Daphne observed the box.
It sat on her vanity table, a small, unassuming cube of dark, unpolished wood. No markings, no hinges visible, just a solid, unsettlingly lightweight thing. It emanated no discernible magic, yet a prickle of unease traced along her skin whenever her gaze lingered on it for too long. Potter's parting grin, all teeth and too much knowing, replayed behind her eyelids. Jack-in-the-Box. The term itself was childish, almost absurd, but from Potter, absurd carried a sharp edge of unpredictability, a guarantee that whatever sprang forth would be anything but harmlessly whimsical.
Evening had settled over Greengrass Manor, drawing long shadows across the manicured gardens visible beyond her window. Dinner had concluded with the usual polite exchanges and carefully neutral observations regarding the day's affairs. Her mother had retired to the drawing-room with needlepoint and the latest edition of Witch Weekly, while Astoria, predictably, had sequestered herself with a book in the library. Father, however, remained in his study, presumably reviewing Ministry documents, which was precisely the condition Daphne had been waiting for.
Proximity, not direct engagement. Sufficient audibility without requiring immediate explanation.
She glanced at the closed study door across the hall, gauging the silence emanating from behind the heavy oak. Father's study was warded against eavesdropping, of course, but not against allowing sound inside. And Daphne intended to deliver a scream of considerable robustness. It was a performance, meticulously planned, strategically timed. Potter desired a scream; she would provide him with one.
With controlled precision, naturally.
Daphne approached the vanity, her movements deliberate, economical. She picked up the box, its lightness still disconcerting against the weight of anticipation gathering in her stomach. It felt… wrong. Too simple. Too mundane for something Potter had tasked her with delivering to her Unspeakable father. She wasn't surprised.
Potter was nothing if not theatrical.
Holding the box at arm's length – purely a precautionary measure, naturally, not a display of nerves – she took a slow, steadying breath. Control. That was the key. Even in the midst of manufactured surprise, composure must be maintained. She positioned herself facing the study door, ensuring a clear line of sound. Then, with a decisive flick of her wrist, she flipped open the lid.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Just the interior of the box, disappointingly empty, lined with unremarkable dark velvet. A faint scent of… smoke? Or perhaps ash, clung to the air. And then, with a sudden, impossible velocity, something erupted upwards.
Not just something. Someone.
Emerald eyes, startlingly bright, impossibly close, met hers. Untamed black hair brushed her cheek. A grin, too wide, too knowing, flashed in the dim evening light. Potter. Harry Potter, impossibly crammed into a space no larger than a jewelry casket, was now impossibly unfolding himself in her dressing room.
Air seized in Daphne's lungs.
Instinct, raw and primal, bypassed calculation entirely. A sound tore from her throat, uncontrolled, involuntary – a high-pitched, escalating shriek that resonated through the manor, bouncing off the polished floors and echoing up the grand staircase. It was loud. Impressively loud. Certainly loud enough to reach the study, and possibly several neighboring postcodes besides. She vaguely registered the frantic scrabble of her mother's footsteps overhead and a muffled thud from downstairs, presumably Astoria investigating the disturbance with cautious curiosity.
But her focus remained fixed on the figure now fully emerged from the box, still grinning, still radiating that unsettling, wrong kind of energy.
"It was me." Potter smiled as if emerging from miniature wooden containers was a standard social greeting. "I was the Jack-in-the-Box."
Daphne stared.
Her carefully orchestrated scream still reverberated in her ears, a ringing testament to the sheer audacity of Harry Potter. She was not amused. A chaotic swirl of emotions threatened to breach her carefully constructed composure. Irritation, certainly. Indignation, undeniably. And beneath it, a thread of unsettledness. Potter's casual disregard for the laws of physics, spatial constraints, and basic decorum was… unnerving.
"You," Daphne managed to force her voice into a controlled hiss, betraying none of the internal turmoil, "were in the box."
"Yup. Fair warning, it was CRAMPED in there." Potter stretched, his limbs uncoiling with fluid grace, as if he'd spent the last hour lounging in a spacious armchair rather than miniature confinement. "Might need a chiropractor. Have you ever popped someone's back? Can you pop mine?"
"I…"
Before Daphne could formulate a suitably scathing response – something involving the long-term psychological damage of enclosed spaces and Potter's general disregard for personal boundaries – the study door across the hall slammed inward with enough force to rattle the crystal vials on her vanity.
Father.
Father filled the doorway, a formidable silhouette against the dimly lit hallway. His wand was already drawn, tip alight with a fierce, contained glow, illuminating the sharp angles of his face and the taut line of his jaw. His gaze, honed by years spent navigating the labyrinthine corridors of the Department of Mysteries, swept across the room, assessing, analyzing, categorizing threats with practiced efficiency.
"Daphne?" He frowned. "What in Merlin's name is happening here?"
"Father…" Daphne straightened her posture. "Allow me to introduce Harry Potter."
She gestured, with a subtle inclination of her head, towards the grinning Gryffindor who seemed entirely unfazed by the sudden, wand-wielding arrival of an irate Unspeakable.
"Mr. Greengrass!" Potter stepped forward and extended his hand towards Father. "So pleased to finally meet you! Daphne's told me so much about you! All good things naturally. A whole lot about your professional discretion. Which, you know, fair play. Secrets are fun."
Potter's grin widened, radiating a warmth that felt distinctly… off. Like sunlight reflecting off ice.
"Anyway, Harry Potter, at your service. Or, uh, in your box, technically, for a bit there. Bit of a long story, actually, involving a woodcutter, a jackass, a nest of wasps, and a whole ton of milk. Don't ask me where I got it, I don't want to lie."
Father's gaze fixed on Harry, his wand still raised, the glow intensifying almost imperceptibly. He did not take Harry's offered hand. His silence stretched, a palpable weight settling in the room, thick with unspoken questions and simmering suspicion.
"Potter. Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain precisely why you are emerging from a box in my daughter's dressing room at this hour?"
"She invited me."
Daphne huffed. "I most certainly did not!"
"You took the box, didn't you?"
"That does not mean—"
"Enough." The tip of Father's wand crackled with unreleased lightning. "This is the height of impropriety, Potter. Are you so ill-mannered that you would barge into a girl's room uninvited?"
"You're really focusing on the wrong thing here." Harry's grin morphed into a predator's. "You should be asking yourself how I got past your wards."
Daphne suppressed a sigh.
This is not the time for that!
If Potter wanted to provoke Father, he was going about it in a completely wrong way. A statement like that would only pique Father's curiosity and lessen his propensity towards violence. Father would now go into his puzzle mode and try to question Potter through subtlety, and the entire evening would stretch forever.
"You are correct, Mr. Potter." Father lowered his wand. "How did you bypass my wards?"
"Father…" She shook her head. "Surely, we have better things to—"
"Silence, Daphne."
She lowered her gaze.
"See, it all started on the train." Potter tilted his head. "I needed to talk to Daphne privately about something super delicate, and, well, discretion is the better part of valor, don't you agree?"
"Indeed." Father walked in and closed the door. "Daphne let you in, then?"
"Oh, not at all." Potter shrugged. "I just needed Daphne to bring you here, so we could talk about sensitive family matters. No weddings, pregnancies, or scandals, scout's honor. Also, I really did just come in the box."
Daphne raised her eyebrow at him. A silent, unsettlingly amused communication passed between them, a shared understanding of the absurdity – and the underlying danger, no matter how confident Potter was that he could somehow come back from death – of the situation.
"Sensitive family matters?" Father blinked. The air in the dressing room crackled with unspoken magic. "Even if I accept your absurd method of breaching my wards as true, I am unaware of any matters that necessitate clandestine arrivals via miniature containers and ear-splitting screams."
"Trust me, Mr. Greengrass." Harry stepped behind Daphne and grabbed her shoulders from behind. "This is the most clandestine business you've ever seen. This puts the cland in clandestine."
Daphne clenched her jaw. "Cland is not a word."
"Daphne, our deal did not include language lessons."
"Deal?" Father stepped to the right. "What deal did you make, Daphne?"
"One agreed to under duress, Father." Daphne met Father's gaze with a perfectly composed expression even as Potter kept turning her to be between him and Father. Control was, after all, everything. "Yet, one I believe would be beneficial to the family."
Well, it'll be beneficial to me if the date with Granger goes well, but I'm family too, aren't I?
Father's gaze locked onto Daphne, searching, probing, undoubtedly dissecting every nuance of her posture, her expression, her tone. It was a familiar scrutiny, a test, a silent interrogation she had navigated countless times throughout her life. Was she telling the truth? Could he trust her to know that a deal under duress could be beneficial? Was she in danger? For all his strictness and mind games he'd brought back from the department of mysteries, her safety would be paramount to him.
He is a good dad after all.
"Advantageous to the family…" Father shook his head, and the crackling magic at the tip of his wand finally dimmed. "How did you bypass my wards?"
"I already told you. I was the Jack-in-the-Box." Potter chuckled and stepped back from her. "Sometimes, the most… unconventional methods yield the most… rewarding results. Wouldn't you agree?"
Daphne's breath remained shallow, a carefully controlled rhythm against the sudden, sharp thrum of her pulse. Father's curiosity, while a marginally preferable alternative to outright hostility, was still a treacherous terrain. Curiosity in an Unspeakable was rarely benign. It was a scalpel, sharp and precise, designed to dissect, to uncover, to understand… and potentially, to control.
"Mr. Potter." Father stepped forward and pulled her behind him. "You cannot expect me to believe that you truly broke the laws of magic and physics and stuffed yourself into that box."
"Why not? Magic is weird."
"Because you were still with me when you gave me the box." Daphne gulped and hid behind Father. "And even if the space within is magically expanded, the entrance must be large enough. You changed size when you came out."
"Oh, Daphne, stop pooping on my party." Potter's voice brimmed with theatrical enthusiasm as he skipped around. "Just… think of it as innovative delivery!"
Father tightened his grip on his wand. "Potter…"
"Traditional methods are so boring." Potter whirled around, picking various knick-knacks and putting them down. "The Floo network is fluffy, Portkeys make me want to vomit, and apparition… Well, 'nuff said about that tube of horrors."
"Potter!"
"A Jack-in-the-Box? Now that's got panache! Flair! A certain…" He paused, tapping a finger against his chin, eyes gleaming with mischief. "…je ne sais quoi."
Daphne inwardly winced. Je ne sais quoi? Potter was laying it on thick, the blatant absurdity of his performance almost daring Father to call his bluff. It was a high-stakes gamble, a calculated provocation… or perhaps, simply Potter being Potter, amplified to an unsettling, almost weaponized degree.
Father's eyebrow arched, a subtle, almost imperceptible movement, yet one that spoke volumes. It was the expression of a man accustomed to wielding control, confronted with a force that seemed to operate entirely outside the established parameters of logic and decorum.
"Panache?" Father spoke as if the word was foreign and distasteful on his tongue. "I confess, Mr. Potter, I was previously unaware that 'panache' was a prerequisite for… family business."
"Come now, Mr. Greengrass, don't be so pedestrian." Harry jumped and landed lying on her bed. "True innovation lies in the heart of the prankster. No, wait—"
"Did you just call me—"
"It's the other way around? No? I'm not sure whether—"
"How dare you—"
"No, it doesn't matter." Potter vanished from the bed in a gust of wind and reappeared on the windowsill. "Just think about the message you're sending Daphne here."
Father gripped Daphne's shoulder and pushed her farther behind him. "What are you talking about?"
"You gotta nurture her creativity." Potter conjured a ball of light and started hitting the ceiling with it. "Magic dies with a dull mind, you know."
"I am surprised, Mr. Potter. Surprised that anyone, even a Gryffindor with your… reputation", Father spat out the word, "would deem it appropriate to break into a man's home and then insult him."
Daphne held her breath.
The tension in the room tightened. Father pushed her towards the door and started stalking up to Potter. His hand gripped his wand like a viper ready to strike. His eyes bore into Potter, probing for weaknesses, for inconsistencies, for any crack in the façade of Gryffindor audacity and theatrical charm. Potter, infuriatingly, seemed to be not just holding his ground, but actively enjoying the confrontation.
"C'mon… You gotta get a good first impression."
"You cannot expect me to believe that you feel you are succeeding in that?"
"Once again, your focus is skewed." Potter's eyes gleamed with emerald fire as he turned to look at Father. "You think you're talking to a fifteen-year-old dude who you can intimidate into not breaking your daughter's heart."
"You—"
"What you should be thinking about", Potter's grin widened as the unsettling light in his eyes intensified, "is that you have, in your home, a wizard that broke through your wards and has been using wandless magic all this time."
The word hung in the air, heavy with unspoken implications, with a subtle, almost palpable shift in the atmosphere. The playful banter, the theatrical absurdity, the carefully constructed façade of Gryffindor charm… something shifted beneath the surface. A darker current emerged, a hint of something sharper, something more dangerous lurking beneath the playful surface.
The same force she'd seen on the train.
Daphne's fingers twitched, a subtle, almost imperceptible movement, towards the wand concealed within her robes. She couldn't do much. Merlin, Father couldn't do much. Yet, it would feel better to have her wand out. Whatever Potter was going to do next was going to be an attempt to provoke her father into killing him.
Father finally reached the window and raised his wand. "Are you threatening me, Mr. Potter?"
I should've seen it coming.
She'd been so consumed with keeping up with Potter's insane ramblings ever since he'd popped out of that box that she completely forgot why he was here in the first place. No, it was worse than that. She'd been naïve enough to assume that Potter would negotiate with Father for what he wanted. It was what a Slytherin would do.
But Potter isn't a Slytherin.
"I don't know, Mr. Greengrass." Potter vanished from the window and appeared in front of Daphne, his burning eyes inches from her own. "Am I?"
Father whirled around. "Daphne—"
Potter's hand shot out, and his fingers wrapped around Daphne's throat.
Air. Ceased. To. Exist.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked through Daphne's carefully constructed composure. He wouldn't actually hurt her, would he? This was all a show for Father… It had to be a show for Father… Her hands flew up, scrabbling at the iron grip constricting her windpipe, nails digging uselessly into unyielding flesh. Her vision swam, edges blurring, the meticulously detailed dressing room dissolving into a hazy kaleidoscope of light and shadow.
Father reacted instantly.
A roar ripped from his throat, raw and primal, a sound Daphne had never heard before, a sound that shattered the carefully cultivated veneer of Unspeakable composure. His wand, already in hand, snapped upward, the air around it crackling with raw power.
"Potter!"
A jet of crimson light erupted from Father's wand, hurtling towards Harry with lethal intent. Daphne's vision swam, black spots dancing at the edges, but even through the encroaching darkness, she saw it – the spell, powerful, perfectly aimed, approached Harry… and then, simply… fizzling out. It didn't hit a shield. It didn't deflect off a physical block. It vanished. As if it was fire and someone had poured water over it.
Impossible. Magic did not simply… fail. Not like that. Then again… Could she really be surprised? After everything she'd seen Potter do?
Father stared, a flicker of disbelief, of stunned incomprehension, momentarily overriding the raw fury contorting his features. He snarled, recovering in an instant, fury reigniting, his wand whipping through a series of complex, rapid-fire incantations. Red sparks, silver whips, bolts of crackling blue energy – a barrage of offensive spells erupted from his wand, each one a masterpiece of controlled, lethal magic.
Each one, impossibly, inexplicably, failed.
Sparks winked out mid-air. Whips dissolved into shimmering dust. Bolts of energy simply… vanished, swallowed by an unseen, unknowable force. It was as if a wall, invisible, impenetrable, had sprung up around Harry, deflecting, absorbing, nullifying every magical assault.
Father's veins bulging at his temples. "Avada Kedavra!"
The incantation ripped from his throat, a guttural snarl of pure, unadulterated intent. A jet of sickly green light, impossibly bright, erupted from his wand. The Killing Curse. The ultimate, irreversible act of magical annihilation was hurtling towards Potter.
Just as he'd told her he wanted.
This time, there was no fizzling. No sputtering. No inexplicable failure.
The green light struck Potter full in the chest.
For a single, horrifying, drawn-out moment, nothing happened. Potter just stood there, still clutching Daphne's throat. Then, slowly, almost languidly, the grin faltered. The unsettling light in his eyes dimmed, flickered, and then… extinguished. His grip on Daphne's throat loosened, fingers slackening, releasing their crushing hold.
Daphne gasped and gulped in air. Sweet, sweet air.
With a soft, almost soundless thud, Harry Potter collapsed.
Crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings abruptly, irrevocably cut. Limbs splayed at unnatural angles, head lolling to the side, eyes staring blankly, unseeing, at the ornate ceiling of Daphne's dressing room.
Silence descended. Heavy. Stifling. Absolute.
Daphne gasped, sucking in air in ragged, desperate gulps, her throat burning, raw, protesting the sudden influx of oxygen. Her vision swam, slowly resolving, focusing on the impossible tableau before her.
Harry Potter lay motionless on her dressing room floor.
Father, wand still trembling in his hand, stood frozen, staring down at the fallen Potter, his face a mask of stunned, disbelieving horror.
That's a wrap for Chapter 7!
Let me know what you liked and disliked, I love and appreciate all constructive criticism, especially since I always keep editing and improving these chapters. I would love to hear all your thoughts!
What did you think of Daphne's POV? Was it uniquely Daphne enough?
Check me out on p. a. t. r.e.o.n.. c.o.m. /TheStorySpinner (don't forget to remove the spaces and dots) for early releases of new chapters and bonus content.
The following chapters are already available there:
Chapter 8: The Thing Wearing His Face
Chapter 9: Forgive Me
Chapter 10: What Have You Done
Chapter 11: What Cannot Be Unheard
Chapter 12: False Sunlight
See you in Chapter 8!
