Nothing is mine.

Harry dreams of a lovely island.

The Flowers Left Thick at Nightfall in the Wood

Harry stared up into a steady, cool drizzle and breathed in the tang of smoke, scorched flesh, and seared stone. Beyond a sprawl of glowing embers and heaps of smoking, steaming white ash, the jagged bluff fell away into a bleak, heaving grey sea that, when it swelled forward and fell upon the rocks, crashed like thunder breaking across the sky.

Voldemort's cold grin curved his lips. 'Bella,' he murmured.

'My Lord.' A reverent whisper came at his right elbow. 'What is your command?'

He ran one fingertip along the length of his pale, crooked yew wand. 'Bring me the three who fought back so bravely. Now is the time.'

'My Lord.' The loud crack of her apparition tore through the quiet night.

Harry turned, spinning around on his bare heel with deliberate slowness.

Helpless wizards and witches hung upside down, suspended in pairs over each great toppled rock of some old, fallen stone circle, dangling above the low rise overlooking the sea as if hooked on an invisible snare. All their skin hung from their shoulders in thin, blood-soaked tatters like the broken, bedraggled feathers of a brace of small dead birds caught upon a wire; it left them raw and red, weeping crimson-streaked fluid onto the huge old rocks below. Within that circle of swinging, swaying corpses stood a large, shallow, iron bowl worked in the likeness of a gaping dragon's head that brimmed with blood. The surface shone bright as obsidian, gleaming in the light of the waxing moon, and faint wisps of steam rose from the gaping jaws, spiralling up past the tooth-lined top of the bowl like smoke spilling from the maw of the Hungarian Horntail.

The corpses spun around and around, not unlike, Harry thought, Dudley and Piers Polkiss dancing all alone at the centre of their year six leaving disco — they bumped into each other in a tangle of limp limbs to the tune of some slow song nobody but the dead could hear, a macabre merry-go-round that would leave Dudley hurling his guts up into a drain in just the same way, if not, Harry suspected, for quite the same reason.

Laughter bubbled up inside.

'Speak, Harry.' Voldemort's murmur left his lips in less than a whisper. 'Only I can hear you.'

'You messed with the connection again?'

'Not again. And only as little as was necessary,' Voldemort replied. 'It is true magic, high magic, born, no doubt, of my rebirth with your blood in my veins. Such things ought not to be tampered with too greatly; it is the height of dishonour to dismember a gift.'

'As opposed to dead people,' Harry replied. 'You tamper with those all the time. And dismember them.'

'They are Reborn in Death at my hand. Aileni yn Marvoleth, we would say, but no doubt that fool, Dumbledore, has taught you nothing of the tongue of your ancestors.'

'Not a word,' Harry said. 'I never understand any of it. What is it? Welsh? It definitely sounds like there are some important vowels missing.' He chuckled. 'Also, you have no right to be upset that I don't know this stuff, it's your own fault I don't; my parents might have taught me about some of it and you very unhelpfully murdered them before they could.'

'Dumbledore ought to have told you some of it in their stead, the old fool,' Voldemort whispered. 'I do not know if he has lost faith or just cannot stomach the truth, but he is wrong regardless, Harry. Lord Voldemort is here. Ken y tyachtfech.'

'I actually know that one,' Harry admitted. 'As it was foreseen, right?'

'Just so.' Voldemort's smile curved his lips as he admired the circle of floating corpses. 'Just so.'

Bellatrix marched across the ash-strewn grass, the edges of the overlapping folds of her tight, black robes trembling in the wind; in one hand she clutched her dark, curved wand and in the other, a mask of pale slender bone etched with countless bright blue runes. 'My Lord,' she breathed. 'Rookwood and Travers have charge of the prisoners. What would you have them do?'

'Bring them to me at the centre of the circle. Nothing more.'

'Ah, it's crayon time,' Harry said. 'Red crayon again, I assume. You really should use some of the other colours more, it's getting repetitive. At least Bellatrix found a blue crayon somewhere for her mask. Why do you wear skull masks, anyway? Everyone knows who you are, they cannot be comfortable and they look horribly like they're made of real bone, which is extremely creepy.'

'Yes, my Lord.' Bellatrix flicked her wand, sending a small dark crow of ink soaring away through the night sky. 'It will be done in but a moment.'

'There is no rush.' Voldemort's grin returned in full as he strode barefoot through the ash. 'The Lords Pendragon built a guest house over a mass grave, but they have never cared for it as anything more than a veil for the barrow's mound and a place to mockingly host the descendants of those whose bones line beneath the ground here. Maerdrid and the aurors of the Graal-Kynak will not come against us tonight.'

'As you foresaw,' Bellatrix murmured.

Harry stepped between two pairs of flayed witches, the blood on the old, toppled stones beneath his feet warm and sticky, and approached the large, brimming iron bowl.

Two Death Eaters appeared with a loud crack, throwing a trio of wizards to the ash at Harry's feet.

'My lord.' The rightmost bowed.

'Travers,' Voldemort whispered. 'Go now with Rookwood and make sure there is not a single soul left free upon the estate. Spare none but the children to spread their unfiltered terror. Bring the corpses of any you find back here and empty their veins into the grail within the circle.'

'As you command, my lord.' Travers's blue-runed skull mask turned to Rookwood and they vanished with a deafening pop.

'Bella, let these three speak.'

Bellatrix raised her curved dark wand in her left hand; her arm lay bare from the elbow, marked with three spirals of thick, bright, blue liquid. 'Speak,' she ordered. 'But speak to the Dark Lord with honour or die without it.'

'Honour?' One of the prisoners raised his head and bared stained, yellow teeth through his blood-matted beard. 'You attack in the night, like a thief, and speak of honour? You burnt a few old buildings. Slaughtered a meagre handful of retainers and servants. You are a pest, not a lord. A mad rat gnawing at its betters.'

'A rat? For a thousand years the Pendragon bloodline and its ilk have depicted us with serpents.' Voldemort's cold grin spread across Harry's lips, but beneath it, Harry's laughter kept on spreading — wider and wider and wider, at the thought of an enamoured young Tom Riddle squeaking away to a giant rat in the Chamber of Secrets. 'And a serpent only needs to bite once or twice, even if it strikes a dragon.' Voldemort pointed one long, pale finger at the other two. 'The two that dare not speak are of no interest to us, Bella. Cut their throats into the grail and bring the bodies back to me here.'

Bellatrix hauled one up over the edge of the bowl with a flick of her wand; she drew a short, steel blade with a pale yew handle from its sheath on her thigh and slashed the wizard's throat open, watching the red spurt into the bowl and across the dirt with a small grin on her lips and a fierce gleam in her grey eyes.

'What are you going to do with the bowl?' Harry asked as Bellatrix opened the neck of the other and hoisted them up into the air by their ankles over the bowl. 'Please don't tell me you're going to drink it or something like that. It cannot be hygienic.'

'It is not just a bowl, Harry, it is a grail,' Voldemort whispered through a cold little smile. 'For a thousand years—' his voice rose from a murmur and his gaze dropped to the wizard kneeling in the ash before him '—the Pendragon family has exerted every scrap of influence it can muster to try and erase our traditions, to, where they can, wipe away our ways and silence our words, and where they can't, they seek to twist them, to change their meaning to suit their own ends. When Myrddin… Merlin rose against them and vanished; they massacred or exiled all those that remained loyal and told the world his story was that of the aged advisor to their own rightful bloodline; in all those lies they spread, they replaced the doorway to the Veiled World with a cup of blood plucked from the Muggle faith they chose to supplant the truth with. For centuries, they and their allies have sought to twist our truth and in many places they have had great success. Little true faith remains among Muggles who once knew what we knew and worshipped what we worshipped.'

Bellatrix ripped the dark-red robes from the two hanging wizards with her short steel dagger and dipped her bare left hand into the bowl of blood. She pressed a bright, crimson print of her palm against the still chests of both wizards and wiped her fingers clean on the ragged remnants of their robes.

'Your ways are dark,' the wizard spat, his brown eyes full of frustrated fury. 'Dark and savage and senseless. The sooner they are gone, the better. Drink our blood. Mutilate our corpses. Beg for your saviour. Nobody is coming but Maerdrid. Nothing is coming but a reckoning. You will get your death at his hands. See if you return from that.'

Harry heard the quiet intake of breath of the Death Eaters as everyone stilled.

Voldemort's high cold laugh cut through the silence and the smoke like the edge of a blade. 'You think your champion will overcome Lord Voldemort? I, who have pushed the boundary of magic further than any since Salazar Slytherin or Myrddin themselves; I, who dared more than any since them and returned where they did not.'

'You are just another mad dark wizard. You style yourself a lord after your betters and slither back to the shadows because you are too afraid to face Maerdrid and the Graal-Kynak in honourable combat. Ynys Dywyll is of no importance. They will scarcely notice.'

'Ynys Dywyll, the Dark Isle,' Voldemort whispered. 'We call it by another name. One your masters have yet to totally silence among those who still hold to truth. This is Ynys y Cedairn, the Isle of the Brave, for those truly loyal to Myrddin waited here before the doorway to the Veiled World for his return. They refused to leave even when Artorīgios Pendragon threatened to hang them, and so Artorīgios put even the last child among them to death, buried them all where they had stood, and salted the ground so nothing could grow over their graves. Then, after his bastard son Medraut killed him and died doing the deed, his son, Uthyrios, finished his father's work, tore down the doorway and built this outpost over the bodies.' He drew his wand, caressing the long, pale, crooked yew. 'This place is not yours. It is ours.'

Bellatrix turned away from the dangling corpses as the last trickle of blood fell into the bowl. 'My lord?'

'Bring the other bodies,' Voldemort commanded. 'I will restore, from the blood and bone of those that blasphemed, the doorway that once stood here. Let Pendragon look through it and dread what he knows is to come.'

Bellatrix vanished with a loud crack.

Harry laughed to himself. 'More seriously suspect sculpture? I don't think whoever it was who told you to get a hobby instead of plotting world domination meant this. Although, neither of them seemed like very nice people, so I guess it isn't a huge loss for the world.'

'A doorway to nowhere,' the wizard on his knees muttered. 'You think the Graal-Kynak will be afraid of a few corpses? When I counted myself among their number in my younger days, we left mountains of dead behind us and Maerdrid has only made them stronger. We are the dread of the magical world, not you. When the ICW needs aurors, it is the Graal-Kynak they turn to first. When the other members of the ICW wake up in cold terror, sweating in the night, and peer into the shadows of their palaces, it is the Graal-Kynak they fear they might find there. Maerdrid will bury you in salt and lime here beneath your own macabre circle, and for the next thousand years, the Lords Pendragon will host their guests above your shallow grave.'

Bellatrix returned with an ear-splitting pop, spilling pale, stiff corpses across the ground. A crimson hand print sat upon the chest of each of them, but from brow to chin, the flesh and skin had been stripped back to bare white bone, and their teeth gleamed bright in the moonlight.

Voldemort ran a fingertip along his wand. 'What starts with doubt will become fear,' he whispered. 'With each victory that doubt will grow and they will fear a little more that it is true; the ICW and all its servants have dreaded it for many centuries. Just a little more doubt and in their hearts they will know. It will not matter how many stand against us then; the battle will already be won. An auror whose heart is poisoned by doubt is already defeated.'

The bodies swept together, piled up high in the invisible grip of his magic into a pair of sprawling pillars either side of the huge bowl; a tangle of white, cold, dead limbs studded by glassy still eyes, and smeared in ash and mud and blood.

'Fear not the touch of Winter.' Voldemort dipped one hand into the bowl of blood. 'Embrace it. You will only change. Nothing is lost. What lies beneath the snow flowers again come the Spring.'

'Maerdrid has never known defeat,' the wizard spat, his brown eyes lingering on Voldemort's dripping fingers. 'He will cut the head off the snake. Your head, Voldemort.'

'You dare,' Bellatrix hissed.

'Let him have his dying words,' Voldemort said, extending one hand for the knife. 'This is the moment of his becoming. His soul and magic will pass into the Veiled World, to be reborn again once the winter I bring blossoms into a world reclaimed by wonders, and all he was will be laid bare for the world to see.'

'Aileni yn Marvoleth,' Bella breathed.

'Reborn in Death at the hand of Lord Voldemort.' Voldemort weighed the blade in his hand. 'But he fought bravely. And he spoke bravely. He should die with honour.'

The knife flashed in the moonlight.

The wizard blinked, reaching up with one hand to where the yew hilt of the blade stuck from between his ribs. 'May… Maerdrid… grant you… the same… honour.' He slumped onto his side in the ash. 'I feel… cold.'

Voldemort bent and pressed his blood-stained hand across the wizard's face. 'Bella.'

'My Lord,' she whispered.

'Ensure all have left Ynys y Cedairn,' he commanded, returning the knife to her hand. 'There is no need to return to me once you have. Our plan begins to bear fruit at long last, soon the trickle of faithful tentatively reaching out to us will become a flood. Those that wait and hope for Dwyr Sy'n Tystio will know that Lord Voldemort has come, and that, at long last, the pain and sacrifice of Autumn will end.'

'Yes, my lord.' Bellatrix wiped the blade clean on her thigh and placed the blue-runed skull mask back over her face, disapparating with a loud crack.

'You never answered my question about the masks,' Harry said. 'You did the whole long monologue thing, but never actually answered it.'

Voldemort's lips curved. 'When we started, Harry, we wore the masks to protect our families from the ICW's retaliation; for many years, those that spoke out too loudly or were followed by too many found themselves the unwilling guests of Pendragon and his Graal-Kynak. Those were the lucky ones. Some simply… vanished, or died in mysterious magical accidents. No doubt your friends or their friends have some family, distant or close, who suffered that fate.' He severed the heads from the three corpses with a flick of his wrist and a flash of white light. 'They wear skulls because when each of them pledged themselves and took up the mask, they chose to be Reborn in Death, to be the touch of Death upon this world and have no other purpose but. Not as I was, Harry; none have returned from Death as I did, not even Salazar Slytherin or Myrddin himself, but they pledged all the same.'

'They also didn't die trying to duel a baby,' Harry replied. 'Some might say they did a better job. Well, maybe not all of them. Karkaroff was a bit useless, really.'

'It was high magic that vanquished me, not you.' Voldemort lifted the last three wizards' bodies up and placed them atop the two pillars, forming a doorway of the dead over the blood-filled bowl. 'Your family is the last of a long and ancient bloodline, one as old as my own. No doubt, in desperation, they turned to the Old Ways and begged those beyond the Veil for aid.'

'What a horrifying thought.' Harry imagined her daubing his scar upon his forehead with a dripping red finger as cold as ice, drawing it upon his face like crimson crayon, and laughed. 'Maybe they did. Dumbledore says it was my mother's love that protected me. Her sacrifice. You said something similar.'

'The old fool is right,' Voldemort whispered.

The severed heads of the three wizards swept up, swinging from a conjured chain of shining steel links.

Voldemort pinned the ends of the chain to the bodies lying across the top of his doorway and watched them dangle. 'What do you think, Harry? Do you think they saw, before they died? Do you think they're there now, in the Veiled Realm, waiting in the midst of Y Noz Yen Braz, the Great Cold Night? Or are they lost, trapped between worlds in the fog of regretful souls and magic that separates us from wonders?'

'I'm pretty sure none of them believed you,' Harry said. 'Especially that last guy, he seemed very convinced someone was going to chop your head off.'

'Maerdrid,' Voldemort whispered. 'Pendragon's sole son; heir to all that his family have seized for themselves over more than a thousand years. He is much feared by those who know what lies behind the facade of the ICW's ministries and their many laws. No doubt Dumbledore told you as little of that as has of anything else. Did he explain what your mother must have truly done, Harry? Or did he only speak of love and sacrifice?'

'It was all love. And a little bit about how nobody should be afraid of dying.'

'Perhaps the old fool still believes the truth in his heart of hearts.' Voldemort's cold grin stretched across Harry's lips. 'But I think he has spared you the truth, Harry. Perhaps, when I soon retrieve that prophecy, Dumbledore will be desperate enough to tell you a little more. Ask him, when he does, about the ICW, and see if he deceives you again.'

A loud crack tore through the night and Harry jerked awake.

Daphne stared down at him with cool blue eyes, the top half of one post of his bed in her hands and the hangings dangling from it across her blouse. All her blonde hair was loose about her shoulders, a cascade across her dark robes save for that one wild lock fluttering before her lips and brushing the tip of her nose. A small, golden sun hung again from her ear, swaying back and forth from the breeze of the open dorm window, as crimson as the handprint on the dead wizard's face and all the blood that had filled the great iron bowl.

Harry reached out and gave her a gentle pinch on the arm.

She blinked. 'Ow.'

'So I'm not dreaming anymore,' Harry said. 'That's good. It's honestly starting to get a little confusing with all these dreams. Some are real. Some are not. Some might be. Some might not be. Sometimes I think I'm dreaming and then I can't find the thing that vanished in the dream, and that should honestly be really concerning.' He laughed to himself. 'And sometimes Voldemort does creepy things and monologues, and even though it's a dream, I'm awake. Oh, speaking of that, I really have to go and get that prophecy now, because he's finished being creepy in that Ynys y Cedairn place and is probably going to go and be creepy in the Ministry instead now.'

'What are you talking about?' Daphne murmured. 'Ynys y Cedairn is a sacred place, but only those invited to counsel the ICW are allowed to go there. They would have their own aurors guarding it; not many, but to strike at one of the ICW directly is to invite retaliation from a force none can hope to match without the support of another member of the ICW. Few would even dare speak of it…'

'Well, Voldemort razed it all to the ground and made an even larger creepy sculpture of dead people and a big bowl of blood. I saw it. But forget that, what are you doing in my dorm at—' Harry tugged the pillow up against the headboard and sat up '—whatever time this is? And how did you even get in here, Daphne?' His gaze dipped to the half-post in her hands. 'And why have you broken my bed? Actually, that's quite impressive; they're old and there were a few cracks in that one, but still, that's a solid oak post…'

'I listened to people telling the Fat Lady the password,' Daphne murmured. 'Do not be so loud, I do not want anyone else to wake up and see us together like this.'

'I didn't want to wake up either,' Harry retorted; he peered past Daphne at the half-dark sky. 'It's basically still nighttime. Also, I want you to know I'm very disappointed you didn't have another secret passage to get into Gryffindor Tower. Almost as disappointed as I am with whoever just shouted the password out while someone from Slytherin was standing right there next to them. Clearly our great interhouse rivalry means nothing to them.' He mulled that over for a moment. 'And don't let the fact that I'm not at all upset to see you in my dorm at night detract from that. I am very aware that you're mildly evil, it's just that you're also very pretty—' Harry bit the rest of that off, but rather felt the damage might have been done as heat rushed to his face. 'I mean—'

'It is twenty minutes to six.' Daphne turned away, a hint of pink upon her cheeks. 'Get dressed.'

'Why?'

'Because today is Awrdgwawr y Gwanwyn.'

'Not again.' Harry groaned. 'Why can't you celebrate things at a more reasonable hour of the day? And what does that mouthful of vowel-less consonants even mean?'

'It is the day the sun rises perfectly in the East,' Daphne whispered. 'The High Day of Spring. We celebrate the moment at which Briganti flowers into womanhood and is crowned as the fairest daughter of Winter, the pinnacle of Spring. Choroní Gwyl Briganti, it is also called, The Feast of Briganti's Crowning.'

'Of course it is. I should've known the moment it was spring you were going to have loads of things like this you get all excited about and drag me into.' He released a long sigh, but his feigned upset was rather ruined by all the butterflies stirring in his stomach and turning that sigh into something shaky and thrilled. 'Unless you want to watch me get dressed, you should turn around.' Harry swallowed the first couple of butterflies down at the thought of her watching him. 'Actually, you should turn around anyway. Who knows what such a mildly evil Slytherin Pure-blood might do with the memory of me in my pyjamas?'

Daphne set the top half of the post down on the foot of his bed and stared out the window at the brightening horizon.

'Wait…' Harry squinted into the reflection, but made out only a few vague blurred outlines of his bed. 'Okay, it's fine. I thought you were sneakily watching in the reflection of the window for a moment there, which would be a typically devious and slightly evil Slytherin thing to do.'

'Hurry up, Harry.' Daphne's fingers dipped into her pocket and pulled out a blood pop. 'In a minute, I will turn back around—' she tore the wrapper open and slipped the sweet into her mouth '—and if you are not dressed, then it is your own fault.'

All the butterflies burst from their little ball at the bottom of Harry's stomach, sweeping through him in a tickling, tingling rush of fluttering wings; he fought them back with a trembling breath as he threw back the covers, trying hard not to imagine Daphne's blue eyes bright with that same strange, fierce spark of yearning as she caught him undressed.

'Am I in the way?' she asked.

'Not enough for me to want you to move,' Harry replied, reaching past the hem of her skirt and the green-and-silver ribbon of her knee socks to grab his robes off his trunk. 'Just… don't turn around.'

He pulled off his pyjamas in the cool night air. All the hairs on the back of his neck and down his arms stood up as Daphne cocked her head to one side, her blonde hair falling over her left shoulder.

'Wait,' Harry blurted.

'I was just listening out,' she murmured. 'Do not wake everyone up.'

'This would be the worst moment for that,' he muttered under his breath as he dragged on his robes. 'Me completely naked. You right in front of me. The only way it could be worse was if you were naked as well.' Harry paused; Daphne's bright blue eyes, her golden, sun-shaped earring, and that rogue lock of blonde hair blurred into a fragmented collage of pictures of women wearing lingerie or less in Dudley's magazine stash. 'No, I take it back,' he whispered to himself, laughing, 'that would definitely be better.'

'We are not dating, Harry.' Her voice turned soft and cold as winter frost. 'And I am not like Brown; I will not flash my underwear at any boy who smiles back at me.'

'What about just one boy?' he asked, grabbing his socks. 'Also, these little escapades you take me on do feel a bit like dates. Hermione keeps telling me to ignore all the things you say about the Old Ways because you're just using them as an excuse to take me on dates without your parents, or Astoria, or anyone else getting upset with you.' Harry chuckled. 'She also told me not to tell you that, but I think it's funnier this way.'

Daphne swivelled on her heel and stared down at him, a strange gleam in her blue eyes. 'You should not say things like that to me, Harry. It will not end well for you.'

'Sorry.' He flushed, staring at his feet as the butterflies floundered, as unhelpful lost in rejection as they were at really any other moment Harry could imagine. 'Forget I said it. Let's go watch the sun rise like it does every other day but with an unpronounceable name that Voldemort never actually told me was Welsh or not.'

'It is Brythonic,' Daphne murmured. 'The tongue of our ancestors. There are languages that descend from it in the Muggle world, but they are not quite the same; they have changed over time and were shorn from their roots many centuries ago.'

'So where are we going?' Harry pulled on his socks and pulled his wand from under his pillow. 'After I try to fix this bed, I mean.' He tapped his wand against his palm. 'I can't remember the spell Hermione used to fix my glasses that one time, so I guess I should just—' he flicked his wand and watched the post meld back together, the splintered ends melding into each other like the closing teeth of some deep sea creature '—fix it like that.' He grinned. 'I love it when magic just works how magic should.'

'We are going up.' She bent and picked his Firebolt from the floor. 'I thought you could fly us to the roof and we could watch the sunrise together while we have a small feast of celebration for Choroní Gwyl Briganti.'

Harry poked his wand up his sleeve with one finger and grabbed his glasses, clapping them onto his face and opening the window all the way. 'Let's go up then.' He took his broom back and swung a leg over it. 'Hold on tight, I'm just going to go straight up.'

Daphne's arm slipped around his chest. 'I am holding on,' she whispered, her breath brushing the back of his neck in a faint wash of spearmint. 'Hurry up, Harry, before we miss the sunrise.'

He kicked off, swooping out the window and corkscrewing up around the outside of the tower to alight upon the slate roof beside the iron weather vane. 'We have arrived at up,' he announced, hopping off the broom and glancing at the brightening horizon. 'And just in time.'

Daphne swung her leg off the broom and stepped back, smoothing her skirt down. 'Just in time.' She dropped down on the roof edge, dangling her feet into the sky. 'Here—' she held out a blood pop '—it is redcurrant. Even a small feast to honour Briganti's crowning is enough.'

Harry leant his Firebolt against the weather vane and dropped onto his side, sliding down the sloped roof to the edge beside Daphne. 'Thanks.' His fingers grazed hers as he took the sweet and, for a moment, the butterflies clamped tight about his heart, a tiny fluttering storm in the back of his throat and on the top of his tongue. 'Thanks for showing me this. All of it. I know it's something very special to you. The high magic. Spring. All that.'

Yearning smouldered in Daphne's bright blue eyes, a fierce, hungry spark of it, but she turned away, her cheeks flushed and pink in the light of dawn. 'I would not mind sharing more,' she breathed, ripping a blood pop from its wrapper and slipping it through her lips. 'It will be Baendyth Gwyl Beal in a few weeks, if you wish, Harry…'

'I wish,' Harry blurted.

Daphne grinned that impish grin and her little dimples sprang up on her cheeks as she crunched on the blood pop, staining her teeth and lips crimson; the sight of her snatched any other words Harry might have found from his lips and left him at the mercy of a storm of butterflies so strong his heart trembled and fluttered in time to the beat of their wings as it hammered against his ribs. He unwrapped the blood pop with a twist of his fingers and crunched on it before any of those butterflies escaped in the form of more embarrassing words.

A sliver of gold crept over the distant horizon, bursting in brilliant rays across the bright green leaves of the Forbidden Forest, sweeping away its shadows and leaving it a shining expanse of rustling emerald leaves.

'What do you see?' Daphne whispered. 'Do you see Spring?'

'I see green.' Harry laughed to himself. 'Everything is beautiful and green. It's pretty great, actually; I'm glad you woke me up now, Daphne. I'm glad you told me about all of this. That nothing is lost, only changed.'

Daphne rested her warm hand on his, a little pink colouring her cheeks. 'Nothing is ever lost,' she murmured as the sun's light spilt over the horizon; her eyes were bright with it, bright and clear as spring skies, and full of desperate, fragile hope. 'Even amidst the pain and sorrow of Autumn, or trapped in deepest darkest Winter; even Those Who Dream in Death; we can all be saved. We will all be saved.'

AN: More can be found via the link!

Lots lots more...

linktr . ee / mjbradley