Chapter Four – Finally Friends

A light drift of snow had covered the land around Hogwarts in a soft white, and the castle's inhabitants were scampering about on it like little ants. Or so it seemed to Daphne as she circled the sky far above them. The cold winter air brushed through her feathers, but she was not cold. She was never cold in her crow form.

It was the first sunny day of the year, so the young witches and wizards had swapped their robes and hats for cloaks and scarves and poured out en masse. Daphne saw some Gryffindors having a snowball fight, other students were ice skating on the frozen lake, and some were just walking around, basking in the rays of the sun. A group of Hufflepuffs were playing tag some distance away, but one of them got too close to the Whomping Willow and a branch hurled him away. How stupid could you be?

From so far above, Daphne could not make out any faces. To her, the students were just little black specks, even smaller than usual They were, however, specks with bright flickering auras common to all magical beings. Daphne paid particular attention to an aura she had learned to recognise since Christmas. The aura moved purposefully towards two others, standing a little apart, close together and, if Daphne had to guess, heads together.

Her crow's heart beat faster.

The time had finally come! Harry's plan and her big entrance!

Who would have thought she would be so excited about it?

Harry walked up to the Weasley twins. Although Daphne couldn't hear his words from this distance, they had been burned into her memory as they had gone over their plan so many times, even rehearsed it. Even Harry's voice was burned into her memory.

"Can I see your map again? I need to see where Snape is. I want to play him a prank."

Daphne had always raised an eyebrow at this point – a gesture she was quite proud of – but Harry had doubted the twins would react that way. And indeed, Harry's stupidly ingenious plan seemed to work. She saw one of the twins take something out of his pocket, quite possibly a piece of parchment. He touched it with his wand and then the three of them bent over it together.

Not yet. Not yet.

If she appeared too soon, the twins would see her name on the map.

Not yet. Not yet. Not – now!

One of the twins had touched the map again with his wand, and a moment later Harry had brushed through his hair, just as they had planned.

Daphne went into a dive. The cold wind ruffled her feathers. The ground came closer quickly. Now she could see Harry's face. The tiniest of smiles curled around his lips.

Don't lose your focus!

Daphne spread her claws. Her heart pounded faster and faster. She let out a scream. The twins lifted their heads; their eyes widened, but they were too slow. Daphne's claws grabbed the map and ripped it out of the twin's hand.

Immediately, Daphne soared back into the sky. She heard loud screams, but did not look back. Then suddenly flashes shot through the air. She rolled to the right and the flashes missed her.

Daphne started to laugh.

"Caw, Caw, caw!"

Good gracious, what had gotten into her? This was what happened when you got involved with a Gryffindor. You lost all control over yourself...

Daphne was now so high up that no spell could reach her. With powerful flaps of her wings, she flew back towards the castle.

She didn't seem to be the only one ecstatic about their successful thievery. When Harry walked into their deserted classroom later, he was beaming.

"That was incredible, Daphne! The way you swooped down and snatched the map! And then your roll in the air! You should've heard the twins swearing afterwards. That was incredible – you are incredible!"

With that, he ran to her and gave her a stormy hug. Daphne stiffened, so surprised was she by his behaviour. Then Harry seemed to realise what he was doing, because he abruptly let go of her and took a step back. He looked down at the floor, but Daphne could still see the slight pink glow in his face. Her cheeks were flushed too.

She cleared her throat. "Well then, Sir Harry. So your plan really did work. And it seems we don't make such a bad team."

"Well then, Sir Harry. So your plan really did work. And it seems we don't make such a bad team."

Harry had recovered from his moment of shock, although he still had no idea what had just happened. He had never hugged anyone like that before.

He grinned at Daphne. "Yes, we are."

Daphne grinned back. Together they sat down on the desks and dangled their legs. Daphne brushed her black hair out of her face before she suddenly burst out laughing. Her laugh was bright and clear and infectious. Harry was grinning so broadly now that his cheeks were starting to hurt.

"Did they really swear?" asked Daphne, laughing.

"Oh, yes. Dastardly beast they called you. And spawn of hell dipped in pitch. The punishment of God for their forgotten homework and scourge of respectable scalawags."

"I would have loved to hear that."

"That's why I'm telling you!"

Daphne nodded. "And now we have the map..."

"We have."

"We can use it together."

"Of course."

Daphne turned to face him. Her golden eyes sparkled mischievously. "Now we have your Invisibility Cloak, a map showing us every living thing in the castle, and I can turn into a crow. We'll be unstoppable!"

"And soon I'll be able to turn into an animal too, count on it!" said Harry resolutely.

Daphne raised an eyebrow, but her smile took the edge off her expression. "With a teacher like me, most definitely."

Harry returned her gaze, remembering that their arrangement at Christmas had not been a one-way street. So far, though, their entire relationship had been far too one-sided for him, which Daphne's words only confirmed once again.

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

"What do you mean?"

"When we first met, I told you we could certainly learn some things from each other. But so far I've only learned from you. And today you helped me too."

"I helped myself too, so you won't rat me out. And the map will be useful for –"

Harry shook his head. "That's not enough. I want to do more for you, for everything you've done for me. That was our agreement, wasn't it?"

Daphne regarded him with an expression on her face that Harry was unable to interpret. At that moment, a gaggle of chattering students passed in the corridor, but neither of them took their eyes off the other.

"How can I help you, Daphne?"

More seconds passed as Daphne just stared at him, but her gaze was still inscrutable; he hadn't the faintest idea what was going on in her head at that moment.

"Daphne –"

"Practice spells with me!"

Harry stopped. "Huh?"

"I told you I practise magic in my spare time," Daphne continued quickly. "But I don't have a training partner. You can help me practise." She hesitated, closed her mouth, then opened it again. "Please."

Well, at least then it wouldn't be quite so one-sided, Harry thought, even if he wasn't sure how helpful it would be for Daphne to train with him. After all, her magical skills were clearly more advanced than his.

"All right," he said. "And I promise I'll make every effort to catch up and be a good training partner for you."

Daphne gave him a gentle smile. "I assumed you would, Sir Harry."

With that, she grabbed her wand and rose from her seat. Harry did the same.

"Sir Daphne."

From then on, there was a new dynamic in Harry and Daphne's relationship. While Daphne continued to help him strengthen his bond with his inner magic, hopefully enabling his Animagus transformation in the future, they also took time to practise spells together after each of their secret meetings – which were now almost every night. The entire first-year syllabus and beyond.

Harry quickly learned that the reason Daphne often looked so bored in class was that she had learned all the spells the summer before they had come to Hogwarts. And that was just with the help of her textbooks. Harry was once again deeply impressed by her, and also a little ashamed. Although he had devoured his textbooks like there was no tomorrow before the ride to Hogwarts, it had never occurred to him to try out the spells already.

He also accompanied Daphne on her nightly excursions into the Restricted Section to acquire even more knowledge. Sometimes they almost got caught, but they were lucky, also thanks to his Invisibility Cloak and their map, which showed a certain cat whose aura Daphne had difficulty sensing. However, he had a hard time stopping Daphne from using his cloak to steal rat poison – which would certainly also work on cats – from Hagrid's hut.

The thrill of the forbidden further encouraged Harry's fervour, and it also helped him get over the intermittent blandness that inevitably came with so much studying. Most of all, he enjoyed spending time with Daphne. She was a great teacher and training partner, he found, and so very different from his other friends. She was curious and ambitious, but also funny and daring. When she told him one evening that the Sorting Hat had considered her for Gryffindor – before it had unfortunately chosen Slytherin – Harry was only momentarily surprised. People didn't fit into fixed patterns, and that was also true of Daphne, even more so of her. Still, he looked forward to getting to know her better as time went on.

It was only understandable that with such extraordinary effort, Harry's progress was also considerable. Ron and Hermione wondered a little about it, while his teachers were delighted. Professor Flitwick often complained with a sly wink that he had not come to his house, while Professor Quirrell reveled in praising his powerful spells.

But the effort came at a price. Harry was often plagued by tiredness during the day, but after he and Daphne had fetched some Pepper-Up potions from the hospital wing one night, things got a little better.

At least until one night in March.

Harry was just practising a fire spell with Daphne when suddenly his eyes went black. He could feel himself collapsing on the stone floor before the darkness enveloped him...

As Harry regained consciousness, he felt a soft surface under his head. Pleasant, cool fingers stroked his temples. He slowly opened his eyes and looked into Daphne's amber irises.

"You should have told me how tired you were."

Harry lifted his head from her lap and sat up. He was embarrassed by his earlier weakness and the fact that Daphne had had to look after him.

"I'll be fine," he waved it off. "Just a bit short on sleep lately."

Daphne was still sitting on the floor. Looking up at him, she said, "Are you having nightmares too?"

"You have nightmares?"

"Sometimes. But an easy way to escape them is to delay sleep. Just don't sleep. You might be tired the next day, but it's worth it."

Even after three months, she was still an enigma to him in so many ways, Harry thought. He sat down on the floor opposite her. Daphne's golden eyes shone in the moonlight, and they seemed much warmer to him than when he had first seen them up close in the Restricted Section.

"What kind of nightmares do you have?"

A faint, almost sad smile played on Daphne's lips, but she did not look away. "Are you really asking me that? Do you think you've earned that knowledge by now?"

Harry remembered Daphne using the same words on an earlier occasion. But a lot had happened since then, so he nodded. "I'd like to know."

"Well, it's a good thing I trust you," Daphne laughed softly as she brushed a strand of black hair from her face. "In my nightmares, I dream of being locked up. In a cage, like my family."

Until now, Daphne had never said anything about her family, except that they had fallen in prestige and wealth, and lost their seat in the Wizengamot to the Malfoys. Harry had suspected that there was more going on between her and her family, and he was glad that she trusted him enough to tell him. Attentively he listened to her words.

"They are weak people..."

A variety of emotions slid across Daphne's face as she said this, but disgust and pain were particularly prominent. Harry felt like he was watching a dam burst.

"You know, I guess I had what many would call a good childhood," Daphne said then. "A lot better than what you had, Harry."

"Does everyone in the castle know that too?" he asked darkly.

Daphne gave him a faint smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. In an unusually quiet voice for her, she continued to speak.

"I grew up in a sheltered home. I had my parents, a younger sister, Astoria, and several house elves who attended to my every need. My parents were often away and my sister was simply younger than me, but still, I was never bored. I had the freedom to roam the grounds and use the huge library. And I always tried to imitate any magic I saw, whether it was the house elves' household spells or a spell my mother used to dry her hair. I was unsuccessful, of course. I was just a little girl, after all, and I didn't have a wand..."

Her words made Harry smile. He had no idea what house elves were, but he imagined a little Daphne running around a magnificent house with little winged creatures, shouting spells and waving a wooden spoon as if it were a wand.

"Maybe that's why my bursts of accidental magic were so strong, or so my parents thought. Once I made Astoria's dolls burst into flames because she took a glittering stone I found in the forest out of my room." Daphne laughed, but it sounded contemptuous. "They said I was destined to be a powerful witch one day. It took me several years to understand that the reason they hoped was that they weren't. They weren't powerful. They were only moderately gifted in magic, nor were they what you would call brave or determined. They were weak."

Harry leaned towards her. "What happened?"

"I found out the truth about my parents, that's what happened. My childhood was over that day. You see, my parents were always good to me. They gave me everything I wanted and never hit me. But they both came from centuries-old pure-blood families, with all the outdated views and prejudices that went with them. That's why they sympathised with Voldemort and his followers during the war, because they were finally showing Muggles and Muggle-borns their proper place in the world."

Daphne snorted disdainfully. Harry, meanwhile, had noticed that, unlike most other witches and wizards, she had no qualms about saying the name Voldemort.

"But they would never have fought themselves, of course," Daphne continued. "That would have required talent or courage. No, instead they supported the Death Eaters' side with gold and resources, with what was left of the Greengrasses' once great wealth. Lucius Malfoy was their contact, and soon he had them in the palm of his hand. By the time they realised what monsters they were dealing with, it was too late. They could not turn away or they would have been killed themselves, nor could they defect to the other side, who were losing the war and showing time and again that they could not protect their own. At least I think that was their thinking at the time. But then something happened. You happened, Harry. You defeated Voldemort and ended that dark era. Maybe my parents were even happy about it. But if they were, their joy did not last long. Many Death Eaters went unpunished, including Lucius Malfoy. He visited us often in my childhood, and I never thought anything of it until one evening when I was six years old. Then I witnessed something outrageous. I relive that moment in my nightmares..."

Harry had moved closer and closer to Daphne, so transfixed was he by her words. Their knees touched. He could feel Daphne's body trembling slightly.

"I had hidden in a cupboard to scare Astoria when my parents came out of my father's study with Lucius Malfoy. And guess what? My parents fell to their knees before him!" Daphne spat out the last words as if choking on them. "They kissed his feet and begged forgiveness for past mistakes! Oh, the disgust and shame that filled me then. Cruel, I tell you, cruel to see the glorified ideas you have of your parents as a child shattered in this way. But you know what, Harry?"

She looked at him with a piercing stare. Harry felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He wouldn't have been surprised if flames had leapt from her eyes at that moment.

"What, Daphne?"

"Today I look back on that moment with gratitude! Because that was the moment I made a decision for myself. Never, ever, under absolutely no circumstances would I ever allow myself to be humiliated the way my parents were. That was when I decided to learn. Every day. I decided to become powerful, a powerful witch who would never have to bow down to anyone."

All at once, a great deal became clear to Harry. He realised why Daphne was so eager to practise spells and increase her knowledge. He realised why she had been sneaking into the library every night, and he realised why she had walked this path of pain and blood to gain the magic she needed to achieve her goals.

And he realised why he had been drawn to Daphne from the moment he had met her.

Their backgrounds might be different, but he could still see himself in her, just a little, but still without any doubt. He, too, had experienced such a drastic moment that had changed his whole life forever, albeit in a different way than Daphne. It had been the moment when Hagrid had revealed to him that he was a wizard. In that moment, a whole new future had opened up for him. In that moment, his time as a sleepwalker had come to an end.

Loveless meals, a hard mattress on cold nights, the bullying, and the beatings – he had endured all this in silence. He had lived without purpose or meaning, without memory of what he had lost, only with the faint inkling that his miserable existence could not be all.

The revelation of a world beyond his imagination, and of the sacrifice his parents had made for him, had filled him with a new determination, as he realised only now, when looking back. It was the same determination that drew him to Daphne.

From the moment Hagrid had revealed his past to him on the storm-tossed island, it had been clear to him that he would go his own way in life, even if he had not been able to see the way clearly at the time. Even if he still did not see it clearly today. But he would go his way, wherever it would lead him. Just as Daphne would go her way.

"But my decision has also made me lonely," Daphne's soft voice pulled him out of his thoughts. "I can't look my parents in the eye anymore. And the other Slytherins are all stupid idiots." She laughed. "But better to be lonely than an idiot, right?"

"You don't have to be lonely anymore, Daphne. We're friends now, aren't we?" said Harry instinctively.

"You mean that?"

"Of course!"

A smile curled around Daphne's lips at his words. Inconspicuous if you didn't know what to look for, but Harry knew Daphne well enough by now to recognise the joy in that smile. It was perhaps the happiest smile Daphne had ever given him.

Although she had already taken his hand at Christmas, during their first conversation in that deserted classroom, it was only now that Harry felt she was genuinely accepting his offer. Perhaps she needed it as much as he did.

"Friends."

It was the next morning, as Harry sat with Ron and Hermione at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, that he heard the clicking of approaching heels.

Harry lifted his head to see a familiar face with amber eyes framed by silky black hair. It was a face he would never have expected to see in such a public place, however, as they had kept their relationship a secret from everyone until now.

"Hello, Harry. How are you?" said Daphne as she sat down beside him. "Did you sleep well?