It wasn't the bindings that bothered her. It wasn't the fact that in every way, she had been restricted, physically, magically, mentally. No, the ropes that held her fast in all senses were hardly what fed the growing tide of annoyance that the girl felt. Restriction, she was used to. Sometimes the blonde even enjoyed it. Loathe as she was to admit it, the silence was what made her pearl white teeth grind in anxious frustration. The dead absence of noise, interceded only occasionally by the quietest of breezes, the faintest of birdsong. Always a social creature, forever kindling the connections to climb higher; she had been just that. Oh she was cold, no doubt, never friendly, never warm. But words were her poison, intoxicating, drawing in the puppets she needed to sway under the reign of her personal duchy of command. The overbearing sound of nothing for the past three hours, had driven her up the metaphorical wall; there was hardly a physical one around for at least a hundred miles or further after all.
The boy, the one with hair like a filthy bracken, eyes like the colour of the green sea stretching far and beyond, hadn't emerged from his tent for nigh on three hours. The last words he had said to the girl rung painfully true. She was alive, and hating every single second of it. The minutes slipping away, she busied herself suppressing the urge to just scream, howl, in anger, hatred, frustration, all of the emotion that bubbled beneath the surface, her personal volcano biding its time until eruption. It was perhaps five and twenty minutes later that the boy returned.
Greengrass said nothing at first, only gazing into the fire with dull eyes. Oh it was difficult, painful even, to consider whether she ought to look, ought to speak, ought to turn around to her spitefully hated hero. To her relief, she needed not to; the boy spoke first.
"So Greengrass, I expect you're enjoying life?" A simple phrase, yet so cruel and mocking in its casual depths. On the surface, in any other situation, a piece of casual, careless conversation, ever so Gryffindor in its nature. In this situation, spoken with such indifference, apathy, it dripped the trademark of Slytherin more than Draco Malfoy ever had.
"I didn't know you had such a sadistic side, Potter. Torturing your foes with the prospect of a quick clean death, but condemning them to a life lived with clipped wings; you ought to have been in Slytherin, you filthy bastard." Her tone hadn't changed; every word was lathered in spite, nothing close to 'friendly' or 'casual' could be used to describe the words the battered blonde spoke.
Potter didn't reply for a while. The boy merely pursed his lips, never looking at her, always past her, beyond, to whatever lay behind. He couldn't bear to look a Death Eater in the eyes so close, not after all they'd done. Better to just be apathetic, treat the captured with indifferent contempt. After several more agonising seconds that seemed to stretch into minutes, he spoke.
"I'm doing you a favour. Maybe you have more life to explore, maybe somehow you'll redeem yourself in Azkaban, find your way, get away from the Dark side, I dunno really. If you'd like to call it torture, then sure, I suppose. Do whatever you want. I'm not going to stop you, it isn't me that controls whatever thoughts you have. Is it a Slytherin pride thing? Rather die than be captured?" It really wasn't a question, but a statement phrased as one that both knew to be true, if only from their own experiences. The snakes and the lions had more in common than they'd often like to admit; tenacity and stubborn pride to their principles, right or wrong, was a trait both houses often boasted.
The Greengrass girl snorted slightly. "Redeem myself? I suppose you think you're running a comedy show over here Potter. There's no redemption from what's right; and if you think for even the tiniest of seconds that I would rather be swayed to the views of pathetic muggle lovers like Dumbledore, you'd be god dammed wrong." The way the name was said left little uncertainty over how she felt about the man. Nothing but disgust filled her voice as she spoke his name. Leaving no room for error, she continued, "I have no idea how the old shithead died, but here's hoping it was painful. He deserved nothing less than-"
"Snape killed Dumbledore. He did it, turned on him and killed him. Does that make you happy, Greengrass? Does it make your bitch's heart sing with glee that the last emotion that ran through the head of Albus Dumbledore was that of horror, and shock? Are you glad that he died lamenting his betrayal? Somewhere in that tiny black heart of yours perhaps you can squeeze out some fake emotions."
To say she wasn't shocked when he interrupted her would have been only lying. The girl still didn't flinch, didn't let it show; if there was one thing she was a master of, it was putting on a mask, covering everything that was 'Daphne', and replacing it only with what she wanted to be seen. In a vicious world of dog-eat-dog nepotism, it was as necessary a skill as walking or breathing. "That's unfortunate. Perhaps if I had something more than a 'tiny black heart' I might even feel a little pity for the old fart. Death by those who you trusted, always a tragedy, wouldn't you agree, Potter?"
The rising emphasis on the last word left no doubt to the deaths she intended to reference. The boy would have punched her there and then, female or not, Death Eater or student, for the callous comment. Sadly, he was far too used to such comments from the snakes. Far, far, too used to ever second snide remark being about orphanhood, or his greatest feat, at the age of one. Instead, he merely replied with a slight tremor in his voice, "Better dead than in that Azkaban shithole. You really are a Death Eater, you think that the worst thing in this world is dying."
Memories came rising to the surface like a drowning man gasping for air, recollections of black cloaks, hoods, empty, rotten mouths, and that high scream, the cry of 'Harry' uttered in such sheer desperation in the face of the end. It was what he never wanted to experience again, the reason why he had poured his heart and soul into learning the charm to stop it. She said nothing while he lost himself in the ocean of times gone.
"Every second in Azkaban would only make you raise your hands and beg for death as mercy, Greengrass. If you think that your parents will come out of the place the same as they went in.." Harry gave a short bark of soulless laughter, "You're in for a shock."
She was silent. For a precious few seconds anyway, before the floodgates opened once more. "Potter, you think I don't know that? You think that I don't care? It doesn't matter what damn side of this war you're on, we've all got people we care about, even in these 'tiny black hearts'. You think that I don't spend every single second of my living being regretting the fact that two of the people I care most for in the world sit with their hearts, minds, and bodies rotting in their cells? You're in for a shock, Potter."
Taken aback at the blunt show of emotion, for the first time, he turned to meet her eyes. Different. They were filled with a quiet fury, and for the briefest of seconds, he swore he could see a tear. For the tiniest of moments, Harry Potter peered through the mask, through the label and title of Death Eater to see the person within. Just another girl. Another girl whose parents were lost, just another girl who was struggling through life, to forge her own way, make her name known. A girl as cold and arrogant as they came, yet still cared in the end, for what she valued most. For the briefest of seconds, he saw Daphne Greengrass. Then it was gone.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have um, said that," was all the green eyed boy could say in reply, the words awkwardly escaping from his mouth without him really thinking about them. She snorted in that fashion that was ever so characteristic of hers, haughty, arrogant, dismissive. Only this time, the slightest tremor of trepidation shone through before she spoke again.
"Whatever Potter. I said it about your parents, so I suppose you had a right to say it about mine. Don't you dare pity me, I'm sure what they did would have disgusted you. In fact, I'm sure you know the former owner of the watch that you wear, do you remember his name?" Puzzled by the question, the boy ran through the memories that seemed so far, so distant from the cold forest. The memories of a better time, in a home, with a 'family'.
"Was it, Prewett something? It was Mrs. Weasley's brother, I think, something Prew-"
Greengrass cut him off with an attempted wave of her hand. It was a gesture she dearly would have loved to made, if her body hadn't been bound fully in ropes.
"Yes, Prewett. The name's right on the watch, you dullard, I noticed it an hour ago. It was probably Fabian. They did put up a pretty good fight, but mother and father won out in the end. The Killing Curse knows no bar From what i heard, it was close. I could almost respect a blood traitor for that, truly."
The dark haired boy said nothing for the longest amount of time yet. Silence, only filled in by the faint ticking of a dead man's watch. A dead man whose murderers' spawn sat next to him, bound in ropes. For the briefest moment, he considered taking revenge of some sort for Mrs. Weasley's sake. It would have been all to easy, to take his wand, cut her, hurt her. The thought flickered through his head, but passed. The difference between Harry and Tom at times, was the fine line of control that the former possessed, the latter so dearly lacked.
"Are you proud of them?" Even as the boy asked the question, he had low expectations for the answer. From the little he knew of the enigma that sat beside him, he expected the answer to be 'yes', with several insults thrown in for good measure to get a rise out of him, all declared in a loud, irredeemably haughty, quintessentially pureblood tone. Life is full of surprises however, and what you expect most is usually what happens least.
"Perhaps you think I'm 'evil', or something, Potter. That isn't how Slytherins are. We're resourceful, ambitious, cunning. The ends justifies the means for us. I do not think of mother and father as murderers. They are soldiers in the line of battle, and they did what they had to. Killing is the means, to finish the war is the the end that justifies it. Sometimes we all have to do what we must."
For a moment the young man considered that something might truly be going wrong with him, because he agreed. Deep in his heart, he almost slightly agreed; the ends was what justified the means, and if that meant rules had to be broken, or acts of violence had to be committed, then so be it. Life wasn't as easy as a simple straight path labelled 'the right way', after all. For all his faults, the boy wasn't stupid. The words left his mouth before he could think them over.
"I agree. Sometimes, codes and rules have to be broken. Maybe lives have to be taken. Just because we're on the opposite sides of a war doesn't mean we can't agree on some things, I guess." Harry regretted the words the moment he said them. He didn't want to admit it, he wanted to continue to tell himself that the means must always be just and right. But that was a fantasy of a cliched world he didn't live in. Greengrass merely laughed, a short bark of slight amusement.
"You're more Slytherin than I thought you would be for the Chosen One." The words rang too true in his mind, echoing a gruff voice six years back, though it seemed like an eternity and then some. 'You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness...'. The boy couldn't imagine himself in any other colours but the red and gold; to dress himself in green and silver would have been blasphemy, a blow to the memory of his parents, surely?
"The sorting hat almost put me in Slytherin," blurted Harry, in a considerably more rushed tone than he had meant to use. "He said I could be great, and that Slytherin could help me to get there."
For the first time, a crack of a grin emerged on Daphne's face. "Oh really, Potter. Well, you do have a certain disregard for the rules, don't you? Everybody's heard about how rules are about as solid as ghosts are to you. Ambition, ambition, well, you want to go places, don't you? I think we're more alike than you care to admit. Not that I have any of those Gryffindor qualities such as being an insufferable berk, and throwing myself head first into life threatening situations like a self sacrificing idiot; I'd prefer to keep my head firmly on my neck."
Harry snorted in laughter in spite of himself; the statements were true, after all. He was hardly going to deny the years of rule-breaking that he was certain would have done the marauders and the twins proud. Even Hermione had also commented on his 'saving people thing' that Daphne had so eloquently described as 'self sacrificing idiocy'. Adopting a mock tone of thoughtfulness, the bot replied, "I dunno Greengrass. I've heard about some of what you've, perhaps you ought to be in Gryffindor. Stealing twelve tests worth of answers out of Flitwick's desk while he was talking to McGonagall in the next room; not bad for a Slytherin, not bad at all."
"Hmph, don't get your hopes up, Potter, I'd never throw my lot in with you. Though the prospect of winning every single house cup as long as you're in the school does sound appealing." The reply stung in an unfortunately truthful manner. Even the dark haired boy himself could see Dumbledore's plain favouritism of Harry and the Gryffindors, and if they could, the other houses most certainly could as well. Nevertheless, he was determined not to lose out to her. He never lost, after all.
"Oy, which house was winning it for years in a row before I got there. Why if I didn't know better, I'd say Snivellus was favouring your house, but of course, that would be nigh on impossible for the most just and lawful man in the castle." Without missing a beat the bound girl replied,
"Oh yes, because McGonagall is ever so generous with her points to Slytherin. She's given so many to us, we've voted her in as honorary head of house!"
"Funny, because we were thinking of adopting Snivellus' head as our crest instead of the lion, what with him so perfectly representing the values of righteousness and justice after all. Plus, his greasy mat of hair could pass for a mane too, " replied Harry with an equally sarcastic tone.
"Let's swap head of houses then. Maybe we can swap common rooms too, you can finally see for yourself how dammed claustrophobic it is in there, Potter, " snapped Daphne with the faintest hint of a smile on her face.
"Already been there." The words were almost sung in pride, a smug smirk crossing Harry's face as he turned to look at the girl, who seemed utterly shocked at the revelation. For the first time in at least ten minutes, a silence crossed the empty camp site, only broken by the girl's frantic splutters.
"But, but, what how?! Only Slytherins can get in there, and no Slytherin would ever let you in! That's impossible! You're lying Potter, there's no way you, you, seriously, can't have-"
Harry cut her off with a single word. "Polyjuice."
A look of dawning comprehension spread across her face, before the girl began to giggle with quiet laughter, "And here I was thinking that the motto of the house of mudbloods and blood traitors was 'honor'."
Mubloods and blood traitors. The words brought Harry crashing back down to Earth and reminded him just who he was speaking to. A Death Eater. A Slytherin. A Greengrass. He bit his lip. Could he just let it go? Didn't he have an obligation to stand up for his friends? A small part of him urged himself to, in a tiny voice, that spoke from the bottom of his heart. He was enjoying the conversation. He felt almost as though he was speaking not with the enemy, but just with another fellow person. Yet the words stung, they reminded him of what he fought against, and what he fought for. She peered at him curiously as his knuckles whitened, unaware of the mental battle he fought in his mind, against his principles, values, and even himself.
Harry opened his mouth to speak.
A/N: Well I suppose that's a cliffhanger of sorts, haha. Just to clear up a few things that may be a little confusing; Daphne doesn't know the details about Harry's escapade in the Slytherin common room, she just realises it's a very viable way to sneak in, if not unwieldy. I say Harry is a 'ends justifies the means' sort of person because of his use of Imperius and Cruciatus. Ultimately, he does have that sort of quality in him, and he is willing to bend or break rules, or moral codes at times, to get to where he desperately needs to. And do tell me if you feel I'm moving their Characters along too fast; I dislike it when stories have characters change too quickly, but ultimately, I'm sure I fall fault to the same problem :c
Thank you for all the reviews so far! :)