Yes, this is a Person From The Modern World Gets Reincarnated Into the Harry Potter Universe. I know it's overdone but I've yet to see it done with a Dursley Character, so there's that. I just really wanted to give Harry a better childhood and also to study the Dursley's and how would they react to having a magical child.
JKR fucking sucks and I do not condone any of her hate messages. She's a bigot, trans people deserve the world and I don't even know if I should be posting this but god forgive me I can't let this fandom (and this story) go. Also, the wizarding world has a lot of plot holes that I will try to fix so this fic is not only a character study but a world devolopement fic at times? I guess?
Most of this fics have the Inserted character like fully mentally developed from birth but that's not a thing in here. Also they focus a lot on Learning Magic and How Magic Works and while I love those fics I could never do that, so this isn't that either. Also, Daisy has too much of Harry with her to be a scholar, tbh. What she is you shall see!
The tilte comes from the poem by e.e. cummings.
Chapter 1: You know the Dursleys, yeah? Perfectly normal family, right? Well, SIKE
See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shinning gold,
Rays of shinning whiteness.
Daisy Dursley was a perfectly normal girl. She lived in Little Whinging, Number 4 Privet Drive, with her mother, her father and her older brother, only a year older than her. Her cousin lived with them, too, but nobody liked to talk about it and so they didn't. She lived in a normal two-story house, went to a normal nursery school and had normal friends.
Except Daisy Dursley had a secret. A pretty big secret, in fact.
Daisy Dursley was only four years old but she already knew death. She knew a lot of things she shouldn't know, a lot of things no kid should be allowed to know. Although, to be fair to her parents and teachers, that wasn't their fault.
No, all of Daisy's strange knowledges came from her past life.
Daisy Dursley remembered a life she hadn't yet lived. She remembered people she hadn't met, adventures she hadn't had, books she hadn't read, movies she hadn't seen, songs she hadn't heard and things she hadn't learned. She knew a language she had never heard, a whole language she'd had no way of learning and yet sometimes she found herself thinking in Spanish. She remembered pain and white and hospitals just like she remembered laughter and yellow and friendship.
She knew those things were real just like she knew her mother was her mother and her father was her father or that the letters D, A, I, S and Y in that order made up her name. At first she couldn't differentiate between lives and memories, all of them a confused bundle in her mind. She kept talking about people she hadn't met and things she hadn't seen or done and worrying her mother so much that when Daisy turned three Petunia tried to convince Vernon to send her to a child psychologist.
Some part of her had known that it meant bad news and so Daisy had learnt to keep her mouth shut ever since. It also had helped that the memories got easier to differentiate, to put into two categories: The Then and The Now.
Most of the memories from The Then were too complex for her little mind, her childish brain not yet ready to process the memories of a full grown person. They were blurry and confusing and tinged with gold. Whenever Daisy tried to concentrate too much on them she ended up with awful headaches and so she had learned not to dwell too much on them. She couldn't avoid them either, and whenever she'd tried to suppress them they would only buzz behind her eyes like a swarm of angry bees, not letting her concentrate on anything at all. No, Daisy had realized the best way to deal with them was to let them come and go as they pleased and not try to avoid them or chase after them.
Adding another layer to the confusion cake was the fact that The Then, also, happened far in the future from The Now and that was a bit too much for her. Sometimes Daisy became confused about what things had happened and which were still to come. More than once she'd asked her parents for something only to realize later on that thing hadn't been invented yet. It was a bit of a pain because Daisy very much would like to play with a Wii but she would have to wait several years to even see one.
As she grew older the memories from The Then became clearer yet foggier at the same time. They made more sense and were easier to understand and to differentiate between memories from The Now but they were harder to remember. They brought headaches with them and the odd nosebleed when she tried to force them.
One of the things Daisy could recall with certain ease were some books. Books she'd read on a grey armchair for hours and hours while a machine tickled medicine in her veins trying to kill the sickness inside her bones. Books that had given her hope and warmth on her darkest days and felt as much like home as a place or a group of people could feel. Books about magic and friendship and adventure and Harry Potter.
She knew her cousin Harry Potter was the same Harry Potter from the books just like she knew the sun rose in the mornings and went to sleep in the evenings. She knew her cousin was destined for greatness and she knew what awaited him.
Her cousin Harry was a bit weird. He was quiet unlike Dudley, who always seemed to be screaming at some thing or another, and unlike Daisy, who was always talking everybody's ear off. He didn't cry or throw tantrums, he didn't talk about his day and, worst of all, he didn't laugh or giggle. Some part of Daisy knew that wasn't his fault. That the way Harry was wasn't his true nature because it's not in the nature of any child to be as contained as he was. Still, that didn't stop her from feeling awkward around him and his wide eyes that seemed to see everything all the time.
It was on a rainy September afternoon, when Daisy had just turned four, that she realized that, okay, maybe her cousin was weird, but that didn't mean she couldn't be friends with him. And also, maybe Harry was weird because he didn't have any friends at all.
And on that rainy September afternoon she decided to fix it: he could do with a friend. Daisy was of the opinion that everybody deserved at least one friend and if Harry was too awkward to find one by himself then Daisy would become that friend, no matter if he wanted it or not. It shouldn't matter that he didn't really talk, then, because Daisy talked enough for the both of them.
They'd just come back from a busy day at pre-school. Her brother had gotten into a fight at school and he'd gotten mud everywhere so her mother had left them both in the kitchen while she went to force Dudley into a bath.
Daisy wasn't sure if Harry was allowed in the kitchen. The boy didn't look very sure himself, standing there in the middle with his back so straight it couldn't be comfortable. He looked a bit like a deer caught in the headlights, completely uncomfortable in a place that was supposed to be safe and familiar, and it made her sad.
On the table was the 'home from school' kit her mother always had ready for Dudley and her. It consisted of an apple cut into slices, a juice box and animal crackers. Harry had never gotten one of those kits.
Set on fixing that grave mistake she climbed on the chair and pushed the plate towards him. "Share!" she called.
Harry blinked up at her utterly confused. "What?"
"My snack," she said. "I wanna share it with you."
Harry took a moment to process her words. "Why?"
"Mrs. Poe says sharing is caring." The 'so this is me caring' was left hanging in the air.
"Oh!" The smallest of smiles appeared on his lips. "Thank you," he said politely.
A silence fell upon them while they made work of the crackers and the apple. Daisy wasn't very good with silences and she didn't last even a minute before she was telling Harry all about her day, her friends and everything that came to mind. Harry didn't seem bothered by her non-stop chatter, those big green eyes of his set on her and brimming with attention. Since he wasn't talking he finished his half of the snack before Daisy had even made a dent on hers and so, without missing a beat, she pushed some more on his part of the plate. Then pretended not to notice his inquiring look and, completely ignoring his confusion, kept on telling him about how she and Bianca had managed to finally climb that tree on the playground.
Her mother came back, looking harried, stressed and a bit wet. Baths with Dudley were always a pain. She spotted the empty plate in front of Daisy and smiled.
"You finished it all! Good job, Day-day," she said in that sweet sugary voice she used whenever she talked to Daisy or Dudley. Then she spotted Harry and her smile vanished. "What are you still doing here?" she all but hissed, all traces of warmth and love completely gone from her voice.
The tiny smile that Harry had been sprouting since Daisy had shared her snack dissappered in the blink of an eye. His back was back to being so straight it could be used as a ruler and every single muscle on his body tensed up as if he was getting ready to run.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
Daisy frowned as she watched him leave. That wasn't right, she knew that. It was wrong, awfully wrong, but it seemed no one around was going to put a stop to it.
Well, no one but her.
She let her mother fuss over her for a bit then went to fetch Harry from his room in the cupboard under the stairs.
"Come on!" she said taking his hand and tugging him out of his closet. "You're-You're late for my tea party!"
Harry dutifully followed her up the stairs. "Tea party?"
Daisy hummed. "With Mr. Snuffles and Mr. Teddy and Mrs. Peggy and Perry the Platypus!" She eyed him critically. "You don't have a dress but-but I can give you a hat! Have you been to a tea party before?" Harry shook his head and she hummed in disapproval. "You don't know the proper et-i-quette. I'll teach you!"
Harry, as it turned out, was an excellent guest. He went along with her make believes, even if he looked very confused at the beginning, and endured whatever she threw at him. He complimented her on her tea, always asked for two sugars and even let her dress him in one of her dresses a couple of times. They were a bit small on him but they made do and Princess Heather (because Daisy insisted he had to have a flower name) was her guest of honour those two times.
He was a good sport. Dudley never wanted to play with her, much less have tea parties, and so Harry, who was happy following her lead, soon became Daisy's favourite playmate and she would go fetch him from his cupboard those afternoons they were both home.
Her mother tried to put a stop to it the first time she caught them. She claimed Harry couldn't play with her because he was grounded for having spilled the milk that morning, which was ridiculous because Daisy spilled the milk almost every morning and didn't get grounded for it. The little girl buggered her so much wanting to know when Harry's punishment was over, that Petunia had to give up.
If Harry was playing with Daisy then she wasn't bothering her. Or anyone else. Daisy could be quite annoying sometimes; especially when she was bored. As they were soon to discover, Harry was an expert on keeping Daisy entertained. Petunia, then, was forced to allow those little playdates: for everybody's sake.
Harry being allowed to interact with Daisy was the first of many changes the Dursley household saw during the following months. Since he was on Daisy-wrangling duty whenever the girl was around, his groundings became fewer and fewer because nobody wanted a bored Daisy buggering them with her playmate out of commission. He started to be allowed everywhere in the house without receiving scornful looks and got to join most of the trips the family would take instead of being handed off to Mrs. Figgs and her smelly room with her smelly cats.
(Except that Daisy loved Mrs. Figg's smelly cats so he, sadly, wasn't completely rid of them).
Food was the next thing to change.
Since Daisy insisted on sharing everything she had with Harry, especially the snacks her mother gave her, Petunia was also forced to take the boy into account when she readied said snacks. Because no matter how many times she told Daisy that the food was for her and for her alone, Daisy would give half of it to her cousin at the drop of a hat.
"But, Mum, Mrs. Poe says we have to share!" she would claim and Petunia would get that pinched sucked-on-a-lemon expression that she always wore when Daisy mentioned Mrs. Poe. "Only bad people don't share! And it's not fair that I get six crackers and Harry none!"
And what could Petunia do in the face of that except let them be and double the amount of snacks?
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
There were a lot of games to be played in the Dursley household. There was hide and seek, tag and the floor is lava. There was 'who can run the fastest?', 'who can climb the fastest?' and 'who can drink their milk the fastest?', at least until Daisy almost choked to death on the last one and Petunia forbade it for the rest of time. There was dressing up and playing family and having tea parties. Playing with toys and board games, children's puzzles and a more than healthy amount of LEGO's that had a tendency of always getting under Vernon's feet or between the sofa cushions. There was drawing (badly), reading, singing, dancing and a strange combination of all four together. Running away from Dudley, making fun of Dudley and hiding from Petunia for having made Dudley mad.
On a cold, rainy and miserable March afternoon Daisy introduced a new game: exploring the attic.
The attic at Number 4 was accessed to by a hatch in the middle of the upstairs corridor. Inside there were only storage boxes and random knickknacks that Petunia hadn't found within herself to throw out. She went up once a week to clean it up and air it but nobody else ever went in.
It wasn't that it was forbidden or anything, only that there was, supposedly, nothing of interest.
That was why Daisy, or Professor River Emmerson and her plucky assistant Thaddeus Harrison –as she told Harry on their way to adventure-, found herself with a desperate urge to explore it on that stormy afternoon.
The hatch was too tall for them to reach so they had to climb on a precariously balanced structure of a chair, Daisy's toybox, a rubbish bin and two pillows to be able to reach the dangling drawstring. Had Petunia seen them, she would have had a heart attack and the punishment would have been one for the ages to come. Luckily for all parties involved, Tilly Fergusson, from Number 8, had just gotten a shipment of rare azaleas that were the talk of the neighbourhood and Petunia was attacking her own garden in a fit of jealousy.
Daisy and Harry scrambled upstairs, feeling like explorers in the middle of the Amazon forest or archaeologists looking for treasure in an Egyptian tomb. (Daisy had been on an Indiana Jones kick, watching the VHS tape of Raiders of the Lost Ark until she had the dialogue memorized). When they got upstairs, tripping on the way due to their eagerness, they were greeted with disappointment.
The loft was filled with boxes piled on the sides, all of them carefully labelled, and some old furniture nestled on the back. A couple of small windows let in some light and a string turned on the bright lightbulb on the middle of the room. Everything was perfectly neat and tidy, like everything that belonged to Petunia Dursley always was. Not even a single speck of dust remained for Daisy to give her imagination free reign. She felt the excitement that had bubbled on the way over pop like a balloon. It was hard to feel adventurous in the tidiest storage room ever seen to man.
"Well…" Harry fidgeted beside her. "Now what?"
Daisy refused to be let down. She wanted adventure, damn it, and she would have it. Perking herself up, she wandered towards the boxes, squinting at the writings.
"Treasure is never outside, Thaddeus!" she stated the obvious. "It's hidden! So we hafta look for it."
They looked at the boxes for a while, trying to decide which one would give them the best treasure. In the end, Harry half-heartedly started opening one of the boxes labelled 'Summer Clothes' while Daisy went to explore the furniture. There were some chairs piled together, a nightstand, an old rocking chair and a dresser. As it was to be expected, Daisy went straight for the cabinet.
It was a small dresser made of dark wood. It had two wide rows in the bottom and two small drawers made up the top part. The two top drawers contained a mothball and an old flowery sachet filled with barely smelling lavender. The middle one had a lonely feather, frayed on the edged, and the bottom one didn't open.
"Huh?"
Daisy gave it a tug. Nothing. She lowered herself into a crouch so she could study the mystery with the attention it required. A closer look revealed the lock Daisy had overlooked the first time. She knew what a lock meant: a lock meant something important; treasures, secrets. Her curiosity bubbled over, waging a war with her frustration when the drawer refused to open upon a second (and third and fourth) tug.
"Oh, c'mon!" Daisy yanked at the handle.
The drawer flew open and slid off the rails. She yelped when it crashed into her, sending her to the floor.
"Daisy!" Harry rushed to her side, concern and fear clearly written on his face. "You okay?"
She pressed her lips together and nodded. Her eyes itched with tears but she wasn't going to start crying like a baby. Her bum ached a bit from falling on it but she wasn't really hurt: it was more because of the surprise of it all.
"What happened?" he asked her taking in the scene. Two thick books had tumbled out and another one had managed to hold its place inside the drawer. "What's this?"
"It was stuck," Daisy explained still trying to get a hold of her tears. "I didn't wanna break it!" She sniffled. The thought of what her mother would say when she caught them sent her over the edge and tears started spilling out.
Harry had been a witness to Daisy's meltdowns before and he went with the most effective course of action: distraction.
"Oh, look! There's pictures inside!"
Daisy's tears cut off and she perked up. "Pictures?"
"It's two girls," Harry said, sitting down with the book –a photo album– on his lap. "Don't know who- Oh! Says Lily and Petunia." He glanced down at the pictures, a funny look taking over his face. "That's Aunt Petunia? That's so weird!"
Daisy scrambled to her feet and peered at the album from over his shoulder. Harry had opened it close to the end, at random. Both pages were filled with sepia-tinged pictures of what looked to be a trip to the beach.
The main stars were two girls, a few years older than Harry and Daisy. They were in eight of the eleven pictures taped on the two pages. The older one was almost a teenager, blonde and gangly, and Daisy found it hard to believe that was her mother. The other one, maybe eight or seven years old, had bright red hair and a smile that was even brighter.
The first picture had Lily and Petunia on the beach, clearly arrived. Petunia was carrying a bag and was mid-rolling her eyes at Lily, who was pointing excitedly to the water. Underneath it was written in a careful penmanship 18 August 1967: Lily likes the beach. Petunia needs to think it over. The second one had the girls posing with a middle-aged woman, wide hat on and a flowery sun-dress that matched Lily's. Rose and the girls on Aberdovey Beach. The rest of the pictures displayed the family in typical beach adventures (Lily looking for seashells, Petunia and Lily putting on sun cream, Lily and her father building a sandcastle, Lily getting in the water and then running away screaming, a very blurry and shaky shot of the girl's parents lounging on a towel, Petunia scowling at a book and both girls eating ice-cream with varying degrees of messiness) with a commentary underneath each one.
"Who's Lily?" Harry broke the silence.
The question made Daisy really sad, but she didn't really understand why. It was the first time she heard the name, at least the first time she could remember, but Daisy had always known who she was. Lily Evans, The Then whispered in her ear as she studied the face of the cheerful redhead forever immortalized on paper.
"That's your Mummy, silly!"
Harry whipped his head to look at her. His eyes were wide and, even though she couldn't see them in the pictures, Daisy knew they were exactly the same shade as Lily's.
"What?"
Daisy tapped the photograph of Lily screaming as she got out of the water, probably too cold for her taste. "Lily," she said bringing his attention back to the album. "That's your Mummy."
Harry drank her in, a strange sort of desperation settling on his face. The cousins studied the two pages in silence, the platter of the rain against the window and on the roof the only sound in the small attic. Harry's desperation gave way to longing and then to a deep-seated sadness that tore at Daisy's heart.
"How do you know?" he asked her, fragile and small and broken and only five years old.
Daisy, feeling far older than her years and with forbidden memories sealing her lips, was only able to say: "How many sisters d'ya think my mother has?!"
Harry had to concede to her logic and soft awe replaced the sadness. He stared at the pictures of Lily almost without blinking, as if he wanted to imprint her expressions into his memory.
"Wanna look more?" Daisy asked.
Petunia found them before they were able to get into the other two albums. She screamed bloody murder and looked ready to ground them for the rest of their life and the next one when Daisy used her best pleading eyes on her.
"What happened to Pear?"
Taken aback, Petunia chocked on her words. "What?"
Daisy pointed to a picture. Lily hugging a big shaggy black dog with a wide smile. 3 May 1965: Lily and Pear. With Lily closer in age to Daisy on that picture, the resemblances were undeniable. Something about the shape of their faces, the tilt of their smiles, the glint on their eyes…
Petunia hesitated. "That was my grandparent's dog," she said. "They found him on the streets."
Daisy brightened up and her mother got a pained look in her eyes, like she as seeing something painful. "Can we get a dog?"
"No."
"Oh," her face fell with disappointment. "Tell me about Pear? And Lily! And Tilly and Martha! What was grandma like? You did ballet? That's so cool!"
Petunia's scoldings died on her lips. Beside Daisy, Harry remained tense, waiting for the blow to come. The longer Daisy rambled and the longer Petunia kept silent, the more high-strung Harry got.
"Tell me the stories?" Daisy asked in the end, the photo-album raised in offering.
And Petunia sat down and did. The other two albums, though, were quickly confiscated and Daisy wouldn't see them again until many, many years later. All thoughts of groundings and punishments were quickly forgotten.
"We really can't get a dog?"
"For the tenth time, I said 'no', Daisy."
"Not even a small one?"
"No."
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
Within one month of Daisy being in Year 1 her teacher, Mrs. Patterson, called for a meeting with her parents. Petunia came with her teeth bared, ready to fight anyone who had anything to say about her sweet princess, and, sitting by the teacher's side on her usual table, Daisy got the urge to flee and hide.
"It's nothing bad," Mrs. Patterson was quick to say, noting Petunia's expression. "Daisy is a sweet girl, incredibly smart. Most of the time I wonder if she wouldn't benefit more in being moved a year or two up, but she's very happy with her classmates and I would hate to rip her away from her peers."
Petunia's hackles lowered. Complimenting her children was always the way to go.
"Then what is it?" she asked, sharp but not as cutting as it could have been, sitting down next to Daisy and in front of the teacher. The chair was too small for her, meant for a five year old, and it made her look ridiculous. Daisy would rather rip her own tongue out than to laugh at her mother, though.
"I always like to meet with my student's parents to talk about their children. I usually do it a bit later in the year, when there are more things to talk about, but I like to push it forward if there any issues I feel need discussing."
Petunia immediately scowled at the word 'issues'. "What issues?"
"Well, as I said, Daisy is really smart. She's doing great in class but she's constantly climbing up the walls. She's bored in her classes and she has too much energy. I'm sure you've noticed that at home, too?"
That Daisy had too much energy? Yeah, that was a thing that had been noticed in the Dursley household. Usually the course of action was to shove her in Harry's direction. Getting them both out of the way.
But Daisy couldn't help it: her body was way too full of restless energy, always humming, always itching to do something. And in school her knowledge of The Then whispered in her ear the answers to everything they were trying to teach her, making classes laughably easy but also an utter torture. She spent most of those bouncing in her seat, distracting her classmates and staring out of the windows.
She didn't think she'd had the same problem in The Then.
"Yes."
Mrs. Patterson perked up. "Right, so you're aware of it. Now, have you considered enrolling her in some extracurricular? A sport would be the best bet."
Petunia blinked. "Have I considered what?"
"Enrolling her in some sport," said Mrs. Patterson patiently.
"A sport?" repeated Petunia puzzled and a bit scandalized, as if Mrs. Patterson had suggested for Daisy to join the circus.
"Sport and exercise have proven to be very healthy in the life of young children, Mrs. Dursley," the teacher adopted a crispy tone. "Not only does it help the children physically and keeps them healthier but it also helps their self-esteem and mental health. Depending on the sport it even helps their social skills and teaches them a lot of useful things like teamwork, co-operation and problem solving."
"But she's a girl!"
Mrs. Patterson eyes flashed. "And?" She leaned forward and put her elbows on the small table, clasping her fingers together. "Mrs. Dursley," she said slowly. "I'm not talking about rugby or anything like that, even though if Daisy choses that then it could be a great option. I do think there are some sports that will benefit your daughter more than others, ones where social interaction is key, but virtually any sport will help Daisy in the long run. That said…" Her gaze darkened. "Your daughter will face enough hurdles for being a woman as it is for you to add even more stones on her path. Women should support each other, not tear each other down, and we should start from the very beginning. There's nothing wrong with a girl playing sports, even sports that are seen as 'masculine' and you should respect Daisy's choices if she wishes to join one of those. Every day more and more women are getting rid of the chains that society tries to burden them with and I think that's beautiful and admirable and powerful. Let Daisy chose her own path," she stressed. "Every time a little girl is told she shouldn't do something because she's a girl the world becomes a worse place. Let's try to make this place a better one, for our daughters. Let's start here."
Petunia had clearly not been expecting a sudden lecture and rant on feminism and she blinked at the teacher in silence for a few seconds. Mrs. Patterson's eyes looked alight with something Daisy couldn't identify, but it set a fire inside of her, too.
"I wanna play football," she blurted out.
Both women turned to look at her.
"You want to what?" Petunia asked with dismay.
Daisy recalled the many games of footy watched on her father's knee. She recalled the feeling of joy in her chest cheering with her Dad for Arsenal, feeling part of something bigger than her. She remembered that match her father had taken Daisy and Dudley to a few months ago: the chanting, the cheering, the connection with thousands of people, so different than her but so similar at the same time, all of them intertwined in that moment of time. All of them one for that single match.
Petunia hadn't been happy that Vernon had taken her to the match too, but he'd only laughed. "She cheered the loudest out of all of us, Pet," he'd said.
"I wanna play football," Daisy repeated because how could she choose anything else.
"Girls don't play football!" Petunia squeaked completely disregarding everything Mrs. Patterson had just said.
"Actually, women have been playing football since the game was born and it was really popular during the late 1800s and the early 20th century. Lately it's been gaining popularity once again," Mrs. Patterson pitched in. At their inquiring looks she flushed. "My sister is really into football," she excused herself.
"Football?" Petunia shook her head. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather anything else, pumpkin? Ballet or gymnastics?"
Daisy's lips pursed into a pout and her face set into that stubborn expression that said there was no getting the idea out of her head.
"I wanna play football."
"But, Day-Day, pumpkin!" Petunia cried. "Where would we even find a place? There's a studio on Broad Street where Rebecca Jones's daughter takes ballet lessons; that's just ten minutes away from home. But a place where girls can play-" She glanced around, as if scared that saying the word would get the Ladylike Police after her. "-football?" she whispered it. "I don't think we can find that anywhere in Su-"
Mrs. Patterson cleared her throat. "Little Whinging has a mini football club and girls are accepted. My niece, Hannah, is Daisy's age and she has been playing since late August."
"Oh." Petunia deflated on her chair. "Oh, well."
"I wanna play football," Daisy said one last time. Calm and confident because she knew that was what she really wanted to do.
Petunia took one look at her and conceded defeat. She had never been able to say no to her children, after all.
"I guess we'll have to talk with your father, then," she said.
She told him after dinner, with Daisy and Harry eavesdropping from behind the kitchen door. Vernon's response had been half a minute of silence and then: "But girls don't play football."
"Actually women have been playing football since the beginning and this line of thought is really harmful to society and to little girls like Daisy," Petunia spat at him because one thing was for a woman to say it and a completely different one for a man to do it. "Daisy's really set on it and you know how she gets when she gets her mind on something. At least this I believe will actually be good for her."
"Well, alright then. Don't come at me now, woman. If the girl wants to play football then let her; at least someone in this house appreciates good sports."
Daisy shared a triumphant look with Harry. With her father defeated and her mother on her side (although begrudgingly) it was a given thing. Her cousin looked at her with a little scowl.
"I'm so confused," he said.
Daisy laughed so hard they had to run away before her mother could catch them eavesdropping behind the door. Once they were in the safe refuge of her room she told him everything.
"Oh!" his face fell. "What about me, then?"
"Well, you can come watch me! I need someone to cheer for me."
A tentative smile curled Harry's lips. "I'll cheer the loudest," he assured.
Knowing that was true, but suddenly feeling vulnerable and in need of reassurance, Daisy leaned forward until her forehead touched his, closing her eyes. Harry yelped and scooted backwards, but since they were both sitting cross-legged on her bed there wasn't enough space for him to run away.
"You promise?"
"What are you doing?" Harry squeaked.
Daisy opened one eye. Her cousin's wide eyed stare met her back and she frowned.
"We learned it in class," she lied without moving away from him. She couldn't very well tell him that she had memories of doing so with a mother she'd never had. "People greet each other like this in-in-in…" she struggled to remember the name. "Somewhere. Thought this could be our thing. Like a pinky promise!"
"Oh…" Harry's cheeks were turning an alarming shade of red. "Er… okay?"
"Cool. Close your eyes," Daisy ordered and followed suit when she saw him obeying. "Now, do you promise?" she asked solemnly, pressing with her forehead against his until their noses were squishing together.
Harry pressed back. "I promise."
Daisy broke apart and beamed at him, sunnily and free. Still blushing somewhat but looking lighter and more like the six year old he was supposed to be, he smiled back.
"Wanna practice with me?" she asked.
"Do you have a ball?"
"No. But it can't be too hard to make one, can it?"
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
When Daisy was five and a half years old she started her first revolution.
It all began when she was playing with one of her dolls on the floor of the living room. Her father was watching the news on the couch, grumbling and scoffing at the telly. Usually, Daisy didn't pay much attention to the news: she found them boring and confusing. But that February afternoon something caught her attention.
They were talking about the Philippines where people were rioting. Images flashed across the street as the newscaster talked about the situation and how it was the second day of revolt. But the people on the streets, Daisy noted, weren't revolting. They were talking and rallying on the street. Thousands of them. All of them unarmed and harmless: singing and talking and looking more like a party than a revolution. There were children and families among the rioters.
The journalist who was reporting went on to explain how the military had tried to intervene but they had been stopped by the people. And the images that were shown weren't of the people fighting but of nuns praying in front of the soldiers and men and women linked in a human chain.
Vernon scoffed. "Hippies."
Daisy glanced at her father. How could he disapprove of people standing up for themselves? Of people coming together and fighting for what they believed but in a way that nobody got harmed. The sight of the demonstrations on the telly brought forth memories from The Then: memories of rallies and screaming, of feeling proud and standing tall and chanting and being part of something bigger than herself.
Daisy had forgotten that she didn't need her fists to fight. That there were other ways to get things done.
And Daisy had a lot of things she wanted done. Things she wanted to change.
Her first foray into the path of nonviolent resistance started on a Monday afternoon. On the way back from school, while Dudley kicked the rocks in his path and Harry lagged behind, Daisy walked up to her mother.
"Mummy," she started. First she had to make sure before she started any revolutions, small as they might be. "Are we poor?"
Petunia startled, glancing back at her daughter. "Poor?" Her eyebrows were so high Daisy feared they would jump off. "Of course not! Why would you ask that, pumpkin?"
"Jake says Charlie's family's poor and they live in a tiny house and so Charlie has to share a room with all his brothers. They're four brothers!"
Looking a bit lost about where Daisy was coming from, Petunia slowed her steps. Dudley kept walking and gleefully kicking stones in front of them but, sensing that a serious conversation was coming, Petunia kept all her attention on Daisy.
"But we don't leave in a tiny house, Day-Day," she said. "Our house is very big and it has a lot of rooms. You don't have to worry about money or sharing your room with anyone, alright?"
Daisy furrowed her brows and wrinkled her nose like she always did when she was concentrating really hard. "But Harry sleeps on the c'pboard. And Mrs. Patterson sayed that's not a room."
Petunia froze. "You asked Mrs. Patterson?"
Daisy shook her head. "No, Mummy," she said as if it was obvious. Because Daisy, Dudley and Harry had been taught early enough not to share anything that happened inside the Dursley household with other adults. "She asked us to say the rooms of a house. I said the c'pboard and she sayed it was a closet, not a room."
Her mother hesitated. She glanced back at where Harry had stopped in the middle of the street, wide-eyed and terrified. Then at the rest of the street: people were walking around, families also going back home from school, but none of them were close enough to hear what was being said.
"Well…" she started slowly, with a last look towards the boy. "It's Harry's room."
"So are we poor?" Daisy's eyes filled with tears. "We don't have enough rooms-"
"We have enough rooms."
"-and Harry has to sleep in a closet."
"Daisy…" Petunia said warningly.
Daisy looked up at her with those wide blue eyes she had gotten from her. "I can share my room! I don't mind!"
"You are not sharing your room with anyone!"
"But Harry-"
"Harry is fine right where he is."
Daisy looked down, disappointed and remained silent. Petunia straightened up and sniffled.
"Now, come on," she said sharply. "I have to get started on dinner." And she set a brisk walk, trying to catch up with Dudley who had inevitably wandered off and was terrorising some birds on the nearby park.
Daisy watched her walk with a determined glow in her eyes.
"Why did you do that?" Harry called behind her. He was frowning and he looked mad at her intervention.
"What do you mean?"
"Why did you-?" Harry cut himself off. "I don't need a room! I'm happy with my cupboard!"
Daisy couldn't believe her ears. She'd been inside Harry's cupboard a couple times and she couldn't understand how he could stand it. It was small and dark, cramped and musty. It wasn't a room.
"It's not a room!" she said. "Boys have rooms! Not closets."
Harry shook his head. "I already take enough space-" he started to say.
She recognised her father and mother's words on his mouth. It made her boil inside. "No! It's not right!" she said. "Don't you see it? It's not right! It's not!"
"But-"
Daisy wasn't gonna stand by it. "You're part of the family," she said. "It's not fair that I get a proper room and Dudley gets one and Aunt Marge gets one even though she only comes for Christmas and you don't get one. That's not right."
Harry blinked at her, looking lost and confused. "But I'm not?"
"Not what?"
"Not part of the family?" he asked. "I'm just Harry."
The little girl burned with an anger that was so much bigger than her. She felt fury towards her parents, real proper anger for the first time in her life, and it made her face turn red. It turned her insides because her parents were her parents and she was supposed to see them as perfect all-knowing beings, but she couldn't do that when they were doing something so wrong. When they were doing it on purpose. What did that make her parents? What did that make her?
"You're not," she whispered, sadness and fury waging a war in her voice. "You're Harry. You're my cousin. You're family."
He looked down at his feet, not able to hold her gaze. "I don't want them to punish me," he said in a low voice. "The cupboard is not bad."
Daisy shook her head at him. "It's not right," she said. "And I'm not- You don't have to do anything, but I will."
His vulnerable gaze met hers. "You think it'll work?"
Instead of answering, Daisy stepped forward and pressed her forehead against his. I promise. Recognizing the gesture, Harry let her do and pressed back.
I promise.
I believe you.
"Daisy! For the love of- What are you still doing there?!"
With no Harry to back her up, Daisy regarded it as a solo mission. When they got home she disappeared upstairs without a word to anyone and began working while her mother got started on dinner. Since it was a Monday, she didn't have training. Usually she would be playing with Harry or out with Bianca and the rest of her friends, but she had something more pressing to do.
Petunia eyed her warily when a preppy Daisy appeared on the kitchen for dinner but didn't say anything. The meal went on as usual, with Daisy chattering everybody's ear off, Petunia reminding her to eat and mind her manners, Dudley stuffing his face and Vernon grunting some comment or another. After they were done, Petunia took Daisy to her bath while Dudley and Vernon went to watch the telly and Harry disappeared who knows where. Dudley was next on the bath and it would be Harry's turn, then, to bathe himself while Petunia put Daisy and Dudley into bed.
Only that night the last part of the routine didn't go as expected.
When Petunia went to get Daisy ready for bed, from where she was watching the telly with Vernon without much interest, the girl marched upstairs without a complaint. But instead of going straight to her room, she stopped in the middle of the hallway and opened the built-in linen closet by the upstairs bathroom. The bottom space had been cleaned of the laundry baskets that usually resided in there and some pillows, a quilt and a blanket took their place.
"What-?"
Daisy crawled into the closet and covered herself with the blanket. "G'night!"
"Daisy, what the hell?" Petunia was so taken aback she didn't even realize she had just cursed. "What's all this?"
Daisy stared up at her mother with a stubborn frown. "S my new bedroom," she said. "If Harry sleeps in a closet then me too." Then, seeing that her mother was at a loss for words, she turned around, tugged the blanket up to her ears and settled herself for sleep. "G'night, Mummy!"
No one really slept that night. The following fight keeping them all up until two in the morning, when Daisy, exhausted by all the tantrums, fell asleep mid-word. But then she did it again the next night. And the next, and the next and the next. When her mother got a padlock for the linen closet she moved to the broom closet, and then the coat closet, the pantry and her own wardrobe.
Harry was moved out of the cupboard by the end of the second week.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
When Daisy was seven she decided she wanted to be an astronaut. It was all Matt Richards' fault: he was the one who got her into Star Wars and then Star Trek and from there the obvious conclusion was to jump into being an astronaut. She put glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling and nagged her mother until she bought her galaxy bed-sheets. With Matt's help they built a model of the solar system -with Matt making fun of her because she forgot to add Pluto- and hung it over her bed. Matt was even crazier about being an astronaut than she was and he was the one who introduced her to movies (some good, some not so good) and documentaries and books and comics.
(Which then spurred her love for comic books, but that's a story for another day.)
Her family watched her with bemusement, but they'd all learned that when Daisy got something on her head there was no stopping her. It was better to just let her do. And if she wanted to listen to Rocket Man and Space Oddity on repeat then Elton John and David Bowie would be very welcomed into the Dursley household. Dudley got things by screaming and throwing tantrums; Daisy got things by refusing to give up.
One evening, Vernon came home while Daisy was reading on her room. She was reading upside down on her bed, her hair brushing the floor and her legs up against the wall. Her face was red from the blood rushing to her head and it was starting to ache but Matt, claiming that was an essential part of astronaut training, had lasted ten whole minutes the previous week and Daisy wasn't going to be any less. She was also listening to music with her father's Walkman so she hadn't heard her mother calling for her to come down for dinner and that was why her father had been sent upstairs to fetch her.
"Daisy!"
She startled so bad the headphones went crashing to the floor. If she strained she could still hear Elton John crooning at her. She sat up on her bed, tilting a bit when the blood rushed away from her head.
"Daddy!"
Vernon looked a bit bemused at the scene. "What are you doing?"
"Reading?"
They gauged each other in silence for a few seconds. While Daisy was always talking, always sharing what was going on with her life, she realized in that second that her father didn't know her at all. And from Vernon's far-away look on his face he was coming to the same conclusion at the same time.
"What are you reading?"
Daisy brightened. "Ender's Game!" she said. "Matt lent it to me!"
Vernon hesitated for a few seconds in the doorway before he made the decision to come in. Daisy happily scooted sideways on her bed to leave enough space for him to sit down. The bed was so small, though, that he took up most of the space and it made him look a bit ridiculous.
"What's it about, then?"
"Oh! It's about this kid, Ender. It's in the future and the Earth is at war with these alien-ant thingies. Ender and other kids go to train in Battle School to defeat the aliens!"
Vernon had not been expecting that. "And… uh… you like that?"
"Yeah!"
Her father frowned to himself and took a look around the room. His gaze stopped on the Solar System model, and the stars and the galaxy bedsheets. On the books on her shelf and the astronaut toys on the floor. He took it in and blinked, as if he was seeing her room for the first time.
"You like space?"
Daisy nodded excited. "I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up."
"You can't be an astronaut," Vernon scoffed automatically.
All excitement flew from her face and she deflated on the bed. "Why not?"
"Because women can't be astronauts," he said.
"Says who?"
He huffed. "Says who? Everyone! That's a fact of life, Daisy: women can't be astronauts. They can hardly even drive."
She frowned at him. "Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space in 1963," she recited. "Just two years after the first man went to space."
Vernon stared. "Really?"
"Uh-huh." The girl nodded. "Mrs. Patterson told me when she saw I was getting into space. She even did some research for me." Daisy beamed. "After Valentina there have been nine women in space in the last five years."
"Really?" Vernon was starting to feel like a broken record. "Nine?"
Daisy nodded again with enthusiasm. "Most of them have been there more than once."
"Huh."
His daughter stared at him, feeling very small out of a sudden, and went back to her book. "Why did you say that?"
"Say what?"
Daisy didn't take her eyes off the book, even though the words didn't make sense anymore and she was just glaring holes at the page. "That I can't be an astronaut."
"Because that's not how things are."
"But it is!" Daisy risked a look. "Don't you think I'm smart enough? Strong enough?"
"That's not it." He huffed. "It's just that you're a girl, and there are things that girls don't do."
"But that's not fair!" she cried. "That's not fair at all. Don't you want me to be great?"
Vernon struggled. "Yes, but-"
"What if I was Dudley?" Daisy pressed, the fire of injustice burning in her chest. "What if Dudley told you he wanted to be an astronaut? What would you say?"
"I would say it was brilliant," he conceded. "That he would have to work hard but he would make it for sure." Even though a part of them both knew Dudley wasn't cut to be an astronaut, not in a million years.
"Then why not me?" she asked with a tiny voice. "Why is it different?"
Her father shrugged and the only thing he was able to come up with was: "Because you're a girl."
"So?"
"So girls are not boys. They do different things. They're not engineers or astronauts or fire-fighters. They're nurses and teachers and mothers."
"That's not fair!" she huffed and crossed her arms. "What if I don't want to stay home like Mummy? What if I want to be an astronaut or a fire-fighter? Dudley can be anything he wants, why not me?" She looked at him. "What did you want to be when you were a kid?"
He hesitated. "A boxer," he said.
While Daisy had not been expecting that and the last thing she could imagine was her father as a boxer (even though she tried to imagine him as a wrestler with the colourful outfits instead of a boxer because that was what she thought a boxer looked like) she took in stride. "Did someone tell you you couldn't do it?"
He sighed, seeing where she was going. "No."
Daisy shot him a pointed look. "How would you feel?"
"Bad," he conceded. "Has there been a British woman astronaut before?"
Daisy grinned. "There haven't been any British people in space yet."
"Huh," Vernon tilted his head. "Guess you'll have to be the first, then."
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
By Year Four, Daisy was very familiar with the detention room in St. Grogory's Primary School. It wasn't that Daisy was a troublemaker or anything of the sort, but things happened.
Most of the times she got detention were for 'disturbing the classroom'. She'd heard that phrase a hundred times if she'd heard it once. What it meant to say was that Daisy talked with her friends when she was supposed to be listening to the teacher or doing homework. But it was only Mrs. Phillips that gave her detention for talking; the other teachers only called her out or sent her outside if Daisy was feeling especially chatty. The girl had mastered the art of talking in class without the teachers noticing or without them caring.
It also helped that she was polite and smart and funny, she got great grades without really trying and most of the teachers were enamoured with her. Key word: most.
Daisy didn't like Mrs. Phillips. Daisy was a curious child and she liked to question everything. The other teachers understood that and most of them liked that she asked questions in class. Mrs. Phillips… not so much. Her explanations verged on the side of "because I said so" and the woman couldn't seem to understand why Daisy didn't take that as an acceptable answer. There might have been more than one debate in class between the two of them, but whenever things got interesting or Daisy was close to proving her point, Mrs. Phillips would send her straight to detention.
The other times it was probably her fault.
Like that one time she went to school with her skates on just to see what would happen. Or when she started a food-trading ring in the playground. Or that week she and her friends kept a litter of kittens in the supply cupboard. There were also the times when she 'violated the rulebook' or 'broke the codes of the classroom' or 'just straight up played with fire, young lady'. But Daisy didn't regret those detentions because they had been for causes she believed in. She had stood up for herself or her friends and, yes, she had been punished, but she'd stood up at least.
"Miss Dursley!" Mr. Rogers, the teacher in charge of detention that day grinned at her. "What brings you here on this fine afternoon?"
Mr. Rogers was cool, Daisy liked him. He was one of the youngest teachers around, even though he was still old, like thirty or so, and his classes were always fun. He taught science and he made them do experiments in class and he loved when students asked 'why'. He almost always had an answer and when he didn't he got all the students to research it together, claiming that was the best way to learn.
Daisy sat down in the desk in front of him with a pout.
"I pushed Nancy Wright into a fountain," she admitted.
Mr. Rogers' eyebrows jumped to his forehead. "You did?"
Daisy couldn't blame him for being so surprised. She never got into fights or physical altercations of any kind. It just wasn't how she did things. And while Nancy Wright was a nasty girl, Daisy wouldn't say she deserved to be pushed into a fountain.
"She called Dudley stupid and fat," she said. "And so I pushed her."
Which was pretty hypocrite of her because it was what she called her brother sometimes. But something ugly had roared inside her chest when she'd heard that whiny girl mocking her brother, a possessive urge, and next thing she knew was that Nancy was in the fountain.
Dudley and Daisy… it was a complicated relationship.
Daisy disapproved of her brother's antics, bullying everyone left and right, and she didn't keep quiet about it. She snarked him about it constantly and mocked him about being a Mummy's Boy if he even looked to their mother for help.
Somehow he managed to bring out the worst parts of her.
They fought for their parents attention and pushed each other into the spotlight to get away from trouble. Dudley threatened to punch Daisy on a daily basis and Daisy blackmailed him in return. She was smarter than him, something they both knew, and Daisy loved to rub her grades into his face. Petunia always tried to make peace and would fawn over Dudley's "He's barely passing"s even more than she did over Daisy's "she's doing great"'s. Which made her furious and only had her boasting to Dudley even more. She felt bad afterwards, especially when she saw her words had really affected him. It was on those nights that she would sneak into his bedroom and offer her help with his homework. On the good nights he accepted, on the bad ones he would throw a shoe at her head. Which she would dodge, obviously, because she had been playing football since she was five years old and she had more reflexes than a mirror maze.
(See, that made sense in Spanish. That would be funny in Spanish. In English? Not so much. And even though she'd never actually heard, outside of her memories from The Then, any Spanish that wasn't a badly pronounced tortilla that physically hurt her inside, she kept slipping.)
They didn't have any interests in common. She liked music and comics, football and sci-fi. He liked watching the telly, destroying things and making little kids cry. And then their father bought them a NES console. She could remember playing way better games with way better graphics on The Then. Hell, even Candy Crush had better graphics than those games. But still… there was something about playing Super Mario Bros on the floor in front of the telly with her brother.
They didn't talk much while they played. Or at least not about things that mattered. But those hours spent playing together built a bridge between them. A silent agreement.
Dudley didn't bully her at school. They fought at home constantly, getting into screaming matches what feel like every other week. It didn't help that Daisy jumped into Harry's defence whenever Dudley went after the smaller boy or that Dudley's favourite pastime was to chase after Harry. It also didn't help that Dudley turned purple like their father when he got mad and that pranking him with Harry was one of the best things ever.
But whenever they were only the two of them they stuck together like glue. Like when they went to trips with their parents and there weren't any kids around. If Petunia tried to get Daisy to sell her brother out she would clam up and change the subject. And whenever their mother wanted to get Dudley to tell her anything about Daisy he would play dumb and refuse to answer. If their parents tried to use them against each other, they had each other's backs: it was Daisy and Dudley against the world. The rest of the time? It was either war or indifference.
She couldn't tell you his favourite colour and it didn't matter to her.
Daisy didn't love her brother. But she didn't not love him either. He was her brother, after all, the one person who was supposed to be always on her side no matter what. The only problem was that he was a spoiled idiot.
Sometimes she wished Harry was her brother instead, because they got on way better than Daisy and Dudley. But then she felt bad because she didn't need Harry to be her brother when he was already one of her best friends and she also didn't want Dudley gone or anything.
They didn't look very much alike. Dudley took after their father, with their mother's blonde hair. But, while Daisy had inherited her father's dark brown hair and her mother's blue eyes, the rest of her was such a mix of them both that left her kind of not looking like any of them. With her dark hair and lean frame, sometimes she looked more like Harry than the rest of her family. If one squinted.
Daisy and Harry had their disagreements, too, of course. But, since The Great Fallout of 87, in which they didn't speak to each other for almost a month, she was learning to listen to him and not boss him around so much and he was learning to speak up and stand up for himself. That meant they had more fights, too, but they were nothing like Daisy and Dudley's fights and Daisy liked to believe those only brought them closer together.
Sometimes she wondered if Dudley felt jealous about her relationship with Harry. If he felt lonely or displaced. But whenever she'd tried to extend a hand, Dudley would mock her and Daisy would know that he wasn't ready yet.
"Ahhh!" Mr. Rogers smiled at her. It seemed he understood when Daisy herself didn't. "Brothers, yeah?" Was all he said.
Daisy nodded. "Brothers."
And maybe that was all that needed to be said.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
When Daisy was about to turn nine she asked her parents for a diary with a padlock. When her birthday came around, August 20th, they'd complied (along with an excessive amount of gifts she hadn't asked for) giving her a shiny pink diary with a unicorn on the cover and a padlock with two keys. It wasn't the safest thing around but she didn't have that many other options.
Her mother was thrilled of course, like she was whenever Daisy showed interest in anything remotely ladylike. No matter the fact that Daisy wasn't especially tomboyish: she liked dresses and pink and pretty things. But she also liked football and comic books and had a lot of friends that happened to be boys. And that all was too dangerous for Petunia, who insisted on shoving every girly thing in the creation of girly things in Daisy's path. But since that had meant a bright pink Walkman for herself the previous year and meant a lot of tapes with women singers she couldn't really complain.
So when all her friends had gone back home, Daisy hid under the covers with a torch. Part of it was in case her mother came to check on her but it mostly was because Daisy liked the feeling of secrecy writing in her diary at midnight under the covers brought her.
It was very important that nobody else saw what was written inside because… well, the contents of the diary weren't exactly conventional. In those pages Daisy wrote about The Then and about everything she remembered. She wrote about her mother and her friends. She wrote about her likes and dislikes, about the things she'd been through. But mostly she wrote about her cousin's books and what she remembered would happen.
As she got older the memories from The Then started to make more sense and the unusualness of her situation became clearer to Daisy. She realized what her knowledge meant and the weight it carried. She couldn't remember that much about her cousin's books. She remembered fondness and love for the text and if she struggled she could recall some major plot points. The basics. And so Daisy wrote those down. It wasn't like she would be able to do much with her cousin leaving for Hogwarts in a year and Daisy staying in Little Whinging. But she wrote everything down just in case.
She didn't want to forget a thing.
Whenever a new memory hit her because of something she'd seen or heard or thought she would rush to her little diary hidden behind a stack of comic books on the shelves and would quickly write it down before it vanished.
She had another diary, a fake diary in her bedside table drawer, in which she wrote random stuff that happened to her so that her mother would have something to snoop through. It was almost the same one, with a bright pink unicorned cover, because apparently there was only one kind of diary little girls might want and that was it. If Petunia noticed it wasn't the same diary she had bought her daughter for her birthday and wondered where that thing had gone she didn't say anything. Maybe she believed that little girls were allowed to have secrets, but Daisy knew those weren't the secrets she was expected to have.
Writing it down helped a lot. It brought more memories to the surface and Daisy was able to sketch a rough timeline of her past life. It helped make sense of it all; it made her feel a little less crazy and overwhelmed.
But, when Daisy wasn't writing on it, she left the diary pretty much alone. She didn't want to dwell on the past memories. She'd rather live in the now. If there was one thing she'd gotten out of so many memories in hospitals was to live life at the fullest. Her past self had died at twenty-five, after several years of fighting on and off to live. Daisy was damned if she was going to waste her life the same way she'd had before. So she spent as much time as possible with her friends. She didn't hold back on anything and blazed ahead like a comet. She tried everything at least once and strived to learn as much as she could. She danced in streets, pet stray cats, stopped to smell the flowers and screamed along to the songs in the radio.
Daisy was a happy, friendly child and she got along with mostly everyone. Which clashed greatly with brother's attitude, for Dudley despised mostly everyone. Some of it was natural charm but most of it was hard work. Daisy knew how it felt to feel lonely and rejected and so she vowed that no one on her watch would ever feel that. And the kids around her answered accordingly. After all, what everybody always wants is to belong.
She liked to think she had made things better for at least one kid in Little Whinging. Even if that one kid had been Harry Potter.
Daisy Durlsey had a happy life, despite everything.
Her days were filled to the brim with stuff to do, every day something different, and so she was never bored. She had football training and matches, Nerd Hour in the local comic shop every Sunday with Josh and Matt and basketball pick-up games with Hannah and her brothers on Saturdays. She had choir practice, book club and Movie Nights at Bianca's every Friday night. On top of that she had her school homework (piece of cake) and still wanted to hang out with her friends. Football friends, like Hanna and Ivy and the boys, music friends, like Kelly and Amy, and school friends, her best friends Bianca, Becca, Matt and Josh. And Harry, of course.
Had she been any other child she would probably have struggled a bit more to keep above everything. But, if anything, remembering snippets of your past life made it very easy to do primary school homework.
Daisy liked to keep busy because that way she didn't have too much time to think. Or to dwell, more likely. About The Then and the things she wasn't supposed to know. About magic and mysteries, about books and hospitals. So she was keeping busy. Learning and exercising and making friends and rooting herself firmly in The Now. Because she feared if she stayed still for just one second the past would catch up with her and consume her.
She just had to run faster.
Notes:
Anyway, I hope you liked it! Don't forget to review! :)
The poem at the beginning comes from Daisy Time by Marjorie Pickthall. I just thought it was fitting lol.