Daphne

"You know what would cheer you up?" Tracey said out of the blue. "Going to the Quidditch match next Saturday."

"What for?" Oleandra sighed morosely. "We've been booted out of the team—last thing I want is to cheer for Malfoy and his two idiots…"

Oleandra had become depressed after her twin sister had been forced to flee from the school. Everything had been going so well— Dumbledore and Umbridge had been out of the picture, the RC (Temp) club had had its first meeting, her relationship with Tracey had been progressing, kind of…

And then Umbridge had come back; except Dumbledore hadn't returned along with her. And two weeks later, Oleandra was only now just beginning to realize just how much the old man had shielded his students from the harshness of the world outside the school.

On the bright side, the RC (Temp) club was doing well. Hermione had fully mastered the Protean Charm that she had first demonstrated the previous year, so now the group no longer had problems meeting up. Hermione had enchanted some fake Galleons to be linked to the master coin in Harry's possession; whenever he altered the numerals on his coin, which represented the date and time of meetings, all of the other coins would be changed in turn, and they would all know the date of the next meeting.

Oleandra was decently pleased with the group's progress, but her heart just wasn't in it. For the sake of their parents taken hostage, Daphne had never wanted Oleandra to participate in any anti-Voldemort activities in the first place, so Oleandra felt that having fun on top of that would just be like spitting even more in her face.

As for Tracey, she was having mixed feelings about this whole situation. She had known Daphne for much longer than she had known Oleandra… but she was in love with Oleandra. On one hand, she was glad to be rid of the third wheel, but on the other, she felt guilty about feeling this way about her other friend! There was just no winning at this game, so Tracey decided that the least she could do was cheer up Oleandra.

"Come on, it'll be fun," Tracey coaxed her. "I promise you won't regret it!"

Oleandra, who'd been slumped over her homework at her desk, rolled over to face Tracey, and opened one eye to look at her. She wasn't lying, so there had to be something to it…

"You might even be surprised," Tracey continued, her lips curling upwards into a smile. "So, what'll it be?"

"Oh, fine, then," Oleandra said, rolling her eyes. "I'll go, if only to see Malfoy get squashed without our help."

"That's the spirit!" Tracey cheered.

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Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, Daphne was having a different sort of pain; not of the spiritual variety, but of the physical: her feet hurt. Two weeks of walking up and down hills, through bogs and swamps, had taken its toll on her walking appendages. And to make matters worse, Daphne was also very short for her true age. Her strides being proportional to the length of her legs, she was naturally taking many more steps than Ginny by comparison!

On the hygiene side of things, since Daphne wasn't allowed to use magic, she could only clean herself by bathing in streams or by using the moistened towel and soap that Ginny would conjure for her. Other than that, Ginny could clean and repair her shoes and clothes for her, but without being able to take a bath, Daphne still felt dirty all the time.

Every so often, Ginny would Disapparate away to acquire some more supplies from Muggle shops, but that would only leave Daphne feeling more useless than ever.

In short, Daphne was absolutely miserable. She missed her sisters, she missed her parents, she missed Hogwarts, she missed warm meals, she missed comfortable beds, and she missed…

!!

Daphne froze, as she had just heard screams of pain and cries for help in the distance. She looked around wildly, but there was no one in her immediate vicinity; she was still very much in the middle of nowhere, in the mountainous area where Ginny had left her.

Feeling slightly unnerved, Daphne took one last glance at her surroundings to check for danger, before closing her eyes to concentrate on listening to the voice of nature, in an attempt to obtain more information about her surroundings.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of people, plants and trees could talk, and they would warn each other of danger by emitting high frequency sounds. And below her feet, there existed an enormous system of roots and mushrooms, that could communicate information faster than it would travel above ground.

Since her transformation, Daphne had gained the ability to listen to plants' chatter, but tuning out the useless background noise to concentrate on the plants' voices was still something that she was not very good at. And more often than not, the information shared by the natural world would be completely useless to her as a Hogwarts student…

But in this sort of situation, the plants' information could prove invaluable to her!

Daphne tried listening in more closely; something enormous was assaulting a nearby group of trees; ashes and oaks, by the sound of it. The local Wood Nymphs had been routed; they were fleeing and hiding and desperately calling for help.

Daphne hesitated to answer their call; Ginny had Disapparated somewhere and told her to stay put. Furthermore, helping Nymphs that she didn't know really was none of her business, and besides, she wasn't allowed to use magic…

"No," Daphne reprimanded herself sternly. "I'm supposed to be the rational one."

But a chorus of contrary voices in her head immediately protested. Her slight inferiority complex towards her twin sister, her frustration towards Ginny, who had basically ordered her to stay like a good dog… And most of all, the inner voice from her Wood Nymph side telling her to act.

Ordinarily, Daphne would have ignored these voices, but she had lost contact with the people who usually grounded her in humanity. As much as she would have liked to believe that she was still the same person as she'd been before, the Bloodline Atavism Potion's transformations were more than skin-deep.

The more one's bloodline origin differed from a human's, a mammalian lifeform, the greater the changes to one's original mental state. For example…

The Japanese Wind Weasel bloodline:

Astoria had changed quite a lot physically; her hair had turned flaming red, her nails and teeth had become pointier and sharper, her pupils had turned into horizontal slits. However, her personality hadn't really changed, since Kamaitachi were warm-blooded mammals that weren't too far apart from humanity, relatively speaking.

The Basilisk Bloodline:

The physical changes were especially evident in Voldemort, even though he had taken the potion towards the end of his teenage years, when his body had become less malleable. His eyes had turned red instead of yellow, his skin had turned pale and waxlike, and his nose had just fallen off his face. His personality had changed even more; he had become even colder and crueller. After all, snakes are cold-blooded reptilians; their way of thinking could be considered completely alien, when compared to a human's.

And lastly… the Wood Nymph bloodline:

From the outside, Daphne's physical changes might have seemed like the least noticeable and the most beneficial out of the three, but that was the greatest misconception one could have made. Wood Nymphs might look like beautiful green-haired women, but that was merely an evolutionary adaptation meant to evoke pity from their greatest predators (human wood cutters) in order to avoid combat. Wood Nymphs are closer to plants than they are to animals, making them as far removed from humanity as any creature could have possibly been; their only allegiances are to the trees and forests in which they make their homes.

Unconsciously, Daphne had begun to consider her family as her forest; the bloodline alteration hadn't changed her love for her family members, but it had altered the dynamics of her relationship with them. Wood Nymphs are tree guardians, which is why Daphne was subconsciously and increasingly feeling like it was her responsibility to guard and protect them.

Furthermore, even among the multitude of kinds of Wood Nymphs, Daphne's bloodline was special. Having the blood of the yew meant that she would outlive her family by thousands of years, at the very least. As for how she viewed the rest of humanity… she was slowly slipping towards total apathy. One day, she would be left all alone, and that day would mark her very last as a human being.