I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 1: Endurance
1975
Daria Durant hated doing things and trying hard and, really, even making an effort was a chore.
It was alright, because she didn't really care about being successful, or doing well, or planning for her future. That all sounded dreadfully dull. Besides, Daria was only fifteen. She'd much rather be skiving off classes. Or torturing her roommates by gradually shrinking their robes, just enough so that they stopped eating anything but celery twice a day. Or throwing their nice jewelry into the Black Lake for the merfolk to wear. Becoming a prefect was her nightmare.
Truthfully, being a prefect had never even entered her worst nightmares. It had never occurred to Daria that Dumbledore was so completely off his rocker to think she'd be a good prefect. Not that she was ever got caught tormenting her roommates. So it wasn't that he was rewarding her for that or something equally nutty.
Maybe he was punishing her for tormenting her roommates by making her a prefect. That was a much more plausible reason than the one he provided in the handwritten letter that accompanied her badge.
In your time at Hogwarts, I do not believe you have been living up to your potential. Indeed, I do not doubt that you are more than capable of rising to meet this new challenge.
What bollocks.
Maybe it was the Slytherin in her, but Daria was immediately skeptical of Dumbledore's stated reason. For starters, Daria did not doubt that Slughorn, her head of house, would have nominated her for prefect when Peeves apologized for his pranks; that is, when hell froze over. Slughorn had held a grudge against her since she refused to attend his silly Slug Club meetings in her first year, and then referred to them as such as he passed by her at supper.
From what she understood (from Hogwarts, A History), it was fairly rare for a headmaster to overrule head of house recommendations for prefect. Daria Durant did not warrant extraordinary headmaster behavior. She was entirely unremarkable by design. She had middling marks, didn't get detention, and didn't stand out enough to earn house points. If anything, she'd carefully cultivated a persona that was off-putting to others. Daria didn't want anyone dipping beneath the surface. She couldn't risk it.
Because she was a muggleborn Slytherin.
She'd gotten away with the charade for years on a fluke. Apparently, there was a pureblood family in France called Durant. It wasn't Sacred Twenty-Eight, but it was pure enough to pass muster from her mad housemates. They all assumed that she was a part of it and chalked her oddities up to generations of inbreeding. She never bothered to correct their assumptions because Daria was nothing if not a Slytherin, and that meant she operated on a strong sense of self-preservation.
In truth, her father was a pastry chef from Paris and her mother was a hobby gardener from Nice. They were French, but otherwise extremely normal. Daria's younger brother Frank was football-mad and completely non-magical.
She groaned, rubbing her forehead. Her parents were going to make a huge deal out of this. Daria had been, and still was, a wild child. Adrien and Marie Durant had front row seats to Daria's rebellious childhood and were under no delusions about her character. They loved her dearly because they were a bit mental, but they'd certainly find this turn of events surprising and wonderful.
They didn't know that every one of her Slytherin house-mates would probably smother her in her sleep if they knew she was muggleborn. They didn't know anything about pureblood supremacy or Voldemort or the escalating Wizarding war. These were all things that they didn't need to know and Daria wasn't about to enlighten them any time soon. The less they knew, the happier they'd be.
The safer they'd be.
Why did Dumbledore make me prefect?!
It should have been her roommate Asma Greengrass. The girl was prodigiously dim, but incrementally less stupid than the other three, and Slughorn thought she was a delight. More importantly, Greengrass was an unimpeachable pureblood—Sacred Twenty-Eight, in fact. They boasted a bloodline nearly as pure as the Blacks, if Asma's incessant crowing was to be believed. Her stupid family wouldn't be in danger just because Dumbledore had unknown ambitions.
Ever since she started at Hogwarts, Daria had nightmares about being outed as a muggleborn witch. In those days, her dreams prominently featured the oldest and worst of her house: Lucius Malfoy and Rabastan Lestrange. They laughed as they tortured her mother and made Daria watch; as they imperiused her father and slit her younger brother's throat. The culprits had begun to rotate as the years went by, a horrifying carousel of cold-eyed murderers—Snape, Wilkes, Greengrass, Flint, Rosier, Black. The dreams became worse whenever summer holidays drew to a close and she was faced with another year at Hogwarts.
Daria looked at the letter on her desk again. She considered writing Dumbledore, tell him that she didn't want the stupid badge, but she doubted he'd take a disgruntled letter very seriously. Maybe if she made her case in person…
Daria snorted. She was hardly more likely to persuade Dumbledore in person than she was by squeezing her eyes shut and wishing. She also had the distinct impression that the Headmaster could peer into her mind, and she was of the opinion that sort of thing should be avoided.
No, she would simply have to endure the badge for now. Surely, if Daria put on an abysmal performance as a prefect, Slughorn or Dumbledore himself would take the thing from her.
Yes, thought Daria, with a smile. That will be enough.
1 September 1975
Francis Durant's bedroom was typical of a nine-year-old football fanatic. Blown up photos plastered every wall: favorite footballers, a poster of the England National Team at the 1966 World Cup, and framed photos of his youth team hoisting a massive trophy over their heads. Trophies and ribbons covered the top of his dresser. A perpetually damp football kit buried a grass-stained football beside the door.
Daria delicately fished the football out of the pile—she held back a gag when her hand brushed a wet sock—and held it aloft for a second. Then she whiffed it at her sleeping brother's head.
Not hard, but by the way Frank shouted, you might have thought she shot him.
"Daria!" he yelled, shooting straight out of bed clutching his forehead. "What—"
Daria dropped onto the side of his bed to bounce him and interrupt his next words. "I'm late, I've got to go, love," she said and leaned over to shower kisses on her little brother's face and hair. Frank allowed it for a few moments, giggling, before her words registered.
He pushed her away, pouting.
"Already?" he whined, looking over at the clock on his bedside table. 5:37, it read in red digits.
"You know takes four and a half hours to get to London. I'm cutting it close as it is," said Daria. She pinched his nose once. "I'm heading off."
"Wait!"
She hid a smile as he rolled out of bed, shimmied into a pair of jeans and grinned up at her sleepily. Her heart clenched at the sight. She ruffled his sandy blond hair.
"Don't bring that cat in here!" came a barked order in French.
Daria's family owned and ran the bakery beneath their flat in Dover. The story her father always told was that the Durants had intended to open a shop in London or Manchester when they first came from France. But when they stepped off the ferry from Calais in Dover, the scent of the sea strong in their noses, they knew they could not leave. Daria's father was a bit of a romantic. Her mother was the practical one who would always follow up his story with a whisper that the only reason they didn't open shop in London and Manchester was that the competition was too fierce and the cost of living was too high. She was also the one who shouted when either of her children let Daria's cat downstairs.
Frank pouted, tickling Morgana beneath her black chin as he held her in his arms.
"It's only for today, Maman. I'm not going to see her for nine months."
Daria's mother Marie stopped kneading the dough she had been working. Without a word, Daria's father Adrien took over as Marie hurried across the room to her children.
"One cat hair in a Pain aux Raisin could ruin us," she scolded, snapping a floury pastry at the three of them. Startled, Morgana began to struggle out of Frank's grip. "Put that cat in her carrier and put her upstairs until Daria leaves. Now."
Grumbling, Frank went to obey his mother's command. Marie sighed heavily and began fussing with the coat of Daria's lapel. She always fussed when she was worried.
"Nine months is too long to be away from your family," mourned Marie. "I only wish we could afford to send letters more often, or that you could come home for Christmas. Maybe if you asked again this year—"
"You know they don't let anyone go home," interrupted Daria, biting the inside of her cheek.
Of course, this was a lie. Most students at Hogwarts went home for the holidays, but her family didn't know that. Daria would've loved to come home as often as she could, but she feared one of her Housemates would see her clearly muggle family waiting for her at King's Cross and know at once that she had been lying to them for years…
And of course Daria invented the brilliant lie that it cost a galleon to send and receive letters using school owls. She could hardly afford to receive all the letters her family wanted to send at those prices. With that, Daria didn't have to worry that anyone would happen on words that could give up the ruse.
Marie's face fell. Daria knew she resembled her mother and Frank resembled their father, but Marie and her son shared careless expressiveness that Daria could only emulate through deliberate effort.
"Well, be sure to go to Midnight Mass at Christmas—" this was another lie of Daria's, one she actually felt a bit guilty about, but her devout mother would be inconsolable if she knew that Hogwarts did not have a chapel at which to attend services, "—and go to service every Sunday, at least. If you're not too busy being prefect, that is."
Daria scoffed, gently pushing her smirking mother away. "Don't start that—"
"Your school truly is magical if it has turned you into a well-behaved young lady," teased Daria's mother. "Though I wish you would remain well-behaved when you're home for the summer instead of sneaking out late to listen to that awful rock music with your friends—"
"I told you that's not what happened; Jackie's mum needed help setting up before a graduation party and her arm was broken—"
"Regardless," her father chimed in with a fond (and knowing) smile, "your mother and I are proud of you. We've always known you were meant for greater things than this little town could offer you. You are far too clever and spirited to tolerate monotony for long. Hogwarts has clearly been good for you."
Daria could have wept.
I hate it there, she wished she could say. I hate magic. I hate that I have this inside of me. I hate the people I live with, I hate that they think you're scum, I hate that entire world. I want to live in this sleepy little town with you forever, baking bread every morning and every evening watching waves break against the orange sand…
If she said any of this, nothing would change. Daria would still have to attend the school; Dumbledore said so. But if they knew just how miserable she was, just how much actual danger she was in by being a muggleborn in Slytherin, her family would drive themselves sick with worry when there was nothing to be done.
Daria just had to bear it for three more years. Once she was finished with that awful place, she could return home to her family and close the book on her magic forever.
"Maybe it has," conceded Daria. Daria was a practiced liar, but this one was particularly bitter on her tongue.
Without warning, a little body tucked himself under her arm. Frank asked breathlessly, as though he'd just galloped up and down the stairs, "Maybe what has?"
Unconsciously, Daria leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head. "Maybe your sneakiness has gotten out of control," she teased, poking his cheek.
"Maybe I'm magical too!" he said hopefully.
Daria's stomach swooped unpleasantly at the mental image of her brother beneath the Sorting Hat. He'd be a Hufflepuff, no question, and unable to obscure the fact that he was both muggleborn and related to Daria.
Thankfully, he had never exhibited any signs that he was a wizard—never willed a bully's hair to fall out, never locked his least favorite priest in a confessional booth; the sorts of things Daria had done before Dumbledore came knocking on their door the summer before her first year at Hogwarts—and so Daria simply smiled and informed him, "You know, they don't have football at Hogwarts."
He made a face and unthinkingly switched to English, "What, like at all?"
"Not even a bit."
"Well, what sports are there, then?—"
"I've gotta go," she interrupted, partly because it was true—Daria needed to be on the next bus to the train station in time if she was going to make all three line switches—and partly because she suspected if she began describing Quidditch, Frank would become enamored with that as well.
Daria's mother hurriedly kissed her on both cheeks, wiping tears from her eyes, while Frank squeezed her so tightly around her middle that she couldn't breathe. It was her father's embrace that made Daria blink back tears.
More than anyone else in her family, Daria's father smelled like home.
The first prefects' meeting of the year took place on the train back to Hogwarts. On one hand, she didn't have to suffer through her roommates' shrill accounts of their summer holidays. For such obscenely wealthy witches, their holidays always sounded dead boring. Daria was pleased to avoid that yearly ritual.
On the other hand, being prefect meant suffering through speeches and instructions from the Head Boy and Girl, two pompous Ravenclaws who were so puffed up Daria was surprised they didn't deflate like balloons when they opened their mouths.
Worst of all was her male counterpart, Evan Rosier, making polite conversation with her when the meeting ended.
"I must admit, I thought the other prefect would be Greengrass," said Rosier pleasantly.
Daria said nothing. She might have risked a glare for any other Fifth-Year Slytherin. Those boys were harmless enough. Avery and Mulciber were dunderheads; Wilkes took nothing seriously. Snape was rather brilliant, but he had an unmanageable temper and no charisma whatsoever. But she never antagonized Evan Rosier.
He was far more threatening than Avery's and Mulciber's unguided thuggery, than Wilkes' cruel humor, than Snape's brooding resentment. Rosier's was an intensely focused hatred, clever enough to disguise itself in soft tones and polite banter. Daria doubted he was as smart as Snape, but he made up for that deficiency with magnetism. Rosier held all of the Slytherins in their year in thrall. Younger Slytherins idolized him; older ones respected him. The entire House stopped to listen when he evangelized on the power of the Dark Arts and the value of pure blood.
There was no one in the world that scared Daria more than Evan Rosier. He was a snake in the grass.
"Evans was made prefect," observed Rosier, sotto voce in mild bemusement, as though he had witnessed a cat walking on its hind legs. "Which is worse, do you think, Durant—a blood traitor or a mudblood?"
Rosier didn't seem to expect a response. At least, Daria hoped; it was all she could do to force herself to smirk.
If she was braver, she'd tell him what she really thought. "Mudblood"was a stupid insult in her opinion, hardly worth all of the fuss people made about it. The intent behind it was vile, to be sure, but Daria could not suppress some amusement that "mudblood" was the best articulation of hate that these supposedly superior beings could come up with.
Prefects had to patrol the train after the meeting, which Daria considered avoiding by hiding in the toilet or hurling herself out of the window. Unfortunately, the toilet was occupied by a couple of tearful first-years and the windows didn't open nearly enough to fit her body through, so she sighed and set about her duty.
At the end of the train, a compartment of Hufflepuff third years hastily stowed away what appeared to be Dr. Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks when they saw her glance inside. Daria moved on.
In another compartment, a group of Gryffindor boys of varying ages sneered at her, making rude hand gestures and blowing inaudible raspberries. She moved on.
A few compartments down, her roommates lounged, cat-like, on the upholstered seats. Asma Greengrass was the prettiest and best-bred, and was accordingly the leader of the girls. Gemma Rowle was Asma's closest friend, which was not unlike a hunter calling his prize wolfhound his closest confidant. Megaera Flint had the distinction of being the stupidest person Daria had ever met in her life, while Silvie Buckland was a half-blood and treated by the others as a kind of yappy pet that they were alternately fond of and annoyed by.
When Asma saw Daria appraising them through the window, she glowered. Immediately, the others followed suit (though it took Flint a moment to cotton on). Daria moved on.
Right into another prefect.
"Terribly sorry," said the other girl, pushing thick red hair out of her emerald eyes and smiling apologetically.
"It's fine," muttered Daria, trying to step around before Lily Evans caught her in a friendly conversation.
It was very difficult to be rude to Evans. Yes, she could be pushy and, yes, she had a rather alarming temper, but Evans never failed to speak aloud what Daria wished she had the courage to say. Evans was muggleborn, like Daria; but instead of hiding that fact, she was beloved for it. Sometimes, Daria wanted to hate Evans for her perfect, easy life; for being pretty and nice and whip-smart, but still bold. But the thought of hating Evans made Daria want to hate herself.
"Have a good summer, Daria?" Evans asked kindly.
"'S fine," repeated Daria.
"I'm glad you're prefect instead of Greengrass," said Evans. Daria tried not to be too touched that Lily sounded she meant it. "I just wish Sev had been made prefect as well, instead of…"
"Me?"
Rosier appeared out of nowhere, wearing a pleasant smile. For a brief moment, Evans scowled, but it quickly shifted into an icy stare.
"Apologies, Rosier," she said coolly, easily meeting his cold grey eyes with defiant green. "I just think avowed blood purists shouldn't be in positions of power. You see, you're foul and your beliefs are foul."
Daria felt a rush of admiration for Evans. Few people seemed to notice how hateful Evan Rosier was. Professors and other students fawned over his manners and his charming smile. But Lily Evans had the boy pegged since their first year and she never flinched.
"It is a shame you feel the need to attack my character," said Rosier mournfully. "My views are not personal, Evans, yet you choose to be so troubled by them."
"It's personal for me!" she hissed. Neither Rosier nor Evans seemed concerned about the red sparks crackling at the end of Evans's wand, but Daria kept a wary eye on it. "If I see you abusing your power to harass anybody, I'll go straight to Dumbledore, you hear me?"
Evans didn't wait to hear his reply before she bodily shoved past him, throwing the pair of them murderous looks as she stomped off.
"Charming girl," Rosier said, rubbing his shoulder. "Muggles are so very savage, are they not?"
Something deep inside of Daria told her to kick him in the balls. Instead, she turned her head toward him, gnashed her teeth and snarled like a wolf.
"Yes, rather like that," said Rosier, but he seemed more disturbed by her display than amused. As she expected, he excused himself a few awkward seconds later.
Daria watched him leave and made a mental note to charm his morning sausage roll to bite back. He wouldn't suspect her. It was a rather savage thing to do, after all, and Daria Durant was no muggle.
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