isclaimer: Everythings belongs to J.K.R.

AN: A big THANK YOU to Federer Rex for editing this story with the speed of light.

This story was inspired by a prompt from Fuzzpot. Thank you for that, Fuzzy!

More author's notes at the end of the chapter

The next day, Harry went down to breakfast without Ron and Hermione. Ron loved to sleep in, and Hermione had had her nose stuck into a thick tome and waved him away when he had asked her if she'lI come to breakfast.

Daphne was already there, together with her sister. The younger girl still had bright red pigtails and didn't look happy. As if she felt his gaze on her, Daphne looked up. Her face lit up in a smile, and she waved.

He returned the smile and raised his hand with the now familiar excited flutter in his stomach.

The little sister looked his way, grinned, and said something to Daphne that earned the younger girl a slap on the arm, and Daphne's face turned pink.

The sisters left soon after that. Harry took his time to finish his breakfast. At the Dursleys, either Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon had always breathed down his neck during mealtimes and admonished him to eat faster because they were chores waiting for him. There had never been as much food for him as he would have liked, either.

Pleasantly full at last, he made his way to the library.

Daphne sat in her usual spot, reading. Her braid had fallen over her shoulder, and her hand fiddled absent-mindedly with the bow at its end.

It was a green bow. Harry's stomach gave a little jump. She was so cute! "Good morning, Daphne," he said and sat down beside her.

She looked up. "Good morning, Harry."

He motioned towards the book in front of her. "What are you reading?"

"The additional reading Professor McGonagall assigned us over the hols."

Harry made a face at that. "Transfiguration is a tough subject."

"Yeah." Her hand still fiddling with her braid, she quirked an eyebrow at him. "Have you already started on the homework we got for the holidays?"

"Already done. I've finished all my homework." He puffed out his chest at that.

This time, her eyes widened and both of her eyebrows went up. She tilted her head to the side and said, "I wouldn't have pegged you for the studious type, Harry."

"Well, you would do your homework as soon as possible if you had Hermione breathing down your neck, she nags."

Daphne snorted, her hand clawed into the bow at the tip of her braid, and the bow came off. "Damn!" She took out her wand, directed it at her hair, and muttered a spell under her breath. Her hair plaited itself into a neat braid, and she picked up the bow from where it had fallen and fastened the ties.

That was his cue. He pointed at the braid, now once again adorned with the green bow, and said, "That looks like a candy cane."

The good mood fled from her face, and she lowered her eyes. "I know, I hate it."

"But why? It looks cute on you," he blurted out. Heat shot into his face. Gods, he was such an idiot! What must she think of him now?

She raised her eyes, a faint smile on her lips. "Thank you, Harry, you're sweet."

The heat in his cheeks intensified, and his heart leapt in his throat.

A heavy sigh followed her statement. "Unfortunately, my family won't see it that way."

Harry frowned. That didn't fit with her description of her parents, especially her father. "But—you said your dad was cool."

"Oh, he is. Mum, too." There was another heavy sigh. "My grandparents—my mum's parents—not so much."

Harry shook his head, his eyebrows still knitted together. "They can't give you a hard time about something someone else did to you." Bollocks, that was nonsense, the Dursleys and the Ministry both had blamed him for the magic Dobby had performed in Aunt Petunia's kitchen. His cheeks grew warm. Hopefully, she didn't think of him as an insensitive idiot after that remark.

Daphne's snort confirmed his apprehension. "Oh, they can and they did. You should have heard them last year, when the traditional Weasley-prank made all members of Slytherin talk in limericks for almost all of the holiday." The colour of her cheeks deepened as she talked. "It was so humiliating! My parents were a good sport about it, but my grandparents were furious. They said I shouldn't have let the pranksters get to me, and that my behaviour was unbecoming of a young lady."

"I see what you mean." Harry grimaced. "They knew you'd just finished your second year then? Besides, we're talking about the twins, they are a menace to seventh years."

"They wouldn't listen." She flung her arms into the air in frustration. "Worse, they wouldn't give it a rest, either, no matter what my parents told them. At each meal they'd first admonish me and then try to reverse whatever those jokers did to me." She huffed. "It didn't work, and each time it led to a fight between my parents and my grandparents."

"Yeah, it's the twins," Harry said with another grimace. "They think differently than most of us, out of the box, and find ways around the usual counters for most spells. I'm sorry about the fighting, though."

Daphne hummed to that. "I think they don't rely much on the commonly known prank spells, or Professors Snape and McGonagall would have undone this easily." She made a fleeting motion to her braid.

"That's what Hermione said," Harry said with a nod. "She thinks their pranks are either runes or potions based, or maybe both."

"Impressive," Daphne muttered with furrowed brows, and staring ahead as if deep in thought. The next moment, however. her shoulders slumped, and the corners of her mouth turned down. "That doesn't help me much. Their damned prank made my last Christmas hell, and Merlin only knows how my grandparents will react to this." She pulled up the end of her braid with one hand and let it fall back against her shoulder. "However, I didn't want to find out and have a repeat of all the fighting we had last year. My little sister is terrified to go home, she hates the fighting."

"Who doesn't?" Harry murmured.

"Yeah." Her dejected posture didn't change. "Tori hasn't stopped crying since. It's hard on her, she's been homesick ever since she came to Hogwarts, and she's been looking forward to the Christmas hols, but considering how our grandparents reacted last year and how uncomfortable the holidays were, neither of us wanted to go home."

It beats me what their firsties did to be humiliated in front of the whole school. Some of them look like they'd want to burst out in tears.

Hermione's words on the morning of the prank came back to him. In the light of what Daphne just told him, the twin's prank didn't seem that funny anymore, but rather thoughtless of the consequences for their targets, if not downright cruel. Yet, not wanting to go home because of the reaction of their grandparents seemed extreme. Sure there was another solution?

"Can't your parents just ask your grandparents to stay away until the prank fades off?"

Daphne shook her head. "That's not possible. We all live in one house that belongs to my grandparents. Dad rents the facilities and the grounds for his business from them and—" She broke off and bit her lips.

And what? Harry puzzled over her unfinished sentence, until he had a sudden epiphany. "You mean they yank the chain?"

Daphne nodded, not looking at him, and her face beet red.

"That's awful, especially when you and your sister decide to stay at school to protect your parents." Was there something he could do to make this easier on her?

"Mom's got it worse, she's forever running interference between my grandparents and the rest of the family." She turned her eyes towards him. "Don't get me wrong, I love my grandparents, they've been nothing but kind to me. However, they are old and set in their ways, especially when it comes to the comportment of a young witch." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Hopefully, the magic will fade soon and Tori and I can be home by New Years Eve."

Harry's neck grew warm. If the twins were here right now, he'd give them a piece of his mind. Playing pranks was meant to be good fun, but he drew a line when a prank hurt someone. Daphne and her sister probably weren't the only Slytherins with stuck-up relatives who'd give them hell for running around with dyed hair.

If only he could get his hands on those two jokers—Harry gritted his teeth.

Daphne gave him a strange sideway look. "Are you alright, Harry?"

"Just thinking about when I can tell the twins what I think of their prank."

She chuckled. "Well, you can send them a howler, if that makes you feel better."

That was it! For what did he have an owl? He could send Hedwig to The Burrow with a scathing letter. "You're brilliant, Daphne! See you later, I have an urgent letter to write."

CCC

There was no reply to his letter by the next morning. It was Christmas Eve and Harry spent the day like the days before, helping Hermione prepare Buckbeak's case, and slipping away to the library in hopes to meet Daphne there as often as he could.

Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and a bright smile appeared on her face that made him warm and fuzzy inside.

"Mornin', Daphne." He plopped in the chair next to her.

"Good morning, Harry." Her smile became mischievous. "Did the red devils react to your howler already?"

He had no problems recognising the twins by that description, nor was he surprised that she had drawn the right conclusion to him rushing off to write a letter. It didn't take a genius after their conversation, and she was a smart one.

"It wasn't a howler," he said with a grin. "That wouldn't have impressed them, anyway. They are too used to them from their mother."

Daphne snorted. "True."

He laughed as well. "I just gave them a piece of my mind about what I think of their prank. Hopefully, that will make them think about the repercussions of their next one. They are not used to criticism from their own house."

"Nobody ever tells them if they went too far?" Daphne asked with raised eyebrows.

"Well, Hermione will scold, and sometimes Angelina and Alicia as well. The rest, however—" Harry shrugged. "They think everything they do is great, especially if it's directed against—" He broke off, not daring to look at her, and his face grew hot.

"Against Slytherin?" She completed the sentence for him.

Harry cast her a fleeting side-glance and nodded, his face still warm.

Daphne huffed and rolled her eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

Something hot ignited in Harry's stomach, and his embarrassment gave way to indignation. "As if this works any differently in Slytherin. I bet your house is egging on Malfoy and his friends as well each time they go against Gryffindor." He glared at her.

Her gaze met his eyes cool and composed. "We don't, actually."

Harry startled and blinked. "What?"

"Not all of us are happy with how Malfoy behaves, especially with his vendetta against you. The older students have repeatedly told him to cool it. His behaviour adds to Slytherin's bad reputation in school, and we don't want to be ostracized even more."

That was fair, but— "There hasn't been a wizard who'd gone dark in history who wasn't from Slytherin," he quoted what Hagrid had said on his first trip to Diagon Alley.

"Bollocks!" Her composure dropped, and she glared at him. "Where did you hear that load of rubbish?"

"Hagrid told me on the day I learned I was a wizard."

"Figures!" She slumped back in her seat and threw her hands in the air in frustration. "Hagrid is nice enough, Harry, but a bit—simple. You must not take everything he says for granted. Check the facts and form your opinion then."

Heat shot in Harry's face. Had she just called him clueless? "He's right, though isn't he?" He couldn't let the slight on his first friend in the wizarding world let go.

Daphne shook her head. "He isn't."

"Prove it!"

She fixed her eyes on him in a hard stare. "Sirius Black was a Gryffindor."

"Oh." That knocked the wind out of his sails. The heat of anger in his cheeks gave way to the heat of embarrassment. "You're right, I'm sorry."

Her hard stare continued for a long moment, then she relaxed. "Apology accepted."

An awkward silence settled down between them. Daphne sat leaned back in her chair, one hand fiddling with the bow on her braid—a green one again. Harry smiled, it was too cute. Yet he was not ready to let the topic of their conversation go. "They aren't successful, though."

"Huh?" She turned her head towards him, her brows creased. "What are you talking about?"

"The older students in your house, in getting Malfoy to stop."

Her face brightened in understanding. "Oh, that." She sighed. "They are about as successful as Granger, Jones, and Spinnet are with the twins, I suppose."

Which amounted to zero. Harry's stomach gave an uneasy flutter, and he grimaced. "So much for future peace and house unity."

"Yeah," Daphne said with a dark chuckle. "Sometimes, Harry, I'm worried where this school is headed."

t.b.c.

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