Chapter Title: INTERLUDE: Snapshots
Timeframe: Various
Characters Involved: Daphne Greengrass and Harry Potter (Teddy Lupin, mentioned)
Point of View:
Notes: Three songs, three snapshots on Harry and Daphne's relationship. This was supposed to be the SIDE B: He plans update, but a friend has forced me into writing a bunch of scenes featuring Harry and Daphne's romantic relationship, apparently she feels like it's been stolen from her since this is a romance story with the two romantic leads only having one solo scene. Soooo, yeah. I'll post the Side B thingy tomorrow or the next day. Enjoy. :)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all its contents is owned by JK Rowling.
Emotionally Yours [Bob Dylan]
Stumbling out of the apprentice halls, Harry grabs into Daphne as he apparates the both of them out of St. Mungo's.
Daphne lands with a yelp. Harry lands on his back.
They're lucky that they're in Harry's house, else they'd both be nursing the death of their public personas.
"Never doing a seventy two hour shift again," Harry tells the blonde woman leaning on the corner wall.
Daphne replies with a snort, "The next shift you'll pick up will last ninety six."
Harry doesn't bother to reply, he knows she's right.
He feels her sit down next to him, leaning against the wall under the portrait of Walburga Black (finally silenced, thank merlin), and he adjusts his position so his head is on her lap.
Daphne seems to understand what he's implying; Harry closes his eyes to the feeling of Daphne's fingers playing with his hair.
He hums in contentment.
"You're the best healer ever," he tells her, now Harry might be a bit biased, but who cares.
"You're only saying that cause I'm the only one that would play with your hair," she says with a laugh.
(It's the truest and falsest statement Daphne ever uttered in her entire life, but then again, oxymorons were never her specialty so, whatever).
"Nope, you're the best," Harry says, "Better than Pomfrey, even."
Daphne's fingers stop for a second, but then they're back to softly playing the Moonlight Sonata on his scalp.
Harry seemed to notice, but before he could comment, Daphne beat him to it. "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me," she says, "Half arsed or not."
Harry's eyes snap open, his eyes focusing on hers.
(They're shiny, Harry couldn't think of anything more beautiful than Daphne looking about to cry. He doesn't know if he'll say that out loud now, or ever, but its true.
It's the first time he realised he's truly deeply in love with her).
"Marry me?" he whispers.
Her eyes widen the same time as his does, he doesn't know why he just said that, he doesn't even know how he said it.
(Later, he'd realise he does. If you find the woman you'd want to spend the entirety of your life with, through the good, the bad, the fucking ugly, and accepts you the way you are with all your flaws and weaknesses and every single colour and shade of your sins, you'd want them with you forever. And marriage guarantees forever.
Or at least, it used to.)
"Haz," Daphne says, her eyes shifting from steele blue to cloudy grey.
Harry realises he made a mistake.
He sits up and kneels in front of her, one hand cupping her cheek and the other on the wall behind her. He wants to apologise, tell her he didn't mean it, that it was a mistake, that he was caught up in her beauty, that he was being an idiot, that he's Harry Potter and she shouldn't take what the hell he says seriously.
But he doesn't, because if he does, then he's lying to himself.
And Harry Potter is anything but a liar.
I must not tell lies.
He has that branded on the back of his hand.
"I meant it," Harry tells her, "I don't have a ring right now and I don't have a speech prepared, but I love you and I just realised it and I want you with me, here, forever."
Harry's voice is cracking and Daphne's got tears running down her face, and by god, she's more beautiful than ever.
"Harry," she says, "Harry, Harry, Harry."
Daphne keeps repeating his name, as if she's torn between telling him off and proud, he doesn't know which is which, but when she crashes her lips into his, Harry thinks he's got the answer.
Her arms wrap around his neck, pulling her off the floor and closer to him. He copies her motion with his arms on her waist pulling her to him, and ignoring the silenced shrieks of the portraits above.
It tastes of love and understanding and despair and want and need and everything else that they feel. It tastes of ice and coffee and loneliness and it tastes of passion and treacle and recklessness.
Its perfect (only, it's not).
When they separate, Daphne leans against him. They're in the centre of the entrance hall, limbs entangled and entwined, its impossible to know where one would begin and the other would end.
"I'll always be yours," she tells him, "Emotionally, physically, psychologically, I am yours, Harry Potter, don't doubt that."
Harry pulls her in tighter, "But?"
Daphne waits for a beat, "But, I'm Daphne Greengrass, and you're Harry Potter, the Wizarding World would never agree."
"Who cares what they think?" Harry says, his voice even, he can't lose his temper now, no, he needs to listen, maybe she'd say yes, she's only telling him the things he'd need to be careful of.
She'd always been like that; make him feel stupid, then make him think, then make him seem like he's the smartest person in the world.
It's one of the reasons he loves her, really.
"I do," she whispered. "I'm not Andromeda Black, Haz, I'm not strong enough to go through what society will throw. I'm not."
She hides her face into the crook of his neck, she hates feeling weak. Harry knows this. She'd be a hundred different things but weak.
She couldn't handle it, wouldn't be able to.
He feels like an ass.
(It wouldn't be the first time).
Everlasting Love [U2]
"Hey, Haz?" Daphne asks over the kitchen counter. She's waiting for the special sunday pancakes Harry makes for Teddy, only today, Teddy slept over with his classmate's house.
Harry says it's because Teddy needs to be developed holistically and enrolling him in the muggle school in Islington would do that. Andromeda agrees with him. Daphne thinks Teddy's lucky his guardians are too muggle dependent.
But, if she had a child, Daphne thinks she'd enroll him in an independent muggle school too.
(It'll build their character better than being cooped up in a country manor with only elves and horses and annoying little sisters as company).
"Yeah?" Harry says, half his attention focused on flipping pancakes and half of the skinny blonde t-shirt stealer. (He always calls her that, but only during mornings and only when they're alone).
"You love me, right?" Daphne says, her hands tapping the marble top. (She has noisy hands, years and years of piano lessons would do that to you).
Harry stops what he's doing and turns off the stove. (He's a natural in the kitchen, he should have gone culinary instead of medicine, he'd be better off). He turns to look at her, his face examining hers.
She feels exposed, more exposed than normal, so she ducks her head.
Harry thinks otherwise, so he gently grips her chin to make her look at him.
An unsure steele blue meets a searching avada green; this wasn't the first time she asked that question, this isn't the first time he'll answer the same.
"What brought this on?" he asks, because Daphne is never unsure and is never vocal, and on the rare times that she is, Harry feels like he might need to burn someone.
Leaning her forehead to his, Daphne sighs and closes her eyes. "Nothing, don't worry about it."
Daphne feels his foot tap, impatience, disbelief. Harry clicks the roof of his mouth in response.
"That's not nothing Daph," he says.
"Well, maybe it is Haz," she replies.
"You don't just ask questions you know the answers to," he adds, ignoring her reply.
Daphne takes a breath, her hands on his shoulders. "Well, maybe I don't know the answer."
Harry didn't even need to think of a response, as he wraps one of his arms around her and pulls her for a kiss.
Morning breath be damned. Pancakes will be forgotten. Questions about love will no longer be heard.
Daphne has her answer, she doesn't need words to confirm it. Harry's always been a man of action anyway.
Drunk [Ed Sheeran]
A bright flash of light wakes Harry from his drunken stupor, he was about to yell at whoever tried to disturb his private time but his sheets suddenly vanished and he was dangling from the ceiling.
He tried to shout, but he found out he was silenced.
He squints his eyes at the figure who had the audacity to use magic against him and wake him up, but when the figure has floated his glasses to him, she suddenly started shouting.
"What the hell we're you thinking, Potter?!" Daphne yelled, her voice hoarse, as if she just woke up or just finished crying. "Did you know Teddy came crashing into my flat at three in the morning? Because he was afraid his papa was dead!? Did you know the heart attack that gave me?! The scare it gave Teddy!?"
Harry summoned is Holly wand, but found it at the hands of the blonde hag, so he summoned his other wand.
The eerie white glow of the elder wand stopped Daphne midrant, but then she wasn't deemed as the best pediatric healer for nothing.
"Expelliarmus!"
The elder wand changed directions, but Harry's hand was faster he grabbed it midway to Daphne's open palm and cast the counter for the levicorpus hex he's under.
He crashes into the bed and Daphne sends a multitude of pain hexes his way.
Hell hath no mother whose child was frightened.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Harry yells over the edge of the bed; he apparently crashed into the floor in dodging the piercing hex Daphne tried to throw at his crotch.
"You're sorry!? For what?! For scaring Teddy?! For making him floo to my flat at the middle of the night!? For drinking all night?! For being a drunk ass who passed out leaving your son, your seven year old son, alone in a house that runs on both magic and electricity?!" Daphne yelled at him, her wand still throwing hexes and curses at the cowering hero.
"What do you think that would've happened to him?! If he didn't know my floo address, what do you think?!" she asked, "What Harry?!"
"I don't know!" Harry yelled, fed up. A bright blue shield charm protecting his body, "Okay, I get it! I'm an irresponsible bastard who shouldn't be entrusted with a child! I get it, Daph! You don't have to rub it in! Merlin, woman."
Harry slumps his shoulders, flopping over to the bed. "I get it. I'm a self-centered prat," he sighs into the pillow, "How is he, anywho?"
Daphne sighs, sliding her wand into its holster and puts his on the nightstand, "He's okay, finally stopped crying after we watched the Little Mermaid for the millionth time."
Harry hums, "He always loved that movie."
"Yeah, I could quote it word for word now." Daphne tells him.
Time stills for a moment, Harry curled up in the edge of his bed and Daphne standing on the other; they looked like they both went through hell.
(That statement couldn't be anymore truer; one getting over being rejected by the same woman for the ninth time, the other for calming a hysterical metamorphagus whose only sense of calm and tranquility was a bunch of Disney movies and Captain Crunch).
"Why are you doing this, Haz?" Daphne sounds resigned, "It's not like my answer will change nor will our relationship, why do you go through this phase every time you propose?"
This makes Harry snap, "Because, Daph! Because every time I see Ron and Hermione, or Draco and Astoria, or Lisa and Seamus, or Padma and Blaise, or even, merlinfreaking Adrian and Penelope, I get jealous! I want what they have, and I can't."
"They can yell though the world that they're in love, and they've got the oaths, and the records, and the insurance, to prove it." Harry says, standing on top of the bed. He must have risen in the middle of his rant, "They could kiss in the middle of Diagon Alley and not get a fucking backlash or could have children together, or I don't know, have mortgages!"
Daphne looks at him, and Harry feels the seconds tick by. It seems tequila and scotch make his tongue a bit lose, "Do you really mean all of that?"
"Every word."
Daphne jumps him, both of them falling into the floor in a loud thump. Mouths were meeting and hands were roaming and clothes are getting torn and teeth grazes their necks and they dance a dance they've danced a million times before.
It takes them an hour and the room is reeking of their scent, it makes Harry grin like a loon and Daphne light up the entire room.
"I can't do any of what you said earlier, but I can do this." Daphne tells him, "I guess we could call it quits, then?"
"In your wildest dreams, Greengrass." Harry responds as he tops her once more.
Hope you enjoyed it!
Please review. (the more i get, the faster i could write the next vignette)