Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter

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Chapter 4: House of Wolves

November 6th 1994

Harry woke up groaning. Another restless night, lying there whilst his mind wandered, thinking about the upcoming task, Ron's displeasure, hatred really, of Harry's name being spat out of the Goblet, Sirius coming back just because he could be in danger, Hermione frantically researching to help in the first task, and the vibrant, yet hollow and dead, purple eyes of Daphne Greengrass.

Harry knew he would have to call on all of his courage to talk to Daphne at some point, something that Malfoy would hate, just on the principle that a Gryffindor and a Slytherin should be mortal enemies. Which, in a way, was true. Gryffindors tended to be brasher and more likely to run into a fight without any thought, whereas Slytherins tended to work to give themselves an advantage and planned meticulously to reach their goal.

Maybe, if they fell apart after a while, they could remain friends and still benefit from it. Daphne would probably slow Harry down, and make him think more, and maybe Harry could make her more confident, as he had heard from Hermione that Daphne was a lot smarter than she let on, she was like Neville in the respect that she was always withdrawn and was a bit of an unknown quantity, somethibg that made people underestimate her greatly, which had resulted in quite a few people in the hospital wing recovering from a vicious hail of spells.

Anyway. Harry couldn't get too caught up in other peoples problems, as he had his own, looming in the distance, otherwise known as the first task.

Actually, that might be a good time to ask Daphne if they could meet somewhere to talk, as perhaps the insanity of the task will mean she could be approached without many people noticing. At least it sounded good in Harry's head. He'd have to talk to Hermione.

If he survived the first task.

At least now he knew what he was facing, thanks to Hagrid, so he could prepare something to help with completing it.

Completing a task. One of the biggest Harry Potter jokes among most of the Slytherins, exempting the ones who didn't care, or had an interest in Harry's welfare, the former being the upper years, and the latter being about two people.

The same ones who had stuck together for the entire time they had been to Hogwarts, who had never said anything about anyone. The ones who remained a mystery. A mystery Harry wanted to solve. The truth about Daphne Greengrass and Tracy Davis.

But the was for another time. Harry now needed to prepare to face the wolves, also known as the rest of the Hogwarts houses.

As Harry sat down facing Hermione, ignoring the stares and whispering that had plagued him for weeks now, he thought over what information he had at his disposal, he was facing a dragon, and that was pretty much all he knew.

"Awwww, has Potter got a little problem, is he scared of what might happen in the task?" Of course, Pansy Parkinson. The self confessed trophy of Draco Malfoy.

Harry just stared down at his plate. 'Perhaps I'll leave it for a few minutes, if she doesn't stop talking I'll consider replying.' Parkinson just kept on going on, as if Harry hadn't heard it all before.

Suddenly a different voice filled in one of the gaps when Parkinson was taking a breath, one that always interested Harry, with its soft, nearly docile, sound, starkly contrasted by its condescending, unapologetic words and tone. A voice that Harry had rarely heard during his time at the Weasley's, from a person who had been obsessed with him, but now, despite the fact she still kept up appearances, he could tell she was taken by someone else.

"Do you have anything better to do with your time? Honestly, you don't need attention from other people, you get enough from Draco as it is."

Harry never caught a glimpse of Ginny, as she left after her short and quiet reprimanding of Parkinson, but was thankful for stopping the flow of insults and generally annoying statements that would usually get a rise out of Harry, but he was too sullen and brooding.

At least in his spare time.

Other than that, he spent the rest of his time creating plans for the First task, but at the same time scrapping them immediately after due to how ludicrous they were.

Hopefully some stroke of inspiration would mean that a plan that was feasible was created. Otherwise he was royally screwed, and would be the laughing stock of the Triwizard tournament. And he would still have fame for failing to complete the task. And they would probably build on Rita Skeeter's painful article, making him seem like even more of an attention seeker.

At least Lockhart was right about one thing, fame is a fickle friend, something not worth knowing.

Harry looked up from his plate to see Hermione looking at him, concern written all over her face.

"Are you alright Harry? Do you know what you're doing for the task?" Hermione said. At least she was by Harry's side.

"I'm at a loose end Hermione, I don't know what to do and I don't have any ideas." Harry sighed. "I have to think of something though. Would it be okay if I meet you on the library later?"

"That would be fine, anything that might help you will good, if you have any inspiration come and tell me." Hermione finally looked at ease.

Harry looked back down at his plate, mentally preparing himself for the coming day.

November 7th 1994

Harry grimaced as he thought about the days events, really it hadn't been that bad, but it was annoying how persistant most of the Slytherins could be, if anything it would be nice if there was some creativity after a while.

At least in the library there was little to no chance of them attempting anything. That was Slytherin self-preservation for you, don't attempt anything that will result in your incarceration or attention being drawn to you, though some clearly didn't understand this. Or in this case, getting thrown out of the library.

Most of them didn't even set foot in the library. Barring a few of the more studious ones, and the ones taking their OWLs and NEWTs, almost all didn't bother sticking their head in, even to just check to see if there was anything of use there.

Harry let his head fall on the table and sighed, wishing, for once, that trouble didn't gravitate towards him, and then put him in situations that put others in danger.

At least it was only him in danger this time, rather than him and his friends. That was the only upside.

The downsides were the fact he was in this tournament, the firts task was less than a week away, Ron was jealous and had severed ties with Harry, and Hermione was looking dead on her feet with the amount of books she was reading for Harry, in a seemingly futile attempt to help him.

But with the task looming in the not too distant future Hermione was hardly ceasing researching for spells that would be useful.

At the time he had thought he was alone, but later he could have sworn that someone approached him, but thought better of it, and then walked away before they could say anything.

November 10th 1994

Harry felt like the week that he had experienced, with the wolves prowling, hurling insults, waiting for the first sign of weakness to pounce, had finally caught up with him after Professor Moody asked him about his strategy for the first task.

As Harry was stumbling through the conversation his conscience started to sneak up on him, but before he could say anything, Professor Moody had already dismissed him, but not before planting a seed of an idea in Harry's mind.

One that finally made some kind of sense.

It was that plan that resulted in him and Hermione standing in the common room at one o'clock in the morning, practising the summoning charm, so Harry could summon his Firebolt to the arena. The plan was risky in itself, because he would have to wait for his Firebolt to arrive, and he would have to try to outfly a dragon, then try to talk to Daphne after and maybe organise for them to meet at a later date.

Speaking of talking to Daphne, Harry still hadn't spoken to Hermione about his plan to talk to her. But there was really no better time than the present, especially as he would forget to ask tomorrow.

"Hermione, could I ask your opinion on something that has been troubling me, and I wanted to know if it would be a good idea?"

Hermione looked up at this as it wasn't often that Harry or Ron aked her opinion on something other than homework.

"What is it Harry?" She wondered if this had anything to do with his home life, his fear of being called on by people who he didn't know or trust, or if it was about the first task. She never would have guessed what Harry said.

"Well, I guess I should start at the beginning." Harry looked pensive for a moment. "I think I first noticed her when were in First Year, at the sorting, and I think at the time it was because there was something different about her. This interest stemmed from the fact that she never seemed completely there, she was constantly looking around, as if someone was going to come down on her like a ton of bricks, and she was always correcting tiny mistakes in the way she sat, walked, ate, and talked."

"This made me realise there were similarities between her and I, as, at the time, we both seemed to have chronic fear of ruining something, but that's not really relevant at the moment, This fascination continued through to Second and Third Year, in Second Year I noticed she was one of the few Slytherin's who didn't antagonise me over the fact I couldn't leave the castle, or who acted like the Chamber of Secrets was the best thing since sliced bread. It was only at the end of Third Year that I realised this wasn't just an innocent interest, I realised I was developing feelings for her, despite never speaking or being in the general vicinity of her."

"That's why I wanted to ask your opinion, I'm going to try to talk to her tomorrow, so we can meet again at a later date, do you think that's a ridiculous idea? And if I can't talk to her, could try to organise a time for her to meet me? Because I know you both do Ancient Runes, so if you could slip her a note one lesson that would be amazing. Only if I can't speak to her."

Hermione looked like she had been given the keys to a library that held all the knowledge in the world.

"Can you tell me who it is? Why did they catch your eye? Oh, you answered that one already. Anyway. Why a Slytherin? Do you think she'll meet you?" Hermione suddenly stopped. She seemed to be contemplating her next question. "You will tell me why? Or at least answer some of the questions?"

"Hermione calm down, I can answer a all of those, if you give me a bit of time." Harry breathed in, he was about to tell his most loyal friend one of his greatest secrets. "Daphne Greengrass. That's who I've fallen in love with, even though we've never spoken to each other, I think I can explain why I was interested in her in First Year. It was simply the fact that she looked perfect, there was nothing out of place, but as I kept on being drawn to her I noticed how she was too perfect, how she always looked fearful when something was even slightly out of place in anything she did."

"Now the only other person who was, and still is to a certain extent, like that, is me. Now I have the scars to prove what my relatives did to me, the physical abuse that was designed, by them, to condition me to be abnormally normal, so I don't stand out at all."

"From the way she used to, and, like me, still does, react to anything that was wrong about her tells me she's been through something similar to me, except she used to wear short sleeves, and shorts and skirts, something that I've never been able to do, obviously not the skirts, but you know what I mean. This shows that there's something that's even worse than physical abuse that has shaped her to be as perfect as possible. That's mental abuse, it means that there's no proof that whoever did this to her did it so it couldn't be traced back to them, so nobody would be able to know what has been done to her" Harry grimaced. "And the biggest insult is the fact that they used mental abuse to make sure people would want to marry her, so her beauty wouldn't be marred by scars."

At the end of Harry's monologue, Hermione let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. But Harry wasn't completely finished.

"You asked why I've fallen in love with her, well when I look at her I see part of myself, and I think that even if she doesn't want to be in a relationship with me we could still relate to each other and maybe be friends."

This made Hermione stop thinking, this was much deeper than she thought it had been. Though she was still puzzled. "But I thought you liked Ginny, you're always looking at her."

Harry didn't even look surprised at her statement, in fact he looked slightly amused and had an air of smugness about him. Harry smirked. "I think I finally know something that you don't know, do you want to know? It might shock you."

"Oh most definitely! You know I love knowing things new things!" Hermione was practically vibrating with excitement.

Harry suddenly looked like a deer in the headlights, then he looked like he was considering something, probably what he was going to say.

"Well I can only really guess, but I think her crush and embarrassment was just because of the fact that I'm Harry Potter. Now I can't tell you who she keeps on looking at, because she would wip my arse and the kill me slowly if I did without her permission. But the gist of it is she's grown out of her crush on me, that was because I'm a celebrity, and she's found someone else that she loves, and she only keeps up the crush as a façade to hide who she really loves."

Hermione was speechless. She had never noticed any of this, though perhaps it was because she was not that good at reading a persons body language.

"Are you going to nudge her in the right direction? It might make her happier than she looks now, Harry."

"No, I'm not going to Hermione, I might draw more attention to her if I do. I'll let it run its course and see if I can help at the right time." It seemed Harry was really not lying about keeping somebody's secrets.

"Well, Harry, if we're finished with learning about peoples love lives, then we can practise the summoning charm a few more times, then go to bed."

AN: Finally finished with that, also uploading chapters might get a bit spotty as I'm having less time on my hands. Anyway I'm open to ideas for scenes or character developments if anyone wants to suggest anything.