[Harry Potter] Malfoid Stories

[AJ_Talon]

It's taken off like wildfire, and since the cunts over at Spacebattles hate it, I say we post Malfoid and Malfoid adjacent stories and ideas here. So I'll start us off!

---

"Potter... What a surprise."

Harry had his forehead against the cold brick of a deserted hallway. He had hoped he could maintain his solitude but... Not to be. He turned and glared at the eternal thorn in his side: One Lyra Malfoy. She smirked at him, one half of her platinum blonde hair hanging down the right side of her uniform, the rest artfully brushed back behind her. Her cold grey eyes mocked him as she looked him over.

"Couldn't even get a girl to go out with you?" She asked mockingly. "Even rejected the one girl who asked you?"

Okay, yes. He had automatically reacted and said no. He'd been so shocked it had just... Popped out! Then later, when Cho rejected him... Ugh...

"And do you have a date, Malfoy?" He asked sharply. Lyra flushed, and huffed. She turned her nose up, looking away as she crossed her arms under her chest.

"I've had a bevy of suitors... None of which met my standards."

"So you just turned them all down," Harry shot back, "That's your own fault then. You're no better than I am!"

Lyra huffed, her cheeks red.

"Just because I don't want to go out with some random rapscallion does not mean I'm as bad as you!"

"So you're alone by choice? Not something to brag about," Harry snorted. Lyra smirked.

"Yes, but unlike you, I don't HAVE to have a date to the Yule Ball, now do I?" She giggled wickedly, clearly enjoying his frustration.

"Sod off, Malfoy," he grunted. He turned to go sulk somewhere else...

"Potter."

He froze. He turned and scowled at her over his shoulder. She was flushed and cleared her throat.

"You know... Given you need a date and all... And I happen to be... Available..."

Harry blinked. Twice. He went for his wand and muttered "Enervate" as he tapped his wrist. No, he was awake all right.

"Are... Are you... Asking me out?" Harry asked, slowly and in disbelief. Malfoy's pale face went bright red as she clutched at the bottom of her school jumper.

"Don't misunderstand! I-I just... Hogwarts has two champions. I'm supposed to be on my best behavior for Father and if I was on the arm of one of the Champions, it will make me look good to him, and Hogwarts look good! This is simple-A simple transaction! You get a date, I make my father happy, we make the school look good!"

Harry again blinked as Lyra's knuckles turned white.

"Not interested."

He turned away again. Lyra hurried up and stood in front him, spreading out her hands.

"Wha-Are you seriously rejecting me?!" She demanded. Harry looked her in the eyes and nodded.

"I'm not that desperate," he sneered.

Lyra turned bright red and scowled.

"You have any alternatives?!" She demanded. She poked him in the chest. "Mister Boy Who Lived?! Not able to get a date?! Here I am offering a mutual-"

"What's the angle?" Harry demanded. "You never do anything that's not for your own advantage-"

"I TOLD you! I just want to make everyone happy-!"

"You are the QUEEN of Unhappiness! For everyone!" Harry growled. "So why should I trust you?!"

Lyra glared and grit her teeth.

"No. Tricks. The Triwizard is too important! I... Everything I did before is... It's reflected... Badly on me. My father isn't happy... We need to put the school ahead of this-"

"Why do you really want to go to the Ball with me?" Harry demanded. "Why?!"

Lyra glared.

"Because I WANT TO! I want YOU to take me to the ball, idiot! I WANT YOU TO TAKE ME TO THE BALL!"

"But why-?!"

"I TOLD YOU WHY-!"

"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!"

Harry turned and stormed back the other way... Again Malfoy got in front of him, panting angrily.

"Look! What would it take to convince you-?!"

"Apologize for calling Hermione a Mudblood," Harry stated firmly. Malfoy made a face like she had bitten into hot garbage... But slowly, she nodded.

"Fine... I'm... Sorry. I'm sorry I called her that."

Harry blinked in shock, but quickly focused back on his anger. He glared harder.

"And for Hagrid?"

"Fine! I'm sorry for that, too!" Malfoy managed, sounding like she was pulling her own teeth out. Harry smirked.

"Now say it in front of everyone-"

"Don't push it, Potter!" Malfoy growled. "My pride only goes so far! Original question: Will you take me to the ball?!"

Harry hummed. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Malfoy growled, her usually perfect hair out of sorts as she ran a hand through it in frustration.

"Yes or no?!"

"I'm thinking about it," Harry mused.

"ARGH!"

"Well... Since you clearly want it so much-"

"I DO not-!"

"Then yes," Harry said, "We can go."

Malfoy flushed. Her eyes went down to the floor. She again clutched at her jumper.

"Can... Can you..."

"What?"

"Can you... Ask me properly... Please?" She asked softly. Harry fought back his disbelief, and slowly shook his head.

"Why would I-?"

"Just...!" She sighed. "Please?"

Harry sighed again.

"... Would you like to go to the Ball with me... Lyra?"

She looked up at him. Her face lit up, her smile was wide and bright. Her eyes were wide and joyfuly. For a moment, she looked... Beautiful. His heart beat hard in his chest as she stared back at him.

"Yes!" She murmured... Then the smiled twisted back into a smirk.

"You'd better not mess this up, Potter. If you embarrass me I swear I'll make your life an endless hell!"

Harry scoffed.

"I'm not gonna-!"

"Of course you won't! I'll make sure!" She grabbed his hand and dragged him off.

"Wha-Where are we going-?"

"Shopping!" She huffed. "I'm making sure you're presentable! Don't bother worrying about payment, you couldn't afford to pay me back! And dancing-I'll teach you!"

"Hold on, you can't just-!"

"I can, and I will! Someone has to make sure you're civilized, Potter!"

Harry reflected, as Malfoy dragged him off, that he really didn't understand girls at all. He doubted he ever would.

---

This last year had been hell for Lucius Malfoy.

The Triwizard Tournament was eating up an enormous amount of time and energy. That Death Eater revival during the Quidditch World Cup had done far more bad than good-Even if it was pleasant to see the old symbol back up in the sky, it accomplished nothing useful. He'd had to manage a great deal of new investments from recent transactions, but most of that had gone to bribery after the Chamber of Secrets fiasco.

And to top it all off, Lyra was becoming a woman. He was glad to see her growing up, becoming a beauty like her mother... But she could be so very taxing at times.

"Hello Father," Lyra chirped, her head sticking through the Floo fireplace in his study, "I have good news!"

Speak of the devil...

"Oh?" He looked up from his paperwork, raising an eyebrow.

"I have secured an appropriate date for the Yule Ball," she said smugly. Lucius slowly nodded.

"Ah, excellent. Nott, I take it-?"

Lyra made a face.

"Father! Of course not him! He's completely unacceptable!"

"His family line is very-"

"And he's a boor and a nincompoop," she sniffed, "Would you really want that for your future son-in-law?"

He supposed he didn't. He was glad his daughter was so considerate.

"I suppose not... Flynt?"

"He's being held back, Father. Why would I want someone who deliberately stays in school just to win the House Cup?"

"Fair enough... Viktor Krum?" He pressed.

Lyra made a face.

"He's taken up with that Granger Mudblood," she sniffed.

"I see, most unfortunate," Lucius sighed. And it was. "So, who is this suitor?"

Lyra smiled mischievously.

"I am leaving it as a surprise, Father! You will see! But rest assured, you will approve. It will greatly improve our standing, I assure you."

Lucius raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure? Your little stunts in the past have cost us a fair amount."

Lyra's face fell, but she looked him in the eyes, determined and serious.

"I am quite sure, Father. I have learned from my mistakes. This is not one of them," she said, her voice firm with conviction.

Lucius studied her for a moment, seeing her mother in her. He slowly nodded.

"Very well," he said, "I shall trust your judgement, Lyra."

"Thank you Father. Excuse me, I need to make sure my date is presentable at Malkin's."

Lucius again raised an eyebrow.

"You're paying for his robes?"

"He is quite wealthy himself but he will owe me," Lyra said, "And as Mother taught me, most wizards are useless at fashion and proper signalling with it."

Lucius nodded.

"I suppose I will defer to your mother's wisdom. Just don't spend too much, Lyra."

"I won't Father."

She hesitated and said softly:

"Love you."

She ducked her head back into the flames and vanished. Lucius allowed himself a ghost of a smile.

If she was being that open with her emotions, she must truly like whoever she was taking to the Ball.

He had a feeling he would be pleasantly surprised.

- - -

Lyra returned from Madam Malkin's Floo, walking down the steps into the shop proper. She smirked as she saw Harry right where she'd left him: Under Madame Malkin's tender care in front of the mirrors. He saw her and scowled as she approached.

"What?" Lyra asked.

"Why is she doing this with pins and needles?" Harry demanded.

"Well, it keeps you here and out of trouble, doesn't it?" Lyra giggled.

"And I charge by the hour," Malkin tittered, making an adjustment. Harry winced.

"Besides," Malfoy said with a smile, "It keeps you from running off."

"I wasn't going to run off," he said quickly. Lyra laughed, and stepped in front of him, hands on her hips.

"Saint Potter can stand up to a basilisk, a hundred Dementors, a dragon: but getting fitted for new clothes-Now that's terrifying!"

"Take it as a compliment," Harry shot back. Lyra shook her head, laughing gently with Madame Malkin. He sulked a bit. She then noticed something, and reached up with a sigh.

"Really Potter, can't you tie a tie properly?" She admonished, undoing the knot. He flushed as she redid it.

"I-They're all self tying at Hogwarts!"

"Yes, but you should know how to do it yourself."

"I thought you wizards were all about never doing anything the Muggle way."

Malfoy snfifed, stepping in closer as she finished tying the tie. She could smell him: Ink, broom polish, the slightest hint of something masculine. She tightened his tie and looked aside to hide her blush.

"Muggles stole it from us, probably... And there's nothing wrong with knowing how to use your hands, Potter," she stated firmly.

She missed Potter's blush, but not Malkin's snorted laughter. She looked over at the seamtress with a scowl.

"What's so funny?" She demanded.

"You make a lovely couple," Madam Malkin commented. Both Potter and Malfoy blushed.

"It-It's just because he needs a date and it will be good for my family and Hogwarts!" Malfoy sputtered. "Nothing more!"

"Y-yeah!" Potter added, "That's all! I don't-I don't like her at all!"

"Double for me!" Malfoy insisted. "And anyway, what am I paying you for?! Not conversation, get on with it!"

Malkin chuckled and went back to work.

"To be young," she murmured wistfully.

 

[AJ_Talon]

I'm not going to spend my time arguing. I'm going to create.

---

Lyra Malfoy sat ramrod straight, perfect posture (as always) in Severa Snape's office. It smelled of potions, old parchment, and ink.

The older woman sat behind her imposing blackwood desk, face grave as always.

"Miss Malfoy, I wish to offer you some advice."

Lyra blinked curiously.

"What for, godmother?"

Severa took a deep breath, as though steeling herself.

"It is... Understandable why you deny your feelings. Romance for a girl in your position is complicated. Expressing them outwardly would be... Politically difficult, even if your father might approve-"

"What feelings?" Lyra demanded, her pale cheeks turning pink, "I-I have no feelings! If this is about Potter-!"

"It is," Severa said blandly. Lyra grasped the hem of her skirt in mortification, her face burning red.

"I-I have no idea what you're talking about-!"

"Then let me make it plain," Severa stated flatly, "Thanks to the war with the Dark Lord, the ratio of witches to wizards in your generation is three to one. It's almost that bad in mine. And given that magicals live much longer than Muggles, the age gaps between partners often fades into irrelevance. You're probably familiar with this by now?"

"Of course," Lyra sniffed, "But why are you-?"

"I am telling you this," Severa said, with infinite patience, "because the moment Potter is a legal wizard, he will have every unattached witch in Britain and beyond after him. His fame will make him a target. And the moment he realizes Weasley and Granger are girls, he may very well focus on them... Instead of you."

Lyra heard an enraged hiss leave her mouth.

How DARE they-!

Severa leaned forward, her expression almost gentle.

"Don't make my mistake and wait too long," she said softly. "Or let your pride prevent you from taking what should be yours."

Lyra flushed... Then slowly nodded.

"I... I will consider it, Godmother."

"Consider quickly."

---

And a set up for a harem fic. Have fun!

 

[AJ_Talon]

The Forbidden Forest was dark, scary, and ominous. Still, Harry trudged along with Malfoy in tow, Fang the boarhound walking alongside.

"Ugh... I can't believe this detention," Malfoy muttered, "I'm not going to stand for this, when my father hears about-"

Fang froze and growled. Harry could hear something rustling in the underbrush, see a dark shape... And Malfoy KEPT TALKING!

"Shut up!" Harry hissed. Malfoy puffed up like an offended cat.

"Shut up?! How dare you-!"

Fang turned and ran as the shadow approached. Finally, Malfoy saw it. The Malfoy scion froze, went even paler than usual, jaw dropped. Harry, for his part, reacted as anyone who had experience with imminent threats-He grabbed Malfoy's hand and ran for it back down the forest path.

"Run you git!" Harry shouted.

"I'm running! Stop pulling so hard, I keep tripping!"

Harry glared back at Malfoy.

"Run faster! And quit complaining like a girl!"

"I AM A GIRL!" Malfoy bellowed.

Harry didn't stop running, but he shot a look of utter disbelief at her.

"Wha-?!"

"I AM A GIRL, IDIOT!" Malfoy screeched. "NOW GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

The flames seemed like burning claws trying to drag them down into a horrible death. Yet Potter surged his power, and the broom flew, away from it all even as the heat chased them through the air.

She held on tightly, her eyes shut out of instinct. Then, slowly, she opened them. She saw his face through her tears: Grim, determined, utterly focused, like a knight on a charging steed, the wind in his hair, undaunted by the inferno surrounding them.

He was beautiful.

"Potter, I-"

"You don't have to say anything," he shouted into the wind, "just hang on!"

She buried her face in his shoulder, and held on tightly. Her tears strained his dirty jacket.

"Thank you," she whispered.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Sport

---

"Really Potter? A Chudley Cannons hat?"

Harry Potter was outside on the grounds, just relaxing in the crisp fall air between classes. He turned and scowled at the ever present annoyance, Lyra Malfoy. She smirked at him, as she always did, golden ring earrings shining lightly in the afternoon sun.

"Ron gave it to me," He said, resting a hand on his orange bobble hat, almost protectively. "It's a gift."

Malfoy scoffed, walking over with her arms crossed under her chest. He HATED when she did that, it was so distracting!

"Of course Weasley did," she rolled her eyes, coming to stand nearby. "His taste in teams is about as bad as your taste in everything."

"Oh really?" Harry snorted. "What would you know?"

"Oh for...!" Malfoy sighed in exasperation, "Don't you know anything about British Quidditch?"

"I have Quidditch through the Ages! Read it dozens of-!"

"Ugggghhh," Malfoy moaned, rubbing her temples in annoyance, "You really don't know anything, do you Potter?"

"Whatever you know, can't be worth anything."

Malfoy's scowl deepened. She strode up to him and pulled out a small book. She opened it up and pointed to a variety of entries of stats and numbers under Quidditch teams, going back... Decades?

"The Chudley Cannons were once the powerhouse team. They had twenty six winning seasons and half of those were championships! A quarter of all British Quidditch Hall of Famers are from the Cannons!"

"Well, sounds like Ron has good taste then-" Harry tried, but Malfoy interrupted.

"Fifty years ago! After that, they lost every season, every series, everything!"

Harry read through the statistics. He did actually have an eye for numbers, despite what Hermione said... At least when it came to sport. Said eyes widened in disbelief. She was right.

"What? Why?"

"They got complacent, of course," Malfoy snorted, "Thought they were royalty. They became lazy, and relied on famous players even as they aged out. They didn't properly draft new players or change with the times!" She shook her head, and smirked as she held up a pamphlet. "Not like my team!"

"Wiltshire Whirlwinds?" Harry read, raising an eyebrow. Lyra nodded enthusiastically as she pointed at moving pictures in the brochure. Of a well lit stadium with wooden bleachers, Quidditch players in green and silver uniforms flying about, and in one picture posing with several trophies.

"Yes! Oh, they were a joke once upon a time, but through determination, hard work, and fantastic management... Along with excellent advertisers... They climbed the ranks and became one of the best overall teams in the league! Not as many championships as the Cannons, but more MVPs, plenty of hall of famers... And they're NOT a joke."

Harry stared at her, and laughed a bit. She flushed.

"What's so funny?"

"Just... I didn't imagine you for a sports girl."

Malfoy sniffed, looking away with that typical superior expression on her face.

"As the heiress to the Malfoy name, it behooves me to comport myself properly. After all, my father owns a significant percentage of the Whirlwinds-"

"Of COURSE he does," Harry grunted. Malfoy ignored him.

"And as heiress, I must know how to manage our affairs!"

"But you like it, don't you?" Harry pressed.

Malfoy flushed again.

"... Yes," she admitted, "I wouldn't... I wouldn't play if I didn't."

Harry stared at her. For a moment, she wasn't Lyra Malfoy, Queen Bitch of Slytherin. She seemed... Like a regular girl. Just for a moment.

"... Anyway," she managed, "If you want to see real professional Quidditch... Not just the World Cup or whatever... My father does have box seats."

Harry blinked rapidly.

"You're... Inviting me to a game-?"

"If my rival is supporting a terrible team, it makes me look awful!" Malfoy said quickly, the bitchy attitude and superior smugness dropping down like the curtain on a stage. Still, she softened just a bit as she looked at him.

"But... It would be nice to go see one... Together, yes?" She asked quietly.

Harry opened his mouth, closed it... Opened it again, still had nothing. She scowled in irritation at him.

"Well?!"

"Well, uh... Sure. Maybe," he managed. Malfoy snorted.

"What? Afraid you'll toss away Weasley's hat for one supporting a real team?"

"No," Harry stated, "And if I do go with you? I'm wearing the hat. And I'm bringing Ron."

"Uggghhh... And here I was trying to do something NICE for you," Malfoy muttered.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Year 4...

---

His stomach wouldn't stop doing flips. His breakfast had been light but even so, it wouldn't sit still.

He was waiting in the Champions tent, waiting for his turn to fight the dragon. The Hungarian Horntail, the worst of the lot.

He was off in a corner of the tent... When he heard a small voice outside.

"Potter?"

He moved the tent flap, just a bit. His eyes widened.

"Malfoy? What are you doing here?"

She tensed. She licked her lips. The smug expression on her face, so natural, was nowhere to be seen.

"I... Came to see you," she whispered.

Harry glared.

"Why?" He hissed, "One last insult before I die?"

She winced. He was caught short by that. She took a deep breath.

"Just... Well... I saw the dragon and..."

"And what?" Harry asked, annoyed, tnese, impatient. What was her game? "I should have you thrown out right now and-"

She grabbed his collar and pulled him close. His nose bumped into hers. He could smell her-Lilac, lavender, and something he could only describe as feminine. Her eyes... Green and silver and wide...

"Wha...?"

She let him go and turned away. Her stance was tense. Her voice came out almost staccato.

"J-Just... Don't die, Potter," she whispered. "All right? Just... Do that for me."

Harry's jaw dropped.

"I... Wha-?"

"If you live, you can take me to the Yule Ball," she whispered. "Call it a prize, just... Please... Don't die... All right?"

Harry swallowed. His face felt hot. His heart beat hard.

"I... Why would I-?"

"Oh, j-just forget it, idiot!" She hissed, turning on her heel and storming off. He watched her go, feeling dazed.

What was that about...?

 

[AJ_Talon]

Year 7

Hogwarts, Headmaster's Office

---


Harry came out of the Pensieve memories. He just... Stared, not seeing. He saw Lyra was softly weeping over Snape's dead body.

He felt like he should be crying too, and yet...

"Potter?" She whispered. She waved her wand, transfiguring Snape's body into a wreath of flowers. She was always so elegant in everything she did, even this grim duty.

She walked over, and then sat down next to him. She grabbed his cheeks and turned his head to face her.

"Potter... Harry!" She hissed. "What is it?! What did you see?!"

He studied her face. Even after they'd spirited her away from Malfoy Manor in the chaos of their escape, even after months on the run in a tent, running low on food... Even dirty and exhausted, she still looked so beautiful. He reached up to cup her cheek, brush his thumb over her freckles. She flushed.

"Harry?"

"... It's me," he said softly. "I'm the last Horcrux... He made me when he gave me the scar."

Lyra stared at him, for a moment uncomprehending... Then her eyes widened in horror.

"No..."

Harry slowly looked up, to the portrait of Dumbledore on the wall. The late headmaster stared back, tears in his eyes.

"You knew all along, didn't you?" Harry asked.

The portrait nodded, solemn and sad. Lyra turned his eyes back to hers, her eyes wide, her breathing almost frantic.

"We-No-We can find another way-We can-!"

"There is no other way," Harry said quietly. She dug her nails into his shoulders, desperate.

"Th-Then we can run-Get out of the castle-Until we do-Go back to Grimmauld, go to-!"

"Lyra," he whispered. He reached up to hold her. Tears filled her beautiful eyes as her face screwed up in anguish.

"YOU CAN'T JUST... Just...!"

She cried, great heaving sobs tearing out of her as she buried her face in his chest. She clutched at him, trembling, nails digging into his skin hard enough to draw blood.

He didn't register the pain. He just held her tightly.

"Harry... Harry... Please... I-I'm begging you-"

"It's the only way to stop him," he murmured, "When Nagini and I... After that, you can kill him. You... You need to find Hermione and Ron, tell them-tell everyone... You understand me, Lyra? You have to tell them. It's the only way to stop him..." He clutched her hand in his, and tilted her up head up to look her in the eyes.

Red lined, filled with tears, green silver... So beautiful it made him ache.

She managed a shaky nod... Then resumed sobbing, pressing her face into his chest.

He closed his eyes, stroking her back. Feeling her warmth, her softness. He smelled her hair: It was a bit dirty but still her... Still...

He wanted to imprint it all in his memory. To never forget.

He chuckled hollowly. He opened his eyes. He saw Lyra stare up at him, uncomprehendingly.

"... Godric Hollow," he said.

Lyra hiccuped.

"W-Wha...?"

"I think... I think it would look good, fixed up," he said softly, "I'd have to learn the spells but... It would be a nice home. You and me. I-I know it's smaller than you're used to, but... I'd let you decorate. We could build a garden. Have some chickens and pigs if needed... Not need to go to the market often."

She clung to him, sniffling, sobbing. He kept on.

"And... And we'd fix the Floo. Friends... Family... They could visit us. We'd have to cook a lot for all the Weasleys to show up, have to expand the guest bedroom, but... I wouldn't want it to be quiet, you know?"

She pressed her face into his chest, unable to look up at him. She managed a shaky nod.

"Yes," she rasped.

"You could play the piano, everyone would like that. You play so beautifully, Lyra, I... I always love it when you do that..."

"Y-Yes... Yes... I-I'd... I'd play... Every night..."

"And the..." He paused. "The nursery."

She shuddered against him.

He stroked her hair gently. He loved how it waved behind her as she walked. Even now, it felt so soft to touch.

"The nursery... I always wanted... Blue wallpaper... With moving white clouds. I... I think our baby would love that."

"Y-Yes... Yes... I-I think so too," she managed between choked sobs.

"James Sirius... For a boy," he murmured, "Um... Lily Rose would be nice for a girl, but... Wh-Whatever you want-"

"I... I-I always liked... Cassiopeia," she whispered. Harry nodded.

"Cassiopeia... I like it..."

Silence fell, save for her whimpers. She looked up at him.

"Harry..." She kissed him. He kissed her back.

He could see her standing on the porch of the house in Godric Hollow, smiling, happy, hair shining in the sunlight. Her belly was round in pregnancy, making her glow.

A child ran up to her, and she laughed and pulled him up into her arms. His black hair, her eyes, a joyful face. They both looked at him and smiled, as the wind blew gently, making the grass and trees wave in the warm summer sun.

He smiled against her lips.

How strange... His dream, his real dream, would never come true. Yet in this moment, it seemed close enough to touch.

 

[AJ_Talon]

He was going to kill the Twins one of these days. Absolutely murder them both.



He didn't even know Hogwarts did culture festivals! He'd been too busy fighting basilisks and Dementors to care about that sort of thing!



But with the Triwizard in full swing, of course they would do it.



"Come on Harry," Fred said, as he sat glumly in an empty classroom in a simple booth, "As our friend, we're begging you-Please?"



"I hate you both," he muttered. George chuckled.



"Like you have to pretend to be unhappy about this! Come on, you made an oath!"



"For the sake of the Weasley family, Harry! You promised!"

"I'm doing this because I lost a bet," Harry grumbled. George nodded.



"And you should have known better than to make it with us. Come on... Stiff upper lip!"

"It'll help," Fred snickered.



They waved their wands. The very long line of witches standing nearby all cheered as a sign was revealed over Harry's despairing head:

HARRY POTTER KISSING BOOTH - 1 GALLEON EACH


"Who's up first?" Fred shouted.

"One at a time now, ladies!" George shouted, as a few seventh years kept the squealing girls in line.



"Out of my way! OUT OF MY WAY!" Screeched a familiar voice. Harry's eyes widened in terrible recognition.



Oh no...



A certain blonde girl elbowed her way through the other witches, sneering as she forced her way forward.



"Potter!" Lyra Malfoy snarled, "What in the name of Merlin's beard do you think you're doing?!"

Harry pointed at the Twins immediately.



"It was their idea! I swear!"



"It was absolutely his brilliant idea!" Fred and George pointed at Harry. Lyra's silver green eyes seemed to glow as her face turned bright red. Her hands trembled as she slid her hands into her robe. Harry's hand slid for his wand, ready to defend himself...



"Out... ALL OF YOU OUT!" She roared, drawing her wand and firing off a Concussive sound. The witches in line squealed and scattered, running out the door along with the bodyguard Fred and George had placed. The twins sighed.



"Well, they're not getting paid," Fred muttered.

"Neither are we," George added.



Malfoy glared her fury... Reached into her robes... And slammed down a small bag that clinked.



Harry's eyes bugged out. His face burned red. The twins gaped. Malfoy didn't meet their eyes.



"... Two hundred fifty Galleons," she mumbled.



"Wha-?" Harry managed, before Lyra snarled.



"TWO HUNDRED FIFTY! YOU TWO GET OUT! AND YOU SHUT THIS DOWN AND NEVER DO IT AGAIN!"

The Twins looked at eachother, nodded, and grabbed the money. They then ran, out the door.



"Cheers Harry!"



"We'll speak of you fondly after!"



They slammed the door shut behind them.



"WHAT?! YOU-!" Harry stood and tried to shout something rude about the Twins... But Malfoy pressed her hand against his chest and pushed him back into the chair. She glared at him, and licked her lips.



"Who said you could go, P-Potter?" She managed.



Harry blinked. He went bright red.



"Ah... You mean-?"



"D-Don't think this means anything, Potter!" She growled, shoving the booth aside. She planted herself in his lap, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.



"I'm... I'm just getting my money's worth!"



Harry blinked. Blinked again. Slowly, dumbly nodded.



"Ah... All right then..."



She leaned in, slowly, tentatively. Harry licked his lips. He leaned in, awkward but warm.



Their lips met.



It was hard to describe it. Wet, warm... And like... Like he felt when he was flying.



She pulled back, cheeks bright red, breathing a bit harder. His heart pounded in his chest as he panted, staring back.



"So?" Lyra prompted.



He wanted to say "Brilliant", because it was, but... The haughty look in her eyes made his eyes narrow.



"... Barely Acceptable," he managed. Lyra's eyes flashed in anger-She looked strangely pretty that way.



"That... That was just one!" She growled, "You... Owe me 249 more! You... You won't be complaining about anything after that!"

"I... Well..." He nodded. "Yes... Absolutely."



He'd have to do something nice for the Twins after this... After he murdered them, of course.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Lucius Malfoy was walking those hallowed halls of Hogwarts. So many memories, good and bad, filled his head. He allowed himself just the slightest indulgence of nostalgia as he looked around the Main Entrance Hall. The slightest smile.

It was quiet... It was so quiet. He could hear nothing but his footsteps. He made his way to the Great Hall. The doors were wide open. Still, there was nothing. No dull drone of conversation, no chairs sliding, nothing.

Nothing.

His heartbeat sped up. He began to breath harder. Fear coursed through his body, though he wasn't sure why. The silence. The silence was getting to him. He would walk in, sneer at the rabble, find his daughter...

He walked into a graveyard. He nearly dropped his cane, his eyes widened. He had seen death, caused it, yes, but... So many... All the children, all the staff, lying everywhere. Faces planted in their rotting plates of food. Bodies lying everywhere, looks of fear and horror etched into them permanently.

He saw a familiar blonde head of hair, lying facedown by the Slytherin table. He dropped his cane.

He ran. He ran and scooped her up.

"No... No no no... No, please..." He whispered., which turned into a scream. "Help...! SOMEONE HELP! HELP ME! ANYONE?!"

He stood up with Lyra's desperately cold body in his arms, shrieking at the top of his lungs, looking desperately. No one. No one could hear him. No one was alive...

No one.

He looked down, tears pouring from his eyes. Even through them, he saw her face. Saw the fear in her dead eyes, the wide open mouth. She was cold, so cold...

She blinked. She slowly turned to look at him. Hope filled his chest for a wild moment, his tears turned to joy-

"Father... Why did you kill me?" She asked, hurt, afraid. His jaw dropped.

"L-Lyra, I-"

"You knew it was a monster, Father," she whimpered, "You knew it would kill... Did you think of what might happen if it didn't care who it killed?"

"I-I didn't know what it was-!"

She fell from his arms as the ground shook. The stones of the floor trembled... Then burst like a corpse. A basilisk rose, roaring. Lyra was wrapped it its coils, as her dead eyes glow red and her mouth belched blood that ran down, covered her, covered everyone, covered his hands.

"YOU DIDN'T KNOW?!" She screamed. "I COULD HAVE DIED! WE ALL COULD HAVE DIED! MUDBLOOD, PURE-ALL OF IT! ALL OF THE MAGICAL WORLD, DEAD! YOUR DAUGHTER! YOU KILLED ME! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME!"

Her eyes locked onto his as the basilisk reared up over him, fangs glistening with venom. She glared at him in hate and anguish.

"WHY FATHER?! WHY?!"

He was in bed, covered in sweat. He sat up slowly, heart racing. He took deep breaths, calmed himself.

He looked to his right. Narcissa was sleeping, back turned to him. She had agreed to return to their chambers but... Things had not been the same. Not since the Chamber.

He got up. He pulled on a robe, got his cane. He briskly walked out into the main hall, slippers making almost no sound on the marble floor. He paused by Lyra's door, and waved his wand. A muttered spell, and the wall became transparent-He could see his daughter sleeping peacefully, tangled up in her bed sheets.

He opened the door and checked with his own eyes, just to make sure. Only her quiet breathing filled the room. He slowly closed it.

He walked downstairs. He found his great chair by the fireplace, high back, comfortable.

He sat down in it... And kept sitting down, collapsing into it. He closed his eyes, his hair in his face.

For reasons completely unrelated to the late hour... He felt tired. So very, very tired.

 

[AJ_Talon]

An example:

Hermione: "It's called ethical non-monogamy, Ronald. You and I are in a relationship, but I am also in a relationship with Krum. You both fulfill different needs of mine and I fulfill your basic needs. We just share! Isn't that so progressive?"

Ron: "... You know what? Lav asked me to massage her gigantic tits for a while. Think I'll take her up on the offer."

Hermione: "Wha-But-HEY! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"

Ron: "Watch me. Actually don't, you'll just make it weird."

 

[AJ_Talon]

"Luna."

"Ronald. It's nice to see you."

"Yeah... Yeah, nice to see you... Things going well at Hogwarts?"

"I get in trouble sometimes but yes. The children are learning. They're happy. You?"

"Just trying to finish what I started... There's a lot of evil in the world to deal with."

"I know."

Luna hums a soft, random little tune to fill the silence. Ron sighs.

"I don't think I can go through with it. With Hermione."

"Hm?"

"Marriage. She's all in on a career and everything and... I can't just defer to her anymore. I've changed... We both have."

"You more than her."

"She needs someone to go along with her... Or someone who excels in fields that don't threaten her. I... I can't be that for her. And... There's you."

"Ronald... You know how I feel about you."

"And you know how I feel about you."

"And you know how I feel about Hermione."

"You two fight all the time-"

"And I still love her like a sister, Ronald. I won't break her heart."

"I... I don't want to break her heart-"

"But you have to. I'm sorry... But she gave you hers. And if you don't want to hurt her more, you have to break it. It will break yours too, but... It has to be done, Ronald. You need to do it."

"... And after?"

"After? You will both rebuild. She will find someone, I've no doubt about that... And you'll have me."

---

Less slanderous more dramatic.

 

[krahe]

"Huh, the Mirror of Erised. It's still here." Harry said, moving closer to the imposing frame, before cleaning the dust from its surface with the hem of his robe. "I thought professor moved it away."

They found this room, a closet, really, by chance, ducking away from incoming Filch into the closest quickly unlocked door. And here it was, by its own size taking up more than half the space. Quite honestly, Harry had no desire to look into the mirror again, having more than enough of his fill from the last time he saw the bloody thing in the Stone's chamber. That only left him looking at his... rival? Accomplice?

"Erised..." Dracia furrowed her brows in thought before looking back at him with barely contained mirth. "Desire, really?"

...a pain in the arse. He blushed in secondhand embarrassment at quite honestly tacky naming, whoever made it clearly had no good sense or a really weird humor. It being both was not that out with how odd wizards tend to be.

"Professor Dumbledore showed me it during my first year here." He moved on a bit too quickly, away from the awkward subject. "It's supposed to show your heart's greatest desire."

Malfoy's face visibly brightens up at his words and she quickly looks back into the mirror with curious anticipation. As the seconds go by her expression falls, turning disappointed, then annoyed, before letting out an irritated huff.

"Well, that thing is clearly not working, there is nothing 'erised' in it at all." She quirked a brow, unimpressed at whatever she is seeing in reflection, before turning to look at Harry, putting her hand on her hip with that annoyingly familiar look of a smug, punchable snake. "The only thing I see in this mirror is the two of us."

 

[AJ_Talon]

"Barty, my faithful servant. You will infiltrate Hogwarts as Moody. You must fool everyone."

"Yes, Master."

"You will ensure Potter falls into my clutches at the appointed hour so I may be reborn, stronger than ever."

"Yes, Master."

"And most importantly... You will ensure Potter and Malfoid become romantically involved."

"... Master?"

"Did I stutter?"

"No Master, forgive me. As always, you know best. It shall be done. They will be married by year's end!"

"No no no, that's far too fast! It needs to develop organically! Give them the right pushes at the right time so they are dating! This is absolutely crucial! Do not fail me."

"Of... Course Master?"

 

[AJ_Talon]

The compartment door slid open with the particular force Lyra Malfoy reserved for an audience. Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass stood at her shoulders, already wearing the thin, anticipatory smiles of girls who expected the usual sport. Lyra herself looked precisely as she always did at the start of term: pale, immaculate, and prepared to be unpleasant. Her eyes lit up as she saw Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and a cruel smirk grew on her face.

"Well," she said, eyes moving from Harry to Ron to Hermione and back again. "If it isn't the famous trio. Scarhead, the weasel, and the mudblood. I had hoped the summer might have improved at least one of you. Evidently not."

Harry stared back. His anger rose… But the memory of the advice he had received helped quell his irritation. A letter from Sirius on how to deal with Malfoy, once and for all! The words burned clear and bright in his mind:

"Harry, the best way to deal with Malfoy is simple: Whenever she's mad, tell her she's beautiful. When she bullies you, act like she's flirting with you. Give her chocolates. Give her flowers. Ask what she wants to name your first child and if you two want to live in the house in Godric's Hollow. What wallpaper for the baby's nursery. Kiss her hand. She will go barmy. It'll be hilarious-Trust me Harry."

He reached into his robe, set a small box of Honeydukes chocolates on his knee, and regarded Lyra with mild interest.

"You look beautiful when you're angry," he said.

The compartment went very quiet.

Ron's hand rose at once to cover his mouth. His shoulders began to shake. Hermione made a small, strangled sound and turned a deep, immediate red, her eyes fixed on Harry as though he had begun speaking in Parseltongue. Behind Lyra, Pansy's smile collapsed. Daphne's lips parted and stayed that way.

Lyra blinked. Color touched the high points of her cheeks. "W-What did you just say?"

"That you're beautiful when you're angry." Harry stood up and walked up to stand just in front of Lyra-The summer had given him a head of height over her easily, and she shied back just a bit as he kept talking. "Though… Honestly? You're always beautiful."

"Wha-You-I-!"

"Honestly," Harry allowed himself a little grin, "At this point in our relationship, we should start thinking of names."

"Names," Lyra repeated. The pink had climbed toward her ears.

"For the first child. James, if it's a boy. Lily if it's a girl, though you'd have a say, of course."

"S-S-Say?!" Lyra managed faintly. Harry nodded.

"Yeah. As for living arrangements, well… My parents left me a house in Godrid's Hollow. It needs repairing, but the nursery faces east. We'd need to choose wallpaper. Nothing green, unless you insist on it. I like blue sky with white clouds, myself."

Ron made a violent noise into his palm as he tried not to die laughing. Hermione had pressed both hands to her face; the visible portion of her forehead was scarlet. Pansy stared at the chocolate as if it might explode. Daphne had gone nearly as red as Lyra and seemed unable to decide where to look.

Lyra's mouth opened, closed, and opened again. The color had reached her throat now, stark against the white of her collar. "You cannot—Potter, that is not—I came here to—!"

"To flirt," Harry said, evenly. "I assumed that was the point of the visit. If I've misread you, say so." He stood, took the hand she had braced against the doorframe, and bent just far enough to brush his mouth across her knuckles. Her skin was cool. She went perfectly still, her face as red as an apple.

"If you want to talk more, we can do it at the welcome Feast. Then start planning out a date."

"D-D-Date…?!" Lyra squeaked.

He slid the chocolates into her hand. She held them, dazed, her mouth opening and closing. Her entourage stepped away, eyeing Lyra like she was a bomb about to burst.

He smiled and winked.

"See you there."

Harry released her, stepped back, and slid the compartment door shut in her face.

For a moment the train compartment was silent. Then Harry sat, and allowed himself a small smile.

Ron lowered his hand at last. His ears were red, his eyes wet with mirth as he finished his snickers. "Harry," he said, reverent. "Mate. You're my flipping hero!"

"Hah," Harry laughed, "Did you see her face? She'll never bother us again!"

Hermione made another incoherent sound and refused to uncover her face.

"Hermione?" Ron prompted. "Come on… You have to admit, that was brill! Come on!"

"... You two are idiots," she sighed.

"What?" Harry laughed. "We've seen the last of Malfoy! At least for some time!"

---

At the welcoming feast, Harry was very surprised when a certain blonde slid onto the bench next to him at the Gryffindor table. Her face was bright red, but she was determined.

"Malfoy?" He managed.

"S-So… Um…" She looked at him without quite looking at him, "About… That date…?"

"... Yeah?" Harry coughed.

"... Well… Um… Aren't we going to… Plan it out?" She ventured.

Ron dropped his food as he stared at them. Hermione rolled her eyes as the rest of the table gaped in silence.

"Like I said… Idiots."

And somewhere warm and tropical, Sirius Black was laughing his arse off.

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

"Barty, my faithful servant. You will infiltrate Hogwarts as Moody. You must fool everyone."

"Yes, Master."

"You will ensure Potter falls into my clutches at the appointed hour so I may be reborn, stronger than ever."

"Yes, Master."

"And most importantly... You will ensure Potter and Malfoid become romantically involved."

"... Master?"

"Did I stutter?"

"No Master, forgive me. As always, you know best. It shall be done. They will be married by year's end!"

"No no no, that's far too fast! It needs to develop organically! Give them the right pushes at the right time so they are dating! This is absolutely crucial! Do not fail me."

"Of... Course Master?"

Click to shrink...

Well, now you made me make this;

Warning, the following fic contains out-of-character moments, in character moments, deliberate mischaracterization of dramatis personae, spelling, grammar, and syntax that look like they were typed up on a phone over the course of a single lunch hour, profusely blatant evidence that the author was more concerned with firing off as many zingers as he could than he was with Harry Potter, the Wizarding World, Malfoid, Malfoidposting and Malfoid-shipping, as well as extrapolations from dumb headcanons that I have not yet explained. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Dark Lord Voldemort's Evil Plan

"I still don't understand why you insist on playing matchmaker between your worst enemy and my daughter, my lord." Severus Snape watched Lucius Malfoy ask in that hushed, deferential, most-likely-to-avoid-a-Cruciatus tone that circumstance had compelled any Death Eater to master quickly.

The meeting had thus far, gone as usual, as far as all-hands meetings among the Death Eaters went, right up until the moment when someone, he could not precisely recall who, so shocking was the content of their inquiry, decided to ask the Dark Lord about his plans to HONEY TRAP Mister Potter.

Severus understood the broad strategy, at least in the abstract. From the Dark Lord's perspective, isolating Mister Potter from the Silly Girl and Mister Weasley (specifically the Mister Weasley whose name Severus had mentally prefixed with 'Pull Out,' and suffixed with an exclamation mark as to distinguish him from his father - Mr. Weasley - and manifold brothers, namely Mr. Weasley, The Younger Mr. Weasley, Shut Up, Mr. Weasley!, and Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley).

To that end, the Dark Lord had contrived, with much input from the insane Lestrange, to mobilize Lyra Malfoy in an attempt to separate Mister Potter from his allies.

On a certain level, the plan was brilliant. As she had begun to mature, Severus was forced to reckon with the fact that his goddaughter's face and figure were, or at least were becoming, the sorts of things that men would kill over.

Which brought him to the proverbial Mister Longbottom in the ointment, namely that Mister Potter hated Lyra.

Severus no longer believed that the hatred went both ways. He knew how it started, the sound of Lyra's voice was part of the Slytherin common Room ambience, and he suspected that it would remain so long after she graduated, that, and being the confidant of Lucius and Narcissa afforded him substantial insight into the trials of preparing Lyra for adulthood.

For the first two years at Hogwarts, Severus had understood, the anger, not real hate, but anger, was entirely real.

Mister Potter had been the first person to tell Lyra 'no' and something that she did not want to hear, and to reject her, in favor of Pull Out, Mister Weasley!, and the Silly Girl no less. And he had done it all publicly.

From then on, Mister Potter had occupied almost all of the otherwise unclaimed time and attention that Lyra had to give.

Lyra's parents had shown him, in very strict confidence, the first few years worth of letters that Lyra had sent them. There hadn't been a one that did not reference Mister Potter. But around the third year, Severus noticed, and he had not been the only one, that Lyra had stopped insulting everything about Mister Potter except his intelligence. But somehow, around the same time, the details which she included about his physical description had increased dramatically.

It was from that, Narcissa concluded, that Lyra had developed a crush on Muster Potter. Severus needed the 'how' and 'why' explained to him, as has Lucius, but the takeaway was that, apparently, once Lyra's temper had cooled off, she had apparently been left to face the fact that she could not have something that she wanted alone… For the first time in her life… At thirteen years of age.

Apparently, what was worse was that Lyra had to deal with not only not getting what she wanted, but how not getting her way made her feel. Again, he was thankful for Lucius putting his foot in his mouth and asking his wife why that mattered.

The dissertation that formed Narcissa's reply ended up being why Severus was asked to stay for dinner for a conversation began in mid-morning.

Severus could not properly recall the content of Narcissa's explanation, and viewing it through a Pensive left him equally stumped and more dizzy. But the takeaway was that since Lyra couldn't have Mister Potter, not only did she want him, but he was hers by right, and had gone from loathing him to both pining for him, and convincing herself in no uncertain terms that he belonged or at least would belong to her.

But Severus, Stupid Stupid 1993 Severus, had immediately followed up by making the fatal mistake of asking Narcissa what would happen if this were not, in fact, the plot of a weepy novel and Mister Potter - Merlin Forbid - simply wished for nothing to do with Lyra.

And up to that point, that was the closest he had ever come to seeing Narcissa Malfoy lose her composure.

Severus ended up getting another lecture, one about how, apparently, regarding interactions on subjects such as these, the content and verbiage of one's conversation meant nothing, and that what really mattered was tone, subtext, and hidden meanings that the opposite party completely invented.

Severus could recall that conversation particularly well, but it particularly hurt because Narcissa had chosen to use Lily's interactions with both himself and Potter, and what was most likely going on in her head at the time of each, as the basis for her examples.

The "Why Severus Snape does not understand women" lecture ended abruptly when Lucius concluded that he should vacate the table and Crucio/belt Potter for making his daughter cry.

Severus and Narcissa had, thankfully, been able to stop him. Because while an apoplectic Lucius had proven too squirrelly for a binding jinx to connect, and telling him that Mister Potter had not done anything yet only earned Severus a loud "He thought about it! HE THOUGHT ABOUT IT!" In reply as Lucius ducked into the next room, the Malfoy head had not anticipated being cornered by his wife before being double-tackled in the hallway before the front door.

Severus was promptly told then to leave Malfoy Manor while the lady of the house attempted to settle her husband down in a way that would have been impolite to watch.

Severus suspected that Narcissa was not wholly successful in draining her spouse of his paternal rage at wholly hypothetical slights against their offspring. Because, while there was no way to verify with a hundred-percent certainty, what with all that had been going on, Severus very heavily suspected the identity of the particular Death Eater who had shown up to the Dark Lord's resurrection with a shotgun.

It had certainly not been Walden McNair, who was later admitted both to Saint Mungo's and an entirely different 'Slug Club' (the former on account of the latter) because somebody else's paternal overzealousness and shaking hands made him a cackhanded shot.

Which brought Severus back to today's meeting. All Death Eaters present, even McNair, who was sitting in a pair of enchanted pants with a pair of likewise enchanted pillows taped to their backside.

And Severus had it on good authority that a mostly full box of twelve gauge ammunition containing shotshells that were each bewitched with both a cutting curse and a binding jinx, that had been sold to the House of Malfoy at great cost by a foreign Pureblood who knew far more about muggle firearms than was polite for the purpose of creating wounds that would never heal correctly, was hidden under that very sofa where McNair was planted.

And now, Lucius was asking his master what fell purpose his daughter could serve in the dark lord's designs.

"Why, Lucius, it is the simplest thing in the world." The snake-like thing that had once been a man started.

"Harry Potter is young, bright, attentive, and full of energy. But he is also a teenager, and conceited." The Dark Lord began. "He will not suspect a beautiful woman his age throwing herself at him."

"Are you sure, My Lord? He has hated her for years." Lucius asked.

"Are you questioning me, Lucius?" The Dark Lord asked

"No, My Lord. But you clearly intend to reorient your strategy for Potter using my family as the fulcrum. If you want me to dispatch my daughter correctly, I wish to know what I should tell her to aim for."

The Dark Lord paused. "Well, if you want my reasoning, it is very simple." He said, after a moment. "If Harry Potter were to suddenly find himself taken in with a girl, he would be far too distracted to bring to bear against us his full presence of mind."

Severus had not thought about that.

"Furthermore, if that girl was an insecure, needy brat with the emotional volatility of Fiendfyre, and so high-maintenance that the highlight of Potter's day would be returning to bed, he'd be too exhausted to stand against me."

Oh, that was Voldemort's plan.

"Something to add, Severus?" The Dark Lord hissed as Snape felt his mark pulsate and writhe.

"That is incredibly devious, My Lord." Severus answered, not bothering to mask the rictus grin that was twisting on his face.

"Thank you." The Dark Lord responded, taking the grimace for admiration.

"But, to your point, Malfoy, this girl would need to be too beautiful for any boy Potter's age to give up. She would be a highly addictive, dangerous narcotic to him. But there lies the problem. Where and how would I source a girl Potter's age that possessed both beauty without peer, and the mental disposition of Lucius Malfoy?"

One could tell by the way that they laughed that Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange were sisters.

Severus immediately stepped in to quietly cast a muffling charm on the pair of doubled-over witches, who were still too busy howling to notice.

Once the manor was quiet again, the Dark Lord nodded, and Severus did his best not to wilt under the gaze of that pair of red eyeballs by reminding himself that Lucius Malfoy's face was the same color.

"But, to my good fortune," the Dark Lord continued, "You have a daughter, Lucius, one with the sharp, effeminate features that everyone who has met you associates with the name Malfoy."

Narcissa and Bellatrix became downright spasmodic on the floor, and everyone shuffled back to the wall to avoid them and their flailing limbs, except for Antonin Dolohov, who had decided that he too would rather be thrashing around on the rug in a manner that looked perhaps too much like he had been hit by the Cruciatus.

"And her body," the Dark Lord continued, "shw is voluptuous in ways that only the fairest and haughtiest women of House Black can be. No man would willingly give the bitch up before his own death. Just think of it Lucius, Potter, trapped between peerless beauty and unbearable bitchiness. He'd push himself beyond the breaking point just to put up with her. He'd go beyond the point of reason and exhaustion just because he is seeing her poonts. He'd become hostile, venomous, irritable, ready to lash out at the slightest twitch over the course of his day. But, his own body would rebel against him. You'll probably be grandfather to a mudblood's bastard by the time my pawn graduates, but Potter would be completely helpless before us!"

Severus Snape had never seen the Dark Lord so enthusiastic, nay, so happy before. It was a genius plan, the success of which predicted entirely on the sorts of problems that magical teenagers caused merely by being both magical and teenagers. Using Lyra like that, Dumbledore had to know! The Order had to stop this scheme before it could start. The worst part of it was that Lyra would go along with it without any coaxing or questioning. She'd be the main driving force behind it once the proverbial wheels got spinning. Merlin's Marblesack, this plan was a villainous masterstroke. None of the other Death Eaters had any words of reply.

"Crucio."

Except, apparently, for Lucius Malfoy.

---

Tune in some time later this weekend/early next week when I deliver on Hermione Slander, CountvonBarnOwl Edition: Hermione Frees the House Elves. Malfoid will actually be a character in that one.

Yes, I saw the post this morning and I rapid-fired all of this over lunch. If it is not clear where I simply forgot things and where I am ignoring rules simply because I thought it was funnier, I am sorry, but also, it was funnier.

I think most, if not all, of the jokes are self-explanatory, but if you find yourself intrigued, want help in writing outrageous nonsense in the Wizarding World, and aren't too squeamish about mental scars I will gleefully advise.

 

[dwennon]

Well here's a twofer.

---

Harry and the not self aware Ronnie

---

Pulling out of the water, Harry dragged an equally water soaked Ronnie out of the lake. Both shivering, and holding onto each other once they were firmly on land. Harry with one arm around Ronnie, who was fully hugging Harry for warmth.

"We are n-never doing that again mate."

"N-no. Never again, no matter how Hermione threatens us."

"Y-yeah. I don't care if she threatens to stop helping us with homework. W-we could always ask L-luna, or even M-malfoy since you seem to be on good terms with her." Halfway up to the castle, Ronnie pressed into Harry as much as she could for warmth.

"I-I suppose, you sure you'd be fine with that. Considering."

"Being warm and her bitching at us, or Hermione occasionally pulling stuff like this. G-gee, I wonder."

"Hard to argue with that logic." With a red face, Harry finally got into the warmth of the castle with Ronnie clutching his side. Still a bit wet, most assumed that was the only cause of the red face after the previous years.



"So Harry, this racoon named Franklin showed up and said I needed to get some bolt cutters. Also he was curious about that thing earlier." Oliver Wood came across Harry not long after he had a shower. "He wanted to know how much your face was because of the water or Ronnie."

From somewhere nearby the chittering of a racoon could be heard. "He's got money on a bet, for some reason."

"I...think it was twenty five seventy five, maybe. And not in the water's favor." Red faced again, Harry held his face while leaning against a wall.

"Well there you go. Now, where is this kid and when do I get to fly the deadliest fighter known to mankind." Glancing around, Oliver tried to figure out where the Racoon noises were coming from.

---

How are my flowers Harry

---

1st year

Harry: Those are some nice flowers there Nellie, were they hard to grow?

Nellie: N-no, not with P-professor Sprout's help. J-just a couple of sunflowers. Looking away occasionally, with eyes covered by her hair, she needs to look up at Harry to meet him in the eyes.

Harry: That's good, they look like they're growing pretty well.

Nellie: Y-yeah, they still have some time before they're done growing.

Harry: Well I'm sure they'll do well under your care.

Nellie: T-thanks. Would you like to try feeling the petals? I-if you're gentle it should be fine.

Harry: Hey, they do. Smell kind of nice too, a little faint though.

Nellie: O-oh, thanks. I'm g-glad to hear it.

---

6th year

Nellie: Having hit her growth spurt she now has to tilt her head down to look Harry in the eyes. Ah Harry I'm glad I've found you. Some of my roses have just bloomed. I thought you'd like to see.

Harry: Oh, of course Nellie. They look wonderful.

Nellie: I'm glad you think so. Come, why don't you give them a feel and sniff. They're quite pleasant.

Harry: They certainly do feel nice, you must've taken good care of them to get them this size.

Nellie: Oh, it was just natural. That's all.

Harry: And they even have a nice smell, very pleasant.

Nellie: Well, I did want to make sure you got to see my best.

Harry: Oh, I'm sure all your roses are pretty great too.

Nellie: Yes, my roses. They're all quite nice to see.


Ronnie: You know, I can never tell anymore if she's speaking plainly or is making one of those entendre things.

Lyra: Hmph, well I doubt a gargantuan brute such as her could even consider anything so clever.

Ronnie: You mean for a Gyffindor, right?

Lyra: ...

Ronnie: Ah, I see...we may need to team up.

Lyra: ...Okay, but I call first to start kissing.

Ronnie: Fine, only if I get hugs first.

Lyra: *tch*

 

[AJ_Talon]

Flirt 2

---

The Owlery was cold at that hour, the stone floor scattered with feathers and the faint, sharp smell of the birds themselves. Harry sat on an overturned crate with a scrap of parchment balanced on his knee, quill moving too quickly and blotting in places. He had already crossed out three openings. The fourth was no better.

Sirius,

It didn't work. Or it worked too well. She sat next to me at the feast. She asked about the date. She's following me everywhere I don't know what to do. Please write back as soon as you can.

He folded the letter, sealed it with more wax than it needed, and tied it to the leg of a plain school owl. Hedwig watched from her perch with the flat, offended stare of a bird who had been passed over for an inferior. Harry winced.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "Someone might follow you. I'll make it up to you."

He produced the strip of bacon he had brought for precisely this purpose. Hedwig considered it, then him, then took the bacon with two precise, punitive nips to his fingers before she allowed him to scratch the soft feathers under her beak. She leaned into the touch for a moment. That was when the door opened and the twins came in, already grinning.

Fred reached him first and clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to rock the crate. George followed, the pair of them bracketing him with the easy physicality of ace Beaters.

"Mate," Fred said.

"Brilliant," George added.

"You got her to blush."

"She's acting like a forlorn maiden out of one of Ginny's romance novels."

"The ones we're not supposed to know about."

"If only she hid them behind more than one lock."

"Careless of her."

Harry's ears went hot. "N-no. No, you don't get it. It—it's a prank!"

Fred's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"You sure?" George asked.

"Y-yes!"

"Then why are you so flustered?"

"And nervous?"

"It's a prank," Harry said, louder than he meant to. "I swear. It-It backfired on me!"

Fred exchanged a look with his brother that contained an entire conversation. "Harry. As experienced pranksters ourselves—"

"—sometimes you have to know when to walk away."

"How?!" Harry demanded. "Help me!"

They regarded each other again. Something passed between them that Harry could not follow. Then Fred's grin returned, wider.

"Well… If it's a prank—"

"—then we'll help you."

Harry blinked. "R-really?"

"Absolutely."

"We owe you a dozen times over."

"Four times."

"But who's counting?"

"Me, apparently."

"That's why you handle the business side of things, brother."

"True, true."

The door opened again before Harry could decide whether this was salvation or disaster. Upon seeing who it was... Yup, disaster.

Lyra Malfoy stepped into the Owlery, saw him, and went scarlet from collar to hairline. Harry felt his own face answer in kind.

"…P-Potter."

"Ah. Uh. M-Malfoy."

Fred made a disappointed sound. "Aw, come on. Why so formal?"

"You're going on a date, aren't you?" George said.

Lyra's scowl found Harry at once. "Well, I thought I was. But you just clammed up and mumbled for the rest of the feast." Her scowl deepened. "And avoided me for the last few days, too!"

Of course he had. What was he supposed to say after she actually took his prank seriously?

"I—I just, I—"

"Oh, don't you worry at all, Miss Malfoy," George said, smooth as butter. "He's got a date for you lined up."

"It was just the Triwizard announcement, you know," Fred added. "He's so excited to watch."

"He was like this for the Quidditch World Cup. You'll have to forgive him."

"Nerves."

An elbow found Harry's ribs. Then another. "Urk. Y-yeah. I—I'm sorry, Lyra."

She flushed harder, but the scowl eased by a fraction.

"I… well. As long as you don't behave this way on our date, I suppose I can forgive it. It is quite exciting."

"Well, it is," George said.

"And Harry will take you to every event," Fred said.

"I will?" Another elbow. "Urk. I mean—I will!"

Lyra's gaze dropped, then lifted again, cautious. "…And the Yule Ball?"

"The wha—?" A third strike, precise and fraternal.
"Urgh. Yes. We'll go together!"

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.And of all people in Hogwarts, Cho Chang appeared in the doorway, a letter in one hand, and smiled at the group with polite warmth. She made Harry's stomach flip, something that had nothing to do with Fred and George's elbow strikes.

"Oh. Sorry to eavesdrop. Harry, Lyra, Fred, George. But—wow. Thinking ahead, huh, Harry?" Her smile turned impish. "Guess that's why you beat me to the Cup last year."

Harry's stomach dropped somewhere in the vicinity of the castle foundations. Cho. His crush. Here. Now. While he was in the middle of promising Lyra Malfoy the Yule Ball.

Was there a Boggart around he hadn't noticed or what?!

"I… uh—"

Lyra moved half a step closer to him. Her scowl redirected itself toward Cho with impressive speed.

"Of course he beat you, Chang. His flying skills rival my own. You pull into your turns too hard and burn more energy than you have to. Potter has a natural talent with the broom. He can discern just how much pull to use at any time."

Harry stared at her. Somewhere in the back of his mind a small, stunned voice observed that she was defending him. The rest of him had no idea what to do with the information.

Cho's smile did not falter. "Oh? I guess you're right. Don't worry, Lyra, I'm not knocking Harry's skills." She looked at him, bright and easy. "He beat me fair and square. Even while you were pretending to be a Dementor to try and scare him."

Lyra turned a color Harry had previously associated only with certain Potions accidents. For a moment he wondered whether smoke might actually emerge from her ears.

"W-well," she managed. "That… just shows his skill."

Cho nodded as if this were a perfectly ordinary exchange and not something from a demented nightmare Voldemort conjured up to make Harry suffer. "That's true. Hey—you two should go flying for your date! There are legal zones in Hogsmeade for it."

"I—" The elbows arrived again, coordinated. "URK!"

"You're a mind reader, Cho," Fred said.

"That's just the first stop he had planned," George added.

Lyra raised an elegant eyebrow despite her flush.

"Oh really?"

The twins shrugged in unison.

"Or rather, last," George said, holding his hand up like there was a paintbrush in it, "You two flying over the forest, watching the sun set—"

Fred added to the pantomime, tracing invisible figures in the air.

"The sky turning from blue to amber and purple—"

George swung his hand dramatically.

"The shadows of the mountains tracing the sky. Leaving you two all alone."

"All so you can be the only thing more beautiful to look at," Fred finished with a slight bow. Harry looked between them like they had proposed cooking Hedwig.

Lyra looked at Harry. The scowl had gone. What remained was something softer and far more dangerous.

"R-really?"

Harry, who had by now identified the pattern of elbows to his ribs and lacked the fortitude to test it further, nodded. "Y-yeah."

"I… oh. Well. Th-that's acceptable, I suppose." She lifted her chin a fraction. "You'd better not use it as an excuse to try and show off."

"N-no."

"But you know Harry," Fred said.

"He'll do it anyway," George said.

"Because he wants you to see him at his best."

The twins grinned like Cheshire Cats. Lyra's gaze dropped. When she looked at Harry again it was almost shy.

"…I suppose that… that's all right. Um. Excuse me."

She turned and left, still red to the ears. The door closed behind her. Cho watched her go, then turned back to Harry with a warm, interested smile.

"Wow, Harry. I didn't think you were so romantic!"

"I, uh. I have my moments." Harry managed modestly, his stomach still doing a flip over her smile.

"I'll have to suggest that to Cedric. He'll love it! Thank you."

And the good feeling passed as soon as it had entered.

"Y-Yeah… You bet," Harry sighed.

She crossed to the perches, tied her letter to a school owl, scratched Hedwig once under the chin with absent fondness, and headed for the stairs. "See you."

Harry watched her leave. The door closed. His shoulders dropped. He turned, slowly, to the twins, as he rubbed his aching sides.

"Guys," he said. "Did you really just do that to me?!"

The twins looked entirely unrepentant. Fred especially.

"It's called helping you, Harry."

"The best way we knew how," George said.

"Next time, don't bloody bother!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

Eh, fair; you do you.

Click to shrink...

Fair, you do you.


---

The announcement went up on the notice board in the Entrance Hall on a Tuesday morning, written in Professor Flitwick's neat hand and already surrounded by a cluster of students before breakfast had properly ended. The Adventures of Merlin, it read. A Hogwarts production, generously funded by Lucius Malfoy in his capacity as a patron of the dramatic arts. Auditions would be held that weekend. The plot, such as it was, concerned Merlin's efforts to rescue the Lady Guinevere from the clutches of Morgan le Fay, with the timely assistance of King Arthur.

Harry had not auditioned. He had, in fact, been in the library at the time, attempting to finish an essay on Goblin rebellions while Ron complained about the length of it and Hermione annotated her own copy in the margins. When the cast list appeared two days later, his name was at the top of it in the same neat hand: Merlin. Beneath it, Ron Weasley as Arthur. Hermione Granger as Guinevere. Lyra Malfoy as Morgan le Fay. Cedric Diggory, in smaller letters, as the Dragon.

Hermione read the list twice, then a third time, as if the words might rearrange themselves under sufficient scrutiny. "I auditioned for Merlin!" she said. Her voice was very level. "I prepared a speech! I had notes on the historical inconsistencies! And they've given me the helpless captive!"

"You did say the source material was riddled with chauvinism," Ron offered, not entirely helpfully.

"That does not mean I wished to embody it!" She folded her arms. "I will play the part. I will play it properly. But I reserve the right to mutter about the structural problems between scenes!"

"What are you complaining about?" Harry asked, "I didn't even audition!"

"Well, well, well," Lyra laughed, walking up to Harry with a smirk, "I see we'll be on opposite sides in this play."

Harry scowled at her.

"Yeah? I didn't even want it!"

"But now you have it," Lyra smirked, and leaned forward. She grabbed his tie and pulled him close, their foreheads nearly touching. "So you'd better do your best, or I'll humiliate you in front of the entire school, Potter."

Potter glared back. He grabbed her hands, and pulled them away from his tie. Pink touched her ears and cheeks-Her eyes were wide.

"Don't worry-I will," he growled.

"G-Good," Lyra managed. She turned and walked off, Pansy and Daphne following her. Harry glared after her.

Hermione and Ron flanked him. Ron cleared his throat.

"You... Do realize there's a love scene between Merlin and Morgan, right?"

Harry's eyes widened and his cheeks went red.

"Wait, what?!"

Hermione sighed.

"Don't you do any of the assigned reading?"

 

[AJ_Talon]

The study room on the third floor smelled faintly of old wood and the lemon oil the house-elves used on the tables. A single floating lamp burned between them, its light warm against the cooler grey that filtered through the high, narrow window. Behind Ron and Hermione, a living portrait of jugglers and clowns conducted an ongoing war. One side hurled painted balls with theatrical fury; the other caught them and returned them with exaggerated dignity. Every so often the frame rattled when a particularly forceful toss struck the edge. Neither of them paid it much attention. They had grown used to the portrait's hostilities.

Ron had a doughnut in one hand and a half-finished essay on the Goblin rebellions in the other, a bag of more donuts resting on the table to his right. Sugar clung to his thumb. Hermione looked up and to her left from her notes, frowned at the doughnuts, and set her quill down with deliberate care.

"You are not supposed to bring food in here."

"I'm keeping my strength up," Ron said around a bite. Crumbs scattered onto his parchment. "Who knows what's going to happen this year?"

"What do you mean?"

He swallowed and gestured vaguely with the remaining half of the doughnut. "I mean we had that attack at the Quidditch World Cup, we've got a gigantic Triwizard Tournament where people might die, and apparently Malfoy fancies Harry. Things are mad. And on top of all that, somebody's probably going to try and kill him again."

The portrait's frame gave a small, indignant rattle as a paint rotary cannon opened up on the jugglers from the clown side. Hermione's mouth tightened. "Ron, surely you're just being paranoid—"

He stared at her. The doughnut hovered, forgotten. She flushed, looked down at her parchment, and mumbled something that might have been an apology.

"Well," she said, more clearly, "I mean… maybe it won't happen this year?"

Ron's expression did not change.Hermione sighed, the sound small in the quiet room.

"Oh, fine. You're right that there is a pattern."

"I'm right?"

"Yes, you're right."

"…Can I get that engraved? Forever?"

Hermione scowled.

"Shut up, Ron. It's just this one instance."

"It's still a win."

"It's not a competition," Hermione hissed. Ron smirked.

"Oh? Then why are you mad?"

"Hmph!"

The door opened hard enough to interrupt the portrait's latest exchange and there was a lull in the fighting as jugglers and clowns stared at the newcomer. Pansy Parkinson strode in, the hem of her robes snapping, and dropped into the chair across from them. She rapped her knuckles once on the tabletop. The sound was sharp.

"All right, Weasel. Granger."

"Hey," Ron protested.

"I don't like you, you don't like me, but Potter finally got some sense and we're not bloody squandering it. So. What's our game plan?"

Ron blinked. Sugar still clung to the corner of his mouth. "Game plan? For what?"

"Ugh. For the date."

"I mean… uh… well, you see, that was just a pr—"

Hermione's heel came down on his foot with decisive force. The impact traveled up his shin. Ron's hand flew to his mouth. The sound he made was not quite a yelp and not quite a curse, somewhere in between. Hermione picked up the remaining half of his doughnut—still warm, still shedding sugar—and pushed it between his teeth before he could recover his voice.

"Ron," she said, brightly, as if they were discussing the weather, "you should finish those before they get cold. You also shouldn't talk with your mouth full. Right?"

He stared at her over the doughnut, wounded and muffled, eyes wide with betrayal. He nodded because there was nothing else to do. The doughnut tasted suddenly of injustice. Hermione turned back to Pansy. Her smile was fixed and did not reach her eyes.

"Harry has prepared extensively for the date," she said. "He has a number of ideas that he will swap to depending on the situation."

Pansy's eyebrows rose. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Really? He's planned this?"

"Yes."

Hermione did not look at Ron. Ron looked at her anyway, doughnut compressed between his teeth, expression somewhere between outrage and awe. In the portrait, a paint ball completed its arc and struck a clown squarely in the painted nose. The clown did not react. He appeared to be sulking.

"I thought he made it up as he went along," Pansy said.

"He is a master of improvisation," Hermione explained, "but he's getting better at long-term planning."

"Finally. Honestly, how could he miss her hints for all this time?"

Ron mouthed "Hints?!" around the doughnut, but keen not to attract Hermione's wrath again, he wisely abstained from further comment.

"Some men require that you be more direct." Hermione's quill hovered over a fresh sheet of parchment she'd pulled from her bag. The nib trembled once, then steadied. "However, I can ensure a great date experience if you give us some information on Malfoy's preferences."

Pansy leaned back. The chair creaked. "Right. She will deny it to her dying breath if you ask, but she loves animals."

"The Buckbeak situation?" Hermione asked dryly. Pansy winced just a bit.

"She did try to get her father to reverse the decision, you know. She gave Hagrid an apology letter for it."

Hermione was quiet for a moment. The lamp hissed softly. She remembered the hippogriff's pen, the way Lyra had stood very still afterward, pale and tight around the mouth, not gloating. "…Yes. I suppose she did look mostly sad over it. If she'd gloated, I'd have knocked her teeth out."

Ron made a noise around the doughnut that might have been commentary on justice, or on Buckbeak, or on the general unfairness of having one's foot stomped in the middle of a study session. Pansy ignored him.

"Look, the point is, a stop at the pet shop wouldn't hurt. She won't buy anything, but she likes to cuddle. Keep in mind, though—she hates snakes."

Ron and Hermione both stared. The portrait's war paused again, as if the painted figures were listening. Ron swallowed his doughnut completely.

"What?" They both said.

"She does. Absolutely terrified of them. Why do you think she was so scared at the Dueling Club?"

Ron choked. He coughed, eyes watering, and managed, somehow, not to laugh out loud. The effort turned his ears red. Pansy's eyes narrowed to slits.

"And if you tell anyone, they'll never find your body, Weasley."

He swallowed audibly. "Not a soul. Not a soul."

"He's trustworthy," Hermione said. Her quill moved again. "Next?"

"She does want to go to Madam Puddifoot's. She would prefer a private booth, though. Most couples go there just to show off. She's fine with the mood of the place, but she doesn't want to be gawked at. Also, Potter should know: order her honey lemon cakes. Never almond cakes. She hates those."

Hermione wrote in small, precise lines. "No gawking. No almond cakes. Got it. Anything else?"

Pansy considered the ceiling for a moment. "Well. If Potter could wear green… she loves it when he's in green. Brings out his eyes."

Hermione's quill paused. Ink beaded at the tip. "She likes his eyes?"

"She goes on and on about them. Endlessly." Pansy rolled her own. "Day in, day out. 'Oh, if only he wore a green scarf he'd be so much more handsome.' Anyway. You got all that, or do you need me to repeat myself?"

"No, no. I've got it."

"Good." Pansy stood. She smoothed her robes with a brisk motion. "Pleasure doing business with you. And tell Potter if he screws this up, he's answering to me."

She left. The door closed with a decisive click. In the portrait, a clown successfully beaned a juggler with a painted ball and looked pleased with himself. The juggler retaliated by juggling three balls at once and unleashing them like a madchine gun into the clown's face, sending him falling into other clowns below into a messy, angry pile.

Ron turned to Hermione. Doughnut crumbs clung to his chin. His expression sat somewhere between betrayal and reluctant awe.

"…Hermione. You're not seriously considering this, are you? It was a prank."

Hermione capped her ink. She did not look up at once. The lamp hummed. Outside, the wind pressed harder against the window.

"Not to Malfoy, clearly."

Ron stared at her. "But… this is Malfoy. You know? The racist who called you Mudblood?"

"Yes." Hermione's voice was quiet. "I know. But looking back… I think she was so angry with me because she was jealous. That I was close to Harry."

Ron was silent for a moment. The portrait's war continued, muffled by glass and paint. "And… you can forgive that?"

"I mean, not the racism." She met his eyes at last. "But did you see the way she's been acting? Not… So much her? Maybe we can bring out more of that, instead of her being a brat."

"Or maybe she's just counter-pranking us."

"Do you really think she would do that, given her past? And besides… What do you think she'll do to us if she finds out it was a prank?"

Ron considered the table. Sugar glittered on the wood between them. "…Okay. Good point."

"Hmph," Hermione was smug, "One for me."

"I thought it wasn't a competition."

"It—it wasn't until you made it one."

"Sure, sure. Just because you were losing."

"I was not!"

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

So the picture here is broken. But the rest is sounding like it's got some potential.

Click to shrink...

Good news, my 'Throwing the Game' picture on page 2 has been fixed.

Anyway, I promised Hermoine Slander so;

Warning: You thought the last one was dumb? Just wait until you see what is coming next.

Hermione Slander, CountvonBarnOwl Edition: Hermione Frees the House Elves

For Lyra Malfoy, headbands had become a utility rather than a fashion statement. In her first two years, she kept her hair pulled straight back - usually with said headband or a more-than-generous amount of hairspray - but a year ago, she had found letting her bangs droop over her forehead more to her liking. What followed were various correspondences with her mother, consultations with Crabbe & Goyle, and when family and the bodyguards did not work, older students and the literature that they preferred to read. The goal had been to figure out which length she should grow them out to, and how much of her face she could cover, and in what ways, if she wanted to blend looking classy, seductive, charming, and beautiful without looking slatternly, slow-witted, unkempt, or desperate.

But when she was studying said bangs would now fall into her face. Which meant breaking out the headbands again as a matter of practicality. Other matters of practicality included adjusting for how much more space at a table that a growing girl needed when she leaned over her books. Mother had not been wrong when she had said, "You'll be in your teens and then, boom," punctuating it with multicolored sparks from her hands. Not that such considerations would ever be a problem for some Gryffindors.

And speaking of that particularly ironing board-shaped annoyance, the mudblood had decided to take it upon herself to raise a ruckus about House-Elves. Now, as a matter of dignity, comportment, and manners, Lyra Malfoy did not concern herself whenever the mud went on a hollow crusade of moral self-indulgence trips in order to bolster their reputation or convince themselves of their own nonexistent adequacy, she had been raised better than that. But it did become personal when the littering of pamphlets and the inane chanting cut into her studies.

With her delicate features suitably creased, Lyra Malfoy contemplated methods of retaliation. Option A was dispatching one of the bodyguards to procure a troll pie and do something exceedingly juvenile with a levitation charm. Funny in the immediate term, but it had too many single points of failure and it would cause more long term problems than it would fix. So she discarded that one immediately. Option B involved direct confrontation. But Potter would doubtlessly intervene, 'dummy,' Lyra thought to herself. 'Doesn't he know that if he keeps stepping in so recklessly, my Father will hear about it?'

Lyra had hated Harry Potter for her first two years at Hogwarts. But she didn't actually want the idiot dead. She had to admit that to herself over the summer, after Father had told her in no uncertain terms that if Potter ever made her cry again, and he found out about it, then "one-and-three-eighths ounces of twofold cursed lead between the shoulder blades would succeed where the Dark Lord had inexplicably failed in Halloween of '81." That had forced Mother to step in and explain to a stunned and stammering Lyra that Father meant business, something that she and Severus had learned sometime after the incident with the hippogriff when Severus had been summoned to the Malfoy household to discuss reorienting vis-a-vis Potter in light of Lyra's own feelings.

That led to a very red-faced Lyra asking Mother in a tone far too loud to be polite, and probably costing her the last bit of banked childhood leniency in doing so, exactly why she and Father felt the need to tell Severus to pivot with the Idiot-Who-Lived. That made Mother dig out her old, variously tear-stained letters and one-by-one go through them to show exactly what she and her husband had come to believe changed in their daughter. And, truth be told, Lyra Malfoy could not disagree.

One very embarrassing admission in front of her vanity mirror later, Lyra promised herself that it was time to deal with about her feelings for Potter as not just a big girl, but a proper Pureblood lady, just as soon as the portraits that she kept in her room for advice stopped laughing.

Lyra Malfoy liked Harry Potter, Lyra Malfoy wanted Harry Potter, Lyra Malfoy could admit that (if only to herself). Ergo, of equal importance to getting his friend to pipe down was making sure that it was done in a way such that Potter would feel no need to continue rolling about in the stye out of pity.

The game, therefore, was to make sure that it looked like the Silly Girl - capital letters, per her Godfather - had merely run headlong into one of those points of impossible friction between the Magical and Muggle worlds due to her own obliviousness.

"Aha." She said as she took the S.P.E.W. pamphlet off of the treatise that she had been reading and began furiously scribbling onto a blank sheet of paper beside it. There was a turn of phrase guaranteed to extricate a House-Elf from any wizard or witch's service. The problem would be making the mud creature say it.

"Idea for camouflage?" Vincent Crabbe asked.

He and Gregory Goyle were a pair of long-armed gorillas for boys their age, and each with a sadistic streak a mile wide, but thanks to their families' relations with the Malfoy lineage, they had practically been raised from birth to be her bodyguards. Crabbe was the larger, swifter, and more academically inclined, with the lazier Goyle being only quasi-literate - meaning that Lyra had to basically spoon-feed him the answers to his homework and would have to come up with something to do Salazar Slytherin himself proud to get him through the O.W.L.s.

"No, but that is in the works." Lyra replied. Moody had shown them the Unforgivables on Friday, and Pull Out, Mister Weasley! - her Godfather had such a way with nicknames - had decided to comment that it was a requirement for being sorted into Slytherin to be slinging those spells from infancy. And while it went completely over the heads of the mud, and even a few halfbloods, the Weasleys were one of the twenty-eight. Meaning that, by itself and on its own merits, not even a Malfoy - but, perhaps a Black, Lyra mentally thanked her mother - could look down her nose at their bloodline. So while it was rather slanderous to insinuate that all Pureblooded Wizards and Witches came out as homicidal degenerates, he hadn't exactly been wrong when he put the notion that most scions of the real aristocratic families of the Wizarding World were familiarized with the Imperius, the Cruciatus, and Old Reliable in the home. Which, of course, would mean that to avoid further trouble or cause for scrutiny; Pureblood students had to - at least appear - as exceedingly studious and clever in order to not make any faux pas that would result in improper criminal suspicion.

Lyra instead told Goyle to go get the 'E' volume of a lowbrow encyclopedia from the Magical Creatures section, with two more books from the same place, as well as three N.E.W.T.-level books on Ancient Runes of relative obscurity, and instructed Crabbe to start practicing writing his DADA notes in a style that wasn't his own, and to get comfortable writing lightly.

Goyle returned, and, on a hand signal from Lyra, plopped the books down and mixed them up with the ones they already had. Lyra opened each as it came down while noting the authors' names and which pages covered the various ritual magics of the ancient societies from whence various runes had been adapted. Then she started scribbling the most pseudo-intellectual nonsense that she could think of and citing various names and pages while pointing out hidden meanings in the text that she might as well have had pulled from her decolletage, that the authors were certain that any witch or wizard of suitable intelligence and comportment would have no problem at all picking up.

She then slipped the paper under one of Crabbe's books and told him to copy all of the sections down on spare sheets. "Copy this first section here onto the pamphlet," she commanded, "I mostly care about the substance, but if you think of any high-flown jargon, use it. But don't be cute, you need to sound like a tired upperclassman without any patience."

Crabbe did. Stifling his laughter as best he could once he committed to the bit. 'Those cruel streaks could lead men to such wonderful creativity,' Lyra thought as she leaned over to help Gregory with his actual homework.

Lyra slid the pamphlet into the pages of the encyclopedia, and pressed it firm before closing the book and plopping two more on it, before passing them to Crabbe. Then the Slytherin students slithered out of the library well before closing time the baited book all returned in a jumble with the DADA treatises and textbooks that they had been making use of, and their notes, as well as Lyra's draft, in her bag.

Critical was making sure that they got out before the fifth through seventh-years were dragged bodily away from their extensive studying. But once their books were in the return bin, Lyra Malfoy considered her mission accomplished. She did not speak again until the trio hit the Slytherin common room.

"Now we wait..." Lyra muttered

--

A week later

--

Hermione Granger was elated with the progress that S.P.E.W. was making. So many Gryffindors had already joined. Some of them even after only being asked eight or nine times. Getting the other students to hand over their organizational dues required a bit more persistence, and progress was slower on that front. But she really felt like her efforts were coming around and starting to bear fruit. Why, just the other day a seventh-year Ravenclaw had coughed up his money and went back to his reading without telling her to "pound sand" in the way that so many of his Housemates had. That had been a relief, Hermione was starting to think that all of the Ravenclaws were elphophobic bigots like the Slytherins.

Hermoine understood how important studying for N.E.W.T.s was. Therefore, it logically followed that wizards and witches who also understood that necessity would be the likeliest place to find students sympathetic to the House-Elf cause. Hence, whenever she saw a busy-looking and physically exhausted sixth or seventh-year who was not wearing green, she made it her business to make sure that she sold each and every one of them on the idea, and to not let up until they plopped two sickles into her hand.

Even though it was becoming relatively difficult to find busy and exhausted sixth or seventh-years who were not wearing green. For whatever reason the upper-year Slytherins seemed to be out in force no matter where she went.

So many green-clad raccoon-eyed older students staring at her in silent contempt and disgust. Every upper-year she had met so far looked at her like she was a gnat, they all had that same condescending, tired stare that screamed 'Neither you nor anything you have to say or do could possibly be of any good or pertinent interest whatsoever.' That hurt. She was good, she was smart, she had important things to say.

Which brought her back to the library. There was something that she had missed. There always was. She just had to figure out what it was, and where. She had checked all of the books on magical creatures last Saturday, when she founded S.P.E.W. She had also read the entire H section on every encyclopedia and periodical that the library had on offer and...

Hermione had another idea.

What if there was more information on elves, generally, which would be under 'E' than there was on house elves, under 'H?' Hermione congratulated herself. She was a genius.

It was in the 'E' section of Edalread's Encyclopedia of the Eldritch Earth. A tad overblown a title for a publisher whose main goal it was clear, was to overwhelm and wow newcomers to the magical world, it made Hermione happy she missed it on her first go-round. 'But if it has anything useful, which could be corroborated...' she thought to herself, leafing through the pages.

When suddenly, one of her own pamphlets dropped out, having seemingly been pressed in between two pages in the first half of the 'El...' section.

Hermione took a moment to put her book down on a table before picking up the pamphlet. It was in an awkward, half-heavy hand that she didn't really recognize.

Written sideways across the pamphlet in dark ink along the margins was what began as a note. 'To anybody else who has already pitched in, tired, busy, I'll make it brief...' it said, before delving into a postulation for a theory about the nature of how different magical vows effect different magical beings.

While Hermione counted three misstatements and one outright error, the note seemed sincere, and onto something, before it ended on 'I'll leave more notes in my Ancient Runes study materials if I find the time between now and May.' Ancient Runes, Hermione was impressed. She really had found a lot of like-minded upperclassmen.

What she did not find, was the carefully guarded observation that her gait was under from the Slytherin table as she entered the Grand Hall the next day. Nor the smiling blonde Snake hiding behind her goblet.

--

October


--

"Right, we've waited long enough." Lyra declared when she realized that she, Crabbe, and Goyle had the Slytherin common room to themselves. She removed her left shoe and took out the left sole, letting a neatly folded piece of paper drop down. "Crabbe, copy, quickly. Section two, same as last time. As tired and angry as you can make a mud-blooded upstart sound. Same handwriting style as last time."

Crabbe took two spare sheets of paper before the writing style returned in enough form to satisfy the discerning eye of the Malfoy heiress before he presented the finished product. "Excellent." Lyra said, creasing the paper in two and dropping it into her bag. Then she returned the master copy to her shoe. "But I don't want any evidence." She said as she bent to retrieve Crabbe's spare papers and held one out to each side of herself. "Both of you, eat."

The command was delivered in a flat, authoritative tone just a hair above ordinary conversation. But Lyra channeled all of her presence into the order.

"Cheers, mate." Goyle said in response as he took a paper as he crumpled his paper up. "To your health." Crabbe responded, tapping his folded-into-eighths paper against Gregory's wad before each scarfed his half of the evidence in one go.

They trio got to the library early the next day, when the rest of the student body was too focused on breakfast to think or keep tabs on each other. And when the coast looked clear, Lyra took the paper from her bag and slid it into a seventh-year book in the Ancient Runes section before mixing back in with the trundling crowd.

The next time she knew that the fourth years would generally be in the library, she commandeered a table that had a good view of the Ancient Runes section. Bottles of polished glass, crystal, and various metal objects arranged in a particular order as she helped Goyle with his homework let her keep an eye on the Ancient Runes section. Lyra put forward the most maternal tone and vocabulary that she could as she explained why Gregory couldn't use Old Reliable as Counter-Curse, responding to his quip that "it was the last Counter-Curse that anybody ever needs," by telling him that the teachers wanted him to be more creative and less basic answers, answers that he had to think about, and try not to misspell. He bought that.

Then, she noticed, in the reflection of a silver bottle that she had on the table, someone was going toward the Ancient Runes section and leafing through books three years above her own. Thank Morgana, the bushy-haired mudblood hadn't lost the plot.

--

A minute later

--

Desperation pulled Hermione back to the Ancient Runes section once again. She had checked every textbook that she could get her hands on trying to reverse-engineer what sort of brainwave the upperclassman must have had, all the while trying to salvage the S.P.E.W.'s reputation after somebody, who she suspected to be a certain somebody's two older siblings, decided to create the Fellowship Unpleased with Cockatrice Killing as a joke, and somebody besides that - probably a Slytherin - who felt it necessary to found the Society for Preventing Lethifold-Objectifying Orgies from Going Extinct.

That one had to be a Slytherin, they demanded a whole Galleon for admittance and their pamphlet had stated outright that they made no promises that the treasurer wouldn't just pocket it, the fucking Pureblood.

That was, until a folded up paper fell out of the book. Hermione closed the book immediately and put it under her arm before bending down to pick up the paper and read it. And line by line, word by word, her anger melted into nothing.

She had to tell the others.

"See, Ron, I told you it was real." She said, triumphant, only to get an owlish blink as her only reward.

"Hermione, nobody ever doubted you after you showed us the pamphlet. What we didn't believe was that this upperclassman would find the time to ever write again." Harry clarified, as he sensed the friction between his friends about to turn into something.

"I still say it is just somebody in seventh year going barmy from staring at textbooks and off-gassing." Ron replied, deciding that Harry's efforts needed to be flung down and danced upon.

"RONALD!" Hermione shouted, rising to the bait and getting stares from every corner of the library before a ghost floated up through the floor in front of her.

"Shhh..." The translucent spirit said as Harry removed his glasses and pinched his nose. Hopefully his two best friends wouldn't stop speaking to each other... again.

Hermione then pulled the paper up and turned back for the Ancient Runes section, muttering something that harry didn't quite catch about ancient Celts, Fey, and most importantly to herself, footnotes and citations.

The next two hours passed in a blur for Harry and Ron as Hermione muttered about magical vows and binding contracts, going back and forth between two books and that strange note from an apparently sympathetic upperclassman who argued that the two sources misrepresented each other's claims completely. Harry merely dismissed it as academic jargon, and he had to shoot Ron a pointed look not to call it rubbish aloud.


--

The runup to the Yule Ball

--

Fate handed Lyra another boon before the Yule Ball.

Namely that Potter asked her out.

Ordianarily, Lyra would have been over the moon, and she was, secretly, until she found out that Harry was entirely motivated by settling a bet between himself and the Weasley twins.

She wouldn't confront him about it. She wouldn't let him know. No, would just have Crabbe copy another section of the note from her shoe, and then send him and Goyle off to hide it under the cover of a disillusionment spell while she and her unwitting husband-to-be - 'Down girl, not yet, Lyra. Not yet.' she reminded herself - distracted three schools worth of witches and wizards with her beauty.

She just had to make sure that Crabbe copied the array exactly.

--

March, 1995

--

Hermione Granger was fast approaching her breaking point. She was going to snap soon. She did not know what form it would take, but she knew it would take form in the coming days, that much was for certain. It would probably include tearing that awful, horrid Skeeter woman in half like a wet sponge. As a start. That much was certain. Using healing magic to bring someone back from the brink, or even hold them over it while breaking their body again and again... God, the sheer volume of letters since that she had received since the good-for-nothing bitch published that horrid lie. The beginning of this month taught her indeed that it was possible to hate another woman more than Malfoy.

And speaking of Malfoy, that skank had become oddly territorial and aggressive when it came to Harry in the wake of the Yule Ball. Not that she wasn't already, but sometimes she'd simply seize him in the hallway, and lead him off by the wrist. The arguments that rose out of their increased proximity to one another cut terribly into her studying time. And then the Triwizard Tournament task. Why couldn't Harry have just left her underwater? He had the chance for three-and-change years of Malfoy-less Hogwarts, and it slipped through his fingers. He probably regretted it though, from the way Malfoy had dragged him off of the field by the ear while screaming like the harridan she was. Harry would not be found again for another three hours, having apparently had his throat shouted down by the snooty pureblood, who was becoming far too handsy with Harry for Hermione's liking.

S.P.E.W. work was rapidly becoming her security blanket, a place into which she could channel her energies constructively, especially with the horrible treatment that Bartemius Crouch had been subjecting his elf to. Hermione did not know what the House Elf with the peculiar gait and perpetual stomach cramps meant when she said that he would Winky his Winky with Winky, and she could guess. Not that she wanted her imagination to travel too far in that direction.

Why couldn't that Skeeter woman do something useful, like break a story about how a ministry official was a House-Elf shagger? Wasn't that what the Prophet was for?

But even that was beginning to feel less and less safe, as her Mystery Compatriot was rapidly proving himself something close to her intellectual equal. His correspondences all pointed to texts that she had familiarized herself with. But they were written as though he hadn't read it. However, the volume and the content of his language, it was clear that even tired and irritable, he was intelligent, thoughtful, and trying to do the right thing. His honesty and credibility was beyond a doubt.

As she stormed into the Ancient Runes section of the library she noticed a raccoon-eyed and sunken-skinned Hufflepuff curse as he pulled a wad of paper from a book he was examining and toss it onto the floor. "Who keeps leaving this fucking junk in these books."

Hermione dove for the paper immediately and uncrumpled it. "Don't you realize what you're doing?" She hissed to him.

"Didn't I pay you elf-people to go away?" He replied. "Some of us want to pass our N.E.W.T.s!"

"For your information, Mister, one of my best supporters is taking Ancient Runes, likely in your class. And he found the time and the heart to help us." Hermione harumphed back at him.

The Hufflepuff regarded her, for a second, his eye twitching like Professor Snape's, "If this friend of yours wants a T on his exam, that's fine by me, I want an A." He snarled before walking through Hermione and toward a particularly stacked table.

'The nerve,' Hermione thought, did not appreciate the implication toward her unseen ally's scholarly competence, or that academic lowbrow's casual use of wandless magic to make himself intangible just to leave their conversation.

'Eureka! I've figured it out! I've been looking in the wrong places. I need Nordic runes not Celtic runes... So elementary...' Hermione skimmed the diatribe that seemed to somehow tie Celtic heroes to Norse gods, explaining that somewhere between Skadi and Scathatch the source that he had been tracing for ancient Geases had gotten him turned around. There were more supplemental notes included and obscure references to two authors who seemed to be in agreement on certain points - Hermione had read each of them, she knew - but subtly, according to these notes, they must have been wholly at odds with each other.

Was that what she wasn't seeing? She'd have to read the texts over again to internalize it.

But the words, the words on this paper. The vows that Frigg had extracted from all things but Mistletoe, never to harm Baldur. How Loki was restrained and poison dripped upon his brow until Ragnarok. The tale was all allegorical - probably - but it all meant something... 'Maybe it meant that Ron was right, and it was just exam nerves "making one of the seventh-years go completely potty,"' a small part of Hermione's brain whispered to her, before it was forcefully quashed.

This array, this circle. The Master Copy of the true contract that held force over all magically binding vows. In theory, this runic array, on a twelve inch wide stone circle, seven tenths of an inch thick, set upright over a building before sunrise would see all creatures within bound to fulfil whatever oath that the being who placed it there gave them. But, for S.P.E.W.'s purposes, were it to be placed upside down, when the sun set the properly prepared runes alight, and they could reflect across the lands surrounding the building, all creatures magically bonded to servitude therein would be free as the wind!

"HAHA!" Hermione shouted as she practically flew from the library and presumably getting a dirty look from the girl and boy leaning over both sides of their friend's homework at the table on her way out. She needed a stone plate.

Once the plate was procured, she began burning the array into the stone, beginning first with what looked like a large, lower-case 'i' near the top, and sharply forking the split near the end. The second row was easier, except for that pitchfork-symbol in the middle that looked like it had the bottom of its end split out and bent twice, but it definitely resembled something like Algiz, and a jaunty Ehwaz set together. The third line, the one that began with the backwards Burisaz and ended with an Eihwaz that was half-crowned with an inverted kauna was written in a semicircle, under the whole rest of it, like a smile.

Satisfied with her work, Hermione set crystals into each of the markings, and charmed the whole carven array to let the sun shine through the foci once it hit the plate from behind. Now, where was Ronald? She'd need help getting this to the top of the castle, and Harry was... indisposed... thanks to the Dark Lord's return. Hermione smiled to herself, nevertheless. Magical Britain was going to become a better place, and the House-Elves would surely repay her kindness of freeing them.

Not that she expected or demanded it from newly freed sentient beings of course... She just... understood the universal obligations of basic decency. Yes, that was it.

For instance, it would be rude of Ron to complain about it being two past midnight, not when they were on the cusp of such a monumental achievement.

--

July 1, 1995

--

Albus Dumbledore rose with the sun, when frustration and headache hit him full-force.


The year had been a disaster. A total disaster. He reached to his nightstand and popped a his first lemon drop of the day. He'd be downing another with his Irish coffee and dragon's blood, that had been sugared with eggs, fairy wings, mayonnaise, and lime. On days like these, when Headmaster of Hogwarts felt every second of his age, he needed a delicate alchemical cocktail of vile sludge to keep himself upright and moving. Thrice he cursed Gellert as he dressed, and thrice more than that, he cursed Tom.

A student, Cedric Diggory, was dead. The promising young Hufflepuff had everything taken away from him by Peter Pettigrew's Avada Kedavra. Voldemort was back, and he had dashed the protections that Lily Potter nee Evans had happily traded her life to forge around her son. The Ministry already wanted him out of the Wizengamot and that damned fool Fudge had a dementor kill their best lead before he could be questioned.

The often-talked-of Payback War that certain wizards in certain families whispered about when they thought word would not make it back to him was here. But right now, Albus Dumbledore had to say farewell to his students, and to Cedric Diggory.

Bereaved persons would have to be consoled, frightened students and families would have to be persuaded, the Ministry would have to be made the fool, and war plans needed to be drawn up. Truly this day could not get any worse.

Albus Dumbledore allowed himself to look out the window. He hoped that wherever Cedric Diggory had gone off to, that he would like the bright orange light of his farewell morning. Some students had even gone to the trouble of writing out in magic a memorial message for him in that selfsame orange across the fields.

That was what kindhearted Albus Dumbledore thought, until he read the words, in something that looked like someone had mixed cursive script with elder Futhark.

PACK UP YOUR SHIT,

KNIFE-EARS.

YOU'RE FIRED!

"No, nonononononononono... WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Albus Dumbledore screamed at the bright orange letters, each fifty feet high.

--

A few hours later

--

The grand hall was unusually dark for a Leaving Feast in on a summer morning. Most of the students were under orders to strictly wear black, and as it appeared, so were the teachers, There were a few dashes of red, blue, and green, and more than a few dashes of yellow here and there. But the mood was not exactly solemn. And the headmaster was a tad more incandescent than a few of the candles. Hagrid was about too, next to Dumbledore in full Hogwarts regalia and scowling in a way that Harry had thought he was physically incapable of, while Harry himself and a red-faced Ron had to pilot an inexplicably catatonic Hermione to her seat.

--

At the same time

--

Severus Snape was not having a good morning. Flopsy had thrown down her apron and punched him between the legs before resigning - he did not know until today that House-Elves could resign - in a huff. Then, he saw the prank emblazoned upon the castle grounds, as well as the flow of similarly hurt, disgusted, and insulted House-Elves sneering, snarling, and storming out of the castle, leaving a trail of discarded aprons, laundry, and hex-vandalized walls that read brightly colored profanity in their wake.

His first instinct, one that he had acted on, was to dock 200 points from Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley, each. Minerva had given him a dirty look over it, but he reminded her it wouldn't matter and that her House would more than make those points back the minute that Mr. Potter existed in Dumbledore's vicinity for more than a minute. Minerva actually had the gall to look hurt when he said that. But it forced him to think that maybe the row of the day wasn't Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley's fault for once.

Which was why he was here, tuning out Dumbledore's droning on and on about understanding, compassion, sensitivity toward different cultures, and other rubbish that a knife between the ribs on the tube tended to put out of one's head, whilst scanning the crowd of students with his occlumency. It was then that he caught wind of something bright blue from the Gryffindor table.

Hermione_Granger.exe has encountered a fatal error and stopped working. Would you like to restart? Y/N

No, no, she couldn't have. The Silly Girl was a muggleborn and clueless. It took decades to learn the the full breadth of derogatory language of the magical world. Severus himself had been an exception, he knew that. The sheer volume of knowledge on that front that had come from friendship with Lucius - who was both taught how to talk by, and inherited his sense of humor from, Abraxas Malfoy - and even he was reportedly rather selective about the company that he used that particular slur in front of.

Severus next narrowed his attention to his Goddaughter. Lyra's face betrayed nothing. Every muscle was arranged into the mathematically most appropriate expression possible for the occasion - as expected of Narcissa Black's daughter - but her mind...

Severus quietly pushed past Lyra's fantasies about herself and Mr. Potter in a pool, and found... Lyra's fantasies about graduating heavy with Mr. Potter's child... Lucius was going to have fun this summer.

Then he caught something else. Something from Tweedle-Larger, next to Lyra. The bodyguard was not doing nearly as well as his charge in diverting his mind from their apparent mischief. One interrupted study session becoming a protracted campaign of worming their way into a despised rival's confidence without giving up their identities all in an effort to sabotage a work of mid-teenage mania that she would have forgotten about over the summer. Well, the Silly Girl wouldn't be forgetting this colossal embarrassment. Nearly a dozen paragraphs of pseudo-academic salted nonsense crammed into notes slipped into advanced treatises in the library.

It was the oldest trick in the world, if you want to convince someone that you're on their side but showing them anything of yourself would make your deception obvious, you just held up a proverbial mirror. Jargon that the Silly Girl would likely use, in dead-drops where she would think to check, focused on a cause that she suddenly decided was her lifelong passion, questions of who?, and why?, would never come up.

Fifteen points, times three students was forty-five, minus the one thousand for making every House-Elf in Hogwarts quit in disgust put them down to negative nine-fifty-five, plus the four hundred that he docked from Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley that morning put the total points that Lyra and her bodyguards earned at negative five hundred and fifty-five. Plus fifty for dedication, fifty for intelligence, fifty for the valor, and fifty for the cunning demonstrated by each student in order to pull this plan off and get away cleanly put them back into the positives. Double the sum because he felt like it, and twenty more for Lyra being a good goddaughter and embarrassing one of Potter's companions - he could have used her when he was in school - and in the most Slytherin way possible, so another twenty five.

The one hundred and thirty five points weren't going to matter this year, not with the extra thousand points that Dumbledore had awarded Hufflepuff in memory of Cedric Diggory, nor the extra two thousand points that he had awarded to Gryffindor because Harry survived the Dark Lord, nor the extra five hundred points he got on top of it for winning the Triwizard Tournament.

But it felt nice working out next year's Slytherin Starting Advantage now, while things still felt a dash normal.

Severus was not Sybill Trelawny (Merlin be praised) but he had a very good idea what was to come.

---

So, what started off as a laugh about self-important girls making their whole lives about causes they only learned about a week ago ballooned into a 5,975 word novella tracking both Count's and the Wizarding World's descent into inane stupidity just to come up with a way for Hermione to plausibly drop a "Hard K" in connection with her activism.

It was a day and a half of work and an hour and a half of lost sleep, but I covered all of the plot points that I wanted to. Damn it, I still have Malfoid stories to tell based on my own insanity.

I want to write Malfoid finding out that the muggles abuse her beloved and reacting accordingly. Also if there are going to be more genderbends, Count needs help making up Snape nicknames for them.

Do I dare branch out into Sevara territory, and can I do so without turning the entire post into a bunch of France jokes.

Actually, that is how I would write it, Sevara and Lyra being two English women arguing about who is more French (and therefore who is less suitable) for Mr. Potter/Pottah.

I want to start on my ideas but i have to hold forth again on storytelling and writing again.

So that will be that.

 

[AJ_Talon]

The Burrow's kitchen had gone quiet after the others drifted upstairs. Harry remained at the table with his hands around a mug he had not drunk from, and Molly, who had been wiping the same stretch of counter for longer than the counter required, set the cloth aside and looked at him.

"Lyra was... Very polite," Molly offered. Harry slowly nodded, eyes fixed on the mug.

"She... Really wants to make a good impression... After everything with her father and..." He trailed off. Molly was patient, rummaging about in the cupboard for a moment. Finally, Harry took a deep breath, let it out, and spoke:

"I'm sorry."

"For what, dear?"

The words stuck. He had rehearsed them on the trip to the Burrow over and over, and lost them somewhere between the gate and the door. "I just... That I don't love Ginny."

Molly did not answer at once. The clock on the wall ticked. Outside, a hen complained and was ignored.

"I care about her," Harry said, faster now, as if speed might make the rest less cruel. "Really. She's a good friend. One of the best I've got. But I don't feel that way about her. I haven't for a long time. I know it's... Kind of obvious but... I... I didn't want to say anything but I... I have to tell you."

Molly's look was tempered from years of dealing with children's confessions: Gentle but firm.

"Why?"

He stared at the tea. "You're my family, Mrs. Weasley. All of you are. If I don't marry Ginny, then we aren't a real family anymore. That's what I've been telling myself. When... When I marry Lyra, where does that leave us?"

Molly crossed the kitchen before he had finished. She drew him in with both arms, one hand firm between his shoulder blades, the other at the back of his head, and held him the way she held all her children when the world had been too large for them. He was taller than he had been at twelve. It did not matter.

"First," she said, against his hair, "call me Molly. And second, it would leave us exactly where we are. Family. Harry, you are my son in everything but blood. Do you honestly believe that changes if you are not my son-in-law?"

His hands had found the back of her cardigan. "Are you sure?"

"Completely." She did not loosen her hold. "All I have ever wanted is for you to be happy. There is no sense in marrying someone you do not love. It would not be fair to you, it would not be fair to Ginny, and it would not be fair to the rest of us. You deserve to be happy. Truly happy. Whoever that is with."

Something in him gave way. He bent into her shoulder and cried the way he had not allowed himself to cry in the hospital wing or at the funerals or in the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place, and Molly stayed where she was, one hand moving slowly over his hair, doing what she had always done best.

 

[AJ_Talon]

The dormitory was dark when Harry finally reached it, the only light a thin spill from the window where the curtains had not been fully drawn. Most of the others were already asleep. Ron's snoring rose and fell in uneven bursts from the bed nearest the window, occasionally hitching when he rolled onto his side. Harry closed the door as quietly as he could and stopped. An owl sat on the trunk at the foot of his bed, feathers ruffled, one foot tapping with clear impatience against the wood. It held a flat, linen-wrapped package in its beak and regarded him with the offended dignity of a bird that had been kept waiting longer than it considered reasonable.

He paid it with a few Knuts from his pocket. The owl took them, transferred the package to his hands with a sharp, businesslike motion, and left through the open window in an irritable snap of wings. Cold air followed it in. The outside of the parcel was addressed in a familiar hand to Harry Potter, Gryffindor Tower. Beneath the name, in smaller letters, was the single word Snuffles.

Harry sat on the edge of his bed. The mattress dipped under him. He unwrapped the linen carefully, mindful of the rustle. Inside was a flat object and a folded note. The note was marked, in capital letters, READ THIS FIRST.

He unfolded it under the thin light from the window. His hands were colder than he had realized.

Harry,

Only use this in a safe place nobody can see you, and cast Silencio around your surroundings to keep anyone from hearing. Activate it by tapping the glass twice with your wand tip and saying my name.

Snuffles

Harry exhaled. The sound was small in the quiet room. Sirius was not taking chances. He pulled the Invisibility Cloak from his trunk, the fabric cool and heavy as he settled it over his shoulders, and slipped back out of the dormitory. Ron muttered something unintelligible and turned over. No one else stirred.

The common room was empty, the fire burned down to embers. Harry crossed it, eased through the portrait hole—the Fat Lady grumbled once in her sleep and did not open her eyes—and made his way down the corridor to the unused classroom nearest Gryffindor Tower. The door stuck once; he shouldered it open, stepped inside, and shut it behind him. Dust moved in the air. The desks had been pushed against the walls years ago and never moved back.

"Colloportus," he whispered. The lock clicked, firm. "Silencio."

The room went very still. Even the faint creak of the castle seemed to retreat. He pulled the remaining linen away.

A plain mirror lay in his hands, unadorned, the glass clean and cool against his palms. He drew his wand, tapped the surface twice, and said, quietly, "Sirius."

The glass clouded, then cleared. Sirius's face appeared, slightly off-center, wearing the crooked smile Harry remembered from the old family photos in the album Hagrid had given him. The lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper and his hair grayer than in those pictures, but the light was back in his eyes.

"Harry!"

"Sirius. What is this?"

"Your father and I used to make two-way mirrors to talk between classes. Works at any distance."

"Wicked." Harry turned the mirror a fraction, watching the way Sirius's image held. His shoulders had loosened without his noticing.

Sirius's smile softened. "How are you? Any more dreams?"

The nightmares about Voldemort had been what he had told Sirius about just before the Quidditch World Cup. Harry felt a small, private relief that his guardian had believed him.

"Well, no. None so far. I'm back at school. Things are going all right, mostly. Moody's a great teacher. Really incredible—"

"Yes." Sirius's expression changed. The smile thinned. "And I'm coming back to help."

Harry's grip tightened on the mirror. The edges bit into his fingers. "But—Sirius, there's a kill-on-sight order for you—"

"I know how to keep hidden, and I'm in contact with Dumbledore. It'll be fine. If Dumbledore has recalled Moody, he's seeing something big on the horizon. Besides, you need all the support you can get. I've been slacking in my godfatherly duties."

"That… that wasn't your fault, Sirius."

"Thanks, Harry." Sirius looked away for a moment, jaw working, then back. The mirror caught the movement. "And one day, maybe I'll believe it. But I'm not letting anything happen to you. Promise."

Something in Harry's chest pulled tight. He shifted his weight on the desk. "Sirius…"

"Well." Sirius cleared his throat, the sound rough and bark-like. "Enough of that girly nonsense. How'd it go with Malfoy?"

Harry groaned and let his forehead rest against the cool edge of the mirror for a second. The glass fogged faintly under his breath. "Ugh. I must have done it wrong. She's… she's actually happy about the date. Even the twins pushed it further."

Sirius's mouth twitched. The smirk returned, wider, and he leaned in until his face filled more of the glass. "Oh?"

"Yes! Right in front of the girl I actually like!"

"Ooh. Rough, Harry. Very rough. I have been there before."

"Is there any way out of this?"

"Harry, listen." Sirius's voice turned more serious, though the amusement did not entirely leave it. One eyebrow rose. "If she finds out this entire thing was a prank, she'll—"

"Murder me?"

"Probably," Sirius agreed. He tilted his head. "How much time do we actually have? Before this date."

"The first Hogsmeade weekend. One week." Harry shifted on the desk. The wood was cold through his robes; he felt it against the backs of his thighs. "They doubled them this year. There's two before Halloween now, what with the Triwizard and all."

Sirius was quiet for a moment. His eyes moved, calculating. "All right. That's better than I expected. Not much, but better. We can work with that."

"Work with it how?!" Harry's voice rose. He sat straighter, free hand gripping the edge of the desk. "The twins told her I'd take her flying over the forest at sunset! They told her we'd go to the Yule Ball! I don't even know what I'm supposed to say to her between now and then!"

"You say as little as possible until we have a plan," Sirius said. His tone had gone flat and practical. "And you do not, under any circumstances, tell her it was a joke. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if we can manage it cleanly. First one, you go. You survive it. You come back and tell me exactly what she said, what she liked, what made her angry. Then we adjust before the second."

"Second?!" Harry squawked.

"Second," Sirius nodded.

Harry stared at the mirror. His reflection was a faint ghost around Sirius's face. "You're serious."

Sirius grinned, quick and sharp.

"I'm always Sirius when pure-blood girls are involved." The smile didn't reach his eyes. "Listen to me, Harry. If she finds out now, she won't just be angry. She'll be humiliated. In front of her house, in front of the school, in front of people who already watch her because of her name. Do you really want to do that to her?"

A pain hit Harry in the chest, sudden and low. He was always under scrutiny for his name. He supposed it was not so different for her. His free hand had curled into a fist against his knee without his noticing.

"No," he decided. The word came out quieter than he expected. "No… I mean she can be a pain and a brat and bully but… No."

Sirius sat back. The crooked smile returned, thinner than before, and he regarded Harry with something that looked almost like approval.

"Which brings me to the question I was going to ask before you started panicking."

Harry braced himself. His shoulders had gone tight again.

Sirius regarded him for a moment, head tilted. "Harry… is a date with Malfoy really that bad?"

"I…" Harry paused. His ears felt hot. "I mean… I-I thought it would be but…"

He had a sudden, unwelcome vision of her actually smiling at him, cheeks pink, one hand in his as they walked. The image was clear enough that he shook his head, hard, as if he could dislodge it, due to the convoluted torment inside his chest.

"YES! YES IT IS!"

Sirius looked skeptical. One eyebrow climbed.

"Uh-huh. A hot bird on your arm who really wants to date you?"

"I don't know why she does!" Harry groaned, dragging a hand down his face. The motion left his fringe standing up. "She's a bloody nightmare! She wasn't supposed to actually say YES!"

"Well, she has, so clearly she believed you were being sincere," Sirius said.

"Or she's trying to drive me mad!" Harry insisted. His voice cracked on the last word.

"Girls always do," Sirius chuckled. The sound was warm and unhelpful.

"But if she finds out—!"

"She won't." Sirius leaned a little closer to his side of the glass. The smile had gone crooked again. "Just listen to old Padfoot. He won't steer you wrong. I promise you'll get out of this alive… and mostly in one piece."

"Mostly?!" Harry's head came up. The mirror tilted with the movement.

"Well, she might bite."

Harry stared at him. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. "Bite? Why?!"

Sirius just grinned.

---

The Slytherin fourth-year girls' dormitory was warmer than the corridors outside it, the lake-light through the high windows turning the green hangings a deeper shade. Lyra Malfoy's trunk stood open in the center of the room. She was on her knees beside it, robes pushed up to her elbows, digging through folded garments with the focused irritation of someone who had already rejected three perfectly acceptable options and was prepared to reject three more.

Millicent Bulstrode sat on the edge of her own bed, broad shoulders relaxed, watching with the mild perturbation of a girl who had expected the evening to be quieter. Pansy Parkinson perched on a chair nearby, chin in her hands, expression already sliding toward exasperation. Daphne Greengrass occupied the window seat with a book open across her lap, posture elegant, attention divided. Tracey Davis sat cross-legged on the floor at Daphne's feet, one eyebrow raised, the corner of her mouth curved in faint amusement.

"So," Tracey said. "Going on the date with Potter."

Lyra did not look up. A jumper sailed over her shoulder and landed on the rug. "Yes. To gather critical intelligence."

"Sure," Pansy said. "Like how his tonsils taste."

Lyra spun. The motion was sharp enough to send a strand of hair across her face. She glared at all four of them, color already high on her cheekbones. "I do not like him! Not one bit!"

Pansy turned her head toward Daphne with the silent plea of someone who had been carrying this argument alone for too long. Daphne kept her eyes on the page. Tracey elbowed her, once, then again. Daphne sighed, soft and precise, and lowered the book a fraction.

"We were all there, Lyra."

"No." Lyra's hands had curled into the fabric still in the trunk. "No, see—this is one of his schemes. You remember!"

"Scheming isn't exactly his forte," Tracey said. "Surviving and being awesome is, though."

Millicent nodded. The motion had the weight of a crag deciding whether to become an avalanche. "Yes. He can summon a Patronus to drive off a hundred Dementors."

"He slayed a basilisk," Tracey added. "A thousand-year-old one. With the Sword of Gryffindor."

"He even defeated You-Know-Who," Pansy said. "In single combat. Twice! Once when he was a baby even!"

Millicent's sigh was almost wistful. "He's killed a man already. I wish a boy would kill someone for me."

"Me too," Daphne said, without looking up.

Pansy and Tracey both turned to stare at them. Lyra, for her part, had gone very still. For a moment her eyes were distant, fixed on something none of the others could see: Potter with a sword in his hand, bare-chested, that infuriating smile directed at her while something large and dangerous lay at his feet. She blinked, hard, and the image scattered.

"He… he's not even my type."

Pansy made a sound of pure exasperation. "A muscle-bound hunk who can outfly you and slays monsters isn't good enough?"

"Heh." Tracey tilted her head. "I'll take a crack at him if you're not game. He does gardening. The Muggle way."

Millicent's brow furrowed. "How do you know?"

"Saw him in Herbology once. His outer robes got dirty with Bubotuber pus. He had to pull them off—" Tracey's expression turned briefly dreamy. "Mmm. Pure lean muscle. I could just li—"

She registered the frantic warning looks from Daphne, Pansy, and Millicent a fraction too late. When she turned, Lyra was already standing inches from her, wand in hand, face pale with rage, eyes burning for murder. Tracey squeaked.

"—eave him for you," she finished, sliding behind Daphne with impressive speed. "My best friend and superior in all wayspleasedon'thexme."

Lyra's growl was low. "You wouldn't know what to do with him. And besides—" The murderous edge eased, just slightly, into something smug. "He asked me."

A pause. The flush returned, climbing toward her ears.

"N-not that that matters! I will simply go along with it for good relations. We're hosting the Triwizard Tournament. What matters is that we look good for our foreign guests… Before they arrive. We need the practice!"

Millicent, Pansy, Daphne, and Tracey exchanged looks of varying degrees of exhaustion. Pansy sighed.

"Well then. In the interest of relations, we'll be providing backup."

"D-don't be silly." Lyra turned back to the trunk and began digging again, movements sharper than before. "I'll be just fine on my own. The less people see this… this embarrassment of riches, the better. I have my reputation to think about. Being seen with Potter. In public. On a date."

Tracey opened her mouth. "Didn't you just say you wanted to be seen for good relations—"

Daphne's hand settled on her forearm, light and final. She shook her head once. Tracey subsided, though not without a muttered, "But she—"

Pansy looked at Daphne. "I thought you had trained her by now."

"She is quite recalcitrant." Daphne returned her attention to the book. "The breed will tell."

"Hey!"

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

I won't even bother including a warning because you should know by now about my penchant for nonsense.

The Payback War Begins, or; Grizzly Murders in the House of Dursley

February 1995 - The Hogwarts grounds, a few hours after the second Triwizard Task

"Potter? What exactly am I looking at." Lyra Malfoy asked him.

"Guuurr..." Harry stared at Lyra.

When the Malfoy heiress had regained consciousness after the events of the tournament, and air was in her lungs again, she immediately put it to use to shriek herself blue in the face whilst bodily dragging him off the pitch. From what Harry heard or, thought he had heard, he would be awarded second place, for arriving first, and staying behind until the others were rescued.

Which had not gone over particularly well with his date.

Lyra Malfoy was displeased, more than usual, at the fact that he did not grab her as soon as he could, pull her to dry land, and give her another foot rub like the one she had badgered him into giving her after the ball itself when she claimed that dancing with an ox made her feet hurt to much and he owed her. He had acceded then after she proved a joke that he told Ron and Hermione in their second year ended up being right. Being that if Lyra wanted something - it had been to brag or gloat, as they had told it but demanding to be waited on hand and foot worked just as well - then she was perfectly willing to follow you into the loo over it without an ounce of shame. At least he was able to get through his business before she decided to climb over the stall door.

But today, Lyra had frog-marched him, berating him all the while, down to the Slytherin dungeons, and into the bedrooms where she threw him onto a bed that was larger and more luxurious than the other two and pulled a silvered bowl, about eight inches across, and six deep, up from the trunk at its foot. "Do you know what a Pensieve is, Potter?"

"Wipe that stupid grin off your face and answer the question, Stupid Pottah!" The still somewhat soaked woman said, depositing herself on his left thigh and leaning in close.

Harry smiled, whenever Lyra lost control of herself she started pronouncing his name as if she were still eleven, with that thunderous pop of the 'P' and the snobbiest prelude to a sneeze, or something that sounded like it, that he could imagine in place of the '-er.' He didn't dare correct her. The Yule Ball had seen her become... something in the same county as bearable. A and for a woman as easy on the eyes as Malfoy had become, the eyes, the face, the long blonde hair and the curves that made him desire so badly to put up with her.

"No, I don't know what a Pensieve is exactly. Might you enlighten me, Miss Malfoy?" Harry made sure to use the moody young witch's favorite word at the end.

"Hmph," her cheeks puffed up as she smiled and went smug, "Well, Potter, a Pensieve is a silvered basin like this one here that lets you view copies of your memories in the third person. So we're going to go step by step through the last day so you can explain to me why exactly you felt the need to deviate from getting me out of the water."

Harry made a face that did not look too unlike one he would have made had he swallowed a lemon. But the way that Lyra giggled when she saw his grimace did register. There was just one problem.

"How, am I supposed to do that?" He asked.

Lyra's face went red like a hunk of metal drawn from the fire at a smithy, and the quivering of her expression gave Harry the distinct impression that it would be just about as hot to the touch.

Then she started cackling.

"Isn't it obvious, Stupid Pottah? Take your memory out with your wand and drop it in the basin. Then when the runes turn it into a liquid, you stick your head in."

Harry Potter was not a mind reader. He knew that the mental arts existed and what they could, in theory, do. But he didn't need to be. Years of protracted exposure of Lyra Malfoy had enabled him to gauge roughly how full of shit she was by her tone of voice and exactly how her head moved based on when her haughtiness was warranted - at least in her head - versus when it was all bluster. And right now he was perfectly willing to bet his entire legacy that Lyra had little if any idea on the mechanics of how to do that.

The fact that her face was now radiating enough excess heat that Fawkes might reasonably mistake it for a mating call - there was an unpleasant thought - told him how right he was.

"Why... why it's very simple, Stupid Pottah, you take your wand," she held hers up to his head, "and you just pull the memory..." nothing happened.

"Erm... Malfoy..." Harry said.

"SHUT UP! I'm trying, I've only ever seen this done twice." Lyra shouted back.

"Sorry." Harry apologized as Lyra growled and her expression pursed in concentration.

"Now, your memory..." Lyra said before another pause. Another very drawn out pause... Were... were those tears starting to well up in the corners of her eyes..?

"This one, ohohoho, yes, this one feels right." Lyra said triumphantly and exceedingly smugly as she pulled a mote of white light from his temple and plopped it into the basin.

"There, perfect. You might want to pocket your glasses, Potter." Malfoy said as she put on her headband, and Harry obliged while contemplating whether or not his early tenure at Hogwarts had seared a taste for spoiled-rotten bratty girls into his subconscious.

They both sucked in a full breath of air and plunged their heads into the foggy soup.

Hence the current problem. "This isn't the lake." Lyra Malfoy said, looking over a street, or to her it was probably something more akin to a dung heap, that was very familiar to the shocked, and currently nonverbal Harry. "Four Privet Drive?" She continued, with the sort of disgust that made Harry wonder if she had previously caught the Dursley address pleasuring itself in public.

"My family's house." Harry replied flatly.

"Oh." Lyra brightened up, before she skipped into the Dursley domicile. 'No doubt eager to watch me be miserable,' Harry thought to himself.

That was a judgment that Harry forced himself to reconsider. While watching 'An average day in the life of Harry Potter before Hogwarts,' Lyra went from smug, mostly about the "impoverished squalor" that the Dursley family allegedly lived in to shocked at the way that the family treated like a House Elf, a House Black House Elf to be specific. That prompted Harry to make a mental note to inquire with Sirius about exactly what she had meant, and to inquire with Dobby to see whether it was true or not that Lucius did not beat the House Elf as often or as hard as Vernon and Dudley did to him - as Lyra had claimed - during his servitude. Then Lyra had gone from shocked to appalled, once she realized that it was not a one-off and she had seen the cupboard under the stairs. He thought that one was public knowledge in the Wizarding World, given that was the address that all of his mail was sent to.

He tried mollifying her and getting her to settle down, but perhaps saying that this particular day had not actually been so bad, but going through what usually happened to him on Halloween was, in hindsight, wrong move, given that she responded by blowing her nose into his shirt twice and throwing a tantrum on the floor.

After about a minute of flailing her limbs, rolling around whilst crying, and screaming "Pottah!" Lyra got up, disengaged from the goings-on of the memory completely, and started moving about the house like a robot. Harry followed her, and tried to make her talk again, but she was dead to the world, completely entranced. Her attention seemingly occupied entirely by the view outside of the windows, the various rooms and furnishings of the house and, for some odd reason, a couple of old newspapers.

Once the memory had ended and the two Hogwarts students came up for air, Malfoy stared at him vacantly. Then she threw her arms around him and cried again. Apparently stroking her hair made Lyra settle down quicker - Harry noted that for the future - and once she found her voice again she sought to pester him with more questions, mostly about the Dursleys and why he never felt the need to tell her about how badly they treated him. After he explained that they had not started off at Hogwarts on the best of terms, and that, "no," he would not in fact feel anything at their funerals, given that Vernon and Petunia had both specified in their wills that he was not to be allowed within three hundred feet of the venue.

"Once the Payback War commences, those filthy, negligent muggles will be the first to go..." Or, at least, that was what Harry thought whatever Malfoy whispered into his chest had sounded like.

Wait... Payback War? Was there something he should know?

"What?" Harry asked.

Lyra looked up at him, her mascara mostly down her cheeks at this point, but her face had gone blank again like it had in Little Whinging. "I have decided that you do not need to explain yourself, or attend to me further unless you wish to, Pottah. Now, I am going to clean myself up. I suggest you do the same."

The subject appeared closed, so much for that.

"Then what about the memory bowl?" He asked, "I don't feel like leaving my past out like this."

"Ordinarily, to clean a Pensieve, whoever's memory it is has to drink it all back up in one go." Malfoy explained, while fishing in her trunk for her toiletries.

Harry sighed. Of course it was going to be the usual brand of Hogwarts oddity.

"Bottoms up."

--

Malfoy Manor - August 1st, 1995

--

Lyra checked her enchanted sports bag for all of her supplies. Two times thirty-foot rope, pre-charmed, check. Muggle duct tape, full roll, check. Lightweight carpentry mallet, pre-charmed, check. Fire axe; twenty-eight inch handle - hickory, six pound hardened steel head with four-and-three-quarters-inch blade and five-inch pick, check. Ladder, check. Invisibility cloak, check. Current map of England, locations of Malfoy Manor and Little Whinging marked, as as well as bearings for both the initial and return trip, and estimated travel time based both on what her 2001 could do quiet, and how fast it could go if she buried it in the red the whole way, check. Compass, phosphorescent markings, check. Wristwatch, freshly wound, also phosphorescent markings, check.

Then she looked at her outfit. Boots, black, four sizes too big, transfigured to add an additional two-and-a-half inches rise and genericize the soles, each weighted with a dozen extra pounds, pre-charmed with silencio, like the hammer. Socks, thick, double-layered to fill up the space in the boots. Pants, black, with tape wrapped around the ankles to keep the boots fast to her feet. Shirt, dark brown, old pillow taped to the front. Full robe, black, pointed hood that gave an extra foot of height, shoulders padded like an American footballer's. Gilt porcelain skull mask, embellished to look like a skull with its mouth sewn shut. Enchanted to obscure wearer's identity from magical scrying, and serve as dual-purpose face protection against both magic and physical attack, check. Wand & Wand holster in case things went pear-shaped, check.

Now all she needed was her Nimbus 2001, and Father's shotgun.

There was an advantage to being seen first and foremost as 'Lucius Malfoy's daughter, who I sometimes see around the manor,' by the Dark Lord and every other Death Eater besides Father, Professor Snape, and Aunt Bella while Potter was thought of as the arch-enemy.

That being that nobody really paid Lyra any mind, so if she just walked into the drawing room to ask Father to borrow the shotgun while she went flying during a meeting where he and the Dark Lord were bringing Azkaban's most recent escapees up to speed, nobody batted an eye.

"Exactly why do you need your father's shotgun, young lady?" Narcissa Malfoy asked her daughter.

"There are a few certain Muggles who offended me that I want to terrorize and kill. Now is as good a time as any." That earned Lyra smiles from everybody in room except for the woman who had asked her the question.

"And why do you need to present yourself in such ridiculous, ill-fitting clothes to do so?" Mother was still not pleased. "And why use a muggle weapon instead of Old Reliable?" Aunt Bella decided to help her sister out.

"In order, Mother, I would rather have my identity obscured such that nobody in this room can be precisely identified. I will not look like Lyra Malfoy in such ill-fit robes that someone could only tell is stuffed up close or in good lighting, and I intend to be back by sun-up. As to the muggle weapon, Aunt Bella, there are two reasons. The first is the Trace. I'm not 17 yet. I have to be choosey about magic outside of school, I know that. Purebloods and wizarding families get a lot of leniency for things like flying, but if I start throwing Unforgivables in a muggle neighborhood, the Ministry is going to start snooping through the trash, and Fudge is merely useless. If he sends the wrong underling, said underling might find something I would not like for him or her to find." The Death Eaters all nodded, it would be bad if someone like Bones or one of the Aurors who could actually justify their salary gave a murder scene a once-over.

"The second reason, Aunt Bella, is fear." Lyra said, and the smiles that everybody in the room except for Narcissa Malfoy had been wearing widened.

"Muggles don't know what Old Reliable is or what the bright green flashes mean. Muggles know what a shotgun is, what a shotgun does, and how. Which means, once they see or hear it, the only question they will be asking themselves is 'Why?' Because they will know exactly what is going to happen. I also have an axe in my bag in case I want to draw it out."

After she had gotten out of the tackle-hug from Aunt Bella, and received both the Dark Lord's and her parents' blessing to absent herself for the night, Lyra departed for the rear entrance - Father's 12-bore and half a dozen spare hulls in her bag - as conversations about what to do in reply to various tactical and strategic scenarios would have to wait for assessment until Professor Snape with actionable intelligence in hand faded into the distance.

A bit more than an hour of flying a few degrees off true East later, and Lyra Malfoy was over a particular neighborhood in Surrey. Years as a seeker gifted her with excellent high-altitude observational skills, and the ability to make snap-judgments. The park, in Potter's memory, was northwest of his address, so if she put down in... was that a covered alley between the crescent shaped road, and the road immediately south of it? What a perfect runway. It would mean a little more walking on her part, but there would be fewer muggles, not that there would be many out past midnight anyway, but it was best not to chance. Lyra put down in the alleyway. Then she unzipped her bag, dropped her broom in, and pulled out her invisibility cloak, zipped the bag back up, draped it over herself, and began her walk.

Lyra's entry plan was roundabout, but direct. The ladder would get her on top of the garage. From there, she would drop into the backyard. The back door was wooden, but its upper half was dominated by a large window. If it were feasible she'd tape up the window to keep it from completely shattering, and then apply the mallet. From there she'd move through the house and explain to those horrid Dursleys that Potter was not to be treated like an Elf... except maybe if he wanted to wait on her hand and foot... 'down girl,' Lyra reminded herself, only for her mind to answer back 'but what if he wants to..?'

Thankful for the skull mask that covered her very pink cheeks, Lyra let the mallet strike the taped-up window all across its edges. The charm prevented the strikes from making any noise, but there was something of a clatter when the glass hit the ground. Lyra reached her hand through and unlocked the door.

And just like that, a Death Eater (Prospect) had let herself into 4 Privet Drive.

Setting the glass pane to one side, Lyra reached into her bag again and traded her mallet for the shotgun. There was nobody on the lower floors, except, obviously, for Potter, his handsome Seeker's body no doubt cramped into that little cupboard barely big enough to accommodate an Elf. So Lyra made doubly certain to ascend the stairs as quietly before moving toward her first target by the dim lights of the night that seeped in through the house's windows. She noted the locked, bolted, and barred door that had not been locked, bolted, or barred in Harry's memory. A recent addition? It didn't matter, it could not possibly house anything of real importance to her.

She opened the door silently and drew a bead on the lumpen mass in the bed. It did not quite look like Crabbe's outline, nor like Goyle's it was not quite large enough for each of them, but large enough for the buck.

The consequences of firing a shotgun in a home so miniscule came immediately. As Lyra departed the room, the hall lights came on and she saw a man older and wider than Potter's memory had made him out to be with a waifish poor whose bearing suggested that she spent her whole day pretending that she'd be anything but. Professor Severus was different. Lyra knew that he came from the exact opposite of means, but he strived, he tried, he bore himself with dignity, and he spent his days being what he chose, rather than what circumstances he existed in or what had previously happened to him. It was a skill few people, and very fewer outside of the Sacred Twenty-Eight than within, by her best guess, truly possessed. That was what made Lyra their better.

The black-clad girl let the Dursleys take in the image. A Death Eater walking out of their son's room with a shotgun that had smoke rising from the left barrel. She waited until realization widened their eyes before she shouldered it and fired again. The great big pudding of a patriarch ate the whole of the blast, or at least Lyra thought he had. She heard a squawk of pain, or fear, both perhaps? She did not know which.

'Oh, well.' Lyra thought as she exchanged Father's shotgun for the axe and followed Petunia Dursley into her bedroom.

Lyra found the upjumped daughter of a chimney sweep slumped against her atrociously poster-less bed clutching a wound about the shoulder and collarbone that added some color that would not most appropriately describe fish guts to the Dursley house, and trying to get air.

"Hello, mud. You know, your house looked better in the dark." Lyra began.

"Who are you, Dumbledore promised we'd be safe from you freaks!" The half-dying woman rasped. "If you want Potter, he's in that room, the one with the locks and the bars..." The woman's blubbering turned incoherent as she rambled on, asking Lyra why she chose to kill her husband and her son.

"Did he prove too formidable for the cupboard under the stairs. You are right, in a way. I do want Pottah, and I will have him. I love him. That makes him mine. AND YOU DARE TREAT HIM LIKE MY GREAT-AUNT WALBURGA'S HOUSE-ELVES! YOU MUGGLE-BORN SWINE!"

When Lyra was done shouting and her focus came back, her axe, robe, mask, right boot, and everything else around her were red, wet and sticky. Meanwhile the upper half of what had once been Petunia Dursley was rendered down to something that resembled a very large pound of raw beef, lightly seasoned with hair, nightgown, and pulverized bone.

Lyra regarded the barred door and let her heart yearn for her noble Potter for a brief moment. Unless he was being clever, it was clear that he could sleep through anything. "Be still my beating heart." She whispered to herself, as she rounded back toward the Dursleys' nightstand, there was one last matter to attend to before the quarter-mile slog back to the alley.

Nevertheless, as she took off on her broom Lyra Malfoy let out a witch's cackle that even Morgana would have acknowledged with the slightest of nods.

--

7 Privet Drive, seconds later - August 2, 1995

--

Arabella Figg had been roused by the tremendous thunderclap that had upset all of her cats. When cognizance dispelled grogginess and she turned the light on, she realized that there was no sound of rainfall to lull her back to sleep with its soft, rhythmic tapping.

Then she checked outside, only to see no rain whatsoever. It was a bright, clear summer night. No rainfall, no wetness, not a cloud in the sky. It was the kind of night that was made for a lovers' rendezvous. The Dursleys had their lights on, and the lights in Number 6 had come on too. Then there came another thunderclap. Confused curiosity was morphing into worry. What had happened? Knowing what he did of the magical world, Arabella Figg was forced to contemplate options that no sane Muggle would. Had a Death Eater somehow subverted the barrier and struck Harry with a pair of lightning bolts?

Fearing the worst, Arabella reached for her telephone. First she'd call Dumbledore's panic number. Then, she'd call 999 and report the suspicious activity, it was only polite. She dialed as she watched the house. She may have been a lady of respectable age, but she was not in her dotage nor anywhere near it. That was when she saw the front door open, she saw the front door open, but she did not see anybody leave through it. She did, however, see that shoeprint that appeared on the Dursley stoop. And the one that appeared after it. She might not have been able to see the ones that came after that, they went through the grass, after all. But the one on the step was enough. It was red.

"Hello?" The other end of the line replied.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS DUNG!" Arabella bellowed.

--

12 Grimmauld Place, Minutes before midnight, August 2, 1995

--

"MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER, YOU LITTLE SHIT! DID YOU ABANDON YOUR POST TO GET FUCKING CABBAGED AT THE LEAKY CAULDRON AGAIN?!?!" Dumbledore asked calmly, as the repeated impacts of the back of Fletcher's head against the kitchen wall that reminded Harry a little too much of the trophy room at Hogwarts.

After Lupin, Moody, and quite a number of Weasleys finally pried the Headmaster's hands from the shabby-dressed wizard's throat, he answered in the affirmative, before sinking to the ground to catch his breath.

Harry did not know until today that he had a bodyguard, nor that said bodyguard regularly flunked his duties to get piss-drunk in London. Although the second fact went quite a way in explaining the first.

Harry had not had a good day today. And now seemed as good a time as ever to mentally clock out of the Order's war council.

Last night's nightmare hadn't just been Pettigrew killing Cedric again. Malfoy had been there too. And that maniac, shotgun-wielding Death Eater had killed her. Why couldn't he ever just dream about Malfoy's Malfoys? Tonight, Harry James Potter was going to have a very long talk with himself, regarding exactly what he felt about Lyra Malfoy. And maybe a shorter talk with Sirius to both make himself feel better, and see the look on his Godfather's face.

He was awoken that morning when he was shaken awake by a pair of bobbies who had broken down the door to his bedroom. 4 Privet Drive had become a crime scene as he slept. It shouldn't have been possible. Dumbledore had brought him up to speed with his mother's blood wards. So long as he was homed with his mother's blood, Voldemort could not touch him there, neither bodily, nor magically, nor via proxies. The Death Eaters should not have been able to set foot onto 4 Privet Drive, even if, supposing, Lyra's father had, indeed, heard about it.

Which brought Harry back to the facts. The upper floor was a bloodbath, and the lower floor had been ransacked. Things from his aunt and uncle's nightstands and jewelry from his aunt's dresser had gone missing. Tables nearest the door had been turned out. A lot of money and small valuables were missing. It looked like a robbery-gone-violent.

Which was the problem. It looked like a robbery-turned-murder. It felt like a robbery to cover up a murder. The police pressed Harry on whether or not he knew anybody who wanted to hurt his aunt's family or whether they owed, or lent, someone money. Especially if that person was a little over six-one, and a medium-to-husky built male. The interest came from the heavy, bloody steps in the grass and the dirt that the killer apparently thought would wipe most of the blood off of his foot gave his approximate height and weight away by their depth and stride.

Harry did not have any time to think about what didn't add up before the awkward questions came. He had already been walked through every defiled room of the house thrice, and positively identified what had been left of three people who were nominally his kin. But after the coppers had gotten into his confidence by consulting him about how somebody could have forced the back door without forcing the gate, they abruptly switched to why his room had been locked from the outside? Why was there seemingly no evidence of his residence or occupancy in the home. It was his first time being sweated by muggle authorities and the unfortunate truth came out before Shacklebolt and Tonks arrived sporting phony hats and badges. And the not-as-brief-as-he-wished-it-was overview of Harry's personal history that he had to give convinced both of the constables that the Dursleys must have been involved in, or at least covering up, a great deal of bad business.

But when Shacklebolt and Tonks did show up, in muggle police regalia, they - with faces completely straight - fed the constables a line about a circle of kidnappers in Scotland seemingly pivoting to grave-robbery earlier that year, with the Dursleys being kin to one of the known witnesses, and that the two had apparently driven all night with hopes of questioning Mrs. Dursley or her husband today and making sure that nobody was following them.

Harry had been in the middle of asking himself exactly which dragon's arse the two Aurors had pulled that one out of, and whether or not it was related to the Hungarian Horntail from the tournament, when the Dementors arrived. Shacklebolt and Tonks fought them off, along with Lupin, Moody, and everybody else that Dumbledore had sent along to ensure that he would get to 12 Grimmauld Place with no further incident. Harry did not blame the old man. He was grateful, he thanked the Headmaster, and the entire Advance Guard quite profusely. It felt very nice, for once, having nine trained adult Witches and Wizards swarm the Dementors before they got within a hundred yards of Harry. The obviation and memory alteration process was long and exhaustive, but not sufficient to remove Harry from the muggle person of interest in connection with an ongoing investigation list, meant both that Harry would likely be contacted later to give statements to the police, and that the Order of the Phoenix, as they were called, were going to have to get clever.

Then Harry got a letter from the Minister of Magic's office. One saying that on or about 9:23 PM that day, he had used underage magic in a muggle neighborhood (furious use of the Patronus charm, apparently) and therefore, was to appear at Ministry Courtroom Number 10, ten days from now, to be formally expelled, Kissed, and sent to Azkaban.

'Don't the Malfoys own the Ministry now?' Harry's brain silently asked him.

'No, Harry, you are not going to use your relationship with Lyra 'Malfoys' as a cudgel.' Harry said back into his head. 'Lyra's Malfoys.' His heads parroted to him.

"Bed." Harry half-announced, to much agreement, before crumpling to the ground and holding his head. He had not had any time to eat during the police investigation, nor when he and the Order were bringing each other up to speed, and he was not ready to deal with this horseshit.

As his Godfather, and Lupin picked him up, and bore him upstairs, Harry used his last embers of lucidity to pray to whatever god would hear him to sic the fat-arse that did in the Dursleys on whoever sent that letter. Maybe then, he could dream of bratty blondes whose robes did nothing to hide their figure.

---

Anyway, Count fic roundup to cap off this latest pile of insanity.

Since all of the pictures in my prior posts seem to have died horribly, so I am linking this Youtube video and saying 8:00 to 8:36.

Spoiler: The inspiration for this story

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgWlpSl9f50

Also everybody else's image links are kind of fucked up too.

But, anyway, as I typed this, Malfoid's 'Tsun' turned into 'Yan' and she basically became an emanation of Yuno Gasai.

Nevertheless, I tried to keep Malfoid within the specific flavor and tone of anime girl insanity that I have given her.

And I did try to work in more British slang and logisms. I know arse, and a couple of words for drunk, but not much besides.

On that note, Lyra can call Harry 'Potter,' at year 3+ anyway, but she calls him 'Pottah' when she is either feeling: too tsun, too dere, tantruming, calling him any English equivalent of 'baka' or really anything else that compromises her calm.

Now, as to explanations.

I figured Lily's blood wards wouldn't protect against anyone who is purely motivated by love for Harry and wishes no harm upon Harry.

Number 2, in reading about how the trace works in order to plan how Lyra would subvert it, I came across a theory to explain away its inconsistencies that basically states that it tracks all underage Wizards/Witches. It tracks all unsanctioned use of magic outside of Hogwarts/magical settings or in muggle areas. Then it cross-references the two. And if there is any overlap, the nearest kid gets blamed.

So works about as well as everything else in the Wizarding Worldbuilding if it sits in your thoughts too long, and I had to share.

Anyway, I will try to reply to a few of the more talky talk posts before I post Lyra's encounter with the woman whose name means 'To take severe exception to,' or rather, the aftermath of it, because I think I can make that funnier.

Okay, that is enough editing for a meme-post done.

But be honest with me guys, should I have titled this one: Harry Potter and the Clearly Not Okay -dere

 

[AJ_Talon]

The day of the Hogsmeade visit finally came. The main courtyard was already filling when Harry reached it. Carriages stood in a loose line along the far edge, the invisible creatures hitched up to them pawing at the ground. The morning was bright and cold enough that most people had kept their cloaks on. Harry had not. Mrs. Weasley's green jumper sat neatly over a collared shirt and the least-battered pair of trousers he owned. He had combed his hair. It had resisted, as it always did, and now stuck up in three places he had already given up on fixing.

Ron and Hermione stood with him near the front of the queue. Ron had his hands in his pockets and was watching the crowd with the wary interest of someone expecting disaster. Hermione had a small bag over one shoulder and the expression of a girl who had already decided the day would be long.

"You know," Ron said, "you could just run off under the cloak. Hide in the Forbidden Forest."

"What, living off Acromantula?"

"Would serve the bastards right."

"Ron. Language," Hermione admonished. Ron scowled.

"They tried to eat us, Hermione." He paused. "What do you think they taste like, anyway?"

Harry considered it. "Huh. Maybe giant crabs?"

"Never had crab."

"I got leftover boiled crab once. Actually pretty good."

"Okay, so you kill some Acromantula and boil them." Ron nodded as if this were reasonable. "I mean, you just have to wait three more years until Malfoy graduates. Then? Open your own Acromantula restaurant."

Hermione made a sound of pure exasperation. "You are both being ridiculous. I'm sure this date will go fine."

"I know it'll go fine," Harry said. He sounded more confident than he felt, which was the point. "Sirius trained me on it."

"He did tell you how to start this," Ron said, "which is why we're in this mess—"

"Ah, but this time he accounted for it. Now I know how to handle things properly."

Hermione's expression was deadpan. "Do you?"

"Sure. I've barely interacted with her all week. Just done some little touches here and there. She'll be super frustrated with me. And the date will be just frustrating enough she'll get sick of me."

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. A headache had already begun behind her eyes. Ron looked less certain.

"Um. You sure about that, Harry?"

Harry opened his mouth to answer and stopped.

Lyra Malfoy had appeared at the edge of the courtyard. She was difficult to miss. The red jumper was a clean, deliberate choice against the green of her house, worn over a short black skirt that left a long stretch of stocking-clad leg visible. A small, old-fashioned purse hung at her side, matched to the outfit rather than to any modern Muggle shape. Her hair was up in a high ponytail that moved when she walked and Harry's eyes locked onto every bounce of her platinum locks. She looked, Harry thought distantly amidst the heat that had flooded his mind, like she had put in a lot of effort into her appearance.

"There she is, Harry," Hermione said. Silence. She frowned in concern, and then lightly prodded his arm. "Harry?"

He was staring. Lyra's gaze found his eyes across the courtyard. Color rose in her face, quick and visible. She started toward them. The noise of the other students seemed to thin. Harry's carefully prepared confidence developed a sudden and inconvenient crack as she walked towards him, every movement of her hair catching the autumn sunlight.

She stopped in front of him, chin lifted, expression caught between irritation and something Harry couldn't quite identify. She looked over Hermione and Ron briefly. Both stared at her in mild disbelief. She locked her eyes back on Harry.

"Well, Potter. I'm here. So…?"

"…So…?" Harry managed, buying time.

Her eyes narrowed. "So?"

Remember, Harry thought. Remember Sirius's advice.

He let a cool, confident smile settle onto his face. It felt steadier than it had any right to. "Hey. You're looking nice."

"Just nice?"

"Hm?"

"Y-you were saying…" She looked aside, then back, irritated and shy at once. "I was… b-beautiful before."

"I said you were always beautiful."

She turned bright red. The color climbed past her collar and into her ears. Harry stepped forward and reached for her hand. Her fingers were cool. She tensed when he closed his own around them, but she did not pull away.

"You—wh-why are you—?"

"You hold hands on a date."

"B-but… I…"

"So we don't get separated."

A cacophony of emotions seemed to through her eyes, before she managed a stiff, "Y-yes. Well." She looked aside. "Don't hold my hand too tightly."

"Of course."

He guided her toward the carriages. Over his shoulder he caught Ron's eye and offered a grin and a wink he did not entirely feel. Ron watched them go, ears red, expression caught between admiration and deep foreboding. Hermione simply planted her face in both hands and stayed that way until they entered the carriage.

---

If Harry had known Legilimency, he might have read the following thoughts from the red-faced young woman as they sat together in the carriage, her hand in his:

AKKSKLLHSKJKBGNKA MY HAND HE'S HOLDING MY HAND THAT'S SO DARING I CAN FEEL HIS HEARTBEAT OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!

She kept her eyes on the opposite seat and attempted to restore order to her thoughts.

Keep control. Keep calm. You are a Malfoy. The future head of the House of Malfoy. Focus!

Harry shifted his grip, settling their fingers more securely together. She felt the change at once. Her eyes flicked down, then up to his face.

"Better grip," he said, easy, as if the adjustment were a practical matter of not losing her in a crowd.

"Oh," she managed. Heat climbed her throat.

Interlacing fingers? On the first date?! Don't we need to be engaged for that sort of thing?!

The carriage steps creaked under new weight. Crabbe and Goyle ducked through the door, filling the opposite bench with broad shoulders and identical, unfriendly stares directed at Harry.

"Hey, Lyra," Crabbe said.

"Lyra," Goyle added. He nodded once, then returned to glaring.

"Lads," Harry answered, unbothered. Lyra felt a sharp, inconvenient flare of admiration and immediately resented it.

Oh, he's so cool. So cool. But I thought I—

"I gave you two the day off," she said. The words came out cold and precise.

Goyle shrugged. "Well, we're all going to the same place, right?"

Crabbe nodded. "And your father told us to—"

Goyle's elbow caught him hard in the ribs. Crabbe wheezed.

"I—I mean your father told us nothing. Especially not about boys—"

"Well, I'm telling you," Lyra said, drawing her wand, "get out."

They hesitated. She did not lower the wand. After a moment of silent calculation they rose, edged past her knees, and exited. The door shut behind them. Lyra exhaled, short and controlled, and returned the wand to her sleeve. Her pulse had not yet settled.

"I apologize for that," she said, prim again. "Sometimes you must make things clear to your minions so they obey your will."

Harry nodded, slow, and smiled.

"You're gorgeous when you take charge like that."

The thought that rose in answer was not composed, and it was not quiet.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

 

[TDR]

Right. I'm gonna be honest I don't get the Malfroid thing. Not the idea, I mean back in my day we called it genderbent, or R63, or in certain parts and mind sets, Chan and kun respectively(mostly Ranma 1/2 crowd)
But I do understand how new words and phrases can get used as derogatory nonsense even if you've never heard it before, (hence that whole weird thing with the Hard Shop in Steller Blade). And and while I'm fine not using the term the linguistic evolution is fascinating, honestly I'm not sure where the slight is, oid is just something that got tacked on the end of a number of 80's cartoons and pizza mascots though it makes me think of Droid. Which lead to this little nonsense snippit.

Click to shrink...

---

---

The rumbling snores of Ron nearly made Harry groan. There were times when the shared dorm rooms were helpful, and then there were times like this. The events thus far in the year had been well not good, finding that potion book had been stroke of luck, but everything else had been a shit show and more often than not thinking about them made sleep hard, if not impossible.

He let out a soft groan sitting up in bed and running a hand up through huis mess of hair. then there was Lyra Malfoy. he knew that girl was up to something, it was impossible to have missed who she and her mother were talking to in Knockturn Alley. That werewolf's face was all over wanted posters scattered about the entirety of Wizarding Britain and more than a few on the muggle side. Ron and Hermione were not convinced that meant she was a death eater, Ron was with him, though Hermione was always the one casting reasonable doubt on things.

To be perfectly honest Harry hoped he was wrong.

Pulling on a robe he slipped out into the common room adjusting his glasses to look around at the familiar room as he pondered.

Lyra was.... well went they first met she was a right bitch and she kept that up for a few years, though during the Triwizard Tourney she had actually shown up and congratulated him, even offering reasonable suggestions on how to beat a few of the challenges. She claimed it was for the pride of Hogwarts rather than anything to do with him. Though last year with the pink toad while she had joined that group that was a right pain, she had caught him at things several times and simply ignored it and he was pretty sure it had been her who warned him about a few of the things Umbridge planned. She had actualy been furious when she found out about the quill.

It ... was rather surprising, almost like she cared. Ron thought it was a trap, Hermione didn't think it was, and Lyra was much less hostile, and had even gotten him a gift that year for the holidays which made him scramble to find something for her.

It didn't hurt that the girl was bloody gorgeous, something he never would have even paid attention to if she hadn't stopped being such a prat. The twins teased she had a thing for him, Ginny was apocalyptical with hate for Lyra for some reason, and Harry was just confused.

Still the chance meetings they had this year were pleasant and Harry almost wanted to see her like this a bit more. Ron would of course object, and Hermione, well there was no telling what was going on in his friends mind. It wasn't like Harry was seeing anyone, after the disaster with Cho, he honestly hadn't felt it, but a pretty girl showing him attention of any sort made him want more of it , even if it was from Lyra.

A click snapped his attention to the shadows of the room, hand reaching for a wand he had left in his room. He silently cursed himself for that, Voldemort was alive and seeking his death, and he left his main weapon up at his bed.

The figure who stepped out of the shadows was not who he expected. A pale blonde almost white head of hair appeared first, everything from the neck down invisable, though a hand lifted up pulling the long tresses back over her shoulders revealing the face of Lyra.

"What... what are you doing here Lyra?" Harry hissed, glancing to the portrait and looking around to see if any of the paintings had spotted her. "How are you even here?"

"Please Potter with as often as the twin idiots slip out of here without notice do you really think some one else hadn't figured out how to slip in?" Lyra scoffed then lowered her voice with a sigh. " Besides I came here to see you."

"Why?"

She sighed softly. " Mother was right men are stupid. Potter... Harry have you not.... ugh this is ridiculous."

"Lyra... why are you here in the middle of the night? What are you talking about?"

"Look this is the only time I could get away to see you without having everyone know. I was hoping you would catch on but....Look.. ugh why is this so hard. I fancy you potter there you happy? Ever since that stupid dragon. I realized how I would feel if you died. I can't have that But I can't just walk up and ask you out with the way things are going." Lyra huffed. "So I've got to resort to this!"

Harry blinked at that staring at her , or at least her face which is all the invisibility cloak showed.

"Wait you like me?"

"Are you bloody daft potter, I just said that." She snapped before breathing in and letting the cloak slip a little , Harry's attention noticed that her shoulders were bare, what was she.....

"If this does not show my intent then nothing will." Lyra swallowed hard, her face going a bit red as she let the robe drop further , Harry's eyes widening as he took note that all the girl seemed to be wearing was that invisibility cloak at least down to her waist where that had dropped.

His eyes ran over her before noting something odd, did she have piercings or ... no those were metal pipes instead of nipples, he was pretty sure that wasn't right.

"Lyra what are...."

"The Dark Lord sends his regards." Lyra snapped and shifted as the pipes started flashing and a loud noise echoed in the chamber as he felt slammed back as multiple things hit him at once tearing through him and spraying the wall behind him with blood..

DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!!!

---

"GAAAH!!!" Harry sat up suddenly in bed with a scream, the sound sending Ron falling out of bed, though when he popped up his wand was in his hand and his eyes were looking around the room in a panic.

"Mate what's wrong, who's attacking this time? Is it the spiders, it's gotta be the spiders again!" Ron shuddered.

Harry worked to catch his breath a moment with a small shiver." No.. just... a nightmare..."

"Been a while since you had one of those that woke you like that. " Ron hummed lowering his wand." Wanna talk about it?"

"No... No it's fine go back to sleep..." Harry offered not sure how he could talk to his best mate about Malfoy's machine gun Jublies anyway.

 

[AJ_Talon]

The carriages emptied in a loose scatter of students along the high street of Hogsmeade, the rustic settlement already bustling with activity. Hermione stepped down first, bag secured, and turned in time to see Harry and Lyra already moving away from the queue, hands still joined. Lyra's ponytail swayed with each step. Harry walked half a pace beside her, green jumper bright against the autumn crowd, and did not appear to notice the several heads that turned to watch them pass. They were heading, Hermione realized, toward the narrow shopfront with the painted sign that read Hayden's Creatures.

Ron came up beside her, hands still in his pockets. "Okay, so he listened to your notes."

"I'm amazed that either of you do."

"Oh, hey. We both listen and read your notes, you know."

"Then why do you make such a big fuss out of it?"

"Because it's you?"

Hermione turned a scowl on him. Before she could answer, another voice arrived from directly behind them.

"Definitely that it's you."

Ron jumped. "Gah! Do you like sneaking up on people?"

"Why yes, actually." Pansy Parkinson stood a few feet away, looking entirely pleased with herself. Millicent Bulstrode waited a pace behind her, broad and unhurried. Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis stood a little farther off, the former already surveying the street with mild disinterest.

Ron recovered enough to glare. "What are you all doing here?"

"Same reason you are," Pansy said. "Lyra's our friend and this is her first date."

Hermione glanced after the retreating pair. They had nearly reached the pet shop. "Well, they're going to notice us all following them."

"Fine." Pansy turned. "Millicent? Tracey? Daphne? Go distract Crabbe and Goyle."

Millicent considered the instruction, then nodded. "Can do. I'll take them to the Three Broomsticks. They can leer at Rosmerta. They'll be happy."

"I'm going to Puddifoot's, I like their desserts and chess sets," Daphne said.

"I'm going with her," Tracey added at once.

Pansy's mouth tightened. "You're supposed to help with Crabbe and Goyle—"

"Millicent is more than capable of handling them both," Daphne's expression did not change. "Plus I really don't want to."

"Daphneeee," Tracey said, half protest, half plea.

Daphne shrugged, small and final. She looked at Ron. "Also, Weasley. I want to play chess with you."

"Eh?"

"What?" Hermione said.

"I want to see if those points awarded in first year were for genuine skill." Daphne stepped forward, took Ron's wrist in a firm grip, and began to walk. "We'll help you spy on Lyra and Potter later."

"Ron!" Hermione admonished.

Ron looked back at Hermione, helpless, and allowed himself to be towed. "Ah… uh…?"

"Ah! Wait up!" Tracey hurried after them.

Millicent turned without further comment and headed in the direction of Crabbe and Goyle, who were still lingering near the carriages. Pansy and Hermione remained on the pavement. Both watched the various departures with identical expressions of irritation.

"Idiots," they said, at the same moment.

They started, then turned the looks on each other.

Hermione exhaled through her nose. "…I guess we'll just sort it out as we go along."

"Yeah, sure." Pansy's mouth twisted. "Just don't get us caught, Mu… Granger."

"Same to you, Pug Face."

"I—!" Pansy's hand flew to her nose. "I am not a pug face!"

"Keep telling yourself that." Hermione adjusted her bag and started after Harry and Lyra. Pansy stared after her for one furious second, then stomped in pursuit, still covering her nose.

---

Hayden's Creatures occupied a crooked little shopfront halfway down the high street, its windows crowded with moving shapes and its door propped open so that the smell of clean straw, warm fur, and something faintly sweet drifted onto the pavement. Inside, the light was softer than the street. Pens and cages lined the walls in uneven rows. A cluster of tiny, luminous moths circled a hanging lamp near the ceiling. Somewhere deeper in the shop a creature chirruped, low and content, and another answered it.

Lyra stopped in front of a low, enchanted pen whose sides shimmered faintly to keep its occupants from bouncing free. Inside, a dozen puffskeins—round, soft, and the color of fresh cream—tumbled over one another like living cotton. Several had already piled themselves against the near wall in a hopeful heap.

"Huh," Harry said. "I've never seen these."

"They're puffskeins. Or poffles." Lyra rested her hands on the edge of the pen. "Native to Great Britain, but they're exported everywhere as pets. Cute, omnivorous, and they breed like mad."

A few of the creatures pressed forward in a single fluffy mass and extended long pink tongues to scoop food from a shallow bowl. They ate with eager, unselfconscious focus. Harry's mouth curved, small and unguarded. Lyra watched him, then lifted her chin.

"Go on. You can touch them. They're harmless. Unless you're scared of little puffs."

He looked at her, raised an eyebrow, and slid his hand over the barrier. The puffskeins converged at once, bumping against his fingers, climbing one another to reach him, their bodies warm and impossibly soft. One settled in his palm and vibrated faintly. He smiled.

"They are cute."

"Heh. Well, aren't you cute. Cuddling up to them," she teased. Harry looked over at her.

"Wouldn't you like to?"

"I…" She hesitated. "I mean, it's not as if I could buy any of them. Well, I could, I could buy all of them, but how would I keep them? There's no pleasure to be had in just having them and getting to-"

"You're overthinking it. It's a date, isn't it?" He nodded toward the pen. "Go on. Pet them. I won't tell a soul."

She made a small, skeptical sound, but she reached in. Several puffskeins immediately abandoned Harry's hand in favor of hers. They pressed against her wrists, climbed her sleeves, and settled against her chest when she gathered them closer. Her shoulders loosened. One hand rose, almost without her noticing, to stroke the nearest soft back.

"Aww…"

The sound was quiet. Harry's head tilted.

"…Was that a giggle?"

"Huh? N-no!" She set the creatures down at once. They bounced, unoffended, and resumed their pile.

"Sure sounded like a giggle," Harry teased. Lyra scowled.

"I do not giggle."

"If you say so."

"I do."

"But that doesn't make it so."

"When I do, it does."

He only smirked. She huffed, turned, and crossed to the next pen before he could answer. Inside, several dark, mole-like creatures with long snouts and clever paws were busy excavating a carefully prepared patch of soil.

"Nifflers. They're like giant moles. They dig, and they search for precious metals and stones."

Harry came to stand beside her, admiring the little industrious creatures. "They're brilliant."

"And so cute and cuddly and—" She caught herself. "Ahem. Useful for mining and such."

Harry smiled gently.

"I hope we get to learn about them in Care of Magical Creatures."

"Honestly, why are we learning about skrewts?" Lyra's nose wrinkled. "Hagrid exposes us to the most dangerous things he can find that aren't even any good!"

"Hey. He is a great teacher. When everything comes together," Harry defended his oldest friend easily.

She snorted. Harry hesitated, then continued, quieter.

"And his first lesson wasn't great because…"

He stopped. Lyra's hands had tightened on the edge of the pen.

"…Because of me," she said. "I know." She exhaled. "I did apologize for Buckbeak. He was… He was a magnificent animal, and… And I didn't mean for that to happen."

"I know," Harry said, "But it hurt Hagrid. And he's my friend."

"I know," Lyra murmured, "I just… I wrote my father that I was fine. Really... But my father insisted, and…" She shifted, one hand rising to grip her opposite arm.

"I do like a number of the classes. Anything that doesn't have to do with flobberworms or blast-ended skrewts. He knows a lot, even if he can be… Well… Hagrid."

Harry's smile returned, smaller. "Yeah."

He held a Galleon out over the pen. A niffler surfaced, took the coin with delicate paws, sniffed it thoroughly, and then dove back into the soil to bury it. The earth closed over it as if it had never been disturbed.

"Wow. It's like it can swim through the earth."

Lyra watched the place where the niffler had vanished.

"Yeah."

After the nifflers, they moved farther along the row of pens. Most were occupied by small, bright things—jarveys arguing in a corner cage, a pair of kneazles washing their faces with exaggerated dignity. Near the back wall sat a lower enclosure with a soft earthen floor and a single dark burrow mouth at its center. Lyra leaned forward, curious.

"What's in here, I wonder…"

A broad green head emerged from the burrow, scales catching the shop light. The snake was thick through the middle, longer than either of them was tall, and it regarded them with calm, unblinking interest. Lyra made a sharp, involuntary sound and seized Harry's arm with both hands, pressing herself against his side.

The snake's tongue flicked once. Its voice, when it came, was a low, deliberate hiss that only Harry understood.

Speaker. Do you have a rat? I would like a rat, please.

Harry answered in the same tongue, the words sliding out of him without thought.

I can get you one.

He turned toward the counter.

"Sir? Uh, you have a rat?" The shopkeeper—a broad, auburn-haired man with kind eyes and sleeves rolled to the elbows—had already noticed the exchange. He grinned, unbothered by Harry's use of Parseltone, flicked his wand, and levitated a plump brown rat out of a covered basket. It floated across the shop and settled into Harry's free hand. Harry dropped it gently into the pen. The snake struck once, clean and precise, and began to swallow.

Lyra made a small, distressed noise against his shoulder. Harry felt her grip tighten. He grimaced, searching for something useful to say while the snake finished its meal.

"I can talk to them," he said, quieter. "Snakes. Always could."

"I know that! I was there when you did!" Lyra hissed, clutching harder. Harry mentally groped for somewhere to go, to calm her down... Then hit upon an old memory.

"When I was little, at the zoo, there was one in a tank. I didn't mean to, but I told it the glass was gone and it got out. Scared everyone. I didn't really understand it then."

Lyra did not loosen her hold. Her eyes stayed fixed on the pen. The snake, having finished, lifted its head again and addressed Harry directly.

Thank you. That was good. Will you scratch my head? I will not bite you. I promise.

Harry glanced at Lyra, then back at the snake. Will you not bite my friend, either?

I will not.

"It's all right," Harry told her. "He won't hurt you. I promise."

He reached into the pen and ran his fingers lightly over the smooth scales behind the snake's head. The creature hissed, low and pleased, and leaned into the touch. Lyra watched, still tense, but she did not pull him backward.

"There are snakes all over the Slytherin common room," he said. "And you summoned one. At the dueling club."

"That doesn't mean I like them," she muttered. Her voice was thin. "I just… I know how."

Harry started to withdraw his hand, ready to steer them both toward the door, when Lyra moved. Slowly, as if the air itself might object, she extended her free hand into the pen. Her fingers hovered, then settled, light and uncertain, against the snake's head beside his. The creature hissed again, content, and held still under both of them.

"It feels… strange," she said. "But not terrible."

Harry smiled, small. "Yeah. I actually like them."

"You killed a giant one trying to eat you!"

"Well. I don't hold that against all snakes."

She pulled her hand back after a moment, still visibly unsettled, and wiped her fingers once against her skirt. The snake lifted its head toward Harry.

Thank you, Speaker. I like to talk to those who understand. Will you come back?

I will, Harry promised.

A small, unmistakable growl sounded between them. Harry glanced at her. She flushed.

"Was… that your stomach?"

"No. It was obviously one of the creatures here." She straightened, releasing his arm at last. "But I am hungry, so let's get a move on, Potter."

"That just didn't sound like any creature I've heard of—"

"Who is the magical creature expert, you or me?" She was already herding him toward the door, one hand light against his sleeve, the other still faintly trembling.

"Heh. Guess it's you, then."

The pleased color returned to her face despite everything. "Yes. I am."

They stepped back onto the street. Behind the corner of the next building, two heads appeared in careful succession. Hermione stared after the retreating pair, mouth slightly open.

"It's… I… When exactly did you figure out she—?"

"Liked him?" Pansy did not look away from the street. "Pretty much the moment they met, really."

Hermione was quiet for a moment. "…I feel stupid."

"Good. You should feel that way."

"At least I do feel that way rather than pretending I'm right all the time!"

"Hello kettle, it's pot, you're black."

"Ugh, you're impossible." Hermione adjusted her bag and started forward. "Come on, come on."

They followed at a discreet distance as Harry and Lyra turned toward the pink-fronted shop at the end of the lane. Madam Puddifoot's windows were already fogged with warmth.

 

[TDR]

Soooo I got another one.

Click to shrink...

Octavia Malfoy leaned back in her chair with a soft sigh, her hands slipping up to rub her temples in annoyance as she looked down over her notes spread out over the table.

Like everyone else in Slytherin at the moment she was trying to figure out who the supposed heir was. Not that she cared about Filch's cat, but the warning was worrying. While most of the other pure bloods thought it meant whoever was doing this was a hero to their supremacy she was less invested in the belief.

Growing up she was made quite aware that her father had wanted a son, and that her mother was subjected quite a lot to more attempts at that. Not that she seemed to mind much, though Octavia was surprised she hadn't wound up with a sibling after her first year here. Her parents had probably been going at it like rabbits the whole semester.

Eww.

The problem was that her parents were some of the odd ones out. Not in trying for a second child but in that there were only the two of them. Many other families had two or three witches to one wizard, well save the Weasley but for fucks sake seven girls and a single boy. That woman terrified her.

The number of witches to wizards was currently at around four or five witches to each wizard and starting a school like Hogwarts right at the age when most people started thinking about that had to be some sort of plot.

Octavia was not spoiled for choice, but she had a better chance than Crabbe and Goyle. The pair of them could easily be mistaken for men if not looked at close enough. Their options would be severely limited.

Which is why she thought this Heir to Slytherin was stupid. There already were not enough magical males and taking out two of them and a ghost already was going to cause all sorts of issues.

Honestly how had they taken out a ghost? She would need to ask if she ever figured out who the hell it was.

The current popular theory was Potter. He was a parseltongue after all, something a heir to Slytherin would need to be.

Adding to that was it seemed he had gotten annoyed with the firstie for all the photos he took, and the other boy hadn't even bothered to that him for stopping the snake that Octavia had lost control of during their duel.

Honestly that had been embarrassing and her Godmother had drilled her in that spell for hours afterwards until she could cast a small summon like that in her sleep.

Sanguinius Snape was terrifying when her anger was directed at Octavia. Still while strict, the woman knew her stuff. Octavia was only as good in potions as she was thanks to her godmothers tutoring.

Octavia however didn't think it was Potter at all. He was too much a white knight. To eager too try and help others. Sickening really, though Octavia knew she had cocked up their first meeting and her pride and ego had kept her from apologizing and kept her doubling down on trying to one up him.

What she really wanted to do was ruffle his hair or drag him off some where private to show him why she was clearly superior to all the other girls fawning over him.

Octavia tensed slapping her cheeks with her hands. Down girl, Potter didn't even like her at worst, and didn't acknowledge her as anything other than another student in a House he didn't like at best. It would take some sort of skilled trickery or cleverness to change that.

Or just more luck than she had ever had before.

Still she did let her mind wander a bit to how good he looked in the Quiddich uniform, and he was only seventeen same as her, what would he look like in a few years when he finished growing, or in his twenties at graduation.....

The sound of heavy footsteps interrupted her daydreaming and made Octavia look back as Crabbe and Goyle waddled up.

She almost wished that these two had been allowed to go home for the holiday, just so she wouldn't have them hovering around her all the time.

"And where have you two been?" Octavia huffed, glad for their absence but not willing to go easy on her supposed bodyguard and muscle.

"The loo." Crabbe grunted, honestly more words than she expected though Octavia simply sighed going back to her notes.

"Both of you at the same time?"

"There's a bloody thing out there petrifying people, better to go in numbers." Goyle offered.

Octavia nodded at the logic,though also was now on guard. She hadn't even known Goyle knew the word petrifying, and the logic of the two going together was higher than these two's usual ideas. Not to say they were absolute buffoons. Goyle oddly had a head for Magical History, or she simply memorized everything Binns said, one of the other, and Crabbe was a fair hand at herbology, not as good as Nicole Longbottom was turning out to be, but higher marks than most.

Still the wording and everything put her on edge, Goyle didn't swear, it was something Octavia was pretty sure was beaten into her while younger.

"Well hear any one else come up with any interesting theories on who this heir is?"Octavia asked off hand, tossing her pale blonde hair back over her shoulder again starting to write something out on another page.

"Nothing more than usual. Lotta people saying it's Potter, couple saying you knew who it was."Crabbe offered.

The girl was far more wordy than usual. Though what was going on? Were they charmed? No that wouldn't change how they spoke. An illusion? No the twins tried that the other day to sneak in here and the Common room defenses easily caught them before they made it fully through the door.

"That rumor is still going around? If I knew who it was I wouldn't still be trying to figure it out!" Octavia snapped gesturing to the pile, though she was gageing their response.

It had to be someone under the effects of Polyjuice. Her godmother had been complaining about expensive ingredients going missing, though she blamed Lockheart. Stars with as many witches who hung on that simpletons every word, had he wanted in a generation over half the wizarding world would be related to him.

"What have you got?" Crabbe asked leaning over Octavia's shoulder looking at the paperwork. "Bloody ell that's a lot of suspects."

Why was she surprised, Crabbe knew this list was being made. So who were these two really. Another Slytherin trying to figure out what Octavia knew? A couple of Ravenclaws seeking knowledge?

Wait.

Octavia jotted something down and kept talking.

"The prime suspect is Potter of course..." She noted the pair of them flinch... no way... it couldn't be. Surely Granger wouldn't break the rules and neither Potter or Measlyy were skilled enough in potions... "Though most suspect a first year since it just started this year, though there is also the chance it is some one older who found something."

Octavia offered the notebook back to Goyle. It was a simple rumor she had heard, that she knew Crabbe and Goyle had heard about Potter, though she had misspelled one word in particular.

"Parseltongue, is spelled Parseltongue, not parseltounge." Goyle offered.

Octavia sighed and rubbed her temples.

"Weasley is a bad influence on you Granger." Octavia sighed turning in her seat to glare up at the two who swallowed had stepping back.

"Damnit, you blew it."Crabbe snapped at Goyle.

"Oh please, you both are terrible at this. You're Gryffindors after all. What even made you think you could get away with this, let alone risk using polyjuice potion, that's something even experts still mess up and the effects can be ….."

Octavia blinked realizing something and reached up grabbing both of them by the ties they wore yanking them closer to her own glowering face.

"Where is Potter!?"

"Umm bit of an issue …." Crabbe started.

"What happened Weasley!?" Octavia snarled, she was going to turn both of these fools into rats to feed to the owls in the rookery if something marred the face of her Harry.

"Ahhh bit of an accident." Crabbe offered.

"What....."

"Seems that the hair we got from Marvin Bulstrode was... not in fact from Marvin Bulstrode, but his cat." Goyle muttered.

"You turned Potter into a Cat?!" Octavia snarled.

"Not fully." Crabbe offered. "More like a kinda cat bloke...he's still mostly human."

Countless things ran through Octavia's mind at that point, but everything settled on on thing. She was going to go and see Potter in this state. She was going to pet Potter like this. And if he purred she was going to drop dead right then and there at the sheer level of adorable that had to be.

"You are going to take me to Potter and I will see if we can fix this before any one finds out."Octavia stated in a low tone that brooked no argument." Otherwise I will need to get Professor Snape or take him to the hospital wing at which point what you two idiots did will come out unless Dr. Pomfrey is feeling very generous."

The two glance to each other then back to Octavia with a wince.

"Fine Malfoy...but why the bloody ell are you offering to help?" Crabbe demanded.

Because I must pet the Potter cat and see how soft his fur is and how cute he has to be you idiot.

"Because there are bigger issues than some stupid rivalry between Houses at the moment." Octavia said instead, pulling out her wand and gesturing, gathering all her books and papers together and pulling them into her bag. "Lets go."

The two disguised Gryffindors led the Slytherin out of the Slytherin common room with the air of people going to a funeral, not realizing that Octavia's inner monologe was just one big excited squee.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Chapter 7

---
Madam Puddifoot's sat at the end of the lane, its windows already fogged from within and its pink paint bright against the greys, browns and reds of the surrounding buildings. The bell over the door gave a tuneful tinkle as Harry and Lyra stepped inside. The shop was exactly as cramped and frilled as Harry had heard: bows on every available surface, lace-edged napkins, china sugar bowls shaped like hearts, and round tables pushed so close together that Madam Puddifoot herself had to turn sideways to pass between them. Most of the tables were occupied by pairs of students leaning across cups of tea or cocoa, hands joined, a few of them kissing with almost comical determination.

Harry's shoulders tightened. Lyra's loosened. Madam Puddifoot emerged from behind the counter at once, round-faced and beaming, her apron as pink as the walls.

"Why hello, Miss Malfoy! And, by Merlin—is that Harry Potter?"

Conversation across the shop dropped. Heads turned. Whispers started, quick and low, and more than one pair of eyes fixed on their joined hands. Harry felt the attention settle on him like a weight. This was the part Sirius had tried to prepare him for… But nothing ever could.

Lyra's smile was small and composed. "Yes. It's nice to see you again, Madam. Private booth, please. Quickly."

"Of course!"

Madam Puddifoot guided them along the perimeter of the tables, past several stares that did not quite manage to look away in time, and drew back a pair of heavy pink curtains. The booth beyond was no less frilled than the rest of the shop. A single candle burned at the center of the tiny table; its flame shaped itself, with every flicker, into a small and persistent heart. They sat. Madam Puddifoot set two menus between them, beamed, winked once, and let the curtains fall. The sound of the shop outside vanished as if a door had closed.

Harry exhaled, low.

"Not keen on all that attention," Lyra said. It was not quite a question.

"Just… well." He shrugged. Lyra hummed.

"You're fine at Quidditch matches."

"Well." He shifted, trying to recover the ease he had managed in the pet shop. "I don't have to keep track of as many things doing that."

"Heh. And it is more fun."

"Well, it's why we both do it, isn't it?"

She chuckled, short and genuine. "Yes. And this place is… a bit much. I came here as a child because I loved the sweets. My father would treat me every time he had spare time. He didn't like the décor. Thought it was beneath us. But…" A small, wistful smile touched her mouth. "He still took me. Every time we came here, it was nice."

Harry nodded, slowly. His feelings about Lucius Malfoy were a bit too complicated for this situation, so he settled on just saying, "I'm glad."

"Come on, Potter." She tilted her head. "Didn't your guardians take you anywhere nice growing up? When you begged for sweets?"

The question landed harder than she could have known. Harry's jaw tightened, his fists clenched a bit.

"…No."

Lyra stared at him. "Not even once?"

"It's… it doesn't matter."

"What, you don't want to talk about it?"

"No. No, I do not."

For a moment he saw it clearly: her learning about the cupboard, the hand-me-downs, the years of being told he was lucky to have anything at all. The idea of her mocking him was unpleasant. The idea of her pitying him felt even worse. He didn't know which he was more afraid of.

Lyra was quiet. The candle flame wavered between them, still stubbornly heart-shaped. Then she nodded once, small and careful, and looked down at the menu as if the conversation had simply reached its natural end.

"All right. So. What do you want to order?"

Harry felt his shoulders unclench. He shrugged.

"I don't know. You've been here before. You pick."

"Ugh," Lyra grunted, "You're supposed to take the lead."

"I did bring us here," He pointed out. Lyra snorted.

"Yes, and…?"

Harry managed to not roll his eyes, just as Sirius instructed. Focus on the essentials.

"…How's the treacle tart?"

"Excellent. So's the hot cocoa and butterbeer."

"And honey lemon cakes for you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Works for me."

Silence settled between them, broken only by the soft hiss of the heart-shaped flame. Lyra studied him over the top of her menu.

"…You don't know how to order, do you?"

Harry's smile was wry. "No."

She sighed, tapped the chosen items on both menus with the tip of her finger, and watched as the parchment folded itself—neat, precise, and entirely without her needing to touch it again—into a pair of small origami cranes. They rose from the table and fluttered through the gap in the curtains toward the counter. Lyra's gaze followed them until they were gone.

"This place how you learned how to do that?" Harry asked.

"Yes."

"Can… you teach me how to fold like that?"

A small smile returned to her face. "Of course. After the cakes arrive. You'll need both hands free."

---

Hermione and Pansy stepped into Madam Puddifoot's a few minutes after Harry and Lyra. The bell tinkled. Hermione's nose wrinkled at once—at the bows, the heart-shaped sugar bowls, the pairs of students leaning across tables with joined hands. The air smelled of sugar and warm cocoa and something faintly floral that clung to the lace.

Madam Puddifoot appeared before they had taken three steps, beaming.

"Hello, dearies! Waiting on your boyfriends?"

"Er, no," Hermione said.

Madam Puddifoot's eyebrow rose. Hermione felt heat climb her neck.

"Oh! Um, we're not—we're not together!"

"Yes, honest, Madam," Pansy added quickly.

Madam Puddifoot chuckled. "Never crossed my mind, you two together. Ha!"

"Good," Pansy muttered.

"Wait," Hermione said, vaguely offended. "What's that supposed to mean—?"

"We're just joining our friends over…" Pansy pointed toward a table farther in, where a familiar shock of Weasley red was visible above the frills. "There."

"Of course, of course!"

Madam Puddifoot led them through the narrow gaps between tables. Hermione made a face at a floating cherub statue of pure, aggressive pink. Pansy raised an eyebrow.

"Do you have to have an issue with everything?"

"It's just so… girly."

"Ugh. What is it with you Muggle-borns and hating on girly things? Did they outlaw being feminine in the Muggle world? Well, given your appearance—"

"Watch it." Hermione's voice sharpened. "Besides, Penelope Clearwater got that modeling contract with Sleekeazy's."

Pansy hummed thoughtfully.

"Okay, she's actually quite attractive, she's Muggle-born… so what's your problem?"

Hermione's hair frizzed in her anger.

"You—!"

"Here we are, dears!" Madam Puddifoot announced.

Ron, Daphne, and Tracey had claimed a larger table near the wall. Ron and Daphne sat opposite each other, a chessboard between them, both leaning forward with the focused stillness of people who had forgotten the rest of the world existed. Tracey sat at the end, sipping something pale and nibbling a biscuit, looking profoundly bored.

Hermione and Pansy took the empty seats on either side of her.

"Ron," Hermione said. "Where did Harry and Malfoy go?"

Ron moved his knight without looking up. Hermione scowled.

"Ron!"

"Hm? Oh, sorry, Hermione. Uh…" He glanced away from the game for a moment. "Tracey?"

Tracey swallowed some pastry and sighed.

"He and Lyra went into that private booth." Tracey nodded toward a curtained alcove a few tables away. "We can't peek because of the charms, but nobody's thrown anything and the Virgin Alarm hasn't gone off yet, so they're probably fine."

Hermione blinked. "Virgin Alarm?"

"So there's nothing going past heavy petting here, obviously, Granger," Pansy sniffed.

Hermione's scowl deepened. "I know what—! Ugh, fine, whatever. We'll just order some food then." She looked at Ron again. A plate of sandwiches sat untouched beside his elbow. "Ron? Are you all right?"

"Checkmate," Ron said, "in three moves."

Daphne studied the board carefully. After a moment she nodded.

"Agreed. Another game?"
Ron grinned, bright and unguarded. "Yes, please!"

Hermione stared. "Wha… you've just been playing chess with her all this time?"

"All this time," Tracey sighed. Ron turned to grin at his best female friend.

"She's brilliant, Hermione! Toughest challenge I've had in a while. She even beat me once. It was amazing!"

"Yes," Daphne said. Her gaze on Ron was steady and, for the first time Hermione could remember, warm. "He is quite a challenge."

Alarm bells rang, loud and immediate, in Hermione's head. Daphne Greengrass did not look warm. Ever. Pansy seemed to have the same realization.

"Oh, bloody hell, Daphne," Pansy said, face scrunching up in disgust. "No."

"Hm? No to what?" Daphne asked, entirely too innocent.

Tracey sighed. "No to Weasley."

Ron looked up, puzzled. "Hm? No to me what?"

"I agree," Hermione said. "No."

Daphne's expression did not change. "I don't recall needing your permission to do anything, ladies." She turned the same steady look back on Ron. The Weasley's ears went pink.

"Do what?" He asked.

"You… never mind." Hermione waved a hand, flustered, almost desperate. "It's just normal, silly girly things—!"

"Want to snog me, Ron?" Daphne asked, as blunt as a dragon ramming through a wall.

Ron's jaw dropped as his face burned almost as red as his hair.

"Eh?!"

"Daphne!" Tracey and Pansy said together, outraged.

"Ron!" Hermione said, equally outraged. Ron winced.

"What did I do?!"

Madam Puddifoot, passing by with a tray, tutted.

"My dear lad, this is why you should only pursue one witch at a time. I know the Weasley reputation, but no one wizard can keep them all happy!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

The plates had been cleared. The honey lemon cakes were gone, and the last of the treacle tart had left a faint sweetness on the table. The heart-shaped flame still burned between them, smaller now. Harry had both hands free, as promised, but the origami lesson had paused when he started talking about something else entirely.

"In a fighter jet," he said, leaning forward, "you have to control the air moving around you and your engine power to pull it off. The Cobra. You pitch the nose up hard, almost vertical, so the plane stalls for a second and the air brakes against the whole body. Then you drop the nose and push the engines, and you're pointed the other way before the other pilot can react. It's not a turn. It's more like stopping in the air and letting them fly past you."

His hands moved as he spoke, sketching the pitch and the stall in the space above the table. The enthusiasm was unguarded..

Lyra hummed. "Sounds like the Donovan Brake in Quidditch. Pull back, cut your speed to almost nothing to let someone fly past, and then push forward after." She tilted her head. "Muggles really do that sort of thing with aircraft?"

"Yeah. At hundreds of miles an hour."

"You got to see it?"

"When I was nine. Dudley was obsessed with this show called Wings, and there was an airshow at the local airport. My… usual babysitter was ill, so they had to take me." He paused. The memory was still sharp: the roar of the crowd, the way the ground seemed to shake, Vernon complaining about the noise and the cost of the tickets he had not wanted to buy. Harry had not cared. "I got to see fighter jets flying. It was amazing."

Lyra's mouth curved, small and genuine. "I've seen a few airplanes flying over the manor. I always wondered how they flew. Father says they're so loud and cumbersome compared to brooms, but… they go so fast."

"Yeah."

She rested her chin on one hand, studying him across the tiny table. "Well. You're going to have to show off a few moves from these Muggle airplanes. When we go flying."

Harry looked at her across the small table. The heart-shaped flame had burned low. Outside the curtains, the shop continued its low murmur of voices and china.

"I'd love to," he said. "How about now?"

Lyra's mouth curved. "Now sounds good."

He rose and offered his hand. For a moment she smiled, small and unguarded. Then she schooled her features into something sterner and took it. Harry kept the easy expression on his face. Behind it, his thoughts moved faster than he liked.

She had not sneered once when he mentioned Muggle airplanes. She had not questioned him knowing her favorite dessert. She liked talking about Quidditch. She had not badmouthed his friends once.

What the hell is wrong with her?

What the hell is wrong with me? He was enjoying being around Malfoy. Talking to her. Holding her hand.

He must have been doing something wrong. Very wrong.

Still. He trusted Sirius. Sirius knew what he was doing. Right?

The curtains parted at a touch of Lyra's wand. Sound returned all at once, and with it a loud, overlapping argument. Harry and Lyra both stopped.

Hermione had one of Ron's arms. Daphne Greengrass had the other. They were pulling in opposite directions as if he were a wishbone that might snap. Both witches looked furious. Ron looked baffled and faintly terrified. Pansy was trying to haul Daphne backward by the shoulder. Tracey stood a pace away, mortified, watching with the expression of someone who had already decided she wanted no part of whatever this was.

"Let—him—go—!" Hermione said through her teeth.

"No. Why should I?"

"He doesn't like it!"

"Let him decide!"

Harry stared. "Ron? What's going on?"

"How should I know?!" Ron yelped.

"Idiot!" Hermione snapped.

"Stop yelling at me!" Ron shouted.

"Stop yelling at him!" Daphne growled.

"Stop yelling at us!" Hermione bellowed.

"Stop yelling period!" Pansy shouted over all of them.

"Harry, help!" Ron cried.

Lyra's grip on Harry's hand tightened. She did not attempt to mediate. She simply turned, pulled him with her, and headed for the door at a pace that was just short of a run.

"Wha—but—!"

"HARRYYY!" Ron cried.

"I think they can sort that out themselves," she said, and did not slow until the bell had tinkled behind them and the cool air of the street replaced the sugar-sweet warmth of the shop.

Harry winced.

Sorry Ron… Forgive me… And thank you for your sacrifice! I'll never forget it!

"HARRYYY-!"

The door slammed shut, the bell tinkled.

---

They kept walking until the noise of the high street fell behind them and the crooked silhouette of the Shrieking Shack rose at the edge of the village, its boards pale and weathered against the darkening trees. The wind had picked up. It tugged at Lyra's ponytail and cut through the thin fabric of Harry's jumper. His pulse was still elevated from the walk and the argument. Lyra's grip on his hand had not loosened; her fingers were tight enough that he could feel the tension running up her arm. They stopped at the the leaning fence surrounding the house, both of them breathing hard, the cold air sharp in their lungs.

"What… was that?" Lyra managed. A strand of hair had come loose and stuck to her cheek. She did not brush it away.

"We could have stayed. To find out."

"Ugh." She turned on him, color high across her cheekbones and throat. "I wanted a nice date. None of your crazy—crazy Potter stuff."

"Hey, this isn't my fault."

"Your stupid best friends were in some weird fight. Over Weasley."

"All of your stupid friends were involved too."

"Well, I—Daphne has always been barmy."

"How does that make it better?"

"W-well… your friends were involved."

"So?"

They had drawn close without noticing. The fence rail pressed against Harry's back. Their noses nearly touched. Both of them were flushed, still catching their breath, the heat of the argument sitting between them like something physical. Harry registered, distantly and with some alarm, that she was very pretty when she was that angry—the sharp line of her mouth, the way her eyes had gone bright, the faint tremor in the hand still locked with his. The observation did not help.

A sharp crack split the air between them. Dobby appeared in a bright, hopeful pop, beaming up at Harry from roughly waist height, ears quivering with excitement.

"Harry Potter, sir!"

"Gah!" Lyra jerked backward. Her free hand flew to her wand before she caught herself.

Harry drew a breath. The cold helped. Sirius's voice rose, unhelpful and familiar: Calm down. Her anger can be endured. Don't get angry. He managed a smile that felt steadier than it had any right to. "Hey, Dobby. You're right on time."

"Thank you, Mister Harry Potter, sir! But Dobby thought Dobby was late and—" The elf's large eyes shifted. He stared at Lyra, the brightness dimming into wariness. "Missus Malfoy."

"…Dobby?" Her voice had gone thin.

Dobby edged closer to Harry and lowered his voice. It was still loud enough for both of them to hear. "Harry Potter, sir… that is daughter of bad former master."

"I know."

"She could also be bad-bad."

Harry looked at Lyra. She had gone very still, shoulders drawn in, one hand still half-raised as if she had forgotten it. The wind moved her hair across her face. "…As bad as her father?"

She flinched. It was small, but he saw it. Dobby shook his head, ears drooping.

"No. Missus Daughter Malfoy not as bad. Never make Dobby punish himself. Still mean. With words."

"Dobby, I…" Lyra's mouth tightened. She glanced at Harry, then back at the elf, and something in her expression shifted—less defensive, more careful. "Are you doing well?"

Dobby remained suspicious, large eyes narrowed. "Dobby fine. Being paid."

"Really?" Her tone was carefully polite, the edges of it softened. "The other elves must not be happy about that."

"Dobby not care! Harry Potter, sir, free Dobby! Dobby free!"

A small smile touched Lyra's mouth, unexpected and genuine. "Yes. You are."

"Yeah." Harry rested a hand lightly on the elf's shoulder. The fabric of Dobby's strange sweater was rough under his fingers. "Dobby? I know she's been mean, but… she's trying to be better."

"I am doing better," Lyra said. The huff lacked its usual force. She was still flushed, but the anger had thinned into something closer to embarrassment.

"Hmm." Dobby studied her for a long moment. "If Harry Potter, sir, says so…"

"Can you get us our brooms, Dobby? Please?"

"Dobby can!"

"Thank you, Dobby."

The elf vanished with another crack. The wind filled the space he left. Lyra raised an eyebrow, though the gesture felt less sharp than before.

"He's your elf now, then?"

"He's free. He can do what he wants."

"He seems very devoted to you."

Harry shrugged. The cold was settling into his shoulders. "Yeah, well. I freed him from getting kicked around in public by your father."

Color rose in her cheeks again, deeper this time. When she spoke, her voice was quieter, and she did not quite meet his eyes.

"For what it's worth… my mother taught me that abusing a house-elf is beneath us. They're bound to us. Hurting them just makes you look weak. Insecure. If you treat your bound servant like that, you look bad." She hesitated, fingers tightening once on the fence rail. "My father was very angry at the time, but… it doesn't excuse his actions."

Harry could have answered. The words were there—about the basilisk, about how her own father had unleashed that monster in a school that had contained her as well as everyone else, about the cost of his anger. The sincerity in her voice stopped them. He watched the way she held herself, small and braced, as if she expected the conversation to turn on her at any moment.

"I'm not fond of acting out in public, either," she added. The admission seemed to cost her. "Of looking foolish. That's why I reacted so badly to… that scene."

"…I get it." He shifted his weight. The fence creaked. "Sorry."

She sighed. Some of the tension left her shoulders. "It's not your fault… I suspect it's one of Daphne's strange little pranks."

"What? Her fancying Ron?" Harry rose to the defense of his best friend easily. "He's great!"

"You'll forgive me if I don't have the same taste in men as she does." The sniff was automatic, but it lacked heat.

A fragment of Sirius's advice surfaced, unbidden. Harry smiled, easy and deliberate, and watched the effect land.

"No. You like men like me, right?"

He expected anger. Denial. Some sharp retreat into the familiar lines they had drawn years ago.

She only stared at him. Her face was red to the ears. The wind moved between them, cold and ordinary, and she said nothing at all.

Harry felt his face grow warm.

Another crack. Dobby reappeared, two brooms clutched carefully in his hands, the Firebolt and Lyra's own Nimbus 2001 held with the reverence of someone transporting fragile treasure.

"Dobby get brooms!"

"…Thank you, Dobby."

"Mister Harry Potter, sir, is welcome!" The elf beamed, then glanced once more at Lyra, still wary but no longer hostile, before vanishing again.

The wind moved between them, colder now that the sun had dropped behind the trees. Lyra's hand was still in his. The brooms rested against Harry's other arm, the Firebolt's polish catching what remained of the light.

"So," she said. Her voice had steadied, though the color had not entirely left her face. "You wanted to show me some moves."

"…Yeah."

She lifted her chin, the old sharpness returning at the edges. "Well. Let's get on with your showing off, Potter."

A small smile touched his mouth. "I can do that."

He offered her broom. She took it, and for a moment neither of them moved to mount. The Shrieking Shack creaked behind them. Somewhere farther down the lane, a carriage rattled past and faded. Harry swung a leg over the Firebolt. Lyra followed a second later, settling onto her Nimbus with her usual grace.

They took to the air.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Honestly I can't help but wonder about how things would go with a Fem!Snape who loved James and hated/cared for Lily.

At Godric's Hollow...

Hagrid: "Snape... Hand him over."

Snape: *Holding Harry* "... He's all alone now-"

Hagrid: "It's Dumbledore's orders. Hand him over."

Sirius: *just arrives* "Oh God, wha-SNAPE!"

*They pull their wands on eachother*

Sirius: "Let him go!"

Snape: "You can't have him!"

Sirius: "Lily and James trusted him to me-!"

Snape: "YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM! The Dark Lord murdered his parents-I-I can't just-!"

Sirius: "Like Hell am I leaving him with a Death Eater!"

Hagrid: "DUMBLEDORE TOLD ME TO TAKE HIM!"

Sirius: "I'm his godfather!"

Snape: "Lily was my best friend!"

Hagrid: "Hand him over, now! Dumbledore's orders! Period!"

Dumbledore Apparates in.

Dumbledore: "What's going on?"

Snape: "... Headmaster, I-"

Sirius: "I'm his godfather, Dumbledore! For pity's sake, he's my responsibility-!"

Dumbledore: "I understand, Sirius... But the safest place for Harry is not here. It's with his mother's family."

Sirius: "They're Muggles!"

Snape: "You can't mean Petunia! She's a Muggle, the worst kind!"

Dumbledore: "It's the only place safe for him. If you care one wit about Harry's life, about Lily and James... You will turn him over."

A tense silence... Then... Snape very slowly hands the baby over to Hagrid.

Dumbledore: "Sirius... Peter-"

Sirius: "Either he broke under torture, or he betrayed us... Either way, I have to hunt him down."

Dumbledore: "Sirius, wait-!"

Sirius: "Hagrid, take the motorcycle! It's Harry's when he's old enough!

Sirius dashes off and Apparates away. Snape grits her teeth.

Dumbledore sighs.

Snape: "... Headmaster, please, I can't just-"

Dumbledore: "You will. You need to stay away, Severa. It's the best protection Harry can get right now." He turns to Hagrid "I'll meet you at the address, Hagrid."

Hagrid: "Yessir." He puts Harry in the sidecar and flies off

Severa: "... It's all my fault... It's all my fault..."

Dumbledore: "Severa-"

Severa: "I told him the prophecy... It's all my fault... I begged him not to... I begged him and he..." She can't look at the house.

Dumbledore: "... Then you're going to do everything possible to make up for this, Severa. Everything you can."

Severa: "... Yes Headmaster..."