I bring you another chapter which I hope you really like! Thank you so much for the comments and the favorites and follows! I'm sooo glad you guys are liking this :)
On another hand, several of you were hopeful that Harry would write to Daisy soon... Yeah, about that... He has not. The main reason is a narrative one, this way I can jump straigh to the summer and I won't bore you dragging the school year. But also, I love Harry but he's a preteen boy, he's a bit of an idiot and it didn't even cross his mind that Daisy would like to hear from him at all. But he fixes it soon, don't worry!
With that out of the way... enjoy!
Chapter 3: You've got mail (but not really)
Harry was supposed to come back on a Saturday afternoon. He had gone radio silent since he'd crossed the barrier to Platform Nine And Three Quarters, not an owl not a letter, so Daisy didn't know when they were supposed to go pick him up. Luckily for him, Petunia remembered. Also, luckily for him, Daisy could still be as annoying as ever and she had a personal interest in knowing when he was coming back. Putting her best skills at use she buggered her mother for when Harry would be coming home the second June started and until her mother relented.
"The last Saturday in June," she said with a sigh during dinner, after Daisy pestered her for a whole day. "It was always the last Saturday in June at half past five."
Daisy convinced her father to take her to go get Harry. She bribed him with spending the day together in London, just like they had done when dropping him off.
"We could even go see a movie!" she cried. Because Little Whinging had no cinemas and she had to take all the chances that were offered to her.
Vernon hesitated. "Well, I don't…" He glanced at Petunia beside him on the kitchen table. "What about your brother?"
Daisy rolled her eyes. "Do you want to go get Harry from the station?" she asked the boy.
Dudley snorted and Daisy gave their father a pointed look as if to say: "see?"
"What movies are on, then?" he relented.
They went to see Hook, which Daisy loved but her father not so much. Maybe he saw himself in Captain Hook and didn't know how to deal with that. Maybe he just thought it was a silly kids movie. Daisy wasn't about to start psychoanalyzing her father. They had to run to make it to the station in time, after, but to Daisy it only made the outing even better.
King's Cross was packed, yet Daisy knew where she was headed. Platform Nine was mainly empty, with a train having just departed, but in Platform Ten a good amount of people waited for theirs. The barrier between the two platforms was crowded with a fair amount of suspicious people. Some of them leaving, some of them clearly waiting.
Daisy waited with her eyes stuck on the barrier while her father hung back a bit, not wanting to tie himself with the crazy characters waiting on the platform. From the corner of her eye, Daisy saw him attentively studying a map of the station, very resolutely not looking at the people with owls and trunks and strange robes that were seemingly appearing out of thin air.
Harry materialized next to the barrier. One second he wasn't there, then Daisy blinked and there he was. A tall red-headed boy and a bushy-haired brunette were by his sides. He looked taller and lighter, more at ease with himself, but there was also something about the set of his shoulders that made him seem older.
"Harry!" Daisy shot off, dodging people and trolleys with an ease that only over five years of football training could give someone.
Harry and his friends had been making their way towards someone in the crowd, but at her call they stopped. His eyes widened when he saw her barrelling towards him and he opened his mouth to say something: maybe a greeting or perhaps a warning. Daisy crashed into him before he could make a sound, almost sending them both tumbling to the ground. It was more a tackle than it was a hug.
"Daisy," he said with bewilderment.
She let him go and bounced on the balls of her feet. "Hi." She smiled, letting her energy fade a bit. "Sorry. It's just that I missed you, Disappointment."
He sent her a fond smile in return. Beside him, his two friends shared a loaded look. Ron and Hermione, she knew without anyone having to tell her.
"Anyway," She punched his upper arm playfully. "I wouldn't have complained about a letter or two, you know?"
He flushed and she laughed at him. She really had missed him and she wondered if, in a castle full of friendship, magic, secrets, mysteries and adventures, he had found time to miss her too. Not sure she wanted to dwell on that, she turned to his two friends.
"You must be Harry's friends!" She beamed at them, wishing and hoping desperately she was making a good impression. "I'm Daisy! I'm Harry's cousin!"
Hermione returned her smile, but hers was tinged with bemusement. "We've heard a bit about you," she said.
Daisy let that fill her inside. She sent her happiness and elation to Harry, who immediately blushed, again, and shot her a warning glare.
"Awww!" she cooed anyway, because she wasn't afraid of him. "You do care!"
He groaned obnoxiously and pushed her with his shoulder. For a second it was as if the whole year had never happened and they were back in her room at midnight, arguing about George Michael being better off on his own than with Wham! or 'Daisy-please-if-you-play-Orionocco-Flow-one-more-time-I'm-gonna-jump-out-the-window'.
"Shut up."
A red-headed woman, as red-headed as Ron, approached. There was a shy-looking girl, also with bright orange hair and a freckled face, walking beside her. The woman had a soft smile on her face that oozed motherliness. Daisy remembered from last September, but she would have recognized anyway. Molly Weasley.
"Busy year?" she called.
"Very," said Harry. "Thanks for the fudge and the sweater, Mrs. Weasley."
The woman smiled pleased. "Oh, it was nothing, dear."
Vernon seemed to decide enough was enough and he walked over with a scowl. "Ready, are you?" he called, still far enough that nobody would mistake him for part of that circus.
"You must be Harry's family!" said Mrs. Weasley.
"I'm Daisy!" she pitched in with a grin. "Harry's cousin!"
Her father grunted in answer. Avoiding Mrs. Weasley's eyes he glared at Harry. "Hurry up, boy, we haven't got all day."
Daisy bounced to her father using her sunniest smile while Harry said his final goodbyes in the background. "So, McDonald's was it?"
He deflated a bit, anger taking the backseat, though the unease didn't fade. "You've got everything?" he asked looking over her shoulder to her 'Survival backpack' as Daisy liked to call it.
"Yep!"
"McDonalds it is." He nodded. "But if your mother asks we've gone to a proper restaurant."
"Yes, sir!"
He sighed.
.
Daisy got a feeling Harry wouldn't want to share his adventures until it was only the two of them, so she filled the car-ride and the dinner at McDonalds with her own updates. Some of them he probably could have gone without, but Daisy told him anyway.
"So turns out I'm diabetic. Type 1. We found out a week or so after you left and it wasn't fun." At his horrified look she was quick to add: "Don't worry! I'm okay!"
"Freddie Mercury died in November. Turns out he had AIDS." To which her father made the great contribution of: "Bloody poof."
"Bianca broke her arm in P.E. We could see the bone and everything."
"Ireland beat us at Eurovision. Just for sixteen points."
"My team won the league. Hannah couldn't believe it."
"Daddy finally bought me The Little Mermaid on tape so you have to watch it, now."
"You missed the Winter Olympics. We didn't win anything, though."
"We went to London with the school and Bi and I got lost. We ended up in the London Eye somehow."
"Wanna see my new GameBoy games?"
"Josh and Jill Jones started dating. They made it two days and only kissed once."
"Now we finally have the Star Wars VHS collection. Want to watch them all tonight? I've got a telly in my bedroom now."
"I got a solo on the Winter Concert. Mum cried."
And so on and so on.
After, once they got back home, Harry told her all about his year. His retelling brought forth memories, an "oh, that's right!" feeling that accompanied his words. The Then flashed behind her eyes what he was omitting and a more in-depth picture of the things he wasn't and Daisy tried to feel flattered and not annoyed about the way he was trying to keep her safe.
Since Harry finished in late June but Daisy's school didn't let out until mid-late July, he found himself with a lot of time on his hands and no idea what to do with it. Daisy's parents and brother were terrified of him, because he hadn't shared the fact he wasn't allowed to do magic outside of school, and avoided him like the plague. If he stayed at home during the mornings when Daisy and Dudley were at school and Vernon was working, Petunia would give him a thousand chores to do.
"I don't want you lazing around the house all useless," she would say.
So Daisy suggested for Harry to go out. All the kids were still in school, not that he had any friends in Privet Drive outside of Daisy, and wandering around got old within two days. There wasn't that much to see. Since Daisy's parents had locked up his magic things in the cupboard he wasn't able to do schoolwork either.
"You could always go to the library," Daisy suggested one Tuesday afternoon while they were eating ice-cream under a tree on the park.
He shot her a look. "Now you're sounding like Hermione."
He got that sad look on his eyes he adopted whenever he remembered his friends. Ron and Hermione hadn't written him once in two weeks and he was starting to worry. Daisy tried to cheer him up making him see how unreliable owls were, but she wasn't sure it managed the desired effect.
"She sounds terrifying," she said after licking her ice cream. "But I didn't mean to study. There are fun books to read: fantasy and sci-fi and adventure. Or you could try learning a new skill like drawing or needlepoint or playing an instrument. You could even learn a new language!" she beamed at him, getting more and more excited. "You could learn Sign Language!" Her eyes were bright.
"Sign language?" Harry eyed her oddly. "Why would I do that?"
"There's a dictionary now so you could do it," Daisy said. "We learnt about it in class and Becca, Bianca and I are trying to learn it. Princess Diana was part of it."
"Aahh," said Harry knowingly because he knew how fond Daisy was of Diana, Princess of Wales. "How's it going, then?"
Daisy made a face of disgruntlement. "We're trying to get Bi's cousin to teach us, but he's only teaching us swearwords."
And Harry laughed so hard he dropped his ice-cream. But he did try to learn some BSL in the end, if only so he and Daisy could make fun of Dudley with him in the room without Petunia or Vernon noticing.
He went to the library in the mornings, or to the park or simply strolling around Privet Drive. Most days, when Daisy got out of school, he was there waiting for her, away from the parents and with his hands in his pockets appearing nonchalance, but there all the same.
"You're picking me up now?" she'd asked the second time with a quirk of her eyebrow. Because the first time she'd been too elated to question it.
"There's nothing better to do," he'd said with a shrug. She couldn't fault him for that.
"Do you miss it?" she asked another day. "The school."
Harry looked at the dull grey walls and empty windows and half-smiled. "Nah." Then: "Do you want to go to the park?"
"I have book club now, but I'm sure no one will mind if you join."
He grimaced and went: "At least is not choir" and Daisy had to do her best to not laugh at him. Her best, alas, was not good enough and her giggles got the attention of everyone in a fifteen-foot radius.
"Mrs. Chapman loved you," she assured him. "She keeps asking me when you'll be coming back."
His horrified look said enough.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
Daisy snuck into her cousin's room when the clock struck midnight on the 30th (now 31st) of July. The idiot was already asleep and she had to wake him up with a pillow to the head.
"Wha- Daisy?" He squinted at her. "What the hell?"
She handed him his glasses. "Happy birthday!"
Harry sat up and accepted the glasses. Now able to see he blinked at her. He saw the cupcake in her hand, a lone candle on top, and his face cleared.
"Oh!" He glanced at the alarm clock on his bedside table. 00:01. "It's my birthday."
"Yep." Daisy got the stove gas lighter from the pocket of her pyjamas. "I'm not gonna sing you Happy Birthday because I know you hate it but you have to blow out your candle." She offered the now flaming cupcake to him. "Make a wish."
Her cousin pursed his lips in thought. He decided on a wish pretty quickly and blew out the candle, which had started to drip wax on the cupcake, without a fuss. Daisy didn't ask him about the wish and he didn't offer.
"You didn't make it, right?" he said, looking at the cupcake with trepidation.
She pouted. "I could have gotten better!"
He shot her a doubtful look. Daisy knew they were both remembering the Disastrous Cookies of '89, which were both burnt and raw at the same time and also ridiculously salty. Whenever Daisy was allowed in the kitchen since that incident, which wasn't very often, everybody regarded her experiments with a healthy dose of caution.
Since Daisy was only a child, her first birthday gifts to Harry had been more of the creative variety: a drawing (a really bad drawing) when he was six and another when he was seven, a song when he turned eight (because she'd started on the choir that year and thought music was the best thing ever) and the Disastrous Cookies when he turned nine. By then she had started to get some allowance, but she kept spending it on comic books and music. Still, she managed to save enough to gift him a T-shirt the following year.
"But I'll outgrow it," he'd said with confusion holding the white tee with a yellow happy face slapped on the middle.
"You deserve to have something that fits you, that's only yours," Daisy had told him.
Since Harry refused to damage the T-shirt he hardly wore it and Daisy had to promise to buy him a new T-shirt every Christmas to get him to put it on. The day he outgrew it was a sad one, but he still kept it somewhere in his room.
The previous year Daisy had given him a framed photograph of the two of them, beaming and happy, Daisy flushed and mud-stained after the last match of the season. She was clinging to him, her body fused to his arm, and offering a wide grin to the camera. Harry's smile was smaller and more contained, with a touch of bewilderment like he couldn't understand what was going on or what he was doing there.
"So you don't forget about me in that magic school of yours," she'd told him.
The gift this year was bigger than the ones before but just as badly wrapped. Daisy waited with baited breath as Harry unwrapped it slowly. He always loved to take his time. A short laugh escaped him when he was done.
"It's a magic set," he said and he looked at her like he couldn't believe her.
Daisy shrugged, suddenly shy. "I know you can't make magic outside of school, but maybe you can make this magic. I know it's not the same, but-"
"It's brilliant," he cut her off, voice thick. "I love it."
She smiled at him with relief. "You're gonna have to catch up," she told him. "Cause I already know one trick. It's very impressive."
He prompted her with a quick of his eyebrow and Daisy performed her trick for him. It consisted on a lot of exaggerated hand movements and 'making disappear' a paper ball by throwing it, not subtly at all, over her shoulder. Harry burst out laughing and she had to cover his mouth with his hand so he wouldn't wake her parents up. With the girl still silencing him, he stared at her with the fondest look in his eyes: soft and light and warm. Daisy stared back and understood everything he couldn't bring himself to say.
Hand still in his mouth, she leaned forward and Harry met her in the middle, their foreheads pressing hard against each other.
I love you.
I love you too.
"Come on! Open it! Let's see if we can learn one trick before morning."
"Shouldn't you go to sleep?"
"Pfftt! Sleep is for the weak."
.
She regretted that attitude in the morning, of course. Her mother woke her up at like seven so they could all have breakfast together before her father left for work. She was half falling asleep in her plate, mentally singing How Do You Do! because they had been playing it non-stop the whole month and she'd had it rattling on her head since the day before. Anything to tune out the arguing at the breakfast table.
"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT SAYING THE 'M' WORD IN OUR HOUSE?" her father was roaring with energy no one should have at seven in the morning on a Friday. In July. Harry had made the mistake of saying 'magic' and Daisy's family had lost their shit. Too tired for it, Daisy sleepily ate her scrambled eggs, longing to go back to her bed and not get up until noon.
"HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!" Vernon slammed his fist on the table, making the plates clink and her orange juice spill.
"Heeey!" she complained doing her best to clean it up. It was better to be irritated than to feel scared. She shouldn't be afraid of her father, but it was hard not to when he was screaming like that. So Daisy shoved the feeling of unease down and focused on other, easier, things, like spilled juice.
Her father ignored her. She didn't think he had even heard her. "I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF-"
The ringing of the doorbell cut him off. For a long moment they all stared wide eyed towards the door, as if they'd never heard a doorbell ringing before. Vernon was still towering over the kitchen table and over Daisy and Harry, but he wasn't looking at the boy anymore. Dudley, who had jumped off at the word 'magic' had his back stuck to the fridge and Petunia hovered beside him. Even Daisy had stopped dabbing at the spilled juice with a paper towel to stare at the door. The noise had been so unexpected that it took them a few seconds before anyone remembered how to move. It was Petunia who reacted first, letting out a high pitched squeal and heading towards the foyer.
"Any of your friends?" Vernon asked.
Daisy snorted. "At seven sixteen? They're all dead to the world." Like I'd like to be too she left unsaid while she poured herself another glass. Calmer now, Dudley sat back down on the table, shooting Harry a nasty look.
S-U-C-K-S, she finger spelled as subtly as could at the boy. He answered with a heartfelt nod.
"I swear if it's another salesman…" her father growled and headed to the kitchen door. But Petunia was there before he could reach it, a stern-faced woman in an old-fashioned green dress with her.
"Who-?"
Harry yelped beside her. "Professor McGonagall?"
Daisy chocked on her orange juice and started coughing as it burned down her throat. Professor what now? Everybody turned to look at her due to her explosive coughing but she waved them off downing half a glass of water in one go.
She was feeling very awake all of a sudden.
Deputy Headmistress Minerva flipping McGonagall smiled at Harry, a tiny smile. Her simple presence had rendered all of the Dursleys speechless. "Why do we always have to come to this house to explain things when you already should know about magic?" she asked. "Aren't the letters enough?"
"I- sorry, what?"
"Letters, Potter," she said somewhat exasperated. "They're delivered by owls."
Harry blinked up at the woman. "I didn't get any letters."
Minerva flipping McGonagall frowned at that. "Well, I'm not here for your letter," she said. "I'm her for hers."
And she looked. Straight. At. Daisy.
The guffaw that left her lips was very undignified and would have had her mother scowling if Petunia had been able to do anything else than cower by the door. "I can't be a witch," she said.
That helped her father find his voice. He was hovering in front of his wife, as if trying to protect her from the mere presence of the professor, but he stepped forward to face her. "That's right." He nodded, his face set. "Daisy is not a witch." And he said it so firmly and so convinced that for a second it hurt.
"Oh, well. Then I guess our magical quill has gotten the wrong Daisy Dursley in The Pink Room, Number 4 of Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, and the three hundred letters that were sent here were a mistake," the woman stated dryly. "Could you tell me where I can find her?"
Daisy would have applauded her saltiness any other day of the week. She was a bit preoccupied at that moment, though, with everything she knew and all she thought she knew falling apart in front of her. Her whole world was crumbling to pieces right before her eyes.
"B-but- I can't be a witch!" she stammered. "I can't. I'm not- Harry's the wizard in the family. I've never done any of this stuff!"
But that wasn't true, was it? She'd pushed Nancy Wright in a fountain without touching her when she was eight; sometimes the lights flickered when she was mad, but they'd disregarded it as faulty wiring before she could even question it; she never got hurt and she hardly ever got sick: her bruises always seemed to disappear overnight.
She'd died and she'd been born again and she remembered it sometimes.
Daisy swallowed back any retorts and looked down at her plate. Her scrambled eggs, surely cold by now, were easier to look at than any of the faces in the kitchen.
"She's right!" her father jumped at her opening. "She's not a witch. The boy's freakiness must have confused your quill thingy."
Professor McGonagall's eyes went hard at that. Both Vernon and Petunia took a step back and Dudley did his best to sink on his chair. "The Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance are never wrong, Mr. Dursley," she said. "They sense the magic-" she stressed the world in place of Vernon's 'freakiness'. "-in all British children and write their name down on the list. Your daughter's name is written on it clear as a day. Daisy is a witch and her place is at Hogwarts, whether you like it or not."
Daisy stared at the no-nonsense woman and felt something akin to hope flaring among the wreckage that was everything she'd thought she knew. So maybe her life wouldn't go as she'd planned, maybe she'd be more involved in Harry's life, maybe she'd have to be more careful: but that didn't have to be a bad thing. Not if it meant magic.
"So I'm really a witch?" she asked, her voice small.
Professor McGonagall's hard exterior melted a bit. "Yes."
"And I can really go to Hogwarts?" Daisy glanced at her cousin quickly. With him?
The teacher softened even more. "Yes," she repeated. Harry was looking between them like they were a very interesting ping-pong match, his mouth half-open.
"But she can't go with you! She can't go to Hogwarts!" Petunia argued shrilly, having found her voice. Her face was seeped in horror. "She's diabetic!"
That stumped Professor McGonagall for a bit, who opened her mouth, closed it and frowned. Daisy guessed not many parents shouted that when she told them their child was magical and had a spot at Hogwarts.
"Diabetic?" she asked Daisy instead of her parents. It made her feel more grown up, more confident.
"It's a metabolic disorder," she recited straightening up. "My pancreas doesn't make enough insulin which regulates sugar and uses it to do stuff."
Realization dawned on the professor's face. "The sugar sickness."
Well, that sounded valid.
She shrugged and kept going. "I need to inject myself insulin several times a day and keep control of my blood sugar. I could crash and so I need easy access to my doctor," she explained. "That's why I can't go to your school. I'm going to a private school in Chertsey not far from here."
She and Bianca had been very excited about the whole thing. They'd both squealed in delight when they got accepted in early March, after sitting in the exams in January. They'd visited the campus, met some of their would-be classmates and they were supposed to go buy the uniform sometime next week.
Professor McGonagall put herself together with an enviable fashion. "You wouldn't be the first student at Hogwarts to suffer from diabetes," she said trying out the word. "We have procedures there in place and our matron is one of the best healers in the country so you couldn't be in better hands, really. And if something went terribly wrong, we have a direct line to St. Mungo's Hospital in case of emergencies like those."
The witch didn't say that she would be better off being taken care of by magic hands instead of muggle ones, but it was clear in her expression.
"Although if proximity is an issue there are other options in place," she conceded. "There's another school in London that could suit your needs. It's not as prestigious as Hogwarts, of course, but you would be home every evening if you're opposed to a boarding school." She wrinkled her nose a bit at the mention of the other school and Daisy would have laughed at her school pride had the situation been any different. "I could help you arrange a meeting if that was what you wished." She paused and then looked at her parents. "Daisy needs to go to a magical school," she stressed. "Whether it's Hogwarts or another one, she needs to receive a magical education. Very bad things happen to children who don't learn how to control their magic."
Professor McGonagall stared at the Dursleys. Vernon and Petunia stared back.
"There's no way I'm letting my daughter throw her life down the drain to join the circus and learn magic tricks!" Vernon huffed, his face turning a violent shade of purple.
Professor McGonagall narrowed her eyes, her face settling in a calm yet terrifying expression.
"Now you've done it," Harry muttered low enough only Daisy could hear it.
Daisy stared at the storm that was brewing in front of her and nodded absentmindedly. Some small, detached part of her wished she had popcorn for the show that was sure to come.
"Now they've done it," she agreed.
In another life, Vernon Dursley had cowered under Hagrid's rage. He should have been grateful he didn't have to face McGonagall instead.
.
"I can't believe they really let you go."
Harry and Daisy left Number Four behind Professor McGonagall, looking at the woman with expressions that were both awed and fearful. Vernon and Petunia had conceded defeat in the end: after an hour long argument with the teacher that involved a lot of shouting, some swearing, several tears and a couple threats. Daisy had thrown the first tantrum since she was six years old when sense and reason didn't work and all the glasses, dishes, cups and windows in the kitchen had exploded at the same time. Professor McGonagall had only had to lift an eyebrow, not even needing to say 'see?', and things had been pretty much a done deal after that.
Vernon had left for work in a rush, almost an hour late, but not before giving Daisy some money to buy 'school books and stuff'. He looked so pained at the thought of giving her money to buy magic things that for a second Daisy feared he was having a heart attack.
Since he had to work and Petunia had to clean the house from top to bottom to get ready for the Masons that evening (the only reason Daisy had been woken up so early on a summer day: Vernon wanted to make sure everyone was clear on what to do before he left for work), Daisy was going alone with Harry and Professor McGonagall to get her things. The woman would usually arrange another day to do the trip, one that suited everyone perfectly, but she had allowed it that time. Daisy suspected she'd only done it because she didn't really want to spend a whole day in the magical district with the Dursleys. Harry had jumped to the chance to go too because "It's not worth making the trip twice."
"She's terrifying," she nodded as they rushed behind the witch.
He looked at her like she was mad. "You're terrifying," he said.
"Me?" Daisy chortled. "Come on!"
"You just made the whole kitchen explode," Harry reminded her.
She had to admit he had a point. Still... "I'm not terrifying," she insisted. "I'm just Daisy."
He got a mischievous look in his eyes, joined by an impish smile. "You're the most terrifying girl in the whole world," he said and why did it sound like he was quoting someone? "You're my cousin."
Realizing it was her who he was quoting she huffed a laugh and pushed him with her shoulder. "Shut up."
"Yes, ma'am."
Professor McGonagall had stopped next to the street and she was looking at them funnily. Daisy felt her cheeks burning and she knew she was blushing.
"This should be far enough," said the teacher. "Since your chimney is not connected, the Floo Network is out of the picture. Apparition is not an option since you're both too young and I don't have the clearance to make a Portkey for these sorts of matters, which leaves…"
A purple triple decker materialized on the street with a loud BANG. The Knight Bus was written in golden letters over the windscreen. An old conductor in a funny uniform as purple as the bus jumped poked his head out.
"Ah! Minerva!" he greeted happily. "More muggleborns?" he said nodding in Harry and Daisy's direction. "Welcome to the Knight Bus, children!" he called. "You couldn't be in better hands than with good Minerva here!"
"Felix…" she admonished.
He raised his hands. "Only speaking the truth! She was the best in our year," he told them. "She's terrifying, I swear."
Professor McGonagall probably couldn't understand why that sent them both into hysterics.
Harry paid for her fare, the conductor insisting on a lower price since they didn't have their parents with them, and Daisy glanced one last time towards Privet Drive. She half expected her mother to run out claiming she had changed her mind.
She didn't.
Daisy insisted on getting a seat at the front and at the top. She immediately regretted it when the bus sped up and she ended up smashed against the window, watching the road below going much faster than any road should go and all the obstacles jumping out of the path in a way that nothing should ever be able to jump. She closed her eyes and struggled to keep her breakfast where it should be, both the movements of the bus and the day's revelations being a bit too much for her.
"How come Daisy didn't get a letter?" asked Harry holding to the seat for dear life. He didn't look too fazed and she resented him a bit for that.
Professor McGonagall, who was chilling on her seat like she was at church on a Sunday, frowned. "Did you get any letters this summer, Potter?" she asked. "From your friends, from anyone?"
Harry hesitated then shook his head. "No, Professor. None at all."
"I think someone has been intercepting your mail." The Professor pursed her lips. "That's not good. I will have to talk with Albus when I get back."
The boy blushed. "There's no need to talk with the Headmaster," He looked flustered. "It's just a couple of le-" he trailed off at McGonagalls expression. "Okay," he squeaked instead.
Daisy sniggered at him. At least until the Knight Bus decided that it wasn't going to wait through the traffic on the motorway and she ended up smashed against the window. Again.
When they got off at Charring Cross her legs were shaking and her stomach was rolling. She felt somewhat vindicated when she noticed Harry didn't seem much better. Professor McGonagall looked as well put as if they'd just gone on a leisure drive across town, not a hair out of place. Yet at their slightly green faces she grimaced.
"Yes, I'm afraid the Knight Bus doesn't make for the best mode of transportation," the professor conceded.
She bought them breakfast in the Leaky Cauldron, since their previous breakfast had been derailed and they hadn't had a chance to finish it or enjoy it. Harry kept low to his seat, glancing at every new costumer like he expected them to suddenly get up and attack him.
Or like he expected to be recognized. Because he was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. Because he was famous.
Huh.
They set out a little past nine, when Gringotts opened, according to McGonagall. Daisy kept pausing to stare open-mouthed at the stores and in the end Harry was forced to grab her hand and tug her along. The Alley wasn't too crowded yet, still too early, but Daisy could still get lost if she lagged. Gringotts, in her opinion, was the most impressive building of them all. The goblins must have had great hearing because Daisy could swear over half of them smirked when she told Harry this by the entrance.
She exchanged some pounds for wizarding coins and interrogated the poor goblin behind the desk about exchange rates and vaults and debit cards while Harry went to get some money of his own. Professor McGonagall looked a bit worried but the goblin wasn't too bothered by her questions and gave Daisy a FAQ pamphlet. According to that, five pounds equalled a galleon, thirty pence approximated one sickle and one penny made a knut. That made sense. The seventeen-sickles-a-galleon and twenty-nine-knuts-to-a-sickle didn't so much.
With McGonagall they went for Daisy's robes (awfully drab and boring, in her opinion) and to the Apothecary. They bought a cauldron, a telescope and a set of scales and she wondered how she was going to fit everything in her suitcase. She didn't have to worry for long, though, cause the next stop was to look for a trunk.
Since the magic in the air made her glucometer useless, Daisy had McGonagall take them outside so she could check her sugar levels, which made the older witch frown in contemplation as Daisy explained how insulin worked and how she managed every day. Afterwards, Daisy drank a juice box while Harry guiltily enjoyed one of Florean's ice-creams.
"Are you sure you don't mind?" he would ask her after every four bites.
After the brief pit-stop they went to Flourish and Blotts. Daisy peered first at her list and then at Harry's, which McGonagall had helpfully provided for him since the owl with the letter wasn't supposed to be arriving until next week at the earliest.
"Can I get your copy of The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)?"
"Sure," Harry told her. "It's not like I'm going to need it anymore."
Already foreseeing the influx of students buying their books, the shop had made the Hogwarts textbooks easily accessible and so Daisy had no trouble getting the books she needed for ten galleons total. Then she went back to Harry's side and faced once again the list and the seven books of one Lockhart bloke she had to buy. There was a stand with the collected works of that man with his new autobiography in the place of honour and she skimmed through one of them. Then she saw the prices and her eyes bugged out.
"This Lockhart bloke," she said. "We do half and half?"
Harry smirked, amused at her reluctance to buy school books. "They are in the school list for a reason," he said.
"They are five galleons each! That's…" She did a quick count. "thirty five galleons for one subject! It's three times all the other subjects put together!" She scoffed. "That's like… one hundred seventy five pounds!" she cried. "And they look to be just storybooks! There's no theory in here! I refuse to buy five of these books just because it says so on the list! We can do half and half and you'll lend me yours when I need them and I'll do the same. It's not like we'll even have class at the same time."
"I don't know…"
"Professor McGonagall!" she called. "Do you think something will happen if Harry and I only get one set of the Lockhart books between the both of us? I don't want to waste my money on this."
Professor McGonagall huffed. "A set for all the Gryffindor tower would be more than enough," she muttered. "Don't worry." She smiled. "I won't say anything."
Since he had McGonagall's approval, Harry told her he would pay for all of Lockhart's books then, since he had way more money than she did and they were family after all.
"Don't think this counts as my birthday present, though," she warned him jokingly.
Daisy wanted to wander around the bookstore, see what books wizards passed as fiction and if they had any sci-fi, but the professor was on a schedule.
"Do you have to be with us the whole time, Professor?" Harry asked her while Daisy did her best puppy dog eyes beside him. "I think we could manage on our own."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "You're both my responsibility now, Mr. Potter, and until I leave you back home with your aunt and uncle."
"Oh!" Daisy made a face. "I wanted to take Harry to the cinema after this. My parents are having a very important business dinner and I thought it would be better if we didn't interfere. And I've been dying to see Noises off. Have you seen it yet, Professor? They say it's a really funny movie."
"I have better things to do than go to muggle cinemas in my spare time, Miss Dursley," the Professor said curtly.
Daisy had to bite her lip at the sudden thought of McGonagall in a dark cinema on her own eating popcorn and watching The Little Mermaid. She resolutely didn't look at Harry, for she knew they both would start laughing if they caught each other's eyes.
"It's okay, Professor," said Harry. "If you tell us how the Knight Bus works we can make it back on our own. We'll be fine."
"We can call them from a phone booth back in muggle London! I've still got some quid left!" Daisy pitched in. Which must have reminded Harry of something because he gasped and he went running to the front desk to ask for spare parchment and a quill.
If Professor McGonagall had been a muggle there would have been no way she would have left them on their own. Luckily for Daisy, wizards were more lax and she was left to enjoy the bookstore at her leisure. At least until Harry got tired after an hour or so and dragged her off to get her wand.
An old man with ginormous eyes beamed at them from behind his desk when they walked through the door. "Aahh, Mr. Potter! I wasn't expecting you back quite so soon. Phoenix and holly, eleven inches." He wasn't asking it.
"That's right, sir," her cousin said awkwardly. "But we're not here for me, we're here for her."
"I'm Daisy Dursley." Daisy didn't know whether she should give her hand to the man to shake or not but since he didn't make any sings that told her he planned to move she settled for a big smile. "I'm Harry's cousin."
"Oh, that's right!" the man said. "I see the resemblance."
Daisy and Harry shared an equally incredulous look. "You do?" they said at the same time with the same tone.
"You, my girl, look a bit like a feisty redhead that came to my shop many years ago. Now, are you right handed or left handed?"
Too taken aback Daisy could only raise her right hand in answer.
"Perfect!" A measuring tape started flying all around Daisy. "Is the wand that choses the witch, did you know that, Miss. Dursley?"
After getting her wand, rowan with a phoenix core, Daisy dragged Harry back to muggle London for lunch, a bit of a late one, and to call her parents. Her mum wasn't happy that Daisy was staying out until so late but she was mollified when Daisy reminded her she was keeping Harry away from the dinner.
"We'll be back before ten, I promise," she said.
Then they went back to the Alley and Daisy let Harry show her all over Quality Quidditch Supplies and talk her ear off about quidditch. They drooled over the Nimbus 2001 and Daisy made Harry promise to let her fly his Nimbus at some point.
"When we get to Hogwarts," he promised. "Your mother would have our heads if the neighbours catch us flying around in a broomstick."
.
"You would not believe what just happened." Harry got his revenge and woke her up at midnight that same night.
"What?"
"There was an elf in my room."
"An elf like Santa's helper elves or like Legolas and Galadriel?"
"Like Lego-? What is wrong with you?"
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
It was a rare afternoon, the following Monday, that Daisy was in her room. She was supposed to be out with Bianca, buying her school uniform, but that wasn't a thing anymore. Feeling sad about the imminent separation from her best friend she decided to stay at home while Bianca did the shopping they were supposed to do together.
Bianca had taken the news as well as it could be expected. Which meant not well at all. First she'd thought it was a joke, even though she knew Daisy would never play a joke like that, then she'd demanded explanation. The official story was that she'd been accepted into Harry's fancy school after doing the exams for a laugh: which bummed her parents out because they couldn't use the 'He's in a correctional facility' anymore.
"But you got accepted into Sir William's too," Bianca had said with wide vulnerable eyes. "Why would you choose that one instead?" Why wouldn't you chose me, was what she wasn't asking.
Daisy had spewed something about her aunt going there and heritance and prestige. She'd quickly reassured Bianca they would see each other on holidays and she would write constantly.
"Write?" Bianca had looked horrified. "Don't you mean call?"
Daisy had grimaced. "They're really against technology," she'd excused, which had done nothing to help her case.
So it was an adjustment. Although the rest of her friends had taken it way better than Bianca had.
The thing is that Daisy was alone at home for once. Dudley was out there somewhere with his friends, probably terrorizing a kid or two, and her mother had gone out to Tesco's. Harry was somewhere in the house, probably locked up in his room doing all the homework he hadn't been allowed to do the past few weeks. She was reading the latest Spider-Man issue while the radio played on her boomboox the top hits of the week. Everything was calm and peaceful for once, not something that people usually associated with Daisy Dursley.
When the phone rang it startled her so much she almost fell out her bed. Since Harry wasn't allowed to pick up the phone she had to run downstairs to get to it in time.
"Hello?"
There was a beat and then a tiny voice answered. "Hello?" they called back. "Is this Number 4 of Privet Drive?"
"Yes…" Daisy said hesitatingly. "Who are you?"
"My name is Hermione Granger," the voice said. "I'm a friend of Harry's and I got a letter with this number."
Daisy remembered the letter Harry had given Professor McGonagall in Flourish and Blotts. Smart boy. If his mail was indeed being tampered with that was the only way he could get a word out.
"Do you want to talk with him?" Daisy offered. "I'll get him." And without waiting for an answer she hollered "HARRY! PHONE FOR YOU!" towards the stairs. A loud thump, probably Harry falling out his bed in surprise, told her he had received her message. "He's coming," she assured into the receiver. "So… how's summer treating you?"
.
Through Hermione, Harry organized a pick up by the Weasleys in two days' time. The morning before he was supposed to leave, he took her aside and shoved a box in her hands. It had holes on the sides and it wasn't very heavy but it moved and Daisy stared wide-eyed at him.
"Since I won't be here for your birthday I thought I should give you this now," he said. "Mrs. Figg helped me out."
With an inkling about the nature of the gift she tore it open with excitement. A small ball of white and orangey fur meowed at her. Daisy's eyes filled with tears and her heart melted into a puddle.
"This… this…"
He seemed smug at her loss of words. "They say every witch should have a familiar," he said. "Mrs. Figg promised me she was a very smart one."
The kitten attempted to jump out of the box and Daisy fished it out. It settled on her arms and the girl sniffled. "This is the best gift I've ever gotten." And then: "You're so lucky you're leaving this afternoon, Mum will kill you for getting me a pet."
"Best keep it hidden until then, right?"
Arthur Weasley swung by to pick him up on his way back from work on a blue Ford Anglia. He helped Harry load his trunk and Hedwig's cage on the back, asked her how a telephone worked and seemed delighted by her answer. She decided immediately that she liked him as much as his wife.
"It's a pleasure to have Harry with us," he told Daisy's parents. "Ron had been really concerned when he didn't answer any letters. I fear they were about to stage a breakout!" he laughed. "It's a good thing it could be averted." And then: "From what Ron tells us Harry is a great friend and a delight to have around, you must be so proud of your nephew!"
It was amazing how he managed to completely miss the disgusted expressions that took over Daisy's parents.
They, Daisy pointed at her parents covertly. S-O P-R-O-U-D she finger spelled.
Shut up he signed back.
"See you in a month!" he called out loud from the front seat of the Weasley's car. She saluted at him.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O
"I still can't believe you're going off to Scotland," Josh said. It was the fourth time he'd said it in the past two hours.
It was Daisy's last day in Little Whinging and she and her friends were hanging out together one last time. She had said goodbye to her team the previous day and to Amy and Kelly earlier that week, but Bianca, Becca, Josh and Matt deserved more than that. They were her closest friends and so they deserved her closest farewell.
It had been a weird August overall. She would have spent it meeting her friends all the same, and they were doing the same things they always did but there was a sense of urgency in all those hours playing games that hadn't been there before. Daisy felt like she'd spent the whole month saying goodbye to everyone, like she was off to war instead of to boarding school, and she was sick of it. But she also wanted to spend as much time possible with her friends and none of them could really help the aftertaste of 'this might be the last time that…' in their meetings.
It was night now and way past her curfew, way past all of their curfews, but they didn't let that bother them. Daisy knew she would regret it in the morning, only a few hours away, but after she went to sleep she wouldn't be seeing her friends again for over three months. She had been seeing them almost every day for what felt like her whole life and she couldn't even fathom the thought that they wouldn't be beside her in the coming years.
She wasn't ready to say goodbye. They weren't ready either.
It was close to one in the morning and they were hanging out in Magnolia's Park, on the swings in the playground. That on itself marked the occasion as unusual and important, because those swings were usually occupied by drunk and high teenagers once the sun set, but that night they had left them alone for some reason. Daisy was on one of the swings and Becca was on the other one. Josh, Matt and Bianca were sitting on the ground around them.
She was supposed to have been back home two hours before, but things with her parents had been weird ever since Professor McGonagall had come with her letter. Things like curfew and chores didn't matter anymore, not when her parents didn't quite know how to look at her. Sometimes they looked scared, as if they feared Daisy would be turning them all into frogs with a sneeze. Other times they swung more towards betrayal, like Daisy had chosen to be a witch to go against everything her parents believed in. Most times, though, they were just confused, but Daisy couldn't blame them for that one.
It didn't help that Dudley had spent all August avoiding her. She didn't know why, but for some reason that had hurt. Not that Daisy and Dudley were especially close, but she didn't like her brother being scared of her. She didn't think they'd exchanged a single word since that breakfast in late July: he was always either out with his friends or locked up in his bedroom. Daisy knew he was avoiding her on purpose because the few times they'd managed to end up in the same room he'd quickly hightailed it out of there.
They were all on unsteady ground, the four of them. Daisy could only be relieved that Harry had gotten out when he did, because she knew things would be way worse with his presence in the house, too. The course of action, of course, had been to push everything aside and act as if nothing weird was happening, as it was the modus operandi in the Dursley household. That would have been hard to accomplish with Harry, who oozed magic and otherworldliness, around.
"I'll send you a postcard," said Daisy. "So you don't forget about me."
They all rolled their eyes as one in a move that spoke of hours and hours of accidental practice. Daisy looked at them, all sitting around with the same expressions on their faces, and couldn't help but love them. Her heart felt full but incredibly heavy at the same time.
"Impossible," said Matt with a grin. "There's no one as annoying as you."
She kicked a pebble in his direction. "I resent that." She pouted. "Guess who's not going to get a postcard."
"Guess I won't save you comic books to keep you updated when you get back, then," he shot back just as quickly.
"Will you look at that? You're back on the list."
"Thought so."
Sitting around like they'd done a lot of nights before, but with her departure looming over them like a dark cloud, was like watching her childhood slipping away. Like trying to hold to it with both hands but still feeling it being ripped away all the same. She knew it would never be the same: they could have nights like that one again, but it wouldn't be the same. That summer and the ones before would never come back.
"At least you're all going to different places, too," she said.
Becca groaned. "Don't remind me. I don't want to make new friends," she complained. "Who I'm going to sit with, now? I'm going to have to find new people."
Josh, who would be going with Becca to the local high school, Stonewall, made a face. "I resent that!"
Becca looked at him up and down and exaggeratedly wrinkled her nose. "I stand by that," she said making Matt chortle.
All of her friends would be heading off to different places and that made it easier. Becca, Josh, Amy and several of the boys on the team would be staying in Little Whinging. Bianca would be going by herself to Chertsey, a fact that she was still trying to wrap her mind around, and the rest of her friends were all off to different schools in London. Daisy knew her friends and she knew they were all great and amazing and would be making new friends in no time. (Daisy might have been a little bit biased). And while she wanted her friends to be happy and not lonely, she still was afraid to be left behind.
"Promise you'll keep in touch?" she asked. "Not only with me but with each other, too." She already struggled enough sometimes trying to balance her football friends and her music friends with them. She didn't need her best friends breaking apart as well. Daisy was usually good with changes, but there had been so many lately she couldn't stand the thought of her friends changing too.
Bianca, who had been pouting most of the afternoon, scooted forward to rest her head on Daisy's leg. A silent reassurance.
"We are united together by our love of complaining about you and there's nothing that can tear that down. It's as solid as that buttercream of yours," she said, her best attempt at a joke when she was feeling so sad. Daisy forced out a chuckle to make her feel better.
"Are you saying you're my anti-fanclub?"
Bianca grinned. "Exactly." Then she turned serious. "Don't worry, D2. We're not going anywhere."
The nickname made a chocked laugh burst from her throat. Gina, Bianca's older sister, had taken to call Daisy and Becca R2D2 ages ago and it had stuck with her. Rebecca Rosenberg and Daisy Dursley, R2D2. It was mainly Gina and her friends who used it, although sometimes Bianca's parents did as well. She would miss them as well.
Becca and Josh nodded in agreement and Matt shot her a reassuring smile. Even though she knew they had no way of knowing what the future awaited them, even knowing how easily friendships fell apart and disappeared, Daisy couldn't help but believe them. It made her feel lighter.
"Thanks, guys," she said and her voice came out so thick she knew she was about to cry.
"I still can believe you're going off to Scotland," said Josh shaking his head.
The other four groaned.
Okay, some things to mention here:
-Rowling, I don't care what you say, the 31st of July in 1992 was Friday. So that means the breakfast conversation during Harry's birthday was actually really early because Vernon had to get to work.
-Will Daisy ever get to enjoy her orange juice? I think not
-According to Rowling the wizarding population of the UK is around 3.000 people. But she also said that Hogwarts has about a 1000 students. So first of all, the math's not mathing. Second of all I think that's bullshit anyway. Because if there's only 3000 wizards it makes no fucking sense to have a Ministry that's so big or so many damn quiddich teams? Like there's not enough people to cover all the jobs? So I decided that after the wars and all the death and stuff the British Wizarding community is around close to 30 thousand and that Hogwarts takes 320 people at the moment (aprox 45 kids per year and 11 kids per house/year on average) though I can accept that pre-wars it was double that size. What does that mean, though? That there's other schools in the country, of course! Hogwarts and 5 more (one of them in Ireland).
-(I headcanon there were also wizarding primary schools because it makes no sense kids aren't going to school? And not all parents can teach their children or can affor a tutor? So there's 8 primary schools.)
-I have an excel with all this info but I can't share it yet because there's spoilers for chapter 5.
I hope you liked it!