Chapter Two
Kendra's Recollection of How This All Got Started
"We could talk about this for hours, dear, but I think you would be better off if I just shared something with you." Kendra Greengrass touched her wand to her temple, gesturing toward her daughter, Daphne, with her free hand. "Let me just find it…come on over to the pensieve."
Daphne Greengrass was 28, educated at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, well-traveled, and a qualified witch. She was descended from two of the most prestigious bloodlines in wizarding Britain, the product of centuries of selective breeding. Some families of British witches and wizards obsessed over blood purity, holding that magical ability only truly belonged to a child of wizarding parents. The longest unbroken line of descent from confirmed witches and wizards conveyed the greatest prestige. Duels were fought over slights concerning ancestry, referencing events hundreds of years past.
Daphne had been raised in a pureblood family, in a pureblood environment, and her pureblood status was integral to her identity. She wasn't overtly prejudiced toward witches with less-prestigious pedigrees. She'd had classmates at Hogwarts, called half-bloods, who had only one wizarding parent, and a fair number were from non-wizarding families, or muggles. The polite term for them was muggle-born.
Daphne avoided using the pensieve if possible. As magical devices go, she appreciated its utility. She didn't know of another way of getting such direct access to another individual's thoughts and memories. On the contrary, being able to directly experience an event through the memories of someone who had been there allowed transmission of atmosphere and nuance that direct reporting could not match. It was also efficient. There was no back and forth conversation, interruptions for clarification, or distractions. The genius of the pensieve was that, assuming the memory was accurate, the user was every bit as present at past events as the participants were.
Kendra Greengrass stood before the pensieve in the library of Greengrass Manor and gently flicked one of her memories off the tip of her wand into the basin. "Look, dear," she said to Daphne. "This will answer all of your questions."
Daphne didn't like the pensieve for the same reason it was so useful. She had always been wary of taking up other people's memories into her own head. That she was about to absorb, directly, some of her mother's experiences made her distinctly uncomfortable. Still, she had to know. How had her pureblood parents ever promised her in marriage to a half-blood?
Daphne lowered her face to the pensieve, Kendra standing just behind her, and felt the pensieve pull her gently through some medium, she never knew exactly what, eliminating time and space until she emerged in the breakfast room of Greengrass Manor. She saw a couple, younger versions of her father and mother, in an earnest discussion over bowls of fruit, boiled eggs, toast, and a heap of orange marmalade on the plate in front of her father.
"I just don't see why it has to be James and Lily, Kendra," said a thirty-year younger version of Fabio Greengrass, Daphne's father, as he spread some marmalade on his toast. "We're both from pureblood families, our daughter will be a pureblood, and allying with another pureblood family just makes sense. I don't have anything against James or Lily. I like them both. James didn't exactly distinguish himself academically, but he was decent at quidditch, and he did emerge, one could say, by the time he finished up. Lily, well, Lily arrives at Hogwarts fresh from Muggledom, leaves as Head Girl, widely acknowledged as one of the academic stars of our generation. Don't think I'm prejudiced against Lily. Strategically, though…"
He let the last comment hang in the air. Kendra turned her face toward her husband-her studied, neutral face.
"What?" Fabio asked. "I know that face, Kendra. You have something to say. I want you to say it. This is too important to leave anything out of the discussion. Cards face up, both of us. It is the only way we'll get it right."
"Fabio, I am your wife, and soon-to-be mother of your child. When we talk about the future, I look at what is going on around us, and I see wizardry, or more precisely, pureblood wizardry, dividing right down the middle. People we grew up with, people I thought we knew, are joining up with Voldemort right and left."
"Kendra…" Fabio began.
"Please don't interrupt just now, Fabio. Voldemort is targeting purebloods for recruitment, you can't deny it. The Malfoys, the Blacks, oursort, they're listening to a siren song. Nothing good is going to come of this, it can't. Wizards and witches are a small fraction of the population. Purebloods are a fraction of the wizards. He can't even get all the purebloods to join him. The Weasleys, the Longbottoms, the Prewitts, they all see the folly.
"This is a war, more or less, right now. If the Greengrasses contract a marriage with a pureblood family that has thrown their lot in with Voldemort, do you think we'll be able to avoid getting sucked in? Even if we do, the issue will be decided one way or the other, and we'll be seen as pureblood fanatics, Dark Army types, or at the very least, auxiliaries. Regardless of outcome, that can't be advantageous for international traders. The Continent is not betting anything on Voldemort. My correspondents say the major players will wait for the Dark Army to disrupt all the British trading houses, then hold a fire sale for the viable pieces."
"Merlin's beard, Kendra! When did you become a geo-political deep thinker? The firm pays people money to write reports that aren't as insightful as what you're giving me over breakfast," Fabio chuckled.
WHAP! Kendra's open hand hit the table. "Listen to me, Fabio!" Kendra growled.
Fabio looked up. He was not a man who was accustomed to being braced by his wife before he had finished his first cup of coffee. Before he could get a word out, Kendra started again.
"Fabio, sometimes it slips your mind that I am Kendra DavisGreengrass. Don't protest, I know you better than you think. We have joined two old pureblood family lines, and one of them is thinking it can fly with dragons and not get burned. In a few months, I'm going to have your daughter, and Lily is going to have James Potter's son. If our oldest daughter is promised to James and Lily's son, we're not going to be seen as obvious recruitment targets by the Dark Army. And, Fabio?"
"Kendra?" Fabio Greengrass looked at his wife, and Daphne, seeing him through Kendra's eyes, realized her father was seeing her mother in a way he hadn't seen before that moment.
"Look at me, Fabio. We have to do whatever we can to protect her. We can't guarantee we'll be here a year, or two, from now. There are things you don't know about Lily. We were study partners from second year on. I couldn't have added a point to our house total without Lily. She might be the most skilled witch in Britain right now, and she keeps getting better. We can't do any more for our daughter's future than to ensure Lily Potter will have an interest in keeping her safe."
Kendra Greengrass touched her daughter's shoulder.
"I think that is the gist of it, dear," she said. "We can go back now."
Daphne always experienced a moment of vertigo when she pulled away from the pensieve and rejoined her surroundings, another reason she liked to avoid using it. Daphne Greengrass did not like vertigo. She did not like feeling like she did not control every cell, every function of her body, and every emotion her psyche produced.
"Any clearer for you now?" Kendra asked. "There were good reasons, we wouldn't just commit you to becoming Mrs. Potter on a whim."
"Magic save me, Mother! Pleasedon't do that again. Hearing Mrs. Potter once has damaged me, a second time might prove fatal. I heard your reasoning, and it was sound, I suppose, at the time. What about now? Potter seems to have settled into a life of magical law enforcement. The Potter family holdings had a rough war. Father's sources say they're either idle or destroyed. Me mating up with Potter and the Greengrass businesses mating up with Potter's are, not really analogous, are they?"
"You do have a way with words, Daphne," mused Kendra. "I can see why your father values your assistance so highly. You see the problem just as clearly, I believe. We looked to James and Lily as another layer of protection for you should we get caught in the violence, then we sailed along just fine while James and Lily paid a terrible price for standing up to madness.
"Dumbledore had his reasons for placing Harry in the care of his relatives, but the results were most unfortunate. Harry came to Hogwarts in the same bubble as Lily did. Worse, actually. Severus Snape had told Lily quite a bit, and she'd already discovered some of her abilities on her own. Petunia and that concrete head of a husband, Dursley, thought they could just distract Harry from magic and it would all go away. No one could get through to them that that doesn't work.
"Harry grew up with no idea of who he was, or what position in the wizarding world awaited him. He was the heir of centuries of culture, invention, arts, and he had to pick it up in bits and pieces. He formed his opinions by direct experience. You could put Draco Malfoy in context when you were both eleven because you had eleven years with your father and me, years of conversations, you asking questions, us answering, explaining why a Malfoy held opinions or acted a certain way. Same for Weasleys, too, for that matter. Harry must have been so lost. Lily and James seem to have passed along their best, though. He has done well. Far better than most expected he would do.
"Still, the problem remains. You are under an agreement. So is Harry. You didn't form any ties at Hogwarts, so he is, it seems, barely aware of your existence. This is not a firm foundation for any sort of mutual enterprise."
"Mother, in case it is still unclear, a mutual enterprise with Harry Potter does not interest me," said Daphne.
"I know dear," Kendra replied. "But there are going to be ripples spreading out from this, whatever we do. We promised you to Harry to protect you, and provide for you, in case, we, well, as you saw. In case we were no longer around. By doing that we thought we were putting some measure of protection around the Greengrass family and its various holdings. If the worst happened, there was a chance you and Harry could build something out of whatever was left. The present situation does not make a good fit with the ideas behind the agreement. You don't need Harry, he doesn't need you, the Greengrass business interests have done well since the war, and recovery more or less complete. The formal arrangement we made with James and Lily doesn't seem to have any relevance."
"Except it does," said Daphne.
"I was just putting some things away in your room," Kendra remembered. "I noticed something in there that says it very much does."