Merit and Inheritance
Chapter Thirty-nine
What's Past Makes What's Present
Daphne completed her evening shift at St. Mungo's at eleven p.m. Evenings were not her favorite shift. She got off work too late to go out for something to eat with friends or family. She had to go straight home and fall directly into bed if she were to get up and start her day at a reasonable time in the morning. Therefore, Daphne's end-of-shift routine seldom varied. She went to the staff changing room, retrieved her cloak from her locker, walked to the nearest exterior door and went home by apparition. She'd done that while living at Greengrass Manor and had only changed her final destination when she became the full-time Mistress of Potter Manor.
As she left the emergency section Daphne considered Iolanthe and the portal she'd been shown.
"I'll have to learn more about that," Daphne thought. "What a handy thing to have. I'll see if Iolanthe wants to talk tomorrow and tell me more about it. Directing it, distance limitations…"
Daphne twisted and disappeared, reappearing almost immediately in the back garden at Potter Manor. Daphne was recognized by the enchantments throughout the estate. She could come and go without hindrance by the wards. Lamps lit up as she walked the path toward the house, extinguishing themselves once she'd passed each one. Harry had the exterior doors open and close for her so she didn't need to go around casting charms whenever she wanted to go in or out.
Daphne was a newlywed and a very happy one.
She had watched Harry while they were at Hogwarts, beginning the evening of their sorting ceremony. Harry had been the cause of a surplus of consternation in Slytherin House. He gave the impression that he barely thought of Slytherin House, at least when Daphne had him under observation. Nevertheless, Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson seemed to obsess over the daily offenses they detected emanating from Harry Potter.
"Greengrass?" asked Draco one evening in the common room.
"Malfoy?" Daphne answered, not looking up. She was stretched out on a very comfortable green leather couch with a textbook propped against her bent knees.
"I SAID, Potter makes me want to puke," said Draco.
"Does he?" asked Daphne, finally looking at him. "That's too bad Draco because it appears he is barely cognizant of our existence. Yours, mine, Pansy's, Slytherin House. To think you'll be going to all that trouble and your audience of one will be oblivious…tsk, tsk."
"You'd be a lot happier if you'd try to develop a little Slytherin Spirit, Greengrass," advised Pansy.
"She's too thick, Pansy," said Draco. He drew his wand.
Daphne saw what was coming as if she watched from five seconds in the future. She tilted her book down from its reading position so the wand she'd slipped up the spine was pointed straight at Draco. Cordelia Greengrass was a realistic mother. She had spent the summer drilling Daphne on some useful spells, hexes and jinxes. She'd taught her eleven-year-old it was never wrong to defend herself against violent or predatory wizards. Draco started to cast something, undoubtedly something unpleasant, to register his disapproval of Daphne's attitude but was cut off when Daphne whispered, "Repulso."
Draco's toadies picked him up from the floor after he'd hit the far wall and bounced off. There weren't any repercussions other than Tracey Davis observing that, "Crabbe and Goyle I get, but are Draco and Pansy actually incapable of learning?"
"It is a puzzle," said Daphne, turning back to her book.
Harry thought Daphne was nice all through first year. He might have spoken once or twice, but the adult Harry couldn't remember anything specific.
Daphne began to show signs of a budding beauty during second year. Third year and fourth year were mixed. Her adult face emerged, her skin was mostly clear, her teeth straight and white. Tracey and Daphne spent hours experimenting with one another's hair, finally settling on a few easy-to-manage styles that they liked on themselves and each other. They started paying attention to their nails, keeping their routines manageable when school was in session. They used soap and water, a nail brush, orange stick and two-sided nail files. They didn't spend time on polish, instead practicing until they could buff their natural nails to a high gloss while studying.
Sadly, each was growing quickly and they spent much effort on shedding their adolescent clumsiness. Daphne's reticence became more pronounced. After serving an apprenticeship as the Ice Princess, in fourth year she became the Ice Queen.
Harry knew Ron harbored romantic feelings for Hermione, however bad he was at recognizing and acting on them. Thus, Harry didn't initiate any exploratory conversations, nor did Hermione. In fact, Harry built a wall around any sprouting feelings he might have had for Hermione. He convinced himself he harbored a pure, chaste love for Hermione, something that transcended physical desire. Harry was offered opportunities for non-Hermione exploratory conversations every day. Some of the young witches who were interested in him, such as Romilda Vane, were not inclined to invest the necessary time to have a conversation but went straight to subterfuge.
By fifth year, Harry was smitten. That was the first year he remembered feeling poleaxed whenever Daphne gave him the look from under her long eyelashes. Merlin, those did a number on Harry. They were brown, only a shade or two darker than her hair, a match for her eyebrows. The two of them seemed to get paired for something in a joint class at least once a week. At some point during the joint lesson Daphne would look up from underneath those eyelashes and do something with her face. She might extend her lower lip in a fake pout, briefly pull up one corner of her mouth in a subtle, this-is-just-between-us grin, raise one or both eyebrows. She seldom had words to go along with her mime. Neither initiated an exploratory conversation.
Harry did not have time to ponder why he and Daphne Greengrass kept getting paired up so often. If he had he might have thought about some vague, impersonal force that insisted on putting him in the path of that look from under Daphne's eyelashes. Something like destiny.
Sixth year, of course, was a mess. Harry stayed sane by flying. Dumbledore loosened up with the information but still refused to come completely clean. The academic year ended with Dumbledore's death.
Daphne thought she was going to go insane during her seventh year. Some of the new faculty were psychopaths. Daphne gutted it out by focusing on keeping Tracey and Astoria as close as possible and vowing to get between them and any kind of danger. The ice thickened as the pressure from her suppressed anger grew.
She tried to stay away from news, from any source. She knew there had to be a clandestine wizard wireless set somewhere, from the bits of gossip that raced through the school. Despite her efforts not to, Daphne listened intently whenever anything or anyone mentioned Undesirable Number One. She knew Harry was widely believed to be doomed. She still allowed herself a silent, internal cheer when the subjective news bits were parsed and the nugget within said Harry and his chums had done something wild and elemental and evaded capture yet again.
Harry despaired throughout the long, rough winter. At times he doubted his ability to bring his two closest confederates through their difficulties. When that thought was dispatched he wondered if he would ever be allowed to live a normal life, grow into a relationship with a witch or start a family. He knew everyone expected, should they both survive, that he and Ginny Weasley would gravitate toward one another. Harry fought to keep himself from remembering Daphne Greengrass. Everything about her appealed to Harry. His internal doubts argued that if he liked and respected her, he wouldn't think about her. What if Voldemort was eavesdropping? What if the simple matter of calling up his mental image of Daphne cast a subconscious jinx?
Their postwar attempt at getting to know one another went nowhere. Later on, Harry blamed himself, telling Daphne, when he got the chance, he was entirely at fault. Daphne wouldn't hear of it, insisting she had her own issues at the time. She worked those out by inappropriate and self-defeating means. She botched the opportunity to give Harry a loving safe haven in which to repair himself after his ordeal.
That was then. This was now.
When Harry and Daphne made up following their joint intervention in Cyrus Greengrass' financial follies, they really made up. Harry confessed his longtime fascination. Daphne did more than thaw out. She warmed up, let Harry babble while she held him, listened while he tried to talk through sobs about his pre-school years with the Dursleys. Harry told Daphne things he had never told anyone, about his struggles to control his magic. Defense Against the Dark Arts wasn't just defense. Bits and pieces of necessary information gave Harry all he needed to wipe the Dursley family from history, if he lost his internal struggle. He feared he'd become a poltergeist, visiting malicious magic on innocents for its own sake. He still harbored such fears. Daphne had a right to know.
Daphne could see, in retrospect, the possibility of something similar in herself. She was a good fit for Slytherin House. Smart, ambitious and driven to succeed. She wasn't inclined to pursue alliances with Dark wizards or their supporters. Thus, she was nearly destroyed by the internal Slytherin conflicts of her Hogwarts years. She was an English witch, with a manor, lanes, green hills and hedgerows. She could make beautiful things with her hands as well as her magic. She loved magical creatures such as hippogriffs and noted her Dark-worshipping classmates seemed to be all but violently allergic to beauty. They attacked beauty with a casual vandalism she could not fathom.
Daphne went through Hogwarts with two close friends and one mentor. Her sister Astoria and cousin Tracey Davis were her close friends and Madam Pomfrey her mentor. Blaise Zabini wasn't pushy but he was close by more than once when Daphne felt the need to stand up against some aggression.
Blaise wasn't complicated, seldom saying more than a low-volume, "Got your back."
Daphne wasn't conscious of the ice at first. It wasn't something she wanted. It grew itself to protect the beautiful creature at its core. Harry Potter liberated Magical Britain from Voldemort. Then he extended his hand and liberated Daphne Greengrass from her icy state.
Daphne wasn't a mystic. As a healer she was much more of a realist than most witches. Even so, after their wedding night and the runes and their joint vision, Daphne was convinced that she and Harry belonged together, that they had been together before, and they had a destiny.
She hadn't shared those thoughts. Her husband held titles that he mostly ignored because he had been raised as a penniless, despised relation. He was mostly formed before he heard of the titles. He had faced death, too many times, so he built a little mundane business from scratch and tried to stay away from the crash and bang. He thought of himself as a practical man, who could do a practical day's work, besides being a wizard.
When Daphne came inside after her commute from work, she tried to make a little noise so that Harry, should he have fallen asleep in his reading chair, would wake up without her having to enter the room and wake him. Healer Daphne had read the journals and knew about traumatic stress. The healers were studying it just as the muggle physicians and therapists were. Few wizards had experienced more traumatic stress than Harry Potter. Daphne viewed Harry's moments of post-traumatic terror as things she lovingly accommodated as a tiny recompense for all that Harry had done for her magical world as well as for her personally.
"Harry?" Daphne called out, softly, from the central hallway.
"Mmmph?" asked Harry.
"Daphne?"
"I'm home," Daphne said as she entered the salon. Daphne swirled her cloak and tossed it over the back of a sofa. "Did you eat?"
"I did," said Harry. He couldn't hold in the smile when he acknowledged: "What there was of it."
"Isn't Kreacher wonderful?" Daphne asked. "A natural collaborator. Did you have to raid the pantry for a little extra?"
"No, I was being a tease," Harry said. "There was plenty and it was all delicious. Are you going to sit down?"
Harry put his book on the floor and slid his wand up his sleeve. His lap was empty. Harry tried to remain neutral but a quick glance down indicated he'd very much like to offer his lap to Daphne as a place to sit. Daphne obliged without hesitation, one arm around the back of Harry's neck, hands meeting and fingers intertwined. The only thing missing was her welcome home kiss.
"How was your shift?" asked Harry as soon as the formalities were over.
"The usual," said Daphne. She lifted her left leg and flipped her shoe off with the toes of her right foot, reversed and repeated.
"Not much that was interesting."
Harry gave her one additional little peck on her lips, accompanied by a tightening of his arms.
"Good," he said. Emergency healing personnel have loved ones and those people do not like to hear that their healer has had an interesting evening shift. An interesting evening or overnight shift means certain botherment, or worse, for someone.
"Anything happening out here?" Daphne asked.
"As luck would have it," Harry began, "We got lucky today."
"Did we?" asked Daphne.
"We did," said Harry, "Believe it or not, the little alabaster bust is…"
"No!" said Daphne, interrupting Harry in a rare display of ill manners.
"None other," Harry said, "Than Iolanthe Peverell Potter. She was carved by an itinerant artist Hardwin Potter brought home to Godric's Hollow from a trading trip to the Continent. She doesn't know when she was put away and the last king she remembers anyone talking about was Richard the Third. We're going to have to be very careful with her. Walburga is giving our current world a loving embrace in comparison."
"Oh, that's an image," said Daphne. "Husband, my schedule is favorable. Tomorrow I'm in my office, and that's that. What would you say if I asked if your chit, good for one treat, can be redeemed this very night? I think I know how I want to un-jangle my nerves to ensure a good night's sleep. You might benefit from some un-jangling yourself."
Harry let Daphne unwrap herself, stood and called out 'Nox.'