A/N:
Hi! New chapter.
Thanks to everyone who read/fav/followed/commented on the last chapter, the feedback is always encouraging to see :)
As before, if you have any ideas/scenes you'd like to see in this fic, feel free to leave a comment and I'll write it. No idea is stupid, I love a challenge, and will most likely find a way to incorporate it into a chapter.
Harry Potter was sitting in the Great Hall with his girlfriend Daphne Greengrass, watching her eat.
He wasn't trying to be creepy, he was just genuinely trying to understand why his girlfriend, who he knew for a fact to be a robot, needed to eat in the first place.
How does it even work? He wondered. Does she even have a stomach?
He watched as she lifted her sandwich and took a bite. As she opened her mouth, he discretely looked inside and noticed that it did look like a normal mouth. Her teeth were pearly white and perfectly straight, her tongue was…a tongue, and there were no gears or cogs in sight.
I'm so confused…
"Harry," Daphne said after swallowing her bite of sandwich. "Why are you staring at me while I eat?"
Harry averted his gaze from his girlfriend's mouth. "Uh, no reason," he lied.
"You are lying," she said.
"No I'm not," he continued lying.
"I know you are lying. I saw your heart rate increase."
"You saw my heart rate increase?" he whispered incredulously.
"Yes."
"So you admit you're a robot?"
"I am not a robot," she answered quietly, making sure no one around them could hear their conversation. "I am a perfectly normal sixteen year old girl."
Harry shook his head. "How are you still keeping that up? We both know a normal sixteen year old girl can't see someone's heart rate increase."
"Do not avoid the question," Daphne said. "Why were you staring at me while I ate?"
Harry didn't answer, so Daphne continued.
"Is this a fetish?" she asked, raising her hand in front of her as if gesturing to a 'fetish'.
"No!" Harry shouted.
Daphne stared at him with the same blank expression that never left her face.
"I mean, maybe?" he shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. I find everything you do attractive, even the most mundane things."
Processing Input: 'I find everything you do attractive, even the most mundane things.''
Possible Emotion Detected: ERROR / EMOTION UNKNOWN
Simulating Physiological Response…
Daphne felt a pleasant warmth course through her circuits. It was a feeling she was coming to associate with Harry, as even when she wasn't spending time with the boy, simply thinking about him would activate a lesser intensity of the same unknown emotion within her.
"You can continue to watch me eat, if it gives you gratification," she said eventually.
Harry blushed. "Well, when you put it like that, I just feel weird about it."
"Do not be ashamed. I am your girlfriend now, and will accept you for who you are."
Harry looked at her, amazed. "Did you just tease me?"
Daphne paused.
Printing Thought Sequence: Did I just tease him? I did not even know I was capable of 'teasing'...
"Perhaps I did," she conceded. "Is this not normal behavior for a sixteen year old girl?"
"No, it definitely is," Harry confirmed.
He decided not to mention that a normal sixteen year old girl wouldn't ask what normal sixteen year old girl behavior was.
After all, he liked Daphne just the way she was.
"Potter!" a voice called from down the hall.
Harry turned around and saw his sometimes friend and always rival, Draco Malfoy.
"What's this rubbish about you dating Daphne Greengrass?"
"Oh, it's not rubbish actually," Harry replied. "We started dating a few days ago."
Draco's face fell. "Oh. So that's your type, huh?"
Harry looked at the boy strangely. "Have you seen her? She's kind of everyone's type."
"Not everyone's…" Draco said, looking down at the ground sullenly.
Hold on a minute, Harry thought in shock. Am I missing something here? Is Draco Malfoy-
"I don't care!" Draco shouted. He ran halfway down the hall before spinning back around and pointing his finger dramatically at Harry, causing all the nearby students to stop and stare.
"Next week, on the Quidditch Pitch! Don't expect to beat me if you're too busy fooling around with your g-g-girlfriend!"
It took him a great deal of effort to force that last word out.
Harry watched, dumbfounded, as Draco Malfoy ran the rest of the way down the hallway and disappeared around a corner.
Harry was doing homework in the Library with Daphne a few days after they started dating, shamelessly taking advantage of her 'eidetic' - or, as Harry knew, robotic - memory.
"Daphne?" he said, looking up from the Potions textbook he was studying. "What are the ingredients used in Eclipsarum Elixir?"
"Moonlit Dew, Shadowfern Leaves, Spectral Essence, Ghostroot Extract, Essence of Twilight, Moonstone Powder, Essence of Silence, Starlit Mist, and Whispering Winds. Would you like exact quantities and a step-by-step guide on how to create one (1) cauldron of Eclipsarum Elixir?"
Harry looked at her adoringly. "I love how smart you are."
Whirrrrr
Harry paused. Did his girlfriend just whir?
"Daphne?"
"What is it, Harry?"
"I really love how smart you are."
Whirrrrr
Harry was now absolutely sure his girlfriend had whirred. Now the trick was just to figure out what caused it.
Possible Emotion Detected: Happiness
Simulating Physiological Response…
Whirrrrr
Printing Thought Sequence: What am I, a cat? Why am I whirring!?
Daphne was pretty sure she had misinstalled one of her gears, because she was now apparently whirring every time she was happy.
And while she wasn't positive, she had calculated there was a 99.7% probability that her boyfriend had noticed as well.
"Daphne?" Harry said.
"Yes, Harry?"
"I love you."
Possible Emotion Detected: Happiness
Simulating Physiological Response…
Whirrrrr
Printing Thought Sequence: Oh my Gears this is so embarrassing!
Harry smiled lovingly at her, and her estimate increased to 99.999%.
"I am sorry, Harry. I have something to which I must attend. I will see you at breakfast tomorrow. Good night."
Daphne packed up her books and got ready to head off to the newly reinforced shed to do some maintenance, and hopefully get this mortifying problem fixed.
Before she could leave, Harry spoke to her again. "I find it really cute," he said. "The whirring, I mean. It's when you're happy right? It's like you're a cat…"
"I am not a cat," Daphne said, not needing the optical display to tell her she was feeling embarrassed.
"That's not what I meant!" Harry rushed, realizing his words may have sounded a bit demeaning. "It's just, nice to know when you're happy, I guess?"
"Goodnight, Harry."
Later that night, in the shed, Daphne performed the required fixes to her mechanisms, silencing the whir from earlier; as she had expected, one of the gears in her constructed brachial plexus was loose.
Processing Input: 'I find it really cute. The whirring, I mean.'
Daphne thought about Harry's reaction from earlier. She knew she wasn't like the other girls, who would blush and smile when their boyfriend's said something nice to them. She knew her facial expressions and body language, being neutral all the time, weren't very expressive.
Heaving a great big mechanical sigh that was entirely for show, as she didn't have to breathe if she didn't want to, she loosened the gear just a bit.
Printing Thought Sequence: Oh, the things we do for love-
Daphne froze. Not just her thoughts, but every single gear, cog, pulley, and circuit in her body ceased moving for a second.
Possible Emotion Detected: Hysteria
Simulating Physiological Response…
Printing Thought Sequence: 01101111 01101000 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100 00001101 00001010
How could she not have seen it? It was so obvious, in hindsight. Daphne could have smacked herself on her own metal skull for taking so long to realize it.
As her panic settled down, and her body came back online, she confirmed her hypothesis by once again envisioning Harry Potter's face.
Simulating Physiological Response…
And there it was. That same unknown feeling as before, that had vexed her for the past few days since meeting Harry.
Only now, the emotion was printed clearly on her optical display.
Possible Emotion Detected: Love
"Harry Potter, it seems as though I love you," she told him the next morning at breakfast.
Harry's orange juice dribbled out of his mouth as his jaw dropped. "What?"
"You spilled your juice."
"Forget the juice, did you just tell me you love me?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "Last night I felt love for the first time by thinking about you."
Harry blushed. He had never appreciated Daphne's straightforwardness so much as he did now.
"How do you know it was love?" he asked.
"My optical display told me."
"I see. But you're not a robot?"
"Correct. I am not a robot."
"I see…"
Ultimately, Harry didn't mind that his girlfriend was keeping this one 'secret' from him. He knew that she knew that he knew that she was a robot, so it wasn't even really a lie. He wasn't even sure Daphne was capable of lying, besides her resistance to admit she wasn't human.
A totally honest relationship suited Harry just fine; he wasn't able to lie to her because she could 'see' his heart rate, and she wouldn't lie to him, because she simply didn't bother. In any case, knowing she always told the truth just made it all the sweeter when she told him that she loved him.
"What do we do now?" Daphne asked.
Harry looked at her oddly. "What do you mean?"
"I did not expect to ever fall in love. I am not certain what the correct proceedings are, though I have an idea."
"Oh yeah?" he said, curious to see what her idea was.
"Yes. According to my research, we are to kiss, copulate, and then get married."
"..."
"You spilled your juice again."
"Why don't we take things slow?" Harry asked once he had recovered from his girlfriend's verbal surprise attack.
Possible Emotion Detected: Disappointment
Simulating Physiological Response…
"Oh, alright," she said flatly.
Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I mean, I'd love to do all of those things eventually, but maybe we can just start with kissing? And maybe leave, uh… 'copulation', and marriage for a bit later?"
"This compromise is acceptable," she stated, and leaned over to kiss him.
Possible Emotion Detected: Love
Their lips made contact, and every circuit in Daphne's processor lit up like a pinball machine, and she couldn't bear to pull herself away.
Daphne felt even better than the previous times she felt love, and immediately knew that she would like to spend a lot more time kissing Harry in the future. And if kissing felt this good, how might other activities feel…?
"Your lips taste like orange juice," she said when she finally broke away.
"Oh, sorry about that," Harry replied, wiping his mouth.
"Do not be sorry, I like the taste."
Harry blinked. His girlfriend certainly said some interesting things sometimes.
"Actually, I wanted to ask about that the other day," he admitted. "How do you, um, eat?"
Daphne tilted her head in a slightly uncanny 'confused' way. "With my mouth, the same way you do."
"Right, but do you have a stomach?"
Daphne looked down at her abdomen, and then back at Harry. "I do not understand your confusion."
Harry leaned in and whispered to her. "But how do you digest food, as a robot?"
"The same way you do, Harry," she explained. "Everything I eat gets broken down and converted into energy, which is then used to power all of my higher functions."
Harry tried to make sense of that in his head. "But surely a sandwich isn't the most efficient source of fuel for you? Do you ever just like, drink oil and eat batteries?"
Daphne stared at him, and even though her expression remained unchanging as always, Harry could tell he messed up badly.
"Harry," she began evenly. "Even a robot can get offended if you speak to them uncaringly. Because I love you, I will forgive you this time. But should you err again, keep in mind I am not above forcefully correcting your indiscretions."
Harry flinched back. Yikes! She can be scary when she wants to be…
"I'm sorry," Harry said, bowing his head to the table. "I wasn't thinking, and I'll be more careful in the future."
"Good," Daphne said. "I would have hated to use my re-education protocol on you."
Harry gulped audibly. Note to self, don't make Daphne use her 're-education protocol' on you.
"Wait," Harry said, thinking back to what she said earlier. "So you admit now that you're a robot?"
"I am not a robot," she replied. "I am a perfectly normal sixteen year old girl."
"Even if the Daphne Greengrass I love is a robot?"
Whirrrrr
Harry smiled affectionately at his girlfriend.
"You play a dangerous game, Harry Potter," she said warningly.
A/N:
Hi! I hope you liked this chapter. The style of this fic is very dialogue heavy and way different from my other story, so let me know if it's working for you or not.
And once again, feel free to leave suggestions for more chapters in the comments. This fic will be mostly episodic from here on out, meaning each chapter will be a largely self-contained vignette chronologically following the daily life of our two main characters.
See you next time :)