It only takes a moment for her to realize he's sleeping.
His legs are folded and feet propped up on top of the charcoal-colored desk. The front two legs of the chair he's slouched in are just slightly lifted off the dungeon floor, and it's honestly a miracle he can keep his balance while snoring so blatantly. A cauldron exuding blue smoke and filled to the brim with a translucent white liquid bubbles next to him, threatening to spill over.
She doesn't know whether she should be appalled, disgusted, impressed, or worried.
She wakes him up by shoving his open textbook in his lap, and is it wrong to be so amused at his confused and manic expression when he wakes up?
Still, she profusely apologizes when papers spill out of his book onto the dungeon floor, and she attempts to cover up her silent laughter by helping him pick everything up. She has a feeling that despite her best attempts, he is all too aware of her amusement.
When the dust settles, she asks what he's brewing, partly because she doesn't recognize it and partly as meaningless small talk. He just gives her a tight lipped smile and curiously asks her why she's in the potions classroom at such a late hour. Even though she knows he's avoiding her question, she can't find it in herself to care.
Because this is Harry Potter she's talking to. This is the most words she's spoken to her fellow housemate, her yearmate, in her entire academic career. In hindsight, it's amazing how well he's strayed away from his fellow classmates. They've skirted around him like some sort of plague, and he's seemed all too happy to be treated as such. But, could you really blame them? He might as well be a deadly sickness to wizards around the world, as blunt as that may sound.
He's a squib, after all.
He's a son of two lions, living in a den amongst snakes.
A snake curls up around the boy's pant leg, and she can't avoid flinching as its tongue flicks out in a hiss. Harry hisses back at it. She can't quite tell if his tone is comforting or hostile.
Oh yeah. He's a parselmouth.
This boy is an amalgamation of oddity. A clusterfuck of magic (and non magic). A confusing enigma surrounded by confusing enigmas. She should be jealous of his ability and pitying of his inability.
And yet all she can think about as he sheepishly apologizes on behalf of his snake (her name is Siren) is how tired he looks. She hadn't noticed it before. Not in her six and a half years of being housemates with him.
But his skin is ghostly pale and his clothes hang loosely on his body. The lavender bruises under his eyes are less crescents and more semi-circles. His glasses are crooked and dirty, his hair a wild bird's nest, his posture entirely too slouched. And even though it's near midnight, she's never known the boy to lose attention when brewing a potion. It's the thing he's best at, after all. He's always been a potions prodigy, from the first day Snape gave him a surprise quizzing before they'd even opened their textbooks, the dungeons his sandbox to play in.
Her mouth's half open, unknown words on the tip of her tongue, when Snape glides in through his office door. He tells Potter to clean his mess up and asks her if she needs anything. She shakes her head in response, because even though the whole point of coming down here in the first place was to ask her Head of House what she'd done wrong on their last potions exam, she has more important things on her mind now.
She leaves, looking back just before the door closes behind her to see Harry tiredly ladling his cauldron's contents into a batch of vials. Her eyes leer in suspicion when he tilts his head back and allows a vial full of the stuff to slide smoothly down his throat.
The door closes.
She's never been an obsessive person.
Harry Potter, however, she's found to be an exception to her unwritten rule.
He is a wilting rose. Soft and dim. Petals sifting off slowly as the stem remains riddled with prickly thorns. Beautiful. Dimmed. Deceivingly innocent.
Their interaction in the dungeons at the height of twilight has sparked a fire in her. A confused, questioning, inquisitive fire.
She doesn't know why she's never done it before. He's an anomaly at Hogwarts. The singular interesting subject she finds worth studying these days. In all their shared classes, even at meals and the rare times she crosses paths with him in the library or their common room, her attention flits to him.
Her conclusions are less than eye-opening.
He's quiet and keeps to himself, this she already knew. But there are other small things she notices as well. Like how he's constantly tired and tries to pay attention during classes despite his tendency to randomly nod off for a minute or two at a time. Or how he spends a barely acceptable amount of time in the Great Hall, eating less than she knows is healthy.
His snake is almost constantly with him, whether their peers realize it or not. He leaves the common room at the latest hours in the night. At every chance the Scottish weather allows, he spends the majority of his time outside, situated under a random tree and shaded from the beaming sun.
When they lock eyes with one another, he waits for her to greet him with a wave or a smile or a raised eyebrow before he replies with a smile. Like he's asking for permission. She's ashamed to admit that she purposefully stopped herself from acknowledging him on more than one occasion. His face betrayed nothing, expressionless as ever, yet she still couldn't help the guilt she felt as he passed her without word or gesture.
She suspects he's the one responsible for draping her with a thick blanket after she passed out on a common room sofa one time, foolishly waiting for him to come back from whatever he does on one of his midnight adventures.
They don't converse any further than brief hello's and polite platitudes, and while she's just about ready to scream with the unnatural desire to have an actual conversation with the conundrum of a boy, he seems content with what they have.
She waits for him to make the first move, but he never does.
And so one Saturday night, when the day had been wet and the castle had been cold, she follows him. It's easier than she would've initially thought, because even though Filch is renowned for roaming the halls at late hours like this, he seems more interested in the tune he lightly whistles than anything else.
He glides through the dark halls with a practiced ease, and while she's sure she's lost him on multiple occasions, she manages to catch back up and is thankful for the silencing charm she's applied to her shoes. Getting caught because she tripped and fell in the dark would've been the death of her. And not due to any academic reason other than pure embarrassment.
The boy manages his way to the seventh floor with only a single incident involving the moving staircases that leaves him purely unperturbed. She hurries to catch up to him once he disappears and her eyes nearly bug out of her skull when she turns the corner to see a door appearing out of a previously unassuming stone wall.
The boy goes through the mysterious entrance without hesitation and she only barely catches the door before it closes. The wood is old and slightly rotting with moss seeping through the cracks, but the engravings etched among the planks range from barely-there to bordering on freshly sketched.
She rakes her gaze off of the scribbled initials and barely visible names and fading symbols and slides through the door, closing it behind her with a nearly inaudible click.
Immediately, she shields her eyes with one of her forearms. Light bombards her senses, forcing her to rapidly blink as she adjusts from the dim hallway lanterns to whatever in Merlin's name she's walked into.
Her vision clears, and when she opens her eyes again she's met with an impossibility.
Where'd she'd expected cobblestone walls and antiquated chandeliers, a blue sky and shining sun greet her. Lush grass layers over rolling hills with a smattering of yellow daisies and swaying dandelions. A glittering lake rests to the side, calm waves rocking towards the sandy shore. A winding dirt path flirts with her curiosity, snaking down the hills towards a treasure of towering trees and a promise of mystery.
Despite the magnificence, the sheer fantasy of what she's immersed herself in, her feet can only stay planted for a moment. A blob of what she assumes to be Harry Potter passes through the treeline, and she shakes herself out of her reverie in favor of following.
While she makes her way down the gravel pathing, she can't help but wander in her gaze.
What she sees should be nothing short of impossible. There's not a castle wall, nor floor or ceiling in sight. It's like she's been kidnapped through a portal into the setting of some childhood novel. Granted, she'd rather willingly been led into this magical miracle, but this is nothing short of a natural paradise, the entrance of which having seemingly disappeared as if it had never existed in the first place.
Once she passes the treeline, spidering shadows flit over her vision from above. She's lost sight of her target, but the dirt beneath her is worn with apparent use and so she's able to at least have some sort of direction.
A barely audible tortured scream tickles at her ears, echoing throughout the forest chamber and freezing her on her feet.
And then she's running. She's running as fast as she ever has, galloping across the dirt and praying to every supernatural being out there that her flats don't hook on some jagged tree root.
She sees a light, a clearing of green past the darkness.
Finally, at what she thinks to be the finish line, her foot gives. She trips and tumbles past the trees and into the clearing, rolling through tufts of brightly saturated grass and ending up on her back. Her chest is heaving from the effort and her eyes are closed in exhaustion. Absentmindedly, she can't help but note the gentle tickling that the grass beneath her applies to areas of her exposed skin. The forest floor she lays on is soft and borderline comfortable.
It's a moment later in which her exhaustion has relatively subsided and she opens her eyes to gain her bearings, only to see a pair of shining green eyes piercing through her with a chilling stare.
Where skin and hair should stretch around the eyes, there's only fur.
A wolf stares down at her, its breath ghosting over her face. Her heart's either stopped or is beating much too fast, and she's tempted to reach for her wand if only she was certain it was still in her pocket.
And then it licks her. Right along the bridge of her nose, to be exact.
She's too stunned to move, and it's only when it keeps licking her cheek and forehead and chin does she realize it's rather wet.
"Ew!" She hastily but gently shoves the wolf's head out of the way and scrambles to her feet. She shakes her head and desperately wipes at her face with the sleeve of her sweater to rid herself of the spit. "Gross."
The wolf whines, and she'd think it was rather cute if she hadn't just been bathed in saliva.
As it is, she takes the moment of relative silence to gather her bearings and look around the clearing. It's rather ordinary. Beautiful, but ordinary relative to the paradise she had entered only minutes ago. Maybe a few hundred meters covered in sleek, shimmering grass, interrupted only by clusters of colorful daisies.
Harry Potter is nowhere in sight.
She squints in all directions in an attempt to spot any figure that might stand out among the clearing and forest circle, but she sees nothing. She frowns and looks down at the wolf, who apparently had been following her own gaze curiously and peering towards the forest.
"You didn't eat him, did you?"
The wolf looks up at her and blinks.
She scoffs at her own idea and admonishes her foolish thinking. Of course he hadn't. If he had, there would've been a noticeable amount of blood staining its teeth, fur, and snout. Silly her.
The wolf yips and bumps her leg with his snout. She attempts to chastise the animal, but it won't bloody stop happily growling and excitedly jumping and just being generally playful. So with a roll of her eyes she acquiesces and scratches at his coat of fur, causing it to lay down in the grass and start growling contently.
She plops down in front of the admittedly beautiful creature and starts to scratch idly at its head, content with admiring such a beast up close. Its fur is almost midnight black, incredibly soft to the touch. Its ears lay flat on its head while its eyes stare up at her as she scratches just under his chin.
Vibrant green eyes stare at her, and with a start, her mind begins to churn. If she hadn't spent so much time these past few weeks thinking about a certain boy and their odd interactions, she wouldn't be so intrigued. But due to her recent unfounded curiosity and interest, she can't help but cup the wolf's head and gently lift him up so that their eyes are inches apart.
Those eyes.
She knows those eyes.
The humane cry from before echoes throughout her head, and now she knows. She can't be ignorant to this. It would be impossibly stupid of her to do so.
He's an Animagus.
Or… a werewolf?
"Can you turn back?"
It might be her imagination, but the wolf rolls his eyes and huffs a snort through his snout. So, a no then. She frowns, deep in thought, but then decides there's only one course of action.
Stay up all throughout the night and see if he transforms back once the sun rises.
They won't see the sun rise, of course, just as they don't currently see the looming, full moon. But how else will she satisfy her curiosity? Harry Potter might be a bloody friggin werewolf, the knowledge alone enough to blow the minds of the entire student population. The fact that he isn't currently ripping her throat out is just the cherry on top.
Harry (she thinks) yips suddenly and begins to pad impatiently back and forth. She gets up with reluctance and starts to follow him with the assumption that he's leading her with a purpose.
So she'll stay with him. Perhaps explore this wonderful little nook that he so graciously introduced her to. After all, who knows what this hidden paradise holds?
She's on her last legs when he turns back.
She's been exhausted since about four hours ago, and she's been a walking corpse for about two.
Harry'd apparently sensed when she could barely keep her eyes open despite applying all the spells she could think of to herself in order to stay awake, and so he'd maneuvered them to a cozy wooden cabin deep in the forest with plush furniture and a number of interesting books on differing magical subjects.
And so for the past few hours she's busied herself with absentmindedly flipping through random books that vary greatly in their subjects. From complicated spell arithmancy to sacrificial rituals to exotic potion ingredients, there is a rather thorough mini-library in this admittedly comforting cabin.
Harry's curled up on a soft looking rug, snout under tail, either asleep or content and barely awake.
And then there's this sort of crunching sound that's terrible to the ears. She watches in fixation, a mix of disgust and fascination overcoming her as the wolf in front of her is quite literally reformed into a different being. His bones shift and rumble, fur turning to skin and stretching in an odd process of coloration.
The transformation ends before she can comprehend its beginning, and before her lies a boy panting in exhaustion, naked as the day he was born.
Her cheeks are probably powdered pink, but she rushes forward to cover him in the fluffy blanket she had just been draped in. Partly to warm his shivering body and also maybe to prevent any further… nakedness.
"Thanks," he gasps out his gratitude, but when he glances up his lips perk up in a subtle smile at the red covering her normal pale complexion. She frowns and sends a small stinging hex his way, but it only makes his smile larger.
He pushes his way onto his legs with a grunt, ensuring the blanket is wrapped around his body, and shuffles past her towards a door she hadn't actually noticed before. He disappears with a mumbling of being right back.
She busies herself with stacking the books back where they'd previously been, inwardly bursting with questions and debating what she should ask first. How long has he been a werewolf? How's he hid it for so long? Do any of the staff know? Was the potion that he'd drunk weeks earlier been Wolfsbane? Where are they?
She settles into the comfy chair, closes her eyes, and exhales a deep, steady breath.
He returns moments later, dressed in a shirt and comfortable looking pants with his hair wet like he's just come out of the shower. He fixes her a grin and she sends a shy smile back. Two mugs are in his hands, and he gently hands her one before he plops down in the velvet couch across from her with his own.
She looks down to inspect the liquid and finds a steaming circle of hot cocoa swirling inside her cup. It even has five small marshmallows, floating and bobbing along the warm liquid's surface. She takes a sip, and it warms her entire body with a tingling sensation that cannot be described as anything but home.
And then the interrogation begins.
Surprisingly - or perhaps unsurprisingly - Harry Potter answers every single question he asks to the best of his ability. No, he hasn't been lying about being a squib. Yes, he's a werewolf. He was bitten two years ago during the winter hols when he had been attempting to protect a suburban muggle family from a random, rabid werewolf.
Yes, he takes some sort of modified variant of the Wolfsbane potion, which is the only reason her limbs were still attached to her person. Yes, he personally made the modifications that allow a greater retention of his mind while he's a werewolf. Yes, the staff knows of his condition.
No, his family doesn't know.
For some reason, this is where he clams up. When she presses further into this topic, he doesn't give an inch. He only smiles rather amusedly - although his eyes give away a sort of vulnerability his rather aloof persona doesn't often show - and says he'll tell her if she tells him something about her family in return.
And damn her curiosity because she starts spilling her family's metaphorical guts before he even finishes his proposal. The Slytherin qualities that have been bashed into her head since she was a child slither away in the moment because Harry Potter, the person, feels worth it.
After she's done mindlessly rambling about her stern father and beautiful mother and flowery sister, after she's done answering his curious interjections and genuine questions, he honors his deal and tells her about his family.
And her blood boils.
Her cup crashes to the ground beside her, the hot liquid spilling onto the hardwood floor. He calmly gets up and exits out of the room only to return with another mug, and it's only his kindness which allows her to hold back her anger and keep her hold on the cup that suddenly feels burning hot in her hands.
She hadn't known much about his family beforehand, that part of his life has been the one thing kept quiet for his entire stay at Hogwarts. There's been rumors of course, of being pampered in a Fidelius-protected fortress or raised in a magical orphanage after his parents had been killed that one night when the Dark Lord had been defeated.
But any option she could've creatively conjured is better than this.
Child abuse isn't necessarily rare in the wizarding world. There is a long track record of pureblood parents going too far in ensuring their heirs and heiresses are up to standards. But there is a line that should never be crossed. And Harry's "guardians" have seemingly crossed that line at every step of the way.
He gently placates her in that same cool, monotone voice when he senses the steam rising up out of her ears, saying that he's been living on his own in a small, secluded house funded entirely on the back of the Potter fortune ever since he'd been bitten. Lord knows what they would've done had they known a werewolf was living under their roof.
It doesn't make it any better, though. The pathetic excuses that Potter makes for what can barely be described as his family don't fool her, and they most assuredly don't fool himself either.
What they had done to him is taboo. The beatings and lashings and verbal abuse are enough for her perfectly filed nails to press angry red crescents in her palms. Even her father, who from what she's heard is on the harsher side of pureblood parenting experiences, has never laid a finger upon her.
The fact that Harry is so gentle and such a fair soul is a miracle in itself. She certainly wouldn't be had she grown up despising every waking hour of every single day.
She releases an angry breath and tries to focus on her heartbeat in an attempt to calm herself. She gulps down the rest of her cocoa, but what seems to do the trick is when she opens her eyes and finds Harry staring at her with a soft smile and eyes filled with a mixture of concern and mirth.
"So, what now, Harry Potter?" She asks.
He tilts his head and studies her for a moment. And then he lazily grins and shrugs.
"That's for you to decide, Daphne Greengrass."
Part 2 coming soon.