes is well," Dumbledore replied, a protective edge in his voice. "And I shall pass along your greetings – no doubt she shares a similar sentiments."
"I don't even want to know what you gave Titania for her to allow one of her pets to bond with you," Mab continued. "A phoenix of all things. Really! Though I think Titania valued Harry a touch more than she did you – she sent a veela after him, or did you not know that our lovely Ms. Delacour is hardly just another champion," she asked with faux innocence.
"In a way, it is fortuitous I got to him first – just think how deep Summer's reach would be within your school if she had taken Harry as well." She grinned coquettishly, "you might even say I have done you a favor."
"You might say so, but I might say not."
"I want to dance," Mab declared, tossing her hair back as if physically throwing off Dumbledore's rejection, "and the ball has not yet ended. Come, my Knight, let us make our debut." And Harry stood up, not necessarily wanting to or even choosing to but finding nothing wrong with the fact he did so anyway, offering her his arm as he did so.
"He will be back in his own mind come the morning," Mab told Dumbledore. "It takes a night's sleep for the magics to settle but by morning he will be free and fully in control of his own will... just with some rather sharp consequences if he directs it too far afield from my own. Of course, I may be able to convince him that this turn of events does not have to be entirely without an upside. If anything, our consummation of his new position should suggest that the job can be quite pleasurable." She gave a tiny shrug, followed by an ever-so-slight bowing of the head. "Tomorrow, headmaster,"
Her eyes and hair shimmered back as Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass strode past the gargoyle and onward towards the great hall.