Daphne Greengrass maintained her poker face while waiting for the knight bus to arrive, yet inside she was quite annoyed. She would be riding this stupid bus for months. And all alone - apparently Tracy was on a trip to Hawaii with her family - and no matter how sad it seemed she was her only friend. Daphne did have a lot of other acquaintances which she called 'friends' in public, yet she could tell, they were only close to her as heiress Greengrass, they did not care for Daphne herself, well maybe cared for her looks at most, not her as a person. She yawned as the knight bus arrived - at least the first few days won't be too bad, yet travelling this thing every day… she shuddered, but as the door opened her poker face was back in place.
She casually climbed the steps and paid one galleon and 2 sickles - the driver shut his mouth mid his usual introduction speech - seeing the amount he knew the purpose she was there, and asked instead - "Which route today, miss… ? "
"Greengrass. I will take the third route today… " - She grimaced inwardly, only 145 more routes to go… Then grabbed her hot chocolate cup and turned around, looking for a place to sit. First she overlooked the bus - it would be more bearable if there was another Hogwarts student inside - she was hopeful to have someone to chat along, well except Malfoy or his lackeys - those people were even worse when drunkards who usually rode the bus.
A quick glance over the bus she locked on to the only youngster besides her inside - he seemed to casually sit near the window and read a book while occasionally taking a sip of his hot chocolate. She saw the familiar black hair and a hint of a zigzag shaped mark behind his mess of hair, along with familiar worn out glasses. Her eyes widened in recognition, before she quickly composed herself - she did not master that part of occlumency yet - emotions control, which was yet another thing expected for pureblood heiresses like her to learn and succeed in.
She walked close by and as the boy glanced up from his book she greeted him by a nod - "Potter"
"Greengrass" - the boy nodded back, then as Daphne expected some hostility - somehow most Gryffindors were foolishly so against even being in same room as Slytherin students such as her, the boy did not even glance back at his book, instead he smiled, and pushed his trunk aside, making just enough space for her to pass and reach a nearby seat just across him - "Want to chat while we travel?"
Daphne once again broke her poker-face, this time it took her a tad bit longer to react - she just nodded and walked to the seat in front of the window, facing Potter. It took a few minutes more for her to calm down her shock and take full control of her face again. The boy seeing she was still silent for a while just smirked and resumed the conversation.
"Never expected to see you here, Greengrass, I bet you feel the same way?"
"Yes, you are right, what are you doing here, Potter?"
"Ladies first" - he bowed while gesturing for her, with a cheeky smile on his face.
Daphne sighted. This was not how a conversation with a muggleborn was supposed to go - it was as if he was older by a few years or so, not quite the reckless Harry she remembered from school. As it was no secret and she was quite curious what the Potter heir was doing there, as he clearly was not there for the same reason she was - seeing him reading a book previously, Daphne opened her mouth to explain.
"I am not sure if you are aware, you know being muggle-raised and all that, but the knight bus was not made for a petty reason to help drunkard wizards get home, nor was it created for muggle-borns and muggle-raised youngster to travel around" - She was amused as she saw a glint in his eyes, he was interested, which made this more entertaining for her - "The knight buses were created by pureblood families, to comfortably see most of Britain, do you know why seeing a place is important, Potter?" - she was quite smug now as she wondered if the boy could guess this, this made the journey way more enjoyable as she could still see all the views from the window - the bus was quickly passing through various streets and intersections, which she was sure to constantly look at, even from the corner of her eye, memorising all the streets of Britain was one annoying thing every heir and heiress needed to do.
Harry took a few minutes to think about it, his eyes shone with years of experience which confused Daphne - how can he seem so much more mature than last year? Did hiding from Sirius Black affect your mentality so much? She even saw the boy shudder a bit as if recalling unpleasant memories - soon after he calmed down and voiced his guess - "My guess would be that it's for that teleportation magic which aurors use, you know appearing with a popping sound. Is that correct, miss Greengrass?"
Shock briefly flashed through Daphne's eyes, but this time she composed herself quickly, he was soon to be third year and as aurors were more active caused by famous Azkaban escapee it made sense for him to guess, still the boy seemed smart, which his grades did not show so far, or perhaps he decided to get more serious from now on?
She nodded while replying - "Yes, Potter. That magic is called apparition, even Hogwarts does not teach it during our seven years in there, it is quite dangerous spell in fact, when poorly executed you could kill yourself if only part of you teleports away. One thing about this spell is that you need to have seen with your own eyes the place where you want to apparate to, and this is why knight buses were made - so that witches and wizards could see all of Britain… by just sitting around - which enables them to 'teleport', as you call it" - she made quotation marks with her fingers - "anywhere in the country - which is a very useful ability as you can imagine, especially so if another war arises, Grindelwald is gone and so is You Know Who, yet who knows what future has in store?"
Harry was fascinated - his eyes shone as if considering all the usefulness of this ability, then the expected question came in - "Are there any prerequisites for learning apparition? Can it be blocked? Do you already know it?"
Now it was Daphne's turn to smirk, she returned the cheeky line from the start of the conversation - "I answered your inquiry about me being there, Potter, is this not your turn to spill the beans now?"
Harry blushed, as if just remembering that just bombarding someone with questions is not a good way to keep a conversation. He sighted and shared his story. Daphne was interested to hear of the boy's adventures - she even recommended some more shops in nearby alleys to Diango for him to visit as they had some good stuff. The conversation flowed on as they discussed various things - Harry was interested how she spent her time, what it was like to live with a Slytherin family and most importantly of any magic he heard Daphne mention and did not know himself. Daphne was happy to share - in turn she learned a lot about muggles, after which she realised how useless those muggle studies textbooks she was used to reading were.
As more time passed, they eventually switched from 'Potter' and 'Greengrass' to just 'Harry' and 'Daphne'.
And as more time passed, the bus came to a halt. The driver's loud voice shouted across the bus - "Privet Drive! it's your stop, Harry!"
Harry quickly picked his trunk, shoved his book inside, then clicked the shrinking button and dropped it into his pocket. Daphne was actually a bit sad to end their conversation there, it would be way more…. entertaining for her if she could have someone nice to chat with on her travels. As they said their goodbyes, Daphne seemed reluctant to part and as Harry stood up to walk to the door she spoke again - "Harry!"
"Yes?" - the boy turned around
"I was wondering if you will ride this any time soon, it was … nice chatting with you" - a slight blush shoved up on her face, but quickly disappeared.
Harry just smiled - "Yes, I plan to do this every day, until the Quidditch world cup at least, I also enjoyed our chat, Daphne, you can owl me the details if you wish to travel with me again, just remember no owls during the day - my relatives hate that"
Daphne smiled back, remembering the horror stories of Harry's 'relatives' - "I will write when I get back home, there's still some time left for this apparition route, see you again Harry!" - she waved at him, as Harry waved back, hurried out of the bus, dropping the empty hot chocolate mug near the pile next to the driver who had a sheepish smile on his face - "ah it's good to be young, Harry! See you tomorrow if you happen to catch my bus!"
"Goodbye!" - Harry stepped out of the bus, and as soon as he touched the ground he could feel large lump of magic behind him - he turned around and as he saw the bus get more transparent and speed up like a formula car, he caught glimpse of Daphne waving, he managed to smile and wave back, but just moments later the bus was out of sight.
Harry was feeling quite satisfied with this day - he made a new friend, a Slytherin friend - who would have guessed? Perhaps thinking about all Slytherins based on that Draco boy was a mistake on his part…
He walked toward the fourth house in the street. Dursleys somehow did not even notice he was absent, glad to avoid an needless explaining Harry walked back to his room - he still had tons of books to finish, which he was looking forward to, especially the muggle fantasy one as he was left at quite the cliffhanger when Daphne's arrival interrupted his reading.
A few hours later Hedwig arrived - she seemed a bit tired from the journey, but still had a proud gaze, so Harry put a lot of treats on her plate. Harry saw a letter attached to her feet. It turned out to be the response from Neville - he told he could only invite him over this week as he was travelling to Rome with his Grandma for the rest of summer later. Harry just smiled and wrote his reply - he would visit his friend this week, perhaps the day after tomorrow? As Hedwig did seem tired, he did not want to send her off just after letting her take a break for a few minutes. He wrote the reply, but did not put it into a letter yet, he would do so in the morning, and who knows. Perhaps more letters would come in at that time, so he would need to replan and reschedule his meetings.
It was getting late, but he did not need much sleep anyway, so he just meditated for a while, organising the days memories - which consisted of taking some books from his first time living this date, placing it in the 'entry hallway' of his library - the one he used to trick Dumbledore with, then going over todays books - splitting content apart to various categories and organising i across the shelvest. Daphne did explain to him that getting actual benefit for apparition required him to build a sort of map in his mind library - it was fun to see her reaction when she realised that he actually knew occlumency, and not just the theory, but was quite proficient in it, especially mind defence, yet he did not mention that part.
It took him just a few hours and there was an addition of a small table in his main library, on it sat a large globe with a lot of pins on it. By touching a pin, a map appeared filled with various muggle cities - he found it in one of the muggle books he casually bought, then just associated mindscape markers on the globe with the maps. As for the globe - he had seen plenty of it in his primary school. Most non magical things could be made inside his mindscape just with a thought - if he understood how it worked.
Harry playfully touched a few mind markers as the table surface next to the globe got replaced with various maps of countries around the world. Most of them were dim, unlit, yet for Britain it had a lot of light lines shining - Privet Drive, King Cross station, various streets around - which took a while to organise, but just going slowly through knight bus memories with muggle maps nearby was quite doable. The lights were just a fancy thing he imagined - by placing thousands of LED lights below the map, then lighting them up as he attached a matching visual memory piece to the map.
Occlumency for organising was quite fun, Harry thought, yet a sudden knock outside his mind forced him to open his eyes - there was a common brown owl lightly pecking his window, a letter with elegant handwriting attached to its feet, He smiled as he walked closer to let him in. Then as if on cue more owls started flying in - he recognized the other ones, Hermione's owl, Weasley owl, even Seamus owl, he supposed Thomas would send him a reply via regular mail, as he did not have an owl.
He smiled as he poured a small hill of owl treats on the window still. While the owls happily ate, then flew away one by one, yet the unseen-before brown one remained, looking at Harry as if awaiting for a response letter. Harry just chuckled and grabbed the letter with elegant cursive from the nearby pile. As expected it was from a new friend he made today - a slytherin girl called Daphne..