Nothing is mine.

Harry goes to visit Whitefern Oast. All resemblances to Dolce are definitely absolutely a coincidence; well, mostly.

Unmindful of the Roses

All the neat rows of Hermione's small handwriting swam together as the pages fluttered in the sun, caught in the slight summer breeze sweeping through Privet Drive. The gentle, warm wind carried the distant sound of traffic and the faint rumble of the trainline to Harry's ears as he sat upon the sign and leant back into the prickle of the box yew hedge, watching Tonks read Hermione's letter with a small grin on her lips.

'Why are you smiling?' He scowled, simmering with frustration. 'She keeps asking me about my feelings and I don't know what to tell her.'

'The truth?' Tonks snickered. 'Confess your love for her has waned, baby cuz. You've met a real hottie and nobody else can compare.'

'Not like that,' Harry retorted. 'You're literally reading it now, I know you know what she's talking about.'

'I notice you didn't disagree about the rest…' She winked at him. 'We'll make an incorrigible flirt of you yet.'

'No we won't,' he replied. 'And who's we? Are you drafting in help? Who is it, Mad-Eye?'

Tonks cackled with laughter. 'Can you imagine? The key to romance, Potter, is constant vigilance. Buy her flowers every day. Ask her how she is. Tell her how you feel. And assassinate anyone who gets too close to her with cursed dustbins.'

'What a way to go,' Harry mused. 'But I told her the truth. I'm not a grieving, broody mess and I don't really want to be either, since it seems like it won't help and it'll be much less fun. Hermione keeps insisting I'm avoiding things and something's wrong, and writing me more letters. I can't just not reply, but I've kind of run out of things to say.'

'Can't help you.' Tonks shrugged. 'Just talk about something else maybe and hope she drops it.'

'Clearly you haven't met Hermione,' he muttered. 'The only thing she's ever dropped was a sweet right hook on Malfoy's face.'

'Good for her. He's a little shit.' She passed him the letter back. 'Look, if you want a serious answer, there's not much more you can tell her. Hermione's Muggle-born, isn't she? This was sent by Muggle post, so I assume she is.'

'She is.'

'Then she might not ever understand. In the magical world, this is our culture, our faith; it permeates everything around us. She grew up outside that, it's entirely alien to her. It's alien to you, but you seem to kind of vibe with it weirdly well.'

'It just makes sense,' Harry replied. 'I like it. I always wanted my parents to come back or to have something of theirs, and now I know they're still here, just changed from how they were. I still don't know that much about it, though.'

'Well, don't worry, Harry; your hot older cousin knows all about it,' Tonks promised. 'Mum's a Black, so she grew up in the loony, culty part of all that, and she still holds true to all the traditions even though she's not like Bellatrix. Taught me all about them too.'

'I know a prettier girl who knows all about it already.' He offered her a smug grin. 'But thanks anyway.'

'Oh? That friend?' Tonks waggled her eyebrows at him. 'Who's this harlot come to steal you away from me, baby cuz? I need that Wizengamot seat and all your gold, and I'm more than happy to fight dirty.'

'I know,' Harry retorted. 'I have bruises from this morning.'

'Baby.' She ruffled his hair. 'Bruises are the best way to learn. You either pick it up fast, or you get hit again.'

'You're enjoying tormenting me so much I'm starting to think you're Bellatrix in disguise.' Harry laughed to himself. 'Actually, that would be very funny. Can you imagine Voldemort's face when she tells him what she's been up to? Or Hermione's face when I write this letter to her and tell her.'

'Snake-like,' Tonks replied. 'Now who's this friend? Seriously asking, Harry. It has to be a Pure-blood or someone from an old family to know that much, and a good number of them might not be on our side.' She patted his crown of tufts. 'You're like a little baby bird, cuz, what is wrong with your hair?'

'It has a mind of its own.' He swatted her hand away. 'Her name is Daphne Greengrass.'

'Greengrass…' Tonks's forehead creased. 'I was hoping it would be Susan Bones, but that's better than someone like Parkinson's daughter.'

'Pansy Parkinson isn't pretty.'

'Good point,' she admitted. 'Greengrass comes from a very old family. I don't know how much you know about them, Harry, but she would definitely know all about this.'

'She does,' Harry murmured with a small smile. 'She takes me to celebrate things. Hermione insists she's just using it as an excuse to take me on dates without upsetting her family and housemates, but as much as they do feel like dates, I think she might genuinely just want to share it with me.'

'Dates?' Tonks grinned. 'Would you like some top tips on dating, baby cuz?'

'No. I'd like you to apparate me to London about now though.'

She blinked. 'Why?'

'So I can Floo across and visit her. I said I would today.'

Tonks's grin faded. 'Let me think about it.'

Harry sat there, bouncing his heels off the sign with each swing of his legs. 'What's to think about?'

'Whether there's a chance she kidnaps you or just straight up murders you?'

'What's she going to do, invite me over and rip out my throat in the middle of the garden? What would her parents think? Or her little sister? Astoria's actually very sweet and pretty shy; she'd totally be traumatised if I was murdered in front of her.'

'Alright, baby cuz, I'll take you, but there are some ground rules here.' Tonks slapped her hand down on his knee. 'First rule. You give me more warning than this next time. A lot more warning. Second rule. You come back by a reasonable time.'

'Yes, mum.' Harry snorted. 'Wait, you could actually impersonate her, couldn't you?'

'Not out here in the open I won't,' she retorted. 'And how would that help me seduce you so I get all your gold?'

'Maybe I have mummy issues because she's dead?' Harry mulled it over. 'I don't think so, though. Project Little Sister really didn't get off the ground. I think I like blondes more than redheads.'

'Focus.' She flicked him on the tip of the nose. 'I will be in the Leaky Cauldron, since I'm sure me turning up with you to visit your girlfriend will cause more problems than it might prevent. I expect you to be there no later than eight in the evening.'

'Fine,' Harry conceded. 'Anything else?'

'Wand. In the sheath I got for you.'

'It is—' he patted his back '—I think it's enchanted because I keep forgetting to take it off and sleeping with it on, and I never notice a thing.'

'It is.' Tonks screwed her face up into a frown. 'What else?'

'Are you just making these up as you go?'

'Yes.' She sniggered. 'Did you think there was some auror manual on how to look after your baby cousin? Chapter One, changing nappies…'

Harry flushed. 'Shut up.'

'No, I haven't finished giving you rules,' Tonks replied. 'Anything weird, and you get out of there. Keep some Floo powder in your pocket.'

He pulled Umbridge's chunky bright pink box out of his pocket.

'What, in the name of all that is holy, is that?' Tonks demanded. 'It's hideous.'

'Umbridge bequeathed it to me.' Harry feigned a deep air of grief. 'Well, technically I stole it just before she inexplicably tried to jump the moving staircases and turned herself into jam for the jampires, but it's all the same to her right now, so…'

'It has Floo powder in it and that's all I need to know,' she decided. 'Just keep it away from me.'

'Are you scared of pink?'

'No, I love pink—' she waved a hand at the box '—it's just that whole weird shade of menopausal pink I'd prefer to avoid. I'm not due menopause for a long time and I don't want to think about it.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' Harry admitted.

Tonks grinned. 'First top dating tip, then. A girl has only got so many eggs, so if you want to knock her up, the odds are better while she's younger—'

'That sounds so wrong.'

'Not that young, what is wrong with you?' She flicked his earlobe with a snicker. 'I was thinking more like her twenties, that's the normal sort of time for girls to have kids.'

'So your age?' Harry turned that over in his head. 'Wow, you're old.'

'Brat.'

'I guess everyone seems like a brat to your withered carcass,' he retorted. 'But look on the bright side, if this menopause thing is only a couple of years away, no need to worry about Pendragon doing anything awful so you have special kids for him.'

'A couple of years?!' Tonks let out a low growl. 'More like a couple of decades. Do you want to go to London or not?'

'I figured if you were upset about menopause jokes you'd be less bothered about the prospect of me being murdered there and take me quicker.'

'Huh.' She laughed and ruffled his hair. 'Devious of you, baby cuz.' Tonks bounced to her feet, slipped on the edge of the curb and sat down hard on the pavement. 'Ow. Fucking hell.'

'Such a hottie,' Harry remarked. 'Is poor balance a sign of menopause and old age?'

'At this rate, that Greengrass girl isn't going to get the chance to murder you, little cousin.' Tonks leapt to her feet dusting her butt off and straightening her short dark skirt. 'I'm going to do it and pin the blame on her.'

'Nobody would believe it was her,' he said. 'She's… actually she's really anti-social and kind of chilly, and sometimes even a tiny bit creepy; people would definitely believe it.'

'Exactly.' Tonks held out her hand, glancing around. 'Come on, then.'

Harry took it with a small flutter of excitement.

She led him down into the underpass with a wink. 'Can't go apparating out of the middle of the street, can we?'

'I'm pretty sure they all think I'm being molested down here by now anyway,' he replied. 'So how much worse can it get?'

Tonks snickered. 'Saying that is usually a good way to find out.' She tightened her grip on his fingers. 'I'm serious about those rules. Anything weird, you come right back. Be back by eight. Not just after, not a bit after, by eight. Were there any others I wanted to emphasise?'

'I can't remember.'

'If anything starts to go down, you use your Agwyd and then get out as fast as you can. They won't be expecting you to be able to do it; it will catch them by surprise and buy you a bit of time, and they won't have prepared anything for it.' Her grey eyes held his gaze, sharp as steel. 'Dumbledore said your safety was paramount, so treat it as important, little cousin. The Greengrasses are an odd family; they're kind of neutral because… well, let's not get into that, but it should be fine. Nobody will go through them to get to you and they generally don't get involved with things either.'

'It's because there's a prophecy that said I will defeat Voldemort,' Harry said. 'But actually, I think it means when I was a baby and Dumbledore's getting a bit carried away.'

'Prophecies are silly things,' Tonks said. 'I don't really believe them, to be honest. Never actually seen one come true, you know. Trelawney looked in my teacup once and told me that she saw hundreds of bloodstained swords; I was careful around those suits of armour for a couple of years, but then realised it was all nonsense.'

'I haven't seen anything she's predicted happen either,' he agreed. 'Well, no, that's not true, that's just her teacup prophecies. I have actually seen one she recited to me come true. Two, technically, because Voldemort did vanquish himself on my face when I was a baby. But those were, you know, the real deal, I heard them said and they were about things that happened soon afterward. They haven't been not happening for thousands of years and probably got started by the ICW for some nefarious plan.'

'You know about Gwanwyn Ynfawr Gwyr,' Tonks murmured. 'This Greengrass girl must really like you; if the ICW heard she was telling people all about that, she might vanish forever. Tell her to be very, very careful, Harry. Really bad things can happen to pretty girls who get on the wrong side of powerful men.'

The butterflies sharpened their wings into steel razors, fanning the spark of Harry's anger into searing flame. 'I wouldn't ever let them touch her.'

'You're not going to stop two hundred first class aurors, Harry. You can't even summon a blade. Maerdrid would make you into sashimi.'

'I don't know what that is.'

'Very finely sliced raw fish.'

'Oh.' Harry considered that. 'I'm not a fish, so your point is invalid.'

Tonks sighed. 'Well, I'm not going to try and argue with you over it. Clearly you like the girl, and I can't imagine I'd say anything different if they went after my mum.' She squeezed his hand. 'Holding on?'

Harry tightened his grip. 'Yes.'

'Good.'

A deafening crack tore through the underpass and Harry found himself staggering across the floor of the Leaky Cauldron. Tonks planted herself face first into one of the old wooden beams beside the bar with a resounding smack.

'Ouch,' Harry said. 'That's going to be a black eye.'

'Why is that beam even here?'

'It's a load-bearing beam and the pub would collapse if it was taken out,' the barman replied.

Tonks scowled. 'Well, I don't like it.'

'I think it'll survive your dislike,' Harry said. 'It definitely came out on top against you there.'

'Not like you,' she retorted. 'You went down like the daughter of a single mother at a Seventh Year pool party.'

Harry blinked, heat rushing to his cheeks. 'Why are you like this?'

'Would you have me any other way?'

'Maybe silent?' he suggested, digging out a pinch of Floo powder. 'I'll be back by eight, probably long before then. Don't destroy any load-bearing beams.' He weighed his next words up with a grin. 'Or go to any more pool parties, Nymphadora.'

She took a swipe at him with her left arm, but he ducked and tossed his Floo powder into the flames.

'Whitefern Oast,' he whispered beneath his breath.

A whorl of emerald flames yanked him forward and spat him out into a very hard, very cold stone wall.

'Oh, irony,' Harry muttered, peeling himself off it with a groan. 'Why do you have to be this way? Who put this wall here?'

'It is part of the oast and has been there for a few hundred years.' Daphne's voice drifted over his shoulder. 'I thought you knew how to use the Floo?'

She stood halfway along the narrow corridor, the hem of her deep, burgundy skirt fluttering about her bare knees in the cool breeze sweeping past, her sharp, black blouse rippling across her stomach. The tips of her golden hair trembled in the ponytail tied up by a ring of bright crimson crocosmia blooms, and where that one rogue lock hung before her cool blue eyes, it swayed back and forth like a ribbon of silk caught in the wind.

'I forgot to step through because my cousin was trying to hit me,' he said. 'So I got sucked through at high speed and hurled into your wall. It's okay, I'm sure the wall is fine.'

Daphne's lips twitched. 'Good. I like that wall.'

'Wow…' Harry shook his head. 'Harsh stuff, Daphne.' He glanced around, taking in the watercolour paintings of bright flowers, green forests and beautiful gardens all across the walls. 'So, are you going to introduce me to your family? I haven't seen Astoria in a bit.'

'Astoria is not here,' she murmured. 'Neither are my parents.'

'It's just… us?'

'Yes.' Daphne stole a step toward him. 'And you are not entirely forgiven, Harry. Do not forget that.'

'For not letting you come with me to fight Bellatrix Lestrange without a wand?' Harry sighed. 'That's not very fair. She played with me like a cat with a mouse and killed my godfather in about twenty seconds. Would you have let me come with you to fight her if I didn't have a wand?'

She turned her pretty nose up at him, sending the bright garnet fang hanging from her ear swinging in small circles.

'Exactly.' His hand crept to his sheathed wand on his back. 'Can we just go and get you a wand?'

'No,' Daphne whispered. 'I have no use for a wand. Not yet.'

'Well, maybe another day?' Harry suggested. 'They are quite useful.'

'Come with me.' She turned on her heel in a swirl of her dark claret skirt and glided away across the smooth stone floor on bare feet. 'This part of the oast just has guest rooms, but I never use them and they are all but empty. I spend most of my time here.' Daphne disappeared down a set of steps.

Harry hurried after her, pausing on the top step.

A narrow, circular terrace scattered with terracotta pots sculpted as gnarled tree stumps with elaborate root bases surrounded a small, steaming bubbling spring and a single large stone seat heaped with crimson cushions. The flowers that filled those pots were all red, but came in every different size and shape that Harry could imagine and more besides; he recognised roses and dahlias and poppies and the Dianthe Cruentes Daphne had worn and tulips and crocosmias and a host of others that Aunt Petunia would have pursed her lips in bitter envy at. Above them, hovering beneath the ceiling of the narrow oast tower before walls draped in the pale green leaves, vines, and dark red blossom of some sort of Japanese wisteria Harry had never seen before, shone a glowing ball of light as pale as the moon; countless little motes of that shining source of radiance drifted about among the delicate clusters of tiny maroon blooms, flitting to and fro among them like butterflies.

'Oh wow,' he murmured, wandering down the steps to breathe in the fragrance of all those flowers. 'You live here?'

A faint smile crooked at the corner of Daphne's mouth. 'Do you like it?'

'If my aunt saw this, she would quite possibly die on the spot from pure envy, or dash home to try and turn her garden into something better and eventually, having been driven mad from her inevitable failure, need to be imprisoned somewhere in a padded cell where she can never see any flowers ever again.' Harry eyed the steaming little spring. 'Is that warm?'

'It is very warm,' she promised. 'It is not natural, though, it is enchanted so it heats the house.'

'And you have an almost literal throne.' Harry admired the collection of crimson cushions heaped upon the grey granite seat. 'I see you weren't joking about liking red.'

'The flowers in this garden have been red for a very long time,' Daphne murmured; her gaze strayed down the neat, curving terraces. 'As have many things.'

From the small spring, a series of steaming waterfalls rushed down through the middle of the terraces to fill a circular pool the size of Aunt Petunia's garden pond at the far end. Along its banks, the red leaves of little acacia trees, the needles of small dwarf pines and the fronds of countless potted ferns shook in the breeze slipping through the narrow skylight windows that lined the very edge of the roof. Bright summer sunshine spilt down the walls over the tapestry of dark, glossy vines of ivy rising from terracotta pots fashioned in the likeness of cupped hands to cover the stone.

'You can go in your own personal little sauna?'

'Yes.' A hint of pink rose on her cheeks. 'But we cannot do that unless we both find something to wear in there.'

'You don't…' Harry trailed off as the butterflies came to the same realisation as him about Daphne not usually wearing anything in her small sauna and attacked with a vengeance, swooping down and turning his stomach into a storm of fluttering, flitting, tingling wings. 'Well, you can still go in if you want, I don't mind?' He clapped a hand across his mouth. 'Oh no, I've only known her for a week and she's rubbing off on me. I'm going to end up an incorrigible flirt and trip over every smooth surface I try to walk across.'

Daphne's ice-blue eyes narrowed a fraction. 'She?'

'My cousin,' he explained. 'She's older than me and thinks it's hilarious to constantly tease me.'

'How much older?'

'Too old, according to her.' Harry laughed to himself. 'She just likes to mess with me, so I mess back, and she is actually quite hot, so… I don't mind all that much.' He caught the icicle-sharp glint in Daphne's eyes and suddenly felt he might be tip-toeing over thin ice. 'But, er… no, I've got nothing, it's too late, I said it. Please don't be mad? I don't even know why you would be; you said that we weren't dating, so I can flirt with all the cousins I want.' Harry turned that over in his head. 'Do I have any other cousins?'

'Not that you would want to flirt with,' she said. 'But yes.'

'Well, if I don't want to flirt with them, then they don't count.' He went back to admiring the garden before the hole he'd dug himself into got any deeper. 'This place is really… amazing; I think it's the most beautiful garden I've ever seen.'

'Thank you,' Daphne murmured; the ice melted from her blue eyes and left them all soaring spring sky. 'I look after it carefully. I like to see my flowers growing, and my trees. They go on living so peacefully and beautifully…'

'You look after it yourself?'

'Yes.'

'Huh. Your parents and Astoria don't help?'

'They are not here much.'

'Sounds—' Harry hunted around for the word Hermione had used '—complicated.'

The corner of Daphne's mouth crooked. 'I was going to suggest we cook together. I love to cook; I could teach you…'

'I know how to cook, but I'm getting the feeling from this garden that you have a fancier idea of cooking than my can make food that is edible idea.'

'I would imagine so,' she whispered. 'Food is life. We take it. Change it. Shape it. Consume it. I like to… enjoy the making as well as the eating.'

Harry followed her down the terraces, past the small red acacias, the ferns with their fronds edged all in dark red and a small, smooth marble vase filled with pale stone flowers inscribed with words in what he assumed was Brythonic from the lack of vowels, and the image of a young girl who danced and twirled and laughed to herself forever.

Beyond the sauna, through the grey stone arch, a small hall held a round, mahogany table with four tall seats backed with red leather. The walls were bedecked in red silk tapestries, but they were old; the white and black and gold threads of the creatures and intricate knot patterns were long-faded and so thin the light filtered through them from the windows behind.

'The kitchen is here,' Daphne disappeared through the rightmost of the two doors on the far side of the table.

A set of stone steps led down, twisting around upon themselves and out into a room lit by flickering pale flames and full of gleaming copper pans of every size and shape Harry had ever seen or heard of.

'Wow…' Harry admired them for a moment. 'I guess I know what not to buy you for your birthday. You have all of them already.'

A faint smile flashed across Daphne's face. 'My birthday has already passed, Harry. I was born on Gwanwyn Byghan, the same day as we celebrate the birth of Briganti.'

'You should have said,' he replied. 'I could have bought you something. I don't know, red flowers maybe? You seem to have most of them already too, though.'

'We were not… close then.'

'No,' Harry conceded. 'Well, to keep it fair, you don't need to get me anything for my birthday, then.'

'It hasn't already passed?'

'No. It's in a couple of weeks. I'm the thirty-first of July, and apparently right at the very end of it close to midnight, too, according to my godfather.' He chuckled to himself. 'Born as the seventh month dies…'

'Of course you were,' Daphne breathed. 'Heol Gwyl Céimnyth, The Feast of the Waning Sun, begins only minutes after your birth.' That desperate hope shone in her eyes, like the bright sun high upon clear spring skies. 'Dod ó luína heol y ganiatáu guit sayr.'

'Starting to feel I should learn how to speak Brythonic,' Harry said. 'What did it mean?'

She smiled back at him.

'Thanks, Daph, so helpful.'

'Daph…?'

'Maybe I should go back to Daphne,' he said. 'Or Lady Greengrass.'

'Daph…' She turned the word over on her tongue, trying out the taste of it, and a hint of pink blossomed across her cheeks. 'No. I like it. But… only when we are alone.'

'Okay, only then… Lady Daphgrass.'

An impish little grin spread across her face, her dimples flashing, and laughter danced in her blue eyes. The butterflies ambushed Harry, bursting from wherever they had been lying in wait somewhere in the pit of his stomach and rising up, a tight ball of fluttering wings beneath his ribs.

'You are ridiculous,' she murmured. 'Come and help me cook, Harry; I would like to cook with you.'

'Command me, Lady Daphgrass.'

The corner of her mouth twitched and the shadow of her dimples appeared. 'First, we will make the sauce, I like making sauces. Normally we would do the marinade, but the meat is already marinating because I was not sure when you would come.'

'Fair enough.' Harry watched her glide barefoot around the kitchen, gathering things from the dark grey granite surfaces and arranging them in neat rows near where he stood. 'What have we got?'

'Red port—' Daphne placed the dark bottle down '—redcurrants, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar.'

'So what do we do?'

'You,' she said, passing him the large white bowl of redcurrants and a grey granite pestle, 'squash all these up as much as you can.'

'Yes, my lady.' Harry poked the pestle into the bowl, squishing the first few. 'What are you going to do?'

Daphne rose onto her toes and lifted a small copper pan from the wall, tugging the cork stopper out of the port bottle with a loud pop as she set it down. 'I will mix these together in the pan and heat them until the sugar melts in. Then we will add your squashed redcurrants through a sieve and warm it until it thickens.'

'Sounds like a plan.' He took the pestle to the redcurrants, flinching and laughing as small splashes of red spattered his face and glasses. 'This feels weirdly like red crayon time.'

A strange soft gleam shone in her eyes as she watched, stirring the small copper pan above a ring of glowing red runes.

'What?' Harry asked. 'Do I have redcurrant on me?'

Daphne nodded, dipping her free hand into her pocket to grab a blood pop. 'Did you find out what the prophecy says?'

He nodded, smiling as she untwisted the wrapper and crunched on the crimson sweet. 'Dumbledore told me, but it was a complete waste of time; it was all about the thing that happened when I was a baby.'

Little lines creased her forehead and her slim brows curved down into a shallow vee. 'You are sure?'

'Pretty much,' Harry said. 'Dumbledore thinks it means I'll vanquish Voldemort, but honestly that seems like a bit of a stretch to me.' He ground the recurrants into a fine paste. 'Want to hear the words? I sort of remember the general gist of it.'

'Yes, Harry,' she whispered. 'Yes, I do.'

'It was something like, the one to vanquish the Dark Lord is coming,' Harry recited with a grin. 'Born as the seventh month dies... the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord doesn't know about... and either must die at the hand of the other.'

Daphne stirred her thickening sauce in small slow circles, staring down into the red. 'It is… vague.'

'Not that vague,' he replied. 'I had the power, because, well, because according to Voldemort, my parents appealed to something in the Veiled Realm out of desperation; Dumbledore says my mother's love and sacrifice did it, but that's not actually necessarily different from what Voldemort said. Anyway, I was born in the last hour of July and my parents opposed Voldemort probably at least three times. And obviously Voldemort didn't know about it, because he died on my face.'

'And either must die at the hand of the other,' she murmured, cocking her head like a crow and setting the garnet fang back to swinging about beside the smooth pale curve of her throat.

'Yeah, who knows what that even means, but he died already, so it doesn't matter.' Harry pried his gaze away from her neck and slid the bowl toward her. 'This okay?'

Daphne pulled a silver sieve from a drawer at her left hand and rested it over her copper pan. 'Pour it all in here, Harry.'

He tipped it in, watching the thick red trickle down into the rest. 'I feel like this stains really badly. And also that to get it off you might need cold water and lemon juice. The jampires would love it.'

'It does stain,' she breathed. The strange, soft gleam swelled, a flickering smouldering hunger that burnt in her blue eyes as fierce as flame. 'But it looks so good and it tastes even better.' Her shoulder brushed his, their elbows bumping together, and the hem of her dark red skirt whispering against his jeans. 'And it is red.'

'Should I squish the rest through?' Harry pointed the pestle at the mush still in the sieve. 'Or do you want it to be really smooth?'

'Leave that.' Daphne lifted the sieve off and set it down over the bowl. 'Let us see,' Dipping the spoon in the red sauce, she touched the tip of her pink tongue to it. 'It is good.' She ate the spoonful with a small, soft sound of appreciation.

'That good?' Harry's gaze strayed to her crimson-stained lips and where the dark red of her skirt hung about her bare knees. 'It looks good. Very red; your favourite.'

'It is,' she whispered, dipping the spoon back in. 'Here, you try.' Daphne lifted the spoon to his lips.

The butterflies assailed him as he let her feed him the sauce, fluttering all about within, their little tingling wings and legs tickling every part of him they touched. The sharp, sweet taste filled his mouth, a dulcet tang as keen as a razor.

'I like it.' Harry offered her a grin. 'It's really good.'

Daphne stared at him, the silver spoon trembling in her fingers. Behind that rogue lock of hair that fluttered with every shaky breath she stole, her blue eyes burnt with a near-desperate craving. 'Harry,' she murmured. 'I am sorry.'

'Why are—'

Her lips crushed against his, tasting of the same sharp sweet tang of redcurrant sauce, and the spoon clattered to the granite.

Daphne's fingers curled into his t-shirt; her kisses came hungry, as if each one she took only stoked her need for the next, bringing her mouth back to his with only the barest of brief moments for breath in between.

'Daph,' Harry managed in the pause.

Daphne froze. 'Sorry,' she whispered. 'I—'

'I wasn't expecting that,' he confessed; the butterflies threatened rebellion as her blue eyes widened and she shrank back a step, colour climbing her cheeks. 'You must be really worried about being friends with me if you're skipping right to going out instead. You're not going to tell me that we're not dating again, are you?'

The impish little grin sprang back to life with all the cheer of Daphne's dimples and her eyes slipped to his lips. 'No,' she breathed. 'You said too many nice things to me and just did not listen to anything anyone said; I cannot resist anymore.'

'Okay good, that would have been very confusing for me.' A huge grin spread across his face. 'Now I'll have to put up with Hermione's I told you so, but I'm used to those; it's my cousin that worries me.' A sudden thought occurred. 'She said you should be careful, by the way, because if the ICW hears you're telling people about stuff, very bad things might happen to you.'

'I am being careful,' Daphne murmured, her gaze not wavering from his mouth for even a moment. 'My family has a certain amount of protection from the ICW's malice too. Pendragon knows that my family needs to survive until Dwyr Sy'n Tystio comes and that moving against us is likely to provoke another uprising in the belief that the day is finally upon us.'

'I have a highly useful pair of enchanted items we can talk with?' he suggested. 'I could bring you one of them, so we can talk easily and safely without writing anything in letters? No proof that way.'

'Yes.' She bobbed her head, sending that rogue lock of gold swaying back and forth before her eyes. 'I would like that.'

'I'm just going to—' Harry took a step toward her and tucked it back over her head with his forefinger '—do that.' All the butterflies trembled together as a little shiver swept through Daphne and she turned her lips up toward him a tiny bit, a spark of that bright, near-desperate hope shining alongside the fierce yearning in the spring sky blue of her eyes. 'And I'm definitely going to kiss you again now.'

Daphne rose onto her tiptoes and met his mouth with hers. As they broke apart for breath, she caught his lower lip between her teeth for an instant, tugging at it, leaving little points of pain behind that Harry, caught up in the thrill of kissing her, found as strangely pleasant as the way her fists clenched in his hair, clutching him close.

AN: Loads and loads more chapters via the links in the linktree!

linktr . ee / mjbradley