New chap :D

big kisses and hug to my lovely charming angel Irymia

thx love you're my savior

Hope you enjoy

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Chapter 10

The Slytherin common room

"What!?" Daphne said, annoyed by Tracey's burning stare.

"Don't 'what' me! You've been gazing at nothing stupidly for an hour, come, we'll be late for dinner," Tracey grasped her by the wrist and ran towards the exit.

Had she? She hadn't even realised. She felt fire building up again; she had submitted to her desires… Why should she be ashamed, though? It was her husband, after all, it's not like it was forbidden for her to touch him if she desired so. She ran a hand through her hair, trying to focus.

Tracey noticed something was off with her friend but decided to stand aside and be quiet. At the beginning of the year, she had noticed the death in Daphne's eyes—it was like her soul had disappeared and somehow Tracey had sensed her friend's magic fading slowly. Daphne said nothing and kept her façade. What was happening in her friend's life, Tracey wondered…

During the summer, her father had been busy as hell. Not just him but every pureblood head house: Parkinson's dad, Malfoy's, and Nott's. Something had happened in July, she felt, so she had dared and asked her father, but he had only said, 'The fates are dancing again.' What did he mean by that? Was Voldemort truly back... She glanced at the ice queen and smiled at her dazzled friend: she looked like Luna Lovegood. Perhaps someone was melting her ice, who knew?

At the other side of the school in Gryffindor's common room

"I told you, it will work," Hermione said to Harry cheerfully.

Harry laughed brightly. "Yeah, this was the first step, now we need to find a place."

Hermione nodded as she started thinking about possible solutions. Harry turned to Ron and asked him if Bill had returned from France yet.

"He was supposed to be back last week," Ron said blindly.

"Supposed?" Harry's brows furrowed.

Fred and George came behind him.

"Mom is freaking out but we believe a certain veela has something to do with it," whispered Fred, smirking at the triplet. Hermione rolled her eyes while Ron let out a groan of disgust.

"Are you jealous, Ronnie?" George mocked Ron.

Harry laughed. "Anyway, we're not worried since he added a week for a reason," George added, waving his hand, and left the room.

Harry looked up at Fred, who was still standing there, "Are you alright, Fred?"

Fred seemed to be in a state of sublime absentmindedness till Harry waved his hand before his face, and then he only smiled and exited the room, leaving Harry in quandary.

He gazed at the fire, remembering the heat that was engulfing his body a few hours ago as he was doing what seemed like devouring his wife. If there hadn't been a school to be back at, would they have continued with it or was it more like he was moving too fast and she just was too kind and trying not to embarrass him?

Before they had left the cave, she had been irritated...

The next day was normal. Both of them were busy with their school lives and homework, waiting for the day to be over. Daphne kept deliberating whether she should open the bloody box: the thought had been tormenting her for weeks.

Later that night

The couple was standing in the lavatory. Daphne asked him why he had wanted her to bring the box here: luck was with them last time because of Draco and Pansy but it might not be this time. Harry dismissed those concerns and asked her to trust him; she gave him a half-shrug. She was a bit nervous: in just a few moments, she would open the will of her brother.

Suddenly, Harry muttered something in a foreign language… wait, not a foreign one—it was Parseltongue! She had previously heard that he could speak it from other students. Her father had told her that all the magic languages must be learned but she never wanted to learn them.

The sink moved, and Daphne's eyes went wide.

Harry offered her his hand and led her inside the mysterious hole. They kept walking in the long dark corridor.

"You'll be surprised but this is where you could say I faced the young Voldemort," Harry remembered as he was holding her hand. 'Tom Riddle,' he thought of him. Why did Voldemort do what he did back then, what did he seek?

'There is only power and those who are too weak to seek it,' Voldemort had said to him once.

Why power and what kind of power was it that it led people to fight each other and kill each other while vying for it…

"Tell me, Daphne, what is power?" asked Harry out of the blue as they kept walking in the corridor, which was dark save for the Lumos on his wand.

Daphne only heard confusion and hesitation in his tone.

"Power is like fire that can burn you or can warm you up, it depends on how you use it... Power is a double-edged sword. Men seek it in order to prove themselves. To try to block something that is imperfect in them, to be part of history. As soon as they get it, the real trial begins. There are those who immediately lose that passion the moment they get it; some of them fall into the pit of power, so there is no return once they fall—" she paused for a second, looking down at the box. "Some seek it to make the world a better place and save it from those who want to burn it, to correct the mistakes of those who were before them," she finished.

Harry didn't say a word; instead, they kept walking for quite a while until they reached the front of a big ordinary metal door. Harry murmured something again but this time, Daphne said her thoughts out loud:

"I once heard you can speak the language of snakes, but I didn't believe it till now," she said, amazed.

"I didn't know about it at first, either. I spoke to a snake once, asked it not to attack my cousin, and back then in the second year, it sounded like our mother language to me."

"Hmmm," Daphne only hummed.

When the door opened, her eyes flashed.

They were standing at the end of a long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more serpents rose to a ceiling lost in the darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.

"Is this?" Daphne asked, gasping at the chamber, and she would have dropped the box if Harry didn't catch it in time.

"The legendary chamber of secrets," he confirmed.

She walked to the head of one of the stoney snakes and felt the damp stone with her fingers.

"It's beautiful," she whispered. She could feel the magic strings attached to the place—beautiful dark magic, it was like a melody or some kind of symphony. She handed the box to Harry and moved to the basilisk's skeleton in the middle.

Harry stole a glance at her as she was walking around the chamber. While he was studying the black wooden box in his hands, something caught his eyes.

"This box does not have a lock!" he yelled to his wife, who was analysing the bones of the basilisk in wonder. She returned to him, smiling.

They sat down on the damp stones of the chamber and he gave her back the box. She smiled warmly at it as she touched the crest. "We never use a lock—we use something else," she said to him.

His eyebrows knitted, confused.

She took a big breath, gathering all her courage as Harry patted her back in a comforting gesture. She bit down her thumb until it bled, and Harry frowned. She then pressed her thumb to the crest on the box and drew something with her blood, some V-shaped symbol or sign he didn't know. When she pulled her hand away from the box, her blood glowed and shifted, forming thorns all across the box.

The box floated in the air and started getting larger and larger until it turned into a trunk, made of gold with angels on the sides. The trunk opened, and he wanted to see what was inside but couldn't, because once Daphne opened the box, she suddenly sprang up and darted away, as if fearing what might be inside.

He tried to catch her and stop her, but she didn't look at him .

He held her hands in his. "You can do it," he encouraged her with a cheering smile.

Her throat felt dry as she leaned forward to see the contents of the trunk. Immediately, a loud gasp of sadness escaped her lips, and her heart clenched and squeezed in pain.

She dipped her hands inside to find fabric. Her brother's favourite cloak. She took it in her hands as she bent down on the floor, burying her face in the article, inhaling its smell, muttering his name. It still smelled like Eros after all these months... She felt herself engulfed by her brother's presence as if she was hugging him again and he was still there.

Harry could understand what she was going through. This cloak meant something to her, just like his parents' pictures meant everything to him.

Those disjecta membra kept the memory of them alive, reminding one that those people had lived once...

She fought her tears when she felt Harry's presence and exhaled, looking so focused on the task in her hands.

He was close to her, trying to help her. She looked again and found this time a wooden box. Picking it up, she waved at the golden wardens, who started to melt and instead, a golden crown appeared. Harry had never seen a crown before, not like this one: it was a beautiful golden crown, adorned with emeralds, diamonds, and rubies.

Harry started praising the object out loud, and she smiled warmly. "It belonged to my mother once, to whom it was given by my great grandmother Tolina. Her husband, my great grandfather, had gifted it to her as a sign of his love. He made her a regent and she was the first queen who truly ruled the estate beside him. Not all Queens are allowed to wear it, except for regents and those who are from the main family, and even they sometimes can't wear it. Eros, my brother, vowed that no one would ever wear it after my mother. Her name was Diane. She was so beautiful, so kind," she recalled, closing her eyes and picturing her mother. She handed the crown to him carefully to let him see.

As he touched it and took a closer look at it, he saw that it was glowing. The rubies were tear-shaped, fanning out from the largest to the smallest on both sides while the biggest one was sitting in the middle of the crown. Small pieces of diamonds girdled the rubies, giving them more sheen, while a row of emeralds trickled down from every ruby like a string of thorns. It looked like blooming roses. Such a beautiful queen crown—he thought for a second that he was in one of the Indiana Jones films, touching some valuable treasure. He laughed at his silly imagination.

As Harry was busy studying the crown, Daphne grasped another box that was inside. She didn't want him to be left out if she wanted him to be here with her—after all, he had been kind enough to bring Eva to her despite all the risks; he did it with her happiness in mind.

The box was middle-sized, decorated with rubies. When she opened it, it was full of jewels that had belonged to her mother. She frowned.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked, worried, putting the crown back carefully in its place.

"These are my mother's jewels, I thought my sisters had taken their share of them," she answered, looking at him, then to the jewels again.

She took in her hand a string of pearls. "I thought this one was buried with her," she ran her fingers through it.

"Mother, can I have it?" little Daphne asked her mother, who was dressing up.

"Maybe one day," Diane answered, mocking.

"But I love it," Daphne whined.

"Stop annoying your mother, you brat, Kou said as he bopped her on the head.

She ran to her mother, crying, and with a laugh, Diane hugged her.

She smiled as she combed her fingers through the pearls.

"Is that bad?" Harry asked her.

"Well, I don't know why it's with Eros, and why they didn't…my eldest sister Vanya always wanted to have them; as for the others, I don't know."

"Nevermind," she shrugged. She found a violin, his favourite instrument, and let out a big moan of pleasure.

"Do you play the violin?" Harry raised one eyebrow.

"Well, I used to. Eros taught me how to play it: he used to go to the servants' dorm and play for the children," she replied, giggling.

She brushed her fingers against the strings. She would pay anything for those days to come back.

This was everything Eros had treasured; it was up to her to pass on his legacy. When they finally reached a thick book, they saw that its cover was made of dragon scales—if those were a dragon's, since the colour kept changing magically. Harry leaned forward to pick it up but Daphne screamed, stopping him as he looked up at her. His fingers suddenly touched the book and he felt lightning hitting him, sending him flying across the room.

She ran to him, frowning, and helped him up, muttering apologies as she should have warned him.

"What was that, a ward?" Harry asked, half-angry.

She didn't blame him, more like she felt sorry for him: he'd just gotten blasted off by a book.

"It was the book defending itself, consider yourself lucky that it didn't kill you right away," she smiled widely, congratulating him on his good luck.

Harry let out a caustic laugh, still feeling pain in his finger. When he looked, his index and middle fingers were frayed. 'What the fuck?' Had a book done this to him? Perfect, first Umbridge's quill and now a book. He raised his eyebrows in anger, waiting for an explanation.

She waved her wand and summoned the book. When it came closer, Harry's instinct made him take a defensive position, pointing his wand at it.

Daphne wanted to laugh, but she suppressed it as she marched to the book, waving her hand over it. The book opened automatically, and its pages started flipping. "Long time no see, my friend," she greeted it as an old friend, and the flipping stopped at some point. The pages were blank.

She eyed Harry. Should she trust him and tell him about this book?

"How is your Occlumency?" she asked with seriousness.

"I'm not bad, professor Lupin tutored me this summer." He wasn't lying.

She nodded with a hum.

"This, husband, is the original magic grimoire. Each page contains all the magic spells, charms, wards, spiritual and demonic powers of the world, how to control and tame them day by day. When someone creates a new spell or something, the book registers it. This is the holy book of the wizards; its heaviness is the heaviness of history. But only one person can touch it and control it. That person is the king: he is the only one who must and is allowed to have it. We let each pureblood family have a grimoire to write down their secrets and magic in, but this one is the original book, and it has them all. The one who has it, rules the world," she explained to him.

"—To explain more, this is what in legends is referred to as the Holy Grail or Excalibur the sword of Arthur, you get the idea?"

"Does that mean you're a queen?" he asked.

She laughed. "Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Who was this king, Harry?"

"Your brother," he said in awe. "Wait, you said only the king can touch it, why can you?" he blurted out.

"Correct, only the king; the king is dead, Harry, and the book needs a guardian. If this falls into the wrong hands, well... you can imagine what will happen," she said seriously.

"I trust you, Harry, otherwise I wouldn't have told you any of this," she said with a bit of regret, but she couldn't hide it from him. Maybe Eros had picked him to help her carry this burden.

He smiled at her. "It's safe with me. Besides, secrets make things more interesting. But what will you do now?" he asked as he came forward.

She rolled her eyes to the book and sighed.

"Be your wife," she admitted as she waved for the book to close and sent it back into the trunk.

Two pieces of parchment fell out of it.

He bent down to pick them up. One was a picture and the other was blank.

The picture showed a bunch of people wearing the same outfits, smiling at the camera. When he counted them, there were fourteen people. He recognised the person in the middle as he looked up at her and then to the photo again.

"You look young here," he confessed.

"Let me see," she leaned to him. When he showed it to her, she let out an 'O' of surprise and joy.

"Oh my! Yeah, I do! I was four or five—can't remember, honestly," she admitted with glee in her eyes.

"You're holding a sword twice as big as you," he smirked at her.

She flushed. " was a tomboy back then," she snapped.

"Who are these chaps?" he smiled at her.

"These are the knights' leaders. The one behind me is my brother Eros, he was ten years older than me. This, next to him on the right, is Berz—you met on our wedding night, remember?" Harry nodded as he remembered the scary man from before, but here in the picture, the latter looked more relaxed and his smile was full of pride; he looked like a military man. Her brother resembled her: he had the same eye and hair colour, and his smile was full of confidence. Harry looked at her, and she continued. "This on the left is Osman. He looks like a troublemaker but he's nice. The others too, each has his own personality and idiosyncrasies. Eros was so close to them and so was I, which is what my aunt wanted my father to punish me for," she said the last sentence in sympathy, playing with her hair.

"Punish you?" asked Harry, shocked.

"Well, she said it was unladylike to hang out with men, and military men specifically. 'What kind of princess runs in the dirt with the servants,' she said. She was trying to mother me because our mother had died by that time," she told him, waving her hands in the air.

Harry wanted to know more about her and her family. He didn't want to pry, though, so instead, he said:

"Well, my aunt and uncle punished me for accidental magic and each time their son failed at something or when something bad happened to them in general, they said I was a bad omen," he sighed.

Her eyebrows frowned in question. "Yep," he said with a pop.

He had also had to live with the people he didn't get on with instead of those he loved.

"We have all night. You can tell me about your family if you want," Harry suggested, looking around the chamber.

Daphne beamed at him. 'Is he an angel or what?'—'Stop drooling!' her inner selves were fighting over her desires.

"My family is far weirder, far more complicated. Most of them think only of themselves and how to save their arses. Eros was the only brother I had from my mother alongside my other three sisters: Vanya, Laya, and Isleen. But he was the only one who took care of me after my mother died. I was six, and Vanya married our cousin, the minister of Egypt; Laya preferred to stay grey and hide in the shadows, working to achieve world peace in the Muggleworld in, emm, what was its name? 'FBI' I think it was called. But she died during a muggle terrorist attack. Isleen ran away and father disowned her; he killed her later, avoiding a scandal, of course. My Father king Chronos remarried. It was a foreign woman named Aurelia, and that's where all the stories began. He had with her two daughters and one son; the son's name is Phobos and he was a bastard, born before they married, and he acknowledged him as his true heir despite Eros being the eldest. That was when the real problems began. When father died two years ago, Phobos and Eros started a war for the throne. Phobos won and he sits on it now... It's a very long story, I don't think you would want to hear it all," she said, gathering all the items back inside the box and trying her best not to reminisce. The past is past, she kept reminding herself.

"And that's why you're with the Greengrasses?" he simply said.

She stopped moving for a while, trying to shirk answering him.

"—My father hated me, saying I was the spitting image of my mother and that her ghost lived in me to haunt him. He decided to kill me and that's when Cyrus stepped in and plotted with Eros to help me abscond. And that's my story," she sighed, half smiling.

'The sword of justice will be expecting her as a traitor,' Harry remembered Eva's words during the summer holiday. Daphne felt afraid and trapped. "Cyrus can't keep you forever, and when things turn around, we will live together," he promised her. Even though he himself didn't know how it would end, whether they were going to win or not, the hope must always be there.

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Harry," she warned him.

Harry frowned: what was that supposed to mean? That there would be no good future or they wouldn't be together? Did she not trust him? Wasn't the point of this whole marriage that the two would be together forever; she herself said that. Or was there something else...

That night had sealed a deal between the two: she would be shielded by his name and he in return would have Sirius's freedom back, right? Wasn't that what Eva and Berz had said back then in July?

But now that they were in a real marriage, they both thought it their duty to make it work. So what had happened, why was she hesitating? Had their kiss from yesterday made her regret things? But if it had, she wouldn't be sharing this with him... this girl was so confusing yet so readable.

Daphne just retreated to gather the stuff. She had said too much anyway, but she must stay strong. Despite her trust in him, there were things he must not know. He would know one day but not today.

Harry said nothing: if she didn't want to talk, he wouldn't disturb her. It was good that she trusted him enough to open this trunk and to talk about her family with him. Again, he wondered why people fought for power.

"You can tell me more about this another time— you said the sacred all have grimoires?" he recalled.

She turned to him, nodding as she whipped her hair in the air.

He put his fingers to his chin and started thinking: could his family have had one?

"Ah! you forgot this blank parchment, maybe it's important, and it's sealed," he reminded her as he scanned it. Perhaps it was like the Marauders' map and it opened the same way the box did.

She took it from his hands and analysed it for a moment. She murmured something and drew blood over it. Seconds later, words started to appear on top of the parchment, and she gave it to Harry. "Read it," she commanded without looking at him.

Harry neither nodded nor disagreed.

Daphne sat down, closing her eyes and waiting for Harry's reaction. That parchment was Eros' final words. 'Hold yourself,' she said to herself as her hands squeezed into fists on her thighs.

"My dearest dove,–" Harry paused, asking her if he should really read it. She nodded, looking away.

"–This message I will carry in the book so it is likely that you will never read it because I am writing for a contingency that I do not want to see fulfilled. And if my wish is not fulfilled and you are reading this letter, then this means that my soul has left this world—" Harry paused for a second to glance at her: she was shivering, trying to hold herself together.

"—Since you are reading these lines, this means I left this false world.

I know what you have stained your hand with. I have always thought that you had been caught in such a manipulative game. I don't blame you and never will, but I do blame myself, for I will not let them sacrifice you to pay for their dirt, even though we pledged and swore to him that I would not rebel against him and that he would not abandon me.

But they have broken their promises and did what they said they would never do.

Today I leave you with this unjust world in which a father neglected his son, because instead of living in this mortal world as an oppressor who killed his brother, who loves for the sake of power and prestige, I prefer death, wronged sister of mine.

I did what I thought was right and I don't blame you and never will.

You sacrificed yourself and handed your soul to the gallows, for a better future and I am proud of what my sister has become and will become. Live and show the world the fate of our family has not been ordained and the strength of our family will not go extinct.

The Vasilia dynasty did not go extinct and my blood was not wasted.

You are alive and continue on the path our mother recommended to us. I have left this world, but I have gone comfortably.

Perhaps my name will not be written in the golden history pages like their names; they will not talk about my victories in the future; I will not have a throne to rule the world, and most likely they will write that I was a rebellious and traitorous prince... So be it, to write and to hide what God knows about His servants.

After years or maybe after ages, there will come a day when the stories of the oppressed will be narrated... someone will tell our story... some will hear and know the truth, and on that day, the right of the oppressed will be returned to its owner."

Harry finished, drowning in guilt and regret at having read what looked like Eros's goodbye to his sister. He closed his eyes and prayed for his brother-in-law to rest in peace. They must have shared a strong bond and whatever happened to these two, he had faced death with honour, and whatever the two had been involved in, he had saved her from it.

He turned to smooth out her worries. "I'm sorry," he sighed in sympathy, but he found her crying harshly, hugging Eros' cloak and shouting his name. He ran to hug her from behind as she cried.

Daphne felt her chest tightening and her breath hashing, trying to fight the tears as Harry was reading the last words of Eros, his final will in the world of the living. The moment she heard him say, 'I know in what that you stained your hand,' her whole world sank into darkness; she sensed no time, no heart beating. Nothing but coldness crept over her body and her body started to move on its own, betraying her, guiding her to what looked like her brother's cloak, that silky cloak. The moment she touched it, her legs tripped, and she fell to her knees, burying her face in that cloak and hugging it tightly. ''Forgive me, please,'' whispered Daphne, letting herself quiver with the restrained grief she had been holding for months, save for those weak tears she had shed on her wedding night. She hadn't cried at all, kept it all inside. What better thing is there than holding all your scars inside, they said, but now she could no longer resist the urge.

The sobbing was getting harsher. A heavy body came behind her and hands wrapped around her.

"He knew," she muttered as Harry was embracing her from behind, but she couldn't stop. Her brother had known what she had done, what she did to him; he had always known, and yet he kept protecting her. "He knew, Harry, of my sin, he always has," she cried hysterically, turning to him. "Brother," she kept calling for him, weeping on the floor as Harry held her closer to him, tightening his arms around her to make her relax. "It's okay, just let it out, let it out," Harry's voice was full of sorrow.

Daphne only sobbed harder, covering her mouth. Harry turned her around, pulling her into his arms as she kept crying loudly.

Harry was stupefied at first: ever since he'd met her, she had never cried or shown weakness, and now she was having a breakdown. He rubbed her back. "H-he said you're brave and he is proud of you," Harry tried to read between the lines of Eros's letter, feeling pain in his chest. He himself had cried as shit when he saw Cedric die in front of him and his final words had been to take his body back to his father. Maybe when he had some time, he would visit his grave.

"Proud of what!? My brother knew, Harry! He had always known and did not say anything. I buried our honour and dignity in the ground and he did not say anything, he kept protecting me despite what I did," she yelled at him. Her hand flapped on her chest. He was speechless, wondering what she was being hysterical about. He tried to hold her as much as he could, but she tried to push him away. He tightened his grip on her until she gave up, crying harder on his chest.

After she had been crying for so long, her breath had finally steadied and she suddenly stopped moving. When he looked down, she looked like she had fallen asleep or passed out.

He kept hugging her for some time. He couldn't move or carry her all the way to her dorm so instead, he decided to stay the night there in the chamber of secrets. He would find an excuse for his absence during the first period later.

The sleep didn't visit him at all.

He looked down at her as he wondered what kind of past she had. Brother against brother, father killing daughter; she might not have said it but it seemed there was more to this family…

He laid her head on his lap as he leaned against a stone statue of a snake. He took off his coat and covered her with it.

He hoped Ron would understand his absence. Now he had to think about a place to train Dumbledore's army. He couldn't teach them here: this was one of the places whose existence the world must not know about. He stared at Salazar Slytherin's statue. 'Cunning, Ambitious, Proud...'

''What were you trying to achieve?'' Harry asked Salazar.

He gazed down at her peaceful face. She had told him leadership was doing what was right. He thought of ways to stop the war before it started; Dumbledore was keeping him in the dark, and the adults thought they could handle all this themselves. The only people who believed in him were his best friends and Sirius. Now even Daphne believed in him, or she wouldn't have advised him to do the right thing and see things from different angles. His friends were Gryffindors, they judged from their perspective, and Daphne was a point of view from the other side. Before the summer, he had been blind to many things.

The royal family too—what was their story? Were they truly the rulers of the world? Why weren't they doing anything, instead fighting for power? Eva, Sirius, and Daphne had said that only the twenty-eight families, the ministers, and high-ranking wizards like Dumbledore knew about their existence. Did Voldemort know about them? Wouldn't he try to take them down instead? Shite, how silly he was, of course he would. Lucius was part of the death eaters and head of a pureblood household. He might rebel against the ministry, Harry understood that, but didn't that mean he was a traitor of the crown because he was with a miscreant like Voldemort.. .now everything was even more complicated.

Voldemort and this Phobos, if they clashed. the world would pay and billions would die. He needed to thwart it but first, Daphne must tell him everything. He noticed her fear when she had spoken Phobos's name earlier. If Eros, who was older than her, had lost to this Phobos, who was the same age as them, didn't that mean he was stronger?

He took off his glasses and massaged his eyes, 'Fuck'.

The minister's office

Fudge was facing a big pile of papers he must sign. Sipping his finest bourbon, he was dog-tired and kept yawning; weariness was eating him as he is trying to solve this country's problems, and Dumbledore wasn't making it easy for him, which was why he had sent Umbridge to the school to keep an eye on him and his boy and to keep him distracted. Sirius Black was still at large, and probably he was the person behind these mysterious crimes. That Bastard! He had been in their hands two years ago and now he was at large... Busy with his thoughts, he didn't hear the knocking on his office door. When he let them in, it was the Weasley boy. He'd made a great move by placing one of the Weasleys closer to him—keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

"Sir, there is a man who wants to meet you. He said it's urgent," Percy Weasley said in a strict tone.

Fudge tried to guess who would want to see him at this hour.

"Let him in," he said, waving his hand tiredly.

Percy nodded and let the man enter.

Two men came in. One was at the door while the other was wearing a hood hiding his figure.

When Fudge moved his eyes up, he paled as he stood up, frightened, and shock was eating him inside. He waved to Percy, and the ginger boy left.

"Forgive me, your majesty, I didn't recognise you at first, your excellency honoured me with their presence," Fudge bowed.

The blond guy only smiled and waved to the minister to sit back in his chair as he sat at the opposite side of the table.

"No need to be frightened, friend, I should have announced my arrival. It seems you're quite busy," the guy said as he glanced at the papers and files around the office.

Fudge took out of his pocket a handkerchief and wiped off the sweat that was falling over his face. King Phobos was sitting in his office in the middle of the night. He should answer him but he felt paralysed.

"A minister must keep everything running, your majesty," he answered poorly.

'Ahah,' Phobos nodded at him, raising his eyebrows.

"What troubles his excellency that it urged him to come in person?" Fudge gathered courage and asked the young king.

"Well, friend, there is some disturbing news running around my council, saying that Britain has been troubled for some time," Phobos said, rubbing his bearded chin.

"Rumours!" Fudge snapped, shaking his head. He remembered who was in front of him and lowered down his head, afraid to cross the line. "Those are false rumours, your grace, to disturb the peace of Britain, from some fame diggers, you shouldn't be troubled with them," he explained, lowering his voice. A faintly quizzical look came into Phobos's incisive stare.

"Rumours, you say—" Phobos murmured, heavy-eyed.

Fudge swore that he could sense the danger filling the room. He might not leave this room alive.

"It started during your coronation, your grace, to disturb the peace, propaganda for a disorder," Fudge hoped that this might work.

Phobos lifted his chin and let out a sigh of irritation.

"And we hope you have captured the plotters," Phobos said calmly with a fake smile.

"We know who's behind it but we need actual proof or we can't put them on trial. We are keeping them under supervision, your majesty needs not to be worried about such minor problems. We've troubled him, and I'm ashamed of it," Fudge apologised.

"You better fix it or I will do it myself," Phobos warned, pointing at Fudge as he rose up out of his chair.

Fudge rose to bow to him as he was leaving. He issued a sigh of relief. Phobos bounced around at the edge of the door. "You didn't tell me their names, the suspects?" Phobos demanded.

"Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore, your majesty," Fudge gulped.

Phobos raised an eyebrow. 'Dumbledore?' he waved with his hand to the minister and walked out of the door.

The moment King Phobos was behind the door, Fudge's legs betrayed him, and he fell on the chair, burying his head in his hands in fear. When Percy entered and saw him deadly pale, he ran to him, asking if he could help. Fudge shook his head. He was paralysed. 'The king will show no mercy if I fail'. Umbridge must destroy these two before his majesty's patience wore off.

On the other side of the door, the king was walking down the corridors of the ministry, recalling his meeting with the minister. So it was true, the rumours.

His thoughts were interrupted by his guard.

"Do you think he was lying, your majesty?" the tall brood man with auburn hair, who was wearing a long black coat, hiding his weapon under it, said.

Phobos lifted his head and raised his left eyebrow. "Well, how about a little bet, Sam?"

Sam, his guard, smiled.

"Gather information about Dumbledore and Harry Potter, leave no details out," Phobos ordered, and Sam bowed. As they kept walking, another guard came, bowing.

"Your majesty, I've arranged everything for your undercover visits around the states."

"Good! I think we should start with Russia."

Back in Hogwarts

Daphne felt cold so she tried to shake herself awake, but she felt her body aching, and there was a soreness in her face. Her eyes were burning and heavy. She couldn't even rub them as she turned to see herself not in bed but instead on the floor, and her head was on no one else's but her husband's lap.

Her eyes still burning, she tried to open them widely. She had cried so much that it felt like her tears had all dried out. She managed to sit up as a coat fell off her shoulders. When she caught it, she looked between it and her husband, who was leaning his back on a stone wall, sleeping in just a thin basic shirt with a print. She frowned: wouldn't he get cold! She tried to cover him with the coat. ''What a fool, you should've woken me up," she whispered to him.

She gazed at his peaceful sleeping face; she couldn't help but pressed her hand to his cheek, feeling him.

Harry scratched his arms when he felt her hand on his cheek. She was about to retrieve her hand but he put his over hers.

"Good morning, how are you feeling?" he whispered as he stared at her.

"Better, except my eyes are hurting," she said, trying to blink. He giggled.

"Did I wake you up?" Daphne whispered, rubbing his cheek with her knuckles.

Harry leaned into her touch, shaking his head. "No. I was awake. You didn't sleep for long, it's been just three hours."

"Oh," she sighed, leaning her back next to him against the wall.

"Why didn't you wake me up, fool," she said, closing her eyes, enjoying the silence.

"We still have time," he replied, laughing.

"I like this place...away from people ...away from everything...no one will ever find us here," she said, sitting down and leaning her head on his shoulder.

"Yeah."

After a few quiet moments, they stood up, preparing to leave.

He cupped her face and leaned to look at her closely. Then he brushed her hair away, kissing each cheek smoothly. "It will go at the end… the pain," Harry said and hugged her.

Daphne said nothing. She felt secure in his arms and wanted to stay longer there but they have to part, people would start looking for them.

They didn't talk about last night, about her breakdown, but he assured her that her pain was his.

"It will be a good place to train, don't you think?" she said, smiling, looking around and trying to lighten the mood up a bit.

"I don't think it's a good place for them," Harry argued.

"Not them... Us," she turned and gave him a sharp and excited look.

Harry's eyes widened. 'What!?'

A/N

Sooo, this was chapter 10 hope you enjoyed it.

what do you think of Daphne's background?

is this truly her story hmm ? and what is this sin of her?

as I was writing the letter of Eros I was listening to a sad song and crying XD

don't forget reviews,reviews

See ya Ciao

XOXOXOXOXOX