Nothing is mine.

Harry leads a DA meeting... (sure to go well)

I Tremble With Your Pain

A flood of first years trampled down the stairs, hopping like some frenetic horde of rabbits over the trick steps, and pouring away down the corridors in a cacophony of squeaky laughter and excited, high-pitched chattering that bounced off the walls and the gleaming suits of armour leaning against the walls, waking snoozing portraits and stirring even the animals carved in the walls to life.

'We were never like that,' Ron said, side-stepping a panicked straggler on their way down to the Great Hall for dinner. 'Tiny little buggers. Like house elves, but much less helpful.'

'Well, more helpful than Dobby,' Harry said. 'He trapped us at King's Cross. Tried to break my skull, did break my arm, and, worse than that, left me at the mercy of Hermione's first true love.'

'Hurry up,' Hermione urged, ignoring the mention of Gilderoy Lockhart with what Harry decided was admirable stoicism for a girl who must still be heartbroken. 'We need to be quick, or there won't be time to do much before curfew.'

'Hermione, we've got ages,' Harry said. 'Literally two whole hours.'

'Not by the time we've waited for everyone to turn up if they're as late for this as they are for lessons,' she replied. 'And we'll need to organise everything in this first meeting; so be quick.'

'I swear, I haven't had a relaxed breakfast or lunch in weeks,' Ron grumbled, stomping down all of the steps except the trick step. 'Always rushing around doing this or that.'

'Get up earlier?' Harry suggested.

'Then it's not relaxed, is it, mate?'

'Fair enough.' He dropped onto the end of the bench and helped himself to the entire dish of pork chops and a bowl of mashed potato. 'Eat quick, Ron; Hermione has the gleam of tyranny in her eyes again.'

'I do not,' Hermione muttered, adding a neat slice of cornish pasty to her plate. 'Just eat, okay. We don't have long.'

A light tug came at his sleeve.

'Greengrass?' Harry paused in scooping mashed potato onto his plate and twisted around. 'What happened to…'

Astoria Greengrass's mismatched eyes peeked through her brown hair as she shuffled her feet at the edge of the table, her hands fisted in her robes.

'Not the Greengrass I was expecting,' he admitted. 'What can I do for you, Astoria? Is Peeves being annoying again?'

'Were you with my sister in Hogsmeade on Halloween?' she whispered. 'Some girls in my year from Gryffindor said you were walking back up to school with her at the weekend.'

'Oh, yeah.' A touch of heat rose on Harry's cheeks, but he grinned. 'I bumped into her in Honeydukes and got a five minute lecture on the Old Ways before I bought myself something sweet.'

Astoria chewed at the inside of her cheek, twisting her fingers in the folds of her green-and-silver-lined robes.

'What?' Harry asked. 'Look, I'm sure I'll be murdered soon, so don't worry about being associated with me; it won't last long.'

'No—' she squirmed '—you're nice. It's just… my sister…'

Hermione elbowed him under the table. 'She's worried being seen with you is going to get her sister in trouble with someone,' she hissed in his ear. 'Umbridge, probably, but also maybe Voldemort.'

'I promise that if someone tries to murder me, I'll ask everyone to stop for a few moments so your sister can leave first?' Harry gave her a thumbs up. 'Better?'

Astoria hovered, wide-eyed, her mouth opening and closing as she wrestled with something.

'Voldemort won't murder your sister, anyway. She's a nice Pure-blood girl. Very snooty. Kind of chilly. And possibly mildly evil because she was sorted into Slytherin, which is, of course, a great hallmark of evil. I would know, the Sorting Hat wanted me to be in Slytherin, but I convinced it that I was actually not evil at the last moment; it's too late for you, though, apparently there are no re-sortings. But, getting back to something more serious, your sister will be perfectly safe; Voldemort will go for Hermione first anyway, to eliminate the competition.'

Hermione rolled her eyes. 'He understands, Astoria; he's just in a weird mood again. He's been like it all autumn. We're slowly learning to ignore him.'

'I resent that,' Harry replied.

'I'm not wrong.'

'I didn't say you were, I just wanted you to know I resented it.'

She sighed. 'See? I think he might have hit his head over the summer.'

'It could be post-traumatic stress,' he suggested. 'Who knows. It's not so bad. I haven't gone completely mad.'

'Yet,' Ron added.

'Yes, we must leave room for the unexpected, Ronald. Your wisdom is great.' Harry ran his fingers through a long imaginary beard. 'Although, I think the Daily Prophet already accused me of being mad on five separate occasions, and that was just the last issue.'

Hermione laughed. 'Also because of head trauma.'

'Hermione, how could you be so insensitive? Look at me, now my eyes are swimming with ghosts of my past again; you might as well have dug up my long-dead parents that I don't remember and dangled them in front of me.' Harry chuckled to himself. 'Not that I have any idea where they're buried, so you'll have to do some research before you get shovelling. And maybe take Ron, you might not be able to get back out of the hole on your own.'

'Oh my god what is wrong with you?' Hermione muttered. 'Just eat and be quiet. In fact, no; get it out of your system now so you don't say weird stuff later.'

'Like that will stop me.' He grinned. 'What am I even meant to be doing?'

'We're going to the place Dobby recommended and then you're going to teach us the Defence stuff.'

'You should probably learn it now, mate,' Ron said. 'Hermione's entire plan hinges on the assumption you already know it all.'

'Might be a little bit bold of her,' Harry reckoned. 'I haven't even opened the textbook this year.'

'As if that would make a difference.' She dug a roll of parchment out of her bag between gulps of pumpkin juice. 'I made a list of everything we need to know and be able to do. I think we should really just focus on the doing, because everyone can learn the rest easily by themselves.'

'Seems fair.'

'Er…' Astoria raised her hand. 'Potter?'

'Yes, Astoria?' Harry reached out and pushed her hand back down with one finger. 'You really don't need to do that; it makes me feel like a professor and Snape said I don't need to feel any more self-important than I already do. I completely trust Snape, he's always very kind and reassuring to his students, especially me.'

'Are you going anywhere alone with my sister again?' she whispered.

'Well, we haven't made any plans,' he said, digging into his mashed potato. 'Usually she refuses to talk to me other than to lecture me about the Old Ways, or tell me I'm a Blood-Traitor and we aren't friends. So really, she's quite safe from me and-or anyone that might try and murder me in a rather disturbing fashion.' Harry hummed, musing over those strange dreams of Voldemort's killing. 'I wonder what he'd do. I don't think he'll rip all my limbs off. Or pull out my eyes. Or give me very creepy blood wings. Doesn't really make sense for me. And he's done all that before already.'

Astoria turned a little pale and sidled away, slipping back across the hall toward the Slytherin table.

'Harry…' Hermione chided.

'Yeah, I've no idea, actually,' he admitted. 'I'll have to ask him next time I see him.'

'Not what I mean,' she said with a long sigh. 'I think you scared poor Astoria; she's clearly quite shy and scared for her sister, and you just started talking about horrible things out of nowhere.'

'Probably not a good idea anyway, mate,' Ron said. 'It'll only encourage him, won't it?'

'On one hand, you're almost certainly right.' Harry said. 'But on the other hand, I think it'll be much more fun if I ask, so I'm going to ask.'

'More… fun?' Hermione's voice slipped up an octave or three. 'Encouraging him to mutilate you to death is more fun?!'

'She just won't let us do anything, Ron,' he complained. 'She gets to start illicit clubs whenever she wants and we even have to help, but I'm not allowed to ask people simple questions.'

Hermione clutched her fork, staring at the tips of the tines as if she was considering stabbing him with it. 'You're actually starting to worry me, Harry.'

'Only now?' Harry shook his head. 'What about the time I went to fight a forty foot snake?' He frowned. 'Oh, wait, you were petrified, so you didn't know about that until afterward. Okay, what about the Triwizard Tournament? Surely the dragon made you worry? Or the fact that now I've seen Fleur Delacour in a bathing suit I might decide I like tall, fancy, willowy blonde girls more than you?'

'You do!' Hermione stabbed a boiled potato instead. 'You have a huge crush on the sort of girl who thinks I'm something she ought to scrape off her shoe just because I wasn't born in the royal bedroom of some fancy old house!'

'In my defence, she is really pretty,' Harry said. 'And that makes the idea of being under her shoe a lot less upsetting than it might have otherwise been. Even better if she's taken the shoe off and is just wearing the summer-uniform's knee-high socks.'

'You're hopeless.'

'I think I've just very clearly demonstrated I'm hoping for something to happen.' He chuckled. 'Stop wasting time, Hermione; eat faster, don't you know we have an illicit club to run?'

'I am going to curse you.'

'What's it going to do, leave a scar on my face?' Harry grinned. 'You don't scare me. We all know McGonagall will take house points away for murder and you'd never risk such a travesty.'

Ron chortled next to him. 'Worse, mate, she might get—'

'Don't you dare say it, Ronald.'

'Expelled,' Harry finished with smug aplomb.

'I hate you two so much right now.' Hermione stuffed her roll of parchment into her bag and scarfed down the rest of her boiled potatoes and carrots. 'Finish eating, then let's go. Harry, try and be at least somewhat sane for the next couple of hours. Ron…'

'What?' Ron asked. 'I'm the only sane one of the three of us.'

'Quite right, Ronald,' Harry said, swiping the last chicken thigh out from under his nose. 'I'm a traumatised orphan who narrowly escaped being entrapped into dating a girl who looks exactly like his dead mum. Hermione clearly can't be sane because she read all of Pride and Prejudice. You're the glue holding us together.'

'I don't know what that is.'

'Right, Muggle idioms.' Harry cogitated. 'The linchpin? Keystone? Wow, there are a lot of idioms now I think about it; how do you even have a conversation?'

'Mate, come on.'

'Right, sorry, Ron.' Harry chuckled to himself. 'You forgive me right, it's… water under the bridge.'

Hermione sighed. 'Stop it and eat that. We need to go.'

He wolfed it down in three huge bites and wiped the grease off his lips onto a napkin. 'I'm good,' he mumbled through his mouthful. 'Ready to teach whatever it is I'm meant to be teaching.'

She leapt from the bench and snatched up her bag, stalking off through small huddles of second and third years in a whirlwind of furious purpose. Harry ambled after her, swiping an apple off the top of one of the bowls of fruit as he passed and ushering the small students aside with a magnanimous wave of his hand.

'Where's she going?' Ron jogged up the stairs after him, shedding a few crumbs. 'I never actually asked.'

'Me neither,' Harry said, polishing the apple on his robes until it was bright and shiny and red as Daphne's blood pop-smeared lips — he tucked the apple into his pocket. 'Don't lose her, or it'll somehow be our fault and you'll get yelled at.'

'You mean we.'

'No, I'm going to blame you.' He chuckled. 'Every man for himself. Those books she might take a swing at us with are heavy and some of them have hard covers.'

A light tug came at his sleeve.

'Ast—' Harry found Daphne beside him, her hair tied up in a crown of slim blonde braids and little delicate, deep maroon flowers hanging like a cluster of floating lanterns from her right ear; a small flutter of tingling, tickling butterflies balled in his stomach '—okay, you and your sister need to stop swapping places when I'm not expecting it. And how did you even get here? I never even saw you. Or heard you.' He glanced about for another secret passage, but found nothing. 'You didn't recently acquire a really good invisibility cloak, did you? Because I misplaced mine…'

'My sister?' Daphne's cool blue eyes measured him and she cocked her head like a crow. 'What did she ask you about, Potter?'

'I'm just going to…' Ron sped up, power-walking up the stairs after Hermione.

'What a coward.' Harry admired her delicate, dark reddish-pink flower earrings. 'Those are nice. Are they real flowers? And you changed your hair again. It looks nice too.'

'They are real flowers,' she murmured, brushing her knuckles against them. 'I make them. These are snake's head fritillaries.'

'How Slytherin—' he laughed '—and therefore at least mildly evil.'

'My sister, Potter.' Daphne's gaze sharpened. 'What did she say to you?'

'Oh, she was just worried that we were together in Hogsmeade alone,' Harry said. 'Probably thinks you might get murdered for walking back to school with me.'

'I did not walk with you.'

'We walked side by side the whole way, Greengrass. I know the papers say I hallucinate things, but they're not telling the truth, I just have weird dreams.'

'We were going to the same place.'

'Yeah, together. If you weren't so weirdly anti-social about talking to me, we might have even had a conversation.'

The corner of her mouth twitched. 'Potter, where are we going? There is nothing up here.'

'Up the stairs, Greengrass.' Harry ambled after Ron, tracking him along the seventh floor. 'I actually don't know any more than that,' he confessed. 'We mostly just let Hermione order us around; we never question her.'

'Never?'

'Never again.' He chuckled to himself. 'On a not-unrelated note, did you know there used to be four of us friends once? Rest in peace, Sally-Anne Perks; they say she fell from the moving staircases, but I'm sure Hermione pushed her off for being Muggle-Born and daring to question her authority.'

Daphne laughed, a soft sounding chuckle that somehow snatched a beat from the quickening rhythm of Harry's heart; stole it away before the brief bright flash of soaring blue spring skies in her eyes had even begun to fade.

'Harry!' Hermione called.

'Oh, here we go,' he said. 'This is how tyranny begins, Greengrass. It's a good thing you're a Pure-blood or she'd disappear you for being a bad influence on me.'

'I am not a bad influence.'

'You're mildly evil, remember.' Harry poked at the green-and-silver lining of her robes, but she caught his hand in a warm, iron-hard grip, staring down at where the tips of his fingers turned pink with a strange wild glint in her blue eyes. 'Wow, I er, I need that hand, so…'

She shoved his arm away. 'Then do not put it near me.'

'Why, do you bite?'

Daphne's lips twitched.

'Harry!' Hermione stormed around the corner and glared down the steps, her hands on her hips. 'Oh… Greengrass. Hello.'

'Granger.'

'Now we just need Goyle,' Harry said. 'Wait, are there any other people with a name beginning with G? Anthony Goldstein? I can't think of any others.'

'What brings you up here, Greengrass?' Hermione asked.

He raised his hand. 'Er, about that…'

'Harry!' Hermione hissed. 'You didn't!'

'I…' Harry glanced at Daphne.

Daphne stared back, her blue eyes cool and sharp, but the memory of that bright gleam of soaring spring skies shone somewhere inside Harry like a ray of summer sunshine streaming through the dappled green leaves of the woods, spilling little fluttering clouds of butterflies through his stomach.

'I absolutely did,' he confessed. 'In my defence—' Harry scrambled for something reasonable through the butterflies '—she changed her hair. See? Voldemort has no hair. And he's evil. So this is conclusive proof that Greengrass is only mildly evil.'

Hermione buried her face in her hands. 'Wizarding Britain is going to collapse into anarchy and bloodshed because you can't shut up around blonde girls. I think I would have preferred Fleur Delacour, at least she could help me learn French.'

Heat flooded Harry's face. 'Don't listen to her, Greengrass; she's never forgiven me for outing Lockhart as a complete fraud and hates it when I pay attention to anyone other than her. She thinks because my mother was a Muggle-born that I should be kneeling at her feet calling her my lady. But it turns out that even in the possession of significant misfortune, I am not in want of a wife.'

'You read it!' Hermione cried. 'You liar!'

'Only the first page,' Harry admitted. 'I wanted to torment you with quotes, but I got bored.'

She shook her head. 'Well, Greengrass can't come, Harry. We have no way to know if she won't just run straight to Umbridge or tell her housemates.'

'I am not going to reveal anything to someone like Dolores Umbridge, Granger.' Daphne's voice was cold and sharp as winter wind. 'She is a liar. A charlatan. And a traitor to those of her blood. She is not one of us.'

Hermione pursed her lips. 'Really, Greengrass? Blood purity nonsense?'

'I think she just disapproves of anyone who can't count the number of grandparents they have on one hand,' Harry suggested. 'Of course, she has extra fingers from so many years of being pure of blood, so really nobody knows what's going on.'

A snort of laughter escaped Hermione. 'Well if you're not going to tell Umbridge, you might as well come after all, Greengrass. Maybe you won't fail your OWLs like everyone else in Slytherin.'

Daphne straightened her skirt, tugging the top of her long, black socks up to her knees by the green and silver ribbons at the hem. 'OWLs are meaningless.'

Hermione gaped. 'What?! They are not. If you don't do well in exams, you—'

'Cannot work for the Ministry turning true magic into bureaucracy,' Daphne said, her tone as cool and soft as frost. 'What a terrible loss for me.'

'Aren't we late?' Harry asked.

'Yes.' Hermione huffed. 'Get in there, Harry. Everyone's waiting for you.'

Harry drifted up the steps past her. 'You haven't told me what I'm meant to be doing, yet.'

In the smooth, stone wall — one that Harry had walked past at least a dozen times in the past and was quite sure did not have a door there — stood a door of stout, dark wood.

Ron leant against it, shooting short anxious glances inside. 'There's bloody loads of them, mate.'

'Hermione will be pleased.' Harry looked back over his shoulder at where Hermione chewed at her lip. 'Maybe.'

She flapped her hands. 'Just don't say anything too weird, Harry. We all need to do well. OWLs are this year.'

'I make no promises.' His gaze strayed to where Daphne stood at the top of the stairs. 'Are you coming in or not, Greengrass? You can't stare at me weirdly from out here, you know.'

Daphne turned away and folded her arms across her chest. 'I do not stare at you at all.'

Harry pulled the apple from his pocket, polished it once more on the front of his robes and crunched a deep bite from the glossy red surface of the fruit. Daphne's head snapped back around toward him; some strange wild spark stirred in her cool blue eyes as he munched on the apple, licking the juice from his lips, and she took a small step toward him.

'Well, might as well get whatever this is over with.' Harry stepped inside.

Most of their year stood in a large empty hall twice the size of any of their classrooms — much larger than Harry felt any room should or could be this high up in the school without it somehow extending out beyond the walls — muttering amongst themselves as they waited.

'Welcome!' Harry gave them all a wave with his handful of half-eaten apple and grinned. 'Welcome to Hermione's Anti-Muggle-Born — I mean the DA—'

'Harry,' Hermione hissed.

'Right. Sorry, we're not meant to tell you that until after you've been initiated into the cult. But, for no particular reason that you should think about, please make sure none of you get a tattoo on your right forearm, we might, er… have some kind of club tattoo there one day in the future, right, Hermione?'

She buried her face in her hands. 'Someone ask him a question,' she mumbled. 'Before he keeps talking.'

'Why is she here?' Dean Thomas demanded.

Harry glanced over his shoulder; Daphne stood there, her arms still folded over her chest and her eyes fixed on some point at the very back of the room over everyone's heads. The door disappeared behind her, vanishing in a smooth ripple of stone.

'She's going out with Harry,' Lavender declared.

'I am not.' Daphne fixed Lavender with a sharp, cold look. 'He is a Blood-Traitor.'

'Mate…' Seamus shook his head. 'You going to take that from her? She wasn't even invited.'

'She's just upset she only has three grandparents,' Harry replied. 'She can't explain why it's an odd number.' He ushered Daphne further in, but she brushed his hand aside and went to stand alone by the wall. 'So… Hermione?' he whispered. 'What am I meant to do now?'

'Do you really think You-Know-Who is back?' Susan Bones asked.

'Not this again,' Harry said, rolling his eyes. 'Voldemort is not going to be here for your OWLs; or I hope he isn't, because he would definitely fail me out of spite.'

'But—'

'I saw it,' he said with a flash of irritation. 'I saw it. I don't care if you don't believe me, that's not why I'm here and nobody listens to me anyway. Only, Voldemort has been going around murdering people and leaving them in creepy ways to be reborn in Death so watch out for that.'

Daphne's blue eyes locked with his, but he smiled back at her and took another bite of his apple.

'Okay—' Hermione stepped forward, waving a piece of parchment covered in signatures '—it looks like everyone is here but Marietta?'

Cho sidled out a step from the rest of the group. 'She said she didn't want to risk it. Her mum has a job at the Ministry and she was worried if she got into trouble her mum might as well.'

'Fine.' Hermione folded up her list. 'I've kind of divided everyone in half in their houses so we can study in groups. The room is enchanted, so if you need something it should just… appear.'

'Awesome,' Zach Smith declared. 'So… what's first?'

'I think the best thing to do is just get an idea of what we need to know for our OWLs,' Hermione replied. 'Get an idea of what we want to prioritise. I think we should do the practical stuff here, because we can do theory wherever we want, really.' She glanced at Harry, chewing her lip. 'Harry?'

'Am I allowed to speak now, Lady Something-Granger?'

A long sigh escaped Hermione. 'I'm sure I'll regret it, but yes.'

'Okay, so, go and do whatever it is you want,' Harry said. 'But, you know, don't kill each other, or anything unhelpful like that. I recommend the Disarming Charm, because if you take someone's wand away, then they're a lot less dangerous.' He drew his wand from his sleeve. 'I can demonstrate if you want? Lockhart tried to teach us this one, but he was really bad at just about everything.' Harry finished his apple as they stared back at him. 'I'll take that as a yes—' he tossed the apple high into the air and vanished it with a flick of his wrist '—so, expelliarmus.'

The flash of red ripped every wand from the hands and pockets of the group standing before him and scattered them across the stone floor.

Daphne cocked her head, studying him with her pretty face wrinkled into a small frown, and a little flush climbed up Harry's face.

'Oops,' he said. 'Right, you'll need those back, but then go do magical things that don't involve cartoon vampires or copying from a textbook.'

'Great work, Harry,' Hermione muttered.

'Thanks, I'm thinking of modelling my teaching style on Snape.' Harry laughed to himself. 'Longbottom, your incompetence is intolerable, this love potion hasn't been turned into a lethal poison, it still smells like Hannah Abbot—' he grinned as an audible squeak escaped Neville '—Malfoy, you remembered your ladle, one thousand points to Slytherin. Why does your potion smell like your father's aftershave?'

A snort of laughter escaped Ron.

'I'm going to make sure nobody is doing anything silly,' Hermione said. 'Ron, stop staring at Lavender's boobs and come and back me up.'

Ron's ears flared red. 'I wasn't!'

'I'll go make sure Greengrass knows what we're doing,' Harry replied.

'Yeah, that's what you're doing,' Hermione accused. 'Sure it is. You're as bad as Ron!'

'I'm not,' he denied. 'I'm not staring at her…'

'Her what, Harry?' She laughed. 'Her boobs?'

'Yes.' Harry felt heat creep up his cheeks. 'Those.' He spun on his heel and strode across toward Daphne, gliding past Cho as she hovered nearby. 'Greengrass, what do you want to practise?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'Yes, Potter. That is what I said.'

'Can I ask why? Since staring at me really can't be that much fun.'

'I do not have a wand,' Daphne murmured.

'You forgot your wand again?' Harry asked. 'I thought it was sacred or something?'

'I would never lose my wand.' A glimmer of yearning shone in her cool blue eyes. 'I do not have one. I always hoped I would get one, but…'

He blinked. 'You don't have a wand?'

'The life my family intends for me leaves me in no need of one,' Daphne whispered. 'But I do hope that maybe one day I will get to have one.'

'You can borrow mine, if you want?' Harry blurted. 'I don't mind.'

Something wild flickered through her blue eyes as they dipped to the wand in his fingers and flicked back up, not the brightness of spring skies, nor the soft chill of winter, but a glint of fierce hunger. 'Your wand is sacred, Potter. To offer it to me carries… meaning.'

'Bad meaning?'

'Your wand is you, Harry,' Daphne murmured, freeing her braids from their crown and shaking them down across her shoulders. 'They are our keys to the Veiled World; they reflect our lives. To offer that to me is…'

'Oh.' The penny dropped in Harry's head and his face burnt. 'I get it now. That does sound like quite a serious thing, so well, er...'

'You said the Dark Lord leaves those he kills Reborn in Death,' she whispered. 'What do you mean?'

'That's what he said,' Harry replied. 'I saw it.'

Daphne took a small step toward him; she smelt of mint, spearmint, all sweetness, but still sharp and cool, like a fistful of hoarfrost. 'You saw it?' she murmured, lowering her voice further still. 'They were truly Reborn in Death?'

'Well, I don't know what truly is,' he confessed. 'He… mutilated them as he killed them. Left them as creepy statues like a proud toddler showing off his crayon stickman.'

'Death is change,' she whispered. 'Aileni yn Marvoleth—' the words sung on her tongue and sung in his blood; they shivered through him to that crack in the ice, whispering away into the bottomless black beneath '—to be Reborn in Death. O Cheñch a Deileinn, the changing of the leaves, autumn, the time of blood, of sacrifice, of falling red leaves as we cross over to become part of the Veiled World and winter. In Death, we are transformed in the other world and in this one. We are one with it even in dying, through autumn to spring, like fallen leaves returning to the earth, our life is part of all life.' Her breath trembled and she dipped a hand into her pocket, slipping a blood pop through her lips and crunching it up in a snap of her neat white teeth. 'Even Those Who Dream in Death are. Like the yew, the eternal wood of life, they remain evergreen through winter for centuries, but in the end, Death comes for all. In this world or the other.'

Harry grinned. 'Voldemort's wand is made of yew. Yew and phoenix feather. He's very fond of it, too.'

'You are sure?' Daphne's knuckles whitened about her fistful of blood pops as she twisted the wrapper of another one and bit it in two with her front teeth, staining her lips and tongue crimson. 'Wands were first given to us as gifts by those who dwell in the Veiled World. A winter wood and a phoenix feather would be a very rare and powerful wand; I have never even heard of one existing before. Winter woods are death and the phoenix is the living avatar of life that crosses from our world to the other and returns unchanged; they are opposites; such a wand contradicts the natural cycle of life — to carry it is to be destined for… greatness.'

'Terrible, but great—' Harry chuckled under his breath '—although Voldemort will need a new wand to kill me; the phoenix feather he has in his wand is the twin of the one in my wand, and they refuse to fight one another in some weird Priori Incantatem thing that Dumbledore sort of explained — in the same way he explains everything but you still feel like you don't really understand it.'

'Destiny decides that you are meant to face one another at a different time,' Daphne murmured. 'Your wand… you said its core is a phoenix feather…' She stole another small step toward him; the sharp scent of redcurrants on her breath tingled in Harry's nose and turned everything inside him into a strange, squirming mess. 'And you are so… alive.'

And suddenly he could feel how close she was; how close the bright, wild, hungry flame blazing in those clear blue eyes was to his; how her warm breath tickled his skin; how all those butterflies in his stomach swirled into some fluttering storm of tickling little legs and wings, lifting his heart up to hover somewhere around about the tip of his tongue.

'Harry?' she whispered. 'What wood is your wand made from?'

He glanced down, running the tip of his finger along the smooth, brown surface with a little smile. 'It's holly. Holly and phoenix feather..'

'Evergreen and crowned in crimson,' Daphne breathed, her half-parted lips trembling; her fingers brushed his chest and the softest light of yearning shone in her blue eyes, a glimmer of hope as gentle a brightness as the breaking dawn.

'Daphne?' Harry swallowed hard, seized by the fierce urge to lean just a little bit closer in and kiss her upturned, redcurrant-smeared lips, to discover what she tasted like. 'You're not being very antisocial right now; it's not like you.'

'I…' Daphne's stare smouldered with hunger, burnt with it, blazed bright as embers, bright as dragonflame, as bright as all the last dying light of the sun bleeding into the deep dark of her sole seeing eye. 'I need…'

And she was gone, stalking from the room so swift she was all but a blur, scattering crimson blood pops across the floor in her wake.

AN: Keep reading on Discord or come support me and find all my draft chapters and original writing on my website!

linktr . ee / mjbradley