Chapter 20

Suddenly, the little girl moved, and before she could register what was happening, Daphne was up and running for the door, almost tripping over her robes in her haste.

Lady Sunny watched her daughter disappear from sight, hoping something good was going to happen, and praying she hadn't just made a huge mistake.

Daphne ran through the halls of Greengrass manor. She needed to find Harry. She needed to.

Eventually, she opened a door to an unused room and found him, sitting at a desk, reading something. Her throat constricted, but she choked out, "Harry."

"Miss Gree—" Harry looked up, and stopped, clearly startled. "Daphne? What's wrong? You look terrible."

She ran at him and threw her arms around him, clinging to him.

"Please," she said, desperation weighing every syllable, "Please don't leave me to that man. He's horrible! I told him about wanting to explore the world, and he laughed at me! He said that wasn't what witches should do. He said when I was married to him, I was going to stay at home, host his parties, and raise his children, and that was all I was for. Then I got angry, and did some accidental magic that turned his skin blue, and he slapped me! He said that I would learn to be obedient, or he'd never even let me step out of the house."

She looked up into his face. It was hard, and he wasn't smiling.

"Please Harry," she repeated, "I don't want to be a prisoner for the rest of my life."

Something flickered in his eyes, and she thought she saw his face soften a little.

Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, he spoke. "Daphne… living by my side would be very dangerous."

"I don't care!" She gripped him harder.

"You know you wouldn't be the only witch in my life."

"I don't care!" she repeated, "I trust you. I'll do anything you want, just don't let him have me… please…"

They sat in silence for a moment more before Harry extracted himself from her, and walked to the door. He paused.

"Excuse me for a moment. I'll be back soon."

Daphne sat in Harry's office.

She'd been sat here for hours now.

The thoughts just wouldn't stop. Again and again her mind tortured her with horrible images of Harry running away from the manor in disgust, or changing his mind, or her parents asking for things Harry wouldn't accept, or changing their own minds, or deciding that Lord Slughorn was the only real choice, or Harry not being able to afford her bride price, or the family magics not accepting the contract, or, or, or…

She'd tried drawing inwards into her occlumency training, but that just made the images running through her head all the more vivid and unbearable.

Somewhere, far off in the manor, a clock struck late.

She was getting tired now. All her energy had been burned in worrying. She looked around the room, perhaps for the first time since she'd walked in.

Why did Harry have an office in the manor anyway?

Come to think of it, she never did get an answer on what business Harry had with Father.

Daphne stood on shaky legs and walked over to the desk.

She ran her fingers, light as a feather, along the desk's edge — across the letters and papers strewn across its surface.

She looked down at a pile of sealed letters in the out-tray. That was odd. The top letter, the only one she could see, was wax sealed with a crest that looked familiar.

It was a shield with a snake on it.

It looked like the crest of Slytherin she'd learned in heraldry lessons.

Why would Harry be sealing his letters with the crest of Slytherin? There had been that man that had visited a month ago, but Harry didn't look anything like him, and the man had been too young to be his father.

Something niggled at the back of her mind, but she was too exhausted to pin it down.

She looked around for a seal stamp, but couldn't see one, and she wasn't about to start rifling through draws.

Daphne looked down at the letter again. The seal really was small, and the crest so intricate.

She turned her hand over and laid the back of one finger over the seal. Her finger didn't cover the width of the seal, but it wasn't far off.

A signet ring?

Strange.

"Ahem."

Daphne spun around, red faced, heart leaping into her throat, and saw the one she'd been waiting for.

Harry stood in the doorway, casual, smiling, and in his hand he waved a very ornate looking parchment.

"All signed and official," the boy said, as though he'd just got back from shopping in the Alley. "We shall become Lord and Lady in our fifth year at Hogwarts, some eight years from now."

Daphne covered the distance between them in a heartbeat and hugged him as tight as she could. "Thank you, Harry. Thank you, thank you, thank you," she cried, doing her best to hold back the rapidly forming tears.

For a long time she held him, Harry easily supporting her weight, until, eventually, she let go, wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe, and looked at him, impishly.

"So," she began after a quick sniff, "am I now to learn what Lady I am going to be?"

Her new betrothed grinned. "I thought you'd have figured that out already by your snooping on my desk."

She felt blood flushing her cheeks. "No. I just saw the Slytherin crest."

Harry brought his hand up and wiggled his fingers in front of her face. A ring stood out on them.

Her eyes widened. "Seriously, Harry! You're the heir of Slytherin?" she shouted.

"Yep, well… actually I'm a bit better then that. I hope you can take the limelight because you're going to be in it."

"What do you mean, a bit better? And… how can we become Lord and Lady Slytherin if there's already a Lord Slytherin?"

"You remember what I said in our first conversation in the garden? Things in the wizarding world are not always what they seem."

Daphne remembered. She was unlikely to ever forget.

"Now we're betrothed, there are quite a few family secrets I refuse to keep you in the dark about. Your parents are downstairs, and we're going to have a long chat about a bunch of different things."

"Will that include what you've been doing with Father?"

"Yes. Although I've no doubt you'd be able to piece that together from tomorrow's Daily Prophet."

Daphne looked into his green eyes again. Somehow, Merlin only knew how, she'd just dodged a killing curse, and found the philosophers stone. She was going to be Lady Slytherin, and married to someone who, in the short time she'd known him, had shown himself to be strong willed, understanding, mature, and impossibly magically powerful.

She'd gone through hell, and came out into the sunlight on the other side.

"Lead on, my future Lord Slytherin?" she suggested.

"After you, my future Lady Slytherin."

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