32 Hard Knocks
Daphne had overall been very disappointed with the day so far. Harry had not been at breakfast that morning and her first classes had been absent of him as well. If the rumors were correct, he had not been around at all today. Walking into her first class after lunch, she sighed. As she entered the Defense classroom, she was caught up in her musings until she looked up to see Harry Potter eating a sandwich and staring absentmindedly out the window. She was frozen in her place and only started moving after her brain manually overrode her muscles to finally move. Uncharacteristically she took a seat towards the front desks. After sitting down, she peaked her eyes up to see if Harry had noticed her coming in. But he was still in his own world, looking for it beyond the classroom. Whatever little discouragement she felt was quickly overshadowed by how stoic and peaceful Harry looked staring out that window. What was a quick glance turned into a long look, as she noted how out of place Harry appeared. The small mile and gentle light that fell on Harry made him seem halcyonic, if not other worldly. A visage of something truly happy among the diatribe of a dull, lifeless, and dusty classroom.
"Oh, hello there," Harry says, his eyes finally breaking from their gaze. "Hey," is all Daphne can muster up. "Daphne Greengrass, right?" he says, taking a moment to squint his eyes and think. "Yes, H-Professor Potter," he smiles and then returns to his stare out the window, this time closing his eyes as if to cat nap in the sun's rays. Daphne could only watch as Harry nearly fell out of his seat when someone yelled, "Professor Potter!" Daphne turned her head to see Professor McGonagall at the door with Professor Moody behind her. Alastor Moody let out a chuckle as he hobbled through. "Potter, already sleeping on the job?" he barked out. Harry replied with an endearing grin, "Hadn't shut my eyes for a minute, Ms. Greengrass here will vouch for me." Daphne then saw all eyes turn to her and she nodded to Professor McGonagall. "It is still unbecoming of a Professor to fall asleep when students are around," Professor McGonagall said before giving Harry one last stare at the door. Harry only replied with a little smile.
"Do you want to just observe today?" Moody said coyly, but Harry had seen through him. "Just observe today, nothing I want to get involved in," Harry replied. Moody grumbled back, "So be it." Harry smirked at Moody's little tantrum at not getting his way.
Students had started to file into the classroom. Tracey came over and scooted herself right into Daphne and gave her a wiggle of her eyebrows. Daphne could only roll her eyes and look away while Tracey egged on, "So you got here early? How was that?" Daphne fired back without any real power, "It was fine until you arrived." Tracey could only give her a look. "Front row today for Ms. Greegrass-Who-Usually-Sits-In-The-Back, I wonder, I wonder…" Daphne turned to hit Tracey only to see Harry staring at the two of them. Daphne froze in shock and backed herself to a more normal and composed state. Harry stares for several seconds before offering an amused smirk. As Daphne and Tracey try to regain their composure at the situation, Daniel walks in.
A cold silence befell the classroom as Daphne watched Harry's reactions, or lack thereof, closely. Harry looked entirely nonplussed and seemed to be watching something out the window with great fascination. Daphne gave a quick look but could only spy some frolicking birds that seemed to have made a nest on the tower across the way. Daphne turned her head back and saw that Daniel was now flanked by a huffing and puffing Hermione and Ron. The three stood gobsmacked as if waiting for the world to move around them.
"Are you three just gonna stand there all day?" Moody barked out, shaking them from their stupor. With their tails between their legs, they found seats quickly near the edge of class. Moody waited not a second longer before barking at the rest of class, "Not here to gawk at pretty boy Potter over here." A gruff toss of the shoulder back indicated that he meant the older Potter. "No, no. See unlike some of you students, Potter here took his studies very seriously, spared no effort or detail. I think some of us here… have a troubling tendency to not take this class seriously," Moody finished ominously.
With a bang of his staff, the desks and chairs in the classroom disappeared sending all the students to the floor with an unflattering fall. Daphne would have been furious, but Moody allowed no time for such trivial matters. "Today, all of you are going to have a fun exercise," Moody cackled, alleviating even the slowest of minds of the notion that today would be any manner of fun. Moody sent a wicked smile Harry's way and Daphne saw the roll of the eyes and groan of laziness Harry emitted. Moody turned back to them and Daphne was horrified: Moody was smiling, enthusiastically.
"Much to Mr. Potter's chagrin, today you will all be trying to land a single spell on his body. If you manage to do so, you will be excused from taking your end of year exams," Moody announced to a wave of chatter and excited eyes. Harry rolled his eyes, got up and whispered to Moody, who whispered something back, but no one in the room could make it out. Their discrete back and forth went on, until Harry let slip a massive sigh with a look of reluctant acceptance. With a crack of his neck and a shake of his arms, Harry took his place at the center of the classroom and looked around him to the twenty odd students fanned out around him.
Daphne surveyed the classroom and the eager looks on most of her classmates' faces was the first sign that this would not end well for them. When Harry's eyes swept over hers, Daphne saw the lackadaisical air about Harry was flush with aplomb. She nervously took a step backwards, perhaps the only one to do so in the classroom. In the background, she could hear Moody start counting down. The numbers ticked down and Daphne could barely hear the noises of eager anticipation in her classmates over the anxious nervousness and worry that had rooted her to the ground. At two she could see Weasley and Nott give their respective housemates a wicked smile. At one, Daphne saw Daniel and Hermione already preparing a series of wand movements. And at zero, the cacophony of students chants and rainbow of spells funneled towards Harry at the center.
A vibrant light blue dome coalesced from the ether around Harry without a word or gesture. The dome swallowed the spells whole, even as students let fly powerful and well practiced spells. But Daphne hadn't even moved a muscle. She already knew.
Harry looked unimpressed and hadn't moved a muscle. Harry flicked out his finger and then with a burst of acceleration the light blue dome rushed outwards at the stunned students. A confused look formed for a few fractions of a second on most of their faces before the blue dome caught them like a sucker punch and -pushed and dragged their bodies into the wall behind them. Daphne had at least winced before she was blown backwards with a loud thump. Daphne, afterall, had already known, Harry was going to win this contest.
Daphne took several breaths before she could find the energy to overcome the aches and pains that racked her body after being slammed into the wall. She was the fourth to rise by her count, seeing that Draco had somehow found his way to his feet only to bend over and take a few breaths. Daniel was slumped against the desk but didn't seem too worse for wear with Ron curled next to him, surrounded by the books of the bookcase he had crashed into. She saw Hermione had made her way to her feet, likely sporting some unpleasant looking bruises. Moody seemed to be shaking his head at the unfortunate state of his class. Harry was already on his way out, perturbed by having to do something.
"I can still go on," Daniel said defiantly. Daphne wondered if his bravado was to impress Moody or himself. Harry stopped and gave a large sigh before looking at Moody. Moody gave Harry some snark, "I think you have one who still hasn't yielded the challenge." Harry rolled his eyes and looked around to the rest of the standing students. Daphne gripped her wand and stepped forward. She found no support from her other Slytherins as Draco was quick to throw up his hands and return to the floor, only offering her a raised eyebrow. Hermione stepped forward with the same defiant look that Daniel wore.
Harry made no movements but gave a slight inclination of his head to them, taking a step back into a readied stance. Daniel was the first to strike, flowing two Stupefys into one another with a magnificent flourish. The blue spells sailed towards Harry who deftly pivoted his head and body to dodge them with ease. Daniel took a large breath, trying to encourage his battered body, and swung again with three Stupefys. The strain caused his spells to fly wide and Harry made no movements as they soared past him. Daphne could see the slightest of impressed eyebrow raises at Daniel's tenacity, but Harry made quick work of Daniel sending a silent spell towards him that caused Daniel to fly back into Ron's slumped body. A frightened gulp caught Daphne as she slowly started to panic as Harry turned his attention towards her and Hermione. Daphne shook as she stepped back slowly, lacking the confidence she had precious moments before, while Harry took more aggressive steps towards her.
"Stupefy! Expelliarmus! Protego!" Hermione could be heard shouting out from behind Harry. Daphne could see the red and blue spells hurtling towards Harry's unguarded back while a shimmering pale blue shield formed in front of Hermione. Without even a look back, Harry precisely flicked his wand hand back and deflected both spells away at greater speeds. Daphne watched in astonishment as the deflected spells arced upwards and curved back towards Hermione, lobbing over her shield to strike down like a missile on top of Hermione's head before she even had a chance to react. Daphne's eyes came back to Harry to see a small smirk on his face; his eyes that had never left her alight with a playful mirth. Daphne braced herself and prepared to mount her defense.
Only the defense never came as she tripped over her own two feet and tumbled backwards onto her bum with all the grace of a newborn fawn. Her wand came tumbling out of her hand as she fumbled her landing. She scrambles for a moment to find her wand only to see it has rolled away. A flick of her head back to Harry puts any further plans out of her head as Harry is now mere paces away and has her dead to rights. Her humiliation burns as she looks up to Harry and sees a very amused smirk on his face and then for him to cheerfully offer her, "Cute try." Harry turns away from her and puts his hands behind his back and now walks out the classroom with a skip in his step and a jaunty smile on his face, leaving the now bruised and disgraced Seventh years behind him. Moody gives a good laugh that would have grated on Daphne's nerves had she already not been burning with embarrassment at her first encounter with Harry. She buries her head in her lap to try and hide how red and unbecome her face is. But her vanity could be given a break as the humiliation she suffered was likewise suffered by all the class.
Daphne was giving Tracey the cold shoulder as Tracey regaled Astoria with a much embellished recount of the events in the Defense classroom. Astoria lapped it all up and was soon nagging Daphne about her great "Fall Before Her Lover". Daphne had spent, perhaps, longer than necessary considering whether sororicide was legal in certain situations. Astoria and Tracey had laughed and laughed at Daphne's furrowing brow and reddening cheeks as she was forced to give her take on what had happened.
"So Harry is like, what, a dueling ace?" Astoria asks, finally coming down from her hysterics. Daphne gives a sigh, "I thought that was obvious years ago." Astoria rolls her eyes, "Newsflash sister, I was not here years ago." Daphne blushes a bit at her own forgetfulness, "Perhaps an understatement. I get the distinct feeling that he was toying with us, feeling us out."
"You're right, he definitely was."
Daphne turns around to find Malfoy has come up behind her, obviously listening in on their conversation. "And what would you know about that?" Daphne shoots towards him. Draco gives her an incredulous look as if she disappointed him and then just offers, "You think a man as skilled as Potter would be left to sit around at home by Dumbledore? Especially when there are enemies at large." Draco dropped that bomb on Daphne and wheeled on the soles of his immaculate shoes and walked off, leaving Daphne to dwell on his words. She looks up to the High Table and sees that Harry is sitting on the left hand side of Dumbledore and watches them talk discreetly. Daphne watches longer as Dumbledore gives an amused smirk every one in a while Harry, rarely if at all, cracks a smile.
It was no secret that Draco, his family, and most of Slytherin had been clandestine supporters if not outright soldiers under Voldemort. But she had never really taken the time to think that the other side had been doing much of the same. So many years out of the public's eye for a generational prodigy was odd, Daphne could admit that. Her careful observation of Harry and then Draco's words imbued a strength into the fact that she had known for a long time: that she and Harry practically existed on different planes of existence. She had to start working fast to close the divide, if she had any hope of satisfying her curiosities about the man, much less her desires.
While Daphne was contemplating and plotting, across the Great Hall Hermione was stuck between a moody Ron and Daniel. Ever since Defense class, Daniel and Ron had been in a moody funk, with Harry manifesting in a pensive brooding and Ron with a sense of ruffled pride. "Absolutely loony that Moody would put us up to that," Ron muttered between some angry bites of food. "Well I thought it was a very good learning experience," Hermione countered. "Yeah, nothing like getting made to look like a first year in front of the whole class,' Ron grunted back.
Hermione flushed a little at that. It had been a rather humiliating experience that she and Daniel had experienced. That much was clear. But she had managed to see something that she couldn't explain, the arcs the reflected spells had come back at her at. As far as she knew, spells traveled like vectors through space. Bending and twisting was possible with some spells, but only with a massive amount of control and exertion. But Stupefy and Expelliarmus were not supposed to be able to be de-vectorized like that. She had attempted to ask Moody about it after class only for him to laugh, "You're a bright girl, figure it out on your own. He did."
Those last two words had stuck with and plagued her since she left the Defense classroom. Her thoughts raced as she tried to come up with some explanation for it all. She massaged her temples as she thought it over and over. Then Daniel let out a long sigh which caused Hermione to turn her head and look over at Daniel, who was forlornly looking into the ceiling. "What's the matter Daniel?" Hermione asked, concerned with how broody Daniel was becoming.
"I don't know what I thought, or even why I thought it," Daniel says, breaking his silence and turning to Hermione. "But a part of me today thought that just maybe, just maybe Harry would walk in and look at me with a smile. That he'd stroll over and give me a brotherly hug," Daniel says wistfully. He shocks himself out of his idyllic trance, "But I knew that wasn't going to happen. But I still wish it did." Daniel slumped into a slouch on the table and Hermione reached over and gave her best friend a good rub on the back. She was reminded that her fascination with an enigmatic man was a spot of soreness for her best friend. A dour mood soon overcame her as well.
A/N Apologies for those who are getting a notification, I am just uploading the beta'd chapter now.
I am working on Ch 3...slowly. The state of the world and the hectic nature of things has caused me to take other time to focus on some career related things and to focus on some political activism avenues.
I plan on getting in it done...sometime, but no promises as of yet.
Hope you all are keeping well, for American readers please go register and vote, and remember Black Lives Matter.
