A/N:

I'm trying to post more consistently, especially now that we're slowly approaching the end.

Thanks for being patient, and I hope you like the chapter :)

"Woof!"

Daphne glanced down fondly at Cuddles as he barked and strained against his leash. Drool fell from his mouth in streams, and he gnashed his teeth and snarled at all the strangers they passed on the street. It was fortunate that Daphne was built to lift over five-hundred kilograms, because the affectionate creature was pulling at its high modulus polyethylene fibre leash with enough force to break the average girl's arm clean off.

Printing Thought Sequence: How cute. Cuddles wants to make some new friends.

Daphne didn't walk Cuddles in the city very often because of how excitable he could be around humans, but she found it pleasant to take him out every once in a while when she had the chance. It was a shame his affable personality was hidden behind an admittedly intimidating exterior, because she'd have loved to introduce him to the people that were crossing to the other side of the street to avoid her.

"It is unfortunate that so many of us judge others based on their appearance, is it not?" she asked.

"Grrr," Cuddles growled in reply, narrowing his blood-red eyes into thin slits as he stared down a random pedestrian.

"That is right," Daphne agreed. "It is their loss. You are a good boy."

They continued their walk through the neighborhood at a leisurely pace, unintentionally terrorizing the locals, until a poster stuck to the side of a utility pole caught Daphne's attention.

ANNUAL KNIGHTSBRIDGE DANCING COMPETITION

OPEN ENTRY – NO SIGN UP REQUIRED

GRAND PRIZE: ALL-INCLUSIVE SKIING TRIP FOR TWO

Daphne's electric blue eyes lit up in excitement.

Printing Thought Sequence: A skiing trip for two? That sounds like fun…and is something that Harry and I have not done before.

Visions of cuddling by a fire in a log cabin somewhere in Canada flitted through Daphne's cerebral processor, and a plan started to form in her mind.

"Cuddles?"

"Woof?"

"It is time to return home. I have a dancing competition to win."

Daphne had two days before the dancing competition, and her plan was simple; use her unparalleled prodigy to blow away her opponents and take home the grand prize. Daphne didn't consider herself conceited, but she knew she was beautiful, elegant, and inhumanly athletic – coupled with the impossible rate with which she learned new skills, she would become an indomitable dancer in no time.

Feeling motivated and confident, Daphne turned on the radio and stepped in front of her full-length mirror to prepare her routine for the competition.

"Five, six, seven, eight!"

As the peppy song played, Daphne moved her body to the beat. She bent her limbs and angled her torso along with the song, trying to imitate the archived footage of dancers in her memory card.

Printing Thought Sequence: Is this right? This looks wrong. Wait…am I supposed to be moving my feet?

As Daphne danced along to the song, and then the next one, doubt started to worm its way into her mind. Something about her movements felt unnatural, even to her.

"Am I doing something incorrectly?" she wondered aloud.

She shook the thoughts from her head and continued dancing. She was Daphne Greengrass, and she could do anything. She'd surely find her dancing form after a few more minutes of trial and error.

"..."

Possible Emotion Detected: Dejection

Two hours later, Daphne could still manage no more than to bend her limbs along with the beat. Her face remained as aloof and impassive as ever, but internally she wanted to cry.

Simulating Physiological Response…

A dull clang echoed in Daphne's mechanical heart, and she beheld herself melancholically in the mirror.

Printing Thought Sequence: Am I just…really terrible at dancing?

"Oof. Yeah, you're really terrible at dancing," Astoria said. "Like, really, really terrible."

Daphne hung her head in shame even though she already knew the words were true. She had wanted Astoria to evaluate her performance honestly, but sometimes honesty hurt.

"Then how do I become good at dancing?" she asked, turning the radio off and moving to sit down next to her sister.

Astoria shrugged. "The same way you got good at everything else, I guess. Watch some videos, read some books, and train your algorithms on everything you learn."

"I already did all of that…"

Astoria frowned. She had never known her sister to be anything less than perfect when it came to physical or intellectual tasks. While Daphne still had the occasional spot of trouble with social skills and reading the mood, dancing should be well within the girl's excessive capabilities.

"Is it a problem of flexibility?" Astoria ventured. "Maybe your joints need greasing."

Daphne stood from the bed and kicked one leg up to the sky while the other remained on the floor, doing a perfect standing split. She then put her leg back down and arched her back to touch the floor with her hands. She crawled forward until her head was almost past her knees, straightened back up and touched her toes, did a cartwheel, and then finished with a sassy little flourish of her arms.

"Bravo!" Astoria clapped excitedly, before reeling in her distraction and getting back to the task at hand. "Hm…so you can do gymnastics perfectly fine. Flexibility isn't the problem then. Maybe your learning processor needs recalibrating?"

"I considered that as well, so I downloaded an 800-page manual on making shadow puppets."

Astoria raised an eyebrow. "And it worked? You…you learned how to make shadow puppets?"

Daphne shut the lights in Astoria's room and took out her wand. Casting a silent spell to shoot a beam of light on the opposite wall, Daphne put her hands in front of the light's path.

"This is a dog," she said, clasping her hands together and making a vaguely canine shape appear in front of them. "This is a crab, this is a rabbit, and this is a pigeon."

Astoria watched Daphne cycle through shadow puppets on her wall for about a minute before she got bored.

"There's seriously an 800-page manual for this?" Astoria asked.

"This is only the beginning," Daphne replied.

Daphne's hands started to move faster until it looked like she was making several puppets at the same time. Soon, the puppets were moving as if on their own, and Astoria lost herself in the show. A boy mounted a broom and stole an egg from a dragon, went on a quest to defeat an evil wizard, and even kissed a princess all on her bedroom wall.

"Marvelous!" Astoria exclaimed once Daphne was finished. "I never knew you could do all that with shadow puppets!"

"I am likely the only one who can," Daphne replied without a hint of conceit. "But either way, it means my ability to learn is not the issue either."

"True." Astoria hummed. "So it's only dancing that's the problem…maybe you just can't dance?"

Daphne hung her head in shame again, and Astoria immediately felt guilty for making such a cute robot sad.

"Yet!" she corrected quickly. "You can't dance yet. But with time and practice, I'm sure you'll be amazing."

"But how do I practice?" Daphne asked, raising her head. "I do not know what more I can do."

"You'll have to learn how to dance the human way – by putting in the work. Do you know anyone who might be able to teach you…?"

Daphne hummed.

"I might know one…"

"Of course I know how to dance," Hermione said matter-of-factly, walking into the Greengrass home thirty minutes later. "I did ballet, salsa, and contemporary up through primary school. I even won a competition when I was nine."

Daphne blinked at her. "Well then your credentials are perfect to help me. I need to win a contest the day after tomorrow, and I do not know how to dance."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. When Daphne had called her asking for help, she had a feeling it would be for something bizarre, but this was rather random even for Daphne's usual standards.

"I don't mind teaching you how to dance," Hermione said eventually, "but it's not that easy. It takes more than forty-eight hours to get good at dancing, let alone good enough to win a competition."

Daphne tilted her head. "But it never takes me that long to get good at something?"

Hermione's left eye twitched. She would've been offended if she thought the girl was bragging, but she knew Daphne was simply being honest.

It still hurt, though.

"Well, why don't you start by showing me what you can do and we'll go from there," Hermione said through the pain. "I can help you put together a program after that."

"That sounds good to me."

Daphne walked to the corner of the room to turn the radio on, took a few seconds to familiarize herself with the beat, and then started to dance.

Or, at least, Hermione thought Daphne was trying to dance.

The girl was moving her torso and bending her limbs, keeping her feet planted firmly on the ground. Her movements followed the beat, for the most part, but it was the single most awkward performance Hermione had ever seen.

Which was honestly kind of cathartic for her to witness, given the fact that Daphne was better than her at almost everything else she tried.

"Okay, stop," she said after a few more minutes. "Why don't you try incorporating your feet?"

Daphne paused the music and turned to look at Hermione.

"What do you mean by 'incorporate my feet'?" she asked. "Harry often tells me the same thing, but the contexts are far different."

Hermione tried her scientific best to remove that last bit from her memory, and stood up to show Daphne what she meant.

"Like this," she said, turning the radio back on and starting to dance.

Daphne stared enviously at Hermione's moves for a few moments before trying to follow along. It was a simple enough sequence, and she thought she'd gotten the pattern down in her head.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

Hermione jumped back in surprise as Daphne started moving her legs up and down like a toy soldier. It was actually pretty scary, and Hermione stopped her immediately.

"Daphne, hold on!" she said. "That wasn't what I was doing at all!"

Daphne stopped and stared down at her feet.

"It was not?" she asked.

"No…"

Possible Emotion Detected: Dejection

"Maybe I am a lost cause," Daphne concluded sadly.

"You're not," Hermione countered. "This is how most people are when they start dancing. You just need to put in the necessary hours to get better. Now repeat after me."

Hermione stepped along to the beat.

Step, step, step!

Daphne copied her.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

Hermione stopped. "No, like this."

Step, step, step!

Daphne copied her.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

Hermione stopped again. "Um, Daphne?"

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

"Daphne, please stop. We're supposed to be dancing, not marching off to war."

"Am I not dancing?" she asked, stopping to stare curiously at Hermione.

"No. You're stomping. You need to learn to control your feet better."

"But Harry says I am great with my-"

"No, Daphne, please, I don't need to know that. I'm sure you're…uh, great with your feet in other situations, but when it comes to dancing you're too harsh." Hermione sighed. "Why don't we put this aside for now and work on your upper body first?"

"That sounds reasonable," she said. "Perhaps success with my upper body will translate into success with my lower body."

"..."

And yet, two hours later, there was no success with Daphne's upper body either. The girl simply could not dance.

"Are there, er, any other competitions you can enter?" Hermione asked hopefully.

Daphne shook her head. "I want to enter the dance competition. Both so that I can win, and so that I can prove to myself that I can win."

"I see…"

She turned to look at Hermione. "As it stands, what do you think my chances are of winning?"

"Do you want me to be honest?" Hermione grimaced.

"Of course. I will know if you are lying."

"Zero percent," she said without hesitation.

Daphne's gears let out a pitiful whine.

"I really am a lost cause…"

After another failure-filled hour, Astoria Greengrass walked into Daphne's room carrying a tray with tea and biscuits.

"Um, er, like, uh…" she stuttered, looking at the ground. "I made some tea, if you want."

Hermione glanced up at the girl. The last time they met, they had gotten into a rather heated argument about who's name was more ridiculous.

"You made tea for us?" Hermione asked, surprised.

"No!" Astoria protested. "I made tea for myself, but then I had some left over and I figured I'd bring it to you guys instead of throwing it out."

"And what about the biscuits?"

"They're, um…also leftovers!" Astoria exclaimed.

Daphne blinked. She considered interjecting, but decided this was too amusing to break up.

"Well thanks, Astoria," Hermione said with a smile. "It was really nice of you to bring this up to us."

Astoria's face immediately flushed red. "Ugh, whatever! It's not like I made it for you or anything!"

The girl sat the tray down on a table and immediately ran back out the door, leaving a puzzled Hermione in her wake.

"Does she still hate me?" Hermione asked.

Daphne shook her head. "She simply has difficulty expressing her feelings."

"Ah. I guess that has a charm of its own, though…"

The robot girl beheld her friend with a thoughtful expression.

Printing Thought Sequence: Wait, really?

Hermione's face started to change, as if she had just reached an epiphany, and then clapped her hands in delight.

"That's it!" she said. "That's how you'll win the dance competition!"

"By poorly expressing my feelings?"

"Precisely!" Hermione stood back up, grabbing a biscuit and putting it in her mouth. "I've never seen anyone dance as, er…robotically as you, but we can use that to our advantage. If we buy into that concept, and make it seem intentional, you'd probably impress a lot of people."

Daphne's eyes sparkled thoughtfully. "And you really think that will work?"

"I think it just might," Hermione replied, eating another biscuit. "Let's see what we can do."

On the day of the competition, Hermione helped Daphne get ready backstage. There was an impressively large amount of people gathered around the outdoor stage, and Hermione was starting to feel the second-hand nerves.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked. "Do you think you're ready?"

Daphne nodded, pulling her arms and legs through her costume. "I was born ready."

Luna Lovegood had helped out by lending Daphne a shiny silver robot costume, which she apparently made last year 'in case she needed to blend in'. It was a little smaller on Daphne than it was on Luna, but it was still modest enough to be appropriate, and Hermione thought it was rather attractive.

"Alright, you're up soon. When they call your name-"

Hermione was cut off as the PA system crackled to life.

"Next up, entrant number twenty-seven, Daphne Greengrass!"

The crowd clapped politely as the previous dancer left the stage, and Hermione gulped nervously.

"It's showtime," she said. "Go break a leg…"

Daphne stood, her focused eyes fixed on the stage.

"My legs do not break."

Harry Potter was doing some afternoon grocery shopping in Knightsbridge when a commotion caught his eye.

"What's going on over there?" he wondered aloud.

There was a large stage set up down the street, with at least a hundred people gathered around it. Music blasted from a set of speakers, and there appeared to be someone dancing along to it on the stage. He couldn't make out many details from this distance, but it appeared to be a blonde girl in a shiny silver outfit. She was dancing stiffly, like a robot.

For the smallest, silliest of moments, Harry thought it might be Daphne, but he dismissed the notion a second later. He just couldn't imagine Daphne dressing up and dancing like a robot in front of a hundred people on a regular Sunday afternoon.

Rubbing his eyes and resolving to get his glasses checked, Harry turned away from the stage and continued with his grocery shopping.

Possible Emotion Detected: Excitement

Daphne felt her circuitry heat up as people clapped and cheered for her dancing. She had perfectly executed the program Hermione had come up with, and despite its mechanical stiffness, the crowd seemed to have loved it.

"Bravo!" someone called. "What an incredible talent!"

"I can't believe you're a human!" another said.

"Marry me, robot girl!" a little boy in the front row yelled.

Daphne bowed just as stiffly as she had danced and exited stage left. She was proud of her performance, but was now slightly conscious of giving away her secret identity to the world.

"That was amazing!" Hermione said, hugging Daphne as she returned backstage. The sentiment was echoed by many of her fellow dancers as they came to high five her, and Daphne felt her gears overflow with joy.

"Thank you, everyone," she said. "I believe that I have now come to understand the joys of dancing."

Once the group had dispersed and the next dancer walked out onto the stage, Daphne sat down in the corner next to Hermione. There was a strange man with his hood pulled up a few feet away from them, but they both ignored him.

"But really," Hermione said, "that was great. I'm so proud of you, Daphne. You really can do anything you set your mind to – I think you're a lock to win this competition."

"Perhaps," Daphne agreed, "but today, I realized that dancing is not about winning or losing. It is about having fun, and expressing yourself on the stage. Whether or not I claim the grand prize, I will walk away a winner."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "That's a really mature way of looking at things, actually."

"Of course. I am very mature, after all."

Possible Emotion Detected: Rage

Simulating Physiological Response…

Daphne's whole body shook in anger.

Printing Thought Sequence: I will…destroy the world…and create it anew…

Luckily for Daphne, she had trouble smiling, so she didn't have to fake one as she accepted the second place prize for the dance competition; a three-hundred fifty pound gift certificate for a pet food store in Knightsbridge. It wasn't a bad prize by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't the first prize.

And that meant Daphne had lost.

She returned to her spot on the podium, which she had already calculated was a whole nineteen centimeters below the top spot, and the announcer raised the microphone to his lips.

"And the winner of the annual Knightsbridge dancing competition is…Al 'The Bus' Dumbledore!" he cried.

Daphne had missed that dancer's performance, so she didn't know who it was or how he possibly could've beaten her. She looked around curiously, and was caught by surprise as the strange man in the hood from earlier jumped to the top spot and stretched his arms towards the sky in victory.

"Hurrah!" he cheered, throwing his hood back.

It was an older white man with a long grey beard and even longer hair, who bore a striking resemblance to Hogwarts' headmaster.

Possible Emotion Detected: Recognition

Printing Thought Sequence: No…that is the headmaster.

"Ha!" the man shouted, shaking the all-inclusive vacation tickets in his hands. "Got 'em! Looks like sly Al just bagged himself another Field Trip!"

Harry was walking back through Knightsbridge on his way home from the grocery store when he peeked in at the stage again.

The blonde girl from earlier was standing on the second place spot on the podium, while the top spot was claimed by…Dumbledore?

Harry shook his head and wiped his glasses. Clearly, he wasn't getting enough sleep.

"To be fair, he was really good," Hermione said on their way home. "I thought he was a professional hip-hop dancer at first."

Daphne clenched her fists. "He is not a professional dancer."

"Yeah, I realized that when he took his hood off. I, er, think he's a professional headmaster, actually."

"In any case, it is irrelevant who he is," Daphne said coldly. "I lost, and he won. It is the hard truth, and one I have to accept."

"I thought you said dancing wasn't about winning or losing?"

"Those were the words spoken by a girl who had never lost before. Now that I know the sharp sting of defeat, I will never be so naive again."

Hermione took a deep breath and tried not to cry. If she thought about it one way, at least she was better than Daphne at taking L's.

"So what are you going to do now?" she asked instead.

"I will ensure that I never lose to anyone ever again," Daphne replied curtly. "No matter what it takes."

Hermione let out a small whimper as her dreams of getting the top scores in their year sank deeper into oblivion.

Later that night, Cuddles munched on his dog treats while curiously watching his master.

The girl had looked furious all evening, and Cuddles was worried at first that her ire was directed at him. But when she presented him with a pile of snacks for being a 'good boy', he realized that she was in fact angry at someone else.

"I will defeat you one day, Dumbledore," she muttered, moving strangely in front of her mirror.

Cuddles didn't know who this 'Dumbledore' was, but he figured it must be an incredibly powerful monster if even his master hadn't been able to defeat it. He would have to train as well, so that he could support his master in her quest to slay the beast.

Slinking over to the mirror to stand beside Daphne, Cuddles started following along with the same strange combat movements his master was practicing. He wasn't sure if he was doing it correctly or not, but Daphne seemed pleased.

"Ah!" she said. "What a brilliant idea, Cuddles. Dumbledore will not be able to win against this. Ha, ha, ha…"

Cuddles felt the hair on his back stand up in fright as Daphne continued her fake, evil laugh. Truly, his master was the scariest monster of them all; this Dumbledore creature stood no chance.

A/N:

I hope this chapter made you smile/laugh/have a good time. I'm aiming for a rough, go-ahead energy with this fic to keep my mental fresh, but let me know if the chapters are getting too rough.

See you (hopefully) pretty soon, the next chapter is already underway, featuring a few characters we haven't met yet :)