Chapter 10: She Deserves to Know

"Well Harry," said Sirius. "Can't say it was the way I'd have done things, but you came through the task quite alright didn't you?"

"Knowing you, Sirius, I'll take that as a deepest of compliments," Harry said, passing the older man a loaf a bread and some meat.

Sirius held a hand to chest, pretending to be in pain and falling to the stone floor.

"Oh dear prongslet! How you've wounded me! This is it, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!"

"I had wondered where your dramatics came from," said Daphne, smirking. "Like godfather, like godson, is it?"

Harry smiled and her and Daphne looked over and winked at him. Sirius rose from the floor and he and Harry broke into laughter.

"So then, how are you two doing, still in the puppy love stage?"

Harry smirked at him.

"Are you seriously interested, or are you just making dog puns?"

"I'm always Sirius."

Harry groaned.

"That was bad."

Sirius looked slightly abashed.

"Ah, I'm out of practice. Honestly though, I'm glad you kids are together. Heavens knows Harry needs a girl to show him how to have some fun."

"She's been great," said Harry, smiling. "I'm actually happy… I can't remember the last time someone held me like she can."

Saying this brought a pained look to Sirius' face, but Harry didn't mention it. No matter how many times he had told the old man that he didn't blame him, Sirius always seemed to regret Harry's upbringing. All-in-all though, Harry was just happy that things seemed to be getting better now.

"Can't relax too much though," said Sirius. "Whoever's put you in this thing isn't done yet. No one would go through the effort of illegally entering you in a tournament for no reason. If it were someone else, I'd be cautious, as it's you I'm checking under every rock I can kick over while staying hidden. If I could clear my name, I'd be able to do more, but as it is…"

"We understand Sirius," said Daphne, rubbing Harry's back softly. "I'm sure I speak for Harry when I say we'd rather you are around even if you can't figure out exactly what's going on."

Harry nodded and moved to Sirius, and hugged the man as hard as he could. Sirius hugged him back and Harry couldn't help tearing up. He couldn't help but feel like his uncle would pull Sirius away from him and tell him that he wasn't worth of love from anyone. That he was merely a no-good freak and deserved to be locked up.

It had been keeping him awake at night even more that his burning scar. Lately he hadn't been able to sleep more than a couple hours a night. It reminded him of his days before Hogwarts, and long sleepness nights in his cupboard under the stairs, nursing burns or wounds from the day's punishments.

He shook the thoughts from his head before they threatened to overwhelm him. Sirius clearly saw Harry's pain, but didn't say anything about it. Like Daphne, he understood that Harry didn't like to talk about things that bothered him. He was a private person and always had been since he'd not been allowed to ask questions growing up. Instead Harry usually internalized everything unless it made him really angry.

Later as they were walking back into the Hogwarts halls, Harry pulled Daphne to the side and embraced her. He couldn't say how much it meant to him that she was there for him. He couldn't tell her how much he loved knowing that she cared about him and how it made him feel to just she her in the morning. He couldn't voice the fact that her presence lifted an entire world of darkness off him, so he tried to put it into his hug.

There was a bit of an alternative motive as well. He had finally made the choice to tell her about the Dursleys. She should know why he couldn't stand being touched. She deserved to understand, no matter how much he didn't want to say it.

"Can we find somewhere to talk?" he asked softly.

He felt her nod against him and she pulled him into an empty classroom before locking the door and casting the silence spell on the door so that no one would hear them.

"What's wrong, Harry?" she asked, worried. "Not that I didn't appreciate the hug but… You don't normally initiate contact like that."

Harry nodded and removed his robes, pacing up and down quickly.

"I wanted to say… To tell you that I… This is a really hard thing to do."

"Take your time," she said, gently. "I'm not going anywhere. Nothing you say is going to make me run away."

Harry took a long breath, and couldn't help but hear his uncle's voice in his hears.

Freak.

"You know I was raised by muggles, right?"

She nodded.

"Your mother's sister and brother-in-law, I believe?"

"Right," he said, harsher than he meant to. "I didn't know magic existed until my eleventh birthday. I knew that I was… different. I'd done a few cases of accidental magic, but I didn't know that's what it was."

"They didn't tell you anything?" she asked gently.

"No. My aunt and uncle like things… normal. It's an obsession with them. In all my time I never heard my aunt talk about mum… or what happened to them. I asked once what happened to them, and she told me they died in a car crash, and then told me never to ask another question."

"You couldn't ask questions?"

Harry shook his head.

"It was rule one… there were a lot of rules. I used to keep a list but I lost it once I came here. Anyway, I think my aunt and uncle only saw me as my mum's kid and always tried to stop me from being magical at all. I remember that once I mentioned a dream I had about a flying motorcycle, my uncle immediately shouted at me and I was just glad I was locked in my… That I wasn't punished."

"Harry," she said, moving closer. "What did they do when they punished you?"

"Usually they'd lock me in my room and not feed me, sometimes it was a bit more… drastic."

He reached down and removed his shirt, turning his back to her and he felt her stiffen, although she made no noise. He knew that even in the dim light she could see the scars and burns that were there.

"Everytime I messed up, everytime I did magic, everytime something went wrong, I was punished."

It was getting easier to talk now that he'd already said the beginning. Now he wasn't sure he could stop explaining even if he'd wanted to.

"My cousin was encouraged to hit me and I was always treated as scum in their house. The best way I can put it is like this. When I had to think of a thought to make a patronus, Lupin told me to think of the happiest memory I could possibly come up with. I settled on the day I got my letter, and I realized I could leave them… it was the best memory I had, up until the Yule Ball."

"Harry…"

"I can remember that until I went to primary school, I thought my name was actually freak because that's all my uncle ever called me. My room for ten years was a cupboard under the stairs and they would lock me in it every night to keep me out of trouble and I had to sneak food just to get by. I think they hoped I would just die one night, but it never happened."

Daphne moved up to him and Harry turned to look at her. She wasn't crying, but her eyes were watering and she immediately pulled him into a hug. He felt her fingers laying across several the marks on his back and he knew she could feel them.

"Listen to me, Harry Potter. Your aunt and uncle are horrible people, and they were wrong about you. You are a wonderful person and I have always admired you. I have. Even from our first year at Hogwarts, everyone wanted to see what the great Harry Potter was like, but you were so shy and quiet I knew that you weren't like Malfoy, brought up to believe you were great. You were soft and kind and treated everyone equally, regardless of where they came from."

"I… I mean…"

"Then you proved that you didn't care about putting yourself in danger when you recovered Longbottom's rememberall. You braved Voldemort to stop him from getting the Sorcerer's Stone. You found the Chamber of Secrets and slew the basilisk. You rescued Sirius and stopped him from committing murder merely because he was your father's friend. You've never once blamed someone for the actions of their past, and you are a damn good person. That's the reason I wanted to get to know you. You are incredible, and not because you survived the killing curse, or because of what you can do… but because of who you are. I love that about you, Harry Potter, and I love you."

"You… love me?"

He'd imagined the words before, but he couldn't explain what he was feeling when she said them. They hurt his heart in a way he didn't think they would. He didn't know why it hurt, but it did, as surely as if she'd stabbed him.

"I love you Harry. You are loving and caring and brave. You'd do anything for the people you love Harry. I know that, so does Hermione and Sirius. Ginny and Ron know it too. Your friends all know how remarkable you are Harry, and I love you for it. I would never hold what they did to you against you."

He hugged her back and cried softly, unable to stop himself. He'd opened one of the most vulnerable pieces of himself, and she loved him. He didn't have the words or actions to express the importance of that.

"I… I want to love you too, Daphne, but I don't… I don't understand it."

She shushed him softly.

"That's what I'm here for, Harry. I'm here to show you how to love someone and I will be with you every single step of the way. Don't you dare try and leave me out of that, ok? And Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"It means the world to me that you trust me enough to tell me this. I promise, I won't breathe a word of this to anyone else. However, should I meet your uncle or aunt… I may kill them."

She said the last four words with a fury he'd never seen in her and it caused him to leap back a little.

"Hermione told me that they put bars in your window before second year, and I knew then that things were… hard between them and you, but I never imagined that anyone could be that horrid to a child. I admit I do not want to meet your uncle or aunt, because I do not want to hurt them and indirectly hurt you. However, I doubt I would be able to hold the desire back. However, I want to make a promise to you Harry. I won't tell them what you told me, but I will do all I can to make sure you never to within one hundred years of either of those… people ever again."

He gave a sad smile at her, and dully noted that there was likely nothing she could do. He'd begged Dumbledore each and every year not to go back to the Dursleys, but the headmaster had repeatedly sent him back there, no matter what he'd said. Daphne gave him the time to recompose and dress himself and then she walked with him back to Gryffindor tower, holding his hand the whole. When they reached the portrait, she kissed him softly.

"I love you," she said. "And when you're ready Harry, you'll love me too. Until then, rest and prepare for your third task."