Hermione Granger: Gamer, Monster [Outside POV Gamer SI in Harry Potter]

[Swordchucks]

The crowd was getting restless, and the shared tension was starting to make Harry Potter nervous. Up until then, his day had been quite literally magical, culminating with an enchanted boat ride across a presumably enchanted lake to a definitely enchanted castle. It was like he was living a dream come true.

Even the ghosts, which most of the waiting first year students had very nearly freaked out over, hadn't been able to bring him down. It was only after that, when they were all stuck standing in a much less enchanted hallway and waiting for some sort of 'sorting' to happen, that he started to worry.

"What are we waiting on?" a voice, young and high, asked curiously.

"Someone's missing," Ron Weasley answered. Harry had met him on the train and he seemed safe enough. He hadn't shown any obvious signs of insanity or been carrying visible weapons, at least. That counted as safe in Harry's view. "They've got half the prefects looking for her."

"Oh," the voice answered. "That sucks, then."

Something about the voice made hairs on the back of Harry's neck, and it was with a growing sense of dread that he turned his eyes away from Ron to look at the speaker. He could hear his blood rushing in his ears as he fought the rising urge to panic.

There, standing in the hallway as peaceful as could be, was her.

"Hello, Harry," she chirped at his attention. She smiled at him, showing her wide smile and her teeth - a little too big in a way that would have been cute if he hadn't understood what a complete monster she was.

It took a long moment before he could find his voice.

"You're real." It was something of an accusation, really. A curse on reality itself for allowing a thing to be true which very much should not have been.

The thing wearing the face of an eleven-year-old girl smiled even wider. "Of course I am. I always knew we'd end up going to Hogwarts together. I have been looking forward to it."

"You know her, Harry?" Ron asked curiously as he looked between the pair. Harry was certain that anyone could tell he was shaking at that moment.

"I thought you were a nightmare," he mumbled, but it was certainly loud enough for her to pick up on.

Her lips turned down in what would have been an adorable pout on someone less horrible. "Is this about the gnomes? I told you not to show them any mercy so you have only yourself to bla-"

"Yes, it's about the bloody gnomes. And the orcs. And the goblins. And all of the other times you almost got me killed." Harry managed to whisper and scream at the same time. Somehow.

"You only almost died," she agreed, smiling again as though that made everything alright. "You're still alive, right?"

"That's not the point," he hissed. "Daisy, you-"

"Hermione," she interjected happily.

"What?" Her choice of words had broken his rant before it could really get started.

"Hermione Granger. It's my real name. Daisy was… a bit of a joke." The girl-shaped monster actually blushed at the admission.

"Hermione Granger?" one of the other students cut in. "You're the one they've been looking for!"

It was Daisy's - no, Hermione's - turn to look confused. "Oh, right, well, I guess it took longer than I expected to get my new hat."

Somehow, in the minute or two that Harry had been talking to her, he hadn't noticed the sparkling headpiece she was wearing. It looked like a hawk studded with rhinestones with a big blue gem in the middle of it. He wanted to dismiss it as a piece of garish costume jewelry, but he'd learned not to dismiss any of Daisy's insanity.

At that point, they were all distracted by the adults who had been informed that Hermione Granger had reappeared and the search could be called off. Harry kept casting her glances, trying to figure out what was going on.

For years, Daisy - Hermione - would appear in his life and cause chaos. He had convinced himself, at some point, that she was imaginary. She'd never appeared when there was anyone with him, and the things they did together were always in weird fever dreams that she called 'dungeons'. She also wouldn't take 'no' for an answer when it came to dragging him through said 'dungeons', either.

He'd done his best to research games like the kinds of things she showed him, but the closest he had come were old computer games that had only cursory similarities. There was the 'party' and the 'stats' and a few of the other concepts, but that was about it. Well, that and the monsters.

He shuddered at the memory of the first time he'd faced a monster. The game had called it a goblin, though it was very different from the goblins he had met in Diagon Alley. It had been armed with a stick which it had used to stab Harry with several times before he managed to kill it with the dagger Daisy had helpfully handed him.

That had set the tone for the next few years and while his stats had gone up, he'd never really noticed anything come of it. Well, nothing dramatic. His cousin didn't bother him as much once his strength score had raised to the point that he could lift the bigger boy, but he'd never developed visible muscles or anything. Other than that, life had just kind of gone along.

But now she was here. She was real and he had seen other people notice her and react to her. She was real which meant that all of the horrors she had subjected him to were also real.

That, or his insanity had reached a fever pitch and he could no longer tell fantasy from reality. In that case, he was screwed either way, so he chose to ignore the possibility.

The group shifted into the great hall as he was lost in thought, and while it looked impressive, he was barely aware of the awesome feats of magic around him as he struggled to wrap his head around the fact that Daisy - Hermione - was a real person.

He snapped out of his semi-trance when the first name was called and watched as people were sorted to their… dinner tables? He had missed most of the explanation of what was going on in his shock.

"Granger, Hermione!" the old witch called and Daisy tromped up to a stool and put on the ratty old hat. On top of her gaudy crown-thing. He didn't realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out - and even then he wasn't sure why he had been holding his breath in the first place.

Nothing happened. The hat didn't react to her in any way as it sat on her head and slowly murmurs started to spread through the hallway.

"Can I just pick a house?" Daisy asked after what felt like forever.

"No, Miss Granger," the older witch overseeing the sorting said, though Harry could tell that she was just as confused as everyone else. "The Sorting Hat chooses houses for everyone."

"Huh…" she said and Harry stiffened. Anyone else might have thought she was giving up on the idea, but he knew better. He'd seen that same expression on her face entirely too many times. "So, what if the Hat picked in a different way?"

Before anyone thought to stop her - because why would they think to stop her, really, they didn't know what Harry knew - she jumped to her feet and had the hat in her hand. Her arm disappeared into its depths far beyond what should have been possible, and then she smiled and stood up straight.

"I have the power!" she yelled at the top of her lungs which caused several people to jump back and at least one person to scream in fright. As she yelled, she yanked her arm back to reveal that her hand was no longer empty. Instead, she held the hilt of a glittering golden sword which she attempted to draw out of the hat in one fluid motion.

Attempted being the watchword there. The sword was longer than her arms would allow her to pull out in a single motion and she ended up flicking the hat halfway across the great hall to land on the head of a particularly startled older girl.

That would have been more relevant if anyone had been watching the hat after the glittering candlelight revealed the magnificent blade with the name Gryffindor inscribed down the side.

"Miss Granger!" the older witch practically screamed.

"Distraction!" Daisy intoned and tossed something small and furry to the ground in front of her. "Eeek! Is that a rat?" she yelled, though her tone was too flat for that to be at all genuine.

The sword in her hands swung around and down to the presumed rat. The only mercy was that she seemed to be aiming to swat it with the flat of the blade and Harry rather hated that he could tell that at a glance. The last time Daisy had decided he needed to learn to fight with a sword had been painful lesson on top of painful lesson, but at least part of it had stuck with him.

There was a dull 'whump' noise, though some of the action was blocked by the milling students in front of him.

"Oh, no! The rat seems to have transformed into noted war hero Peter Petigrew! That is the man who everyone believes was murdered by the notorious traitor Sirius Black after he betrayed Harry Potter's parents to Voldemort!" Again, her acting was terrible. She sounded more like she was reading a script than making genuine statements.

"Let me help you up, Mister Petigrew!" Harry saw her head dip below the line of the crowd and then there was a loud ripping noise. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to rip the sleeve off your jacket. And your shirt. But oh no, what is this? The Dark Mark? Does this mean that it was you that betrayed the Potters this whole time while Sirius Black was shipped off to prison without a trial?"

"Bloody hell?" Ron muttered beside him. Harry looked at the boy and shrugged helplessly. The redhead looked just as confused as the rest of the hall and didn't have the benefit of Harry's long exposure to Daisy to protect his own sanity.

"You get used to it," Harry said, though even he wasn't sure if that was meant as a comforting statement or a threat.

Spoiler: Notes

The drafts for this cover nine chapters and about 17k words. It was also how I responded to the urge to write a Self-insert Gamer fic, and I think this came out pretty well. It's a little absurd because overpowered Gamer MCs are absurd.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Harry, guess what today is?"

Harry's shoulders slumped as he recognized that tone in Daisy's voice. While she had become a chaotic presence in his daily life, she hadn't actually pulled her into any specific danger in two blissful months. The professors were the ones that had to deal with her antics, but that wasn't his problem. Usually.

"Halloween?" he asked gently. He knew what she was getting at, but he couldn't bring himself to play into her insanity directly. He had known this was coming, on some level, all day. He had even gone so far as to attempt to avoid the Great Hall for that evening's feast, but he'd gotten hungry. He was intending to just pop in and grab a bite to eat before turning in early. He really wasn't in a feasting mood, in any case, and avoiding Daisy was just an extra reason.

He was certain he had gotten away with it, too, but Daisy had come up behind him in the hallway after he made his escape and ruined his hopes of a quiet night.

"That's right, and what is Halloween?" she asked leadingly.

"The anniversary of my parent's deaths?" he rejoined in an even tone. She'd told him that ages ago, though he hadn't entirely believed her at the time. He'd almost convinced himself that she was imaginary up until he started Hogwarts, after all. The fact that his parents had really died on Halloween was less of a surprise than it was an annoyance.

"Yes, it is that, but what else happened on Halloween?" Her smile was huge as she went over the familiar questions. It really was the same thing every year.

"It's the anniversary of the first time I killed someone." When he was younger, he'd doubted her on that one even more than what she'd said about his parents dying. Now that he was in the wizarding world and learned about what had happened to his parents - and Voldemort - it made a lot more sense.

What made no sense was how she'd known, even back then.

"Exactly!" she cheered and clapped, jumping up and down excitedly. The jumping made the torchlight flicker off Ravenclaw's diadem which was still perched on her head as it pretty much always was. She only took it off when she needed to hide it from the grasping hands of a Professor. "So, what do you want to kill to celebrate?"

He let out a heavy sigh. "Nothing?" It was a feeble hope that she'd let it go. She never did.

"Oh, don't be shy, let's murder something good. How about a troll? You've never killed a real troll before. I'll let you use Gryffy." The priceless relic appeared in her hands and she did a few swings at a phantom opponent with a level of almost unsettling grace. The fact she had named one of the most priceless treasures in the castle 'Gryffy' barely even registered.

"There's a troll in the castle?" he asked as his brain caught up with the situation. Daisy had a habit of revealing facts in a backwards way.

"Yep, and if you don't kill him, he'll probably mow down a bunch of first years. Probably each of them holding a tiny kitten or puppy, too." The sword hilt was thrust into his hand and he realized that he'd let her lead him far away from the Great Hall. A rancid stench hit him and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and his protest that he was also a first year student died before he could utter it.

His eyes went to Daisy who had traded her diadem for a turban she had probably stolen from Professor Quirrel at some point. "Troll… troll in the dungeons. I thought you ought to know."

Then she rolled her eyes up in a bit of comical overacting and fell face first into the floor.

He was very tempted to stab her with the sword in his hand. It probably wouldn't hurt her much, but it would feel pretty satisfying. On the other hand, it might actually annoy her, and he wasn't certain he wanted to deal with an annoyed Daisy. Happy Daisy was bad enough.

His indecision cost him the chance, however, because the stench was quickly followed around the corner of the hallway by the appearance of a hulking green mass of muscle with a gigantic club.

"This is going to suck," he groaned as he raised the sword and prepared for battle.

oOoOoOoOo

"Use the boy," a voice hissed and Harry cursed internally. He cursed Quirrel. He cursed Snape. He cursed the splitting headache that had come over him suddenly. Most of all, he cursed Hermione 'Daisy' Granger for leading him into this trap.

He hadn't wanted to get mixed up in a quest for a Philosopher's Stone - which had come entirely out of left field - and he definitely didn't want to get mixed up with whatever was going on with Quirrel. He was also painfully embarrassed that the man had gotten the drop on him as easily as he had.

As he stared at himself in the mirror, he had a fleeting image of himself surrounded by peace and quiet before the morbid curiosity about what, exactly, this Philosopher's Stone actually was started to creep in. He didn't really want the thing, but maybe a little peek would be alright?

The version of Harry in the mirror winked at him and produced a red stone that it slipped into his pocket. After that, the entire atmosphere in the room seemed to change. Daisy was there - not trapped behind the flames which she had shoved Harry through after force feeding him a potion - and her hand was in his pocket.

"Yoink!" she declared and tossed the stone up in the air before making it vanish into that magical storage space she called her 'inventory'.

"No!" Quirrel screamed while Daisy cackled. "Give me the stone!"

"Finders keepers!" she screamed and flicked her wrist at the professor. Whatever she did sent him flying back to crash into a wall.

"Daisy!" Harry yelled in a mixture of shock, relief, and annoyance.

"Harry!" she yelled back in a voice that held none of those things. "Want to kill another guy?"

"What? No!" he denied. Of course he didn't want to kill someone! Did she think he was as insane as she was?

oOoOoOoOo

"You killed the shit out of him, Harry," Daisy congratulated him a few minutes later as he stood over the smoldering pile of ashes that had once been his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

For Harry's part, he couldn't stop staring at his hand. Somehow, the touch of his hand had burned the man to death, and he wasn't sure if it was because it had been the shade of Voldemort or it had just been more of Daisy's insanity rubbing off on him.

"I didn't mean to kill him," he protested weakly.

"Of course you didn't," she agreed in a patronizing tone as she patted him on the back. "You just get these urges and people end up dead around you. I understand."

"No, really, why did that kill him?" he half-mumbled.

"Which 'him'? Quirrel was the human equivalent of one of those cheap chocolate eggs that has a hard shell but the inside is all hollow and maybe filled with goo that's probably gone bad because it was made like a year ago and kept in storage for the next Easter. One good poke might have done him in. Voldemort was probably a ghost and you know how ghost rules work."

He hated that he did know how ghost rules worked. He had been in plenty of dungeons where the ghosts were normally unbeatable unless you used some specific method to defeat them after which they just kind of melted away. He supposed that being touched by the person that originally killed them would probably count as one of those methods.

Daisy clapped her hands loudly and made a show of dusting them off. "Well, we had better get out of here before they come looking and find us standing over a corpse. That'd be awkward to explain."

Harry looked at the ashes again and while he wouldn't really call it a corpse, it was vaguely person shaped.

Daisy looped her arm around his. "Come on, let's go make ourselves an alibi. You'd think with all of the murders you commit, you'd be better at covering your tracks."

Harry's headache, which had actually been getting better with the departure of Voldemort, was suddenly back in full force. He didn't even have it in him to protest that this was only the second person he had killed - because that really didn't sound like the kind of defense a sane person would make.

Spoiler: Notes

I thought about wedging something in about the Dragon, but decided to just skip it. Daisy handled that BS off screen.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Oh no you don't!" Daisy declared and suddenly the strange creature - Dobby the house elf, he had called himself - was seized off Harry's bed by the scruff of his neck like a wayward kitten. Daisy hadn't been there a split second before.

Harry let himself relax a little because, as challenging as Daisy was, at least he understood her insanity. The little creature… not so much.

Up until the house elf had appeared, Harry had actually been having an amazing summer. No one had contacted him, but that also meant that Daisy had been leaving him alone. His family mostly ignored him, anyway, so it was just quiet. Peaceful. Relaxing.

Then the elf had showed up and started making cryptic statements and Harry's finely honed 'bullshit detection' senses had started going off. Just before the elf could do something drastic to 'protect' Harry, Daisy had appeared out of thin air and snatched him.

"We do not call the cops on people we don't want dead. Don't be a narc," Daisy admonished as she attempted to stare the elf in his bulbous eyes. Every time the little thing tried to look away, she would shake him a little and move the both of them so that he was forced to look at her again. He then looked away almost immediately and she repeated the process. "And don't worry about what your master has planned. I'll make sure that Harry Potter and everyone else worth saving survives."

Sometimes, Harry almost started to feel like Daisy was a good person. Then she had to go and say things like that. She had a bad habit of acting like most people just didn't matter.

"Daisy," Harry greeted awkwardly as the staring contest - or, rather the attempted staring contest - went on.

Daisy gave Dobby one last shake. "Go on home and don't worry about anything. I know exactly what your master intends, and I'll be making sure it doesn't cause any problems."

She placed the elf down on his feet with an almost gentle gesture and then patted him on the head. The elf looked as confused as Harry felt, but quickly popped away.

Once Dobby was gone, Daisy sighed heavily, displaying a level of empathy he wasn't accustomed to from her. "Little guy means well, but house elves are… well, it's complicated." Then she straightened up and gave him a wide small. "Anyway, ready to get the fuck out of here? It's your birthday and we should celebrate!"

The sinking feeling was back in his gut as he contemplated what, exactly, Daisy had in mind.

oOoOoOoOo

Daisy's plans threw him because they were actually somewhat normal. She had him pack all of his stuff which she promptly shoved into her inventory and then she hauled him into one of her dungeons. The place was a copy of the real world, only without any of the people or monsters. That made it a little creepy but a lot less scary than most of the ones he had been into since nothing was trying to eat him. On the other hand, inside said dungeon, she used her wand to hotwire a car and drove them all the way to Devon like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Fun fact, the popo can't tell if you're using magic in a dungeon," she declared happily as the car roared to life.

What followed next didn't rank in his list of the 'top ten most terrifying Daisy moments', but it was a contender for an honorable mention. They made it from Surrey to Devon in only a couple of hours. A sane person would have taken three. Still, despite the speed, she was actually a very proficient driver, which he figured meant it was a skill she'd been working on.

Harry noticed with some relief that the stolen car stayed in the dungeon where it wouldn't have to be explained to any authorities.

"Where are we?" he asked her now that they were walking and almost certainly near their destination. He hadn't bothered asking before because he doubted she would have told him, and it wasn't like he wouldn't have gone with her, anyway. He was always morbidly curious to find out what she was up to. It was one of his more suicidal traits, really.

"Harry!" a voice yelled from up ahead on the path and he took his eyes off Daisy to see Ron jogging in his direction. "Where have you been, mate? We were worried because you weren't responding to our letters. I almost had the twins talked into a rescue operation to make sure you were okay."

"I thought you might like to spend a bit of time with the Weasleys," Daisy admitted, giving him a small grin.

Relief flooded him because that did sound like it would be nice. It was also much tamer than he had expected - practically normal, even.

oOoOoOoOo

The rest of the summer passed pleasantly. Daisy came and went - no doubt stealing cars in another dimension to get where she needed to go or something equally absurd - while Harry played Quidditch with the Weasleys and just generally had a great, relaxing time.

He'd always wondered what it would be like to be part of a big family growing up or even just a family that cared about each other. He was pretty sure that Daisy did care about him, but she wasn't the best about expressing it. In fact, she seemed to default to murdering monsters together as her primary bonding activity, which could be fun but was mostly terrifying.

It was one such day when Harry was hanging out in the Weasley family's living room and going through his new textbooks that he had just purchased in Diagon Alley. The whole shopping trip had been a bit exciting, what with Malfoy Senior and Mr. Weasley getting into it and Gilderoy Lockhart being… well, something.

"Ginny, is this one of yours?" Daisy asked as she lifted a book with a black leather cover, golden corner protectors, and a name embossed on it that was too small for him to read from where he was sitting.

"No? How did that get in there?" the younger girl asked, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Well, then, yoink." The book vanished into Daisy's inventory. "If anyone is missing it, they can come ask me about it."

Ginny shrugged. "I guess. How did you do that disappearing thing, anyway?"

Daisy grinned widely and wiggled her fingers. "Magic!"

"Ha ha," Ginny responded in the deadpan tone of voice that only the sister of Fred and George Weasley could have perfected. "I didn't see a wand."

Daisy cocked her head to the side as though studying the younger girl. "Think of it like… a magical skill. I can't really teach you how to do that specific thing, but there's other stuff you might find cool. You're starting Hogwarts this year, right? It's best to be prepared."

Harry's blood ran cold and he got up to go find Ron. He really, really needed someone to save Ginny from Daisy without forcing him to get in the middle of it.

oOoOoOoOo

Ginny did not want to be saved, as it turned out. In fact, her enthusiasm for Daisy's training was so intense that Daisy herself seemed a little unnerved by it.

It did buy Harry some peace and quiet, at least, since Daisy's attention during her frequent visits was split between the two of them instead of just him. Ron seemed to find it all hilarious, but he'd already been smart enough to avoid making Ginny mad even before she started twirling around knives and mumbling about eviscerating orcs when she was distracted.

Eventually, the lazy summer came to an end and they were whisked back to Hogwarts for another year.

"Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall said as she came around to pass out schedules on the first morning. "You'll be pleased to note that the Board of Governors has reviewed the proposal you submitted and tentatively approved it for next year, provided a suitable instructor can be found."

That seemed to bring Daisy up short. "What, really?" Then her face broke into a wide smile. "That's wonderful."

Professor McGonagall graced her with a small smile of her own. "Your proposal was most persuasive. After reviewing it, I firmly agreed with your points, as well. Please keep up the good work."

Daisy beamed after the departing professor and Ron shared a look with Harry. Harry sighed and decided to go ahead and get it over with.

"What proposal?" he asked suspiciously.

"Oh," she turned her smile on him. It was less predatory than normal. "We start taking electives next year, and I heard that one of them was Muggle Studies. However, there's no class on wizarding culture, so I started asking around and decided to advocate for one based on what I learned."

Harry was a little lost at that thought because it sounded perfectly sane and reasonable. "That does sound like a good idea," he admitted. He had no idea what information he was missing on the world of wizards, but he was sure that there was a lot of it.

Daisy nodded enthusiastically. "This way, we'll know more about how to bring down the wizarding patriarchy from the inside when the time comes."

There it was. Harry relaxed a little as the puzzle pieces fell into place. It still sounded like it would be a good class, but at least he understood Daisy's motivations now.

Daisy caught Ginny's eye and raised a closed fist in her direction. "Viva la revolución."

Ginny smiled and returned the gesture. "Viva la revolución."

Spoiler: Notes

Entirely too busy this week. I meant to have this up yesterday, but yeah. Anyway, here you go.

 

[Swordchucks]

"What is this again?" Harry asked as he stared at the long document Daisy had put in front of him. There was a big area down at the bottom where he was supposed to sign, but he wasn't dumb enough to do so without at least skimming it and asking a few questions.

"It's a contract," Daisy said as though it should be obvious. "You're giving Professor Lockhart publishing rights to market his next book with your name included in exchange for half a percent of the gross. I could have gotten you more, but I assumed that you didn't want to be obligated to do public appearances as part of the promotion of the book. I'm getting the same deal for the stuff I'm giving him."

"I definitely don't want to do any public appearances, but why would I give him the other thing? Why would he even want it?" Harry asked, morbid curiosity again leading him down a path he probably should have avoided entirely.

"Well, you want your percentage off the gross because it's harder to manipulate that. If you try to just take a percentage of the profits - that's the net - then they can play all sorts of games where they make a ton of money in reality but on paper actually lose money. Hollywood used to do it all the time-"

"Not that. I mean why would I want to give him my name for his book? And what are you giving him, exactly?" Harry steered the conversation back to something useful as hard as he could. Daisy was bad about using tangents to baffle people, and he was rather used to having to redirect her.

"Well, I'm going to give him a tour of Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets and let him take some pictures of the basilisk after I kill it. You're mostly just letting him use your name and recount the events of tonight. We also promise to swear up and down that things happened the way they're described in the book if anyone asks afterwards so I guess you'll need to read it at some point, too. He's trying a new, gentler approach to sourcing his material on account of the fact that I'll murder him if he doesn't. Or let you. You haven't killed anyone lately, have you? Any urges I should be aware of?"

There were so many things wrong with that paragraph that Harry didn't know where to start. Well, he actually did. He had a finely honed sense for when the trouble that Daisy was brewing would bite him in the long-term or short-term, and she had mentioned 'tonight'. That reminded him of the date. "It's Halloween," he remembered.

Daisy's grin grew wide. "Yes, it's Halloween."

"What is going to try to kill me tonight?" he asked carefully. The other things she'd mentioned were bad, but Halloween was a clear and present danger to his life. It was definitely exciting, at least.

"How do you feel about spiders?"

oOoOoOoOo

"You said spiders," Harry growled as he fired yet another flame charm from his wand to keep the swarm from spreading out too much and engulfing their small group as they executed a fighting retreat away from the main nests. Combat useful flame charms were, strictly speaking, fourth year material but they were also the kind of thing he had plenty of incentive to study ahead on.

"Acromantula are a kind of spider," Professor Lockhart broke in. He was looking less wooden as time went on and he killed more of the things with the enchanted flamethrower that Daisy had produced for him. When the swarm had first attacked, he had all but frozen in terror, but he was doing much better after the second wave. As long as you ignored the fits of giggling and the obviously shaking hands. "Native to the rainforests of Borneo. One wouldn't think they would be able to breed in such numbers in this climate."

Harry was glad that Daisy had also provided the whole group with amulets enchanted with the Flame Freezing charm as the man raked the stream of fire across the horde, sending a couple of the creatures stumbling back and smoldering.

"Die!" came a scream as Ginny dropped on another of the giant spiders from above, flaming daggers in either hand.

"Does she need help?" Harry yelled. He was holding his own, but he wasn't as crazy as the redhead by any means.

"She's having fun," Daisy said as though he was silly for worrying about the younger girl. She was the sister of his best friend - well, his best normal friend - so he had to worry, right?

oOoOoOoOo

"Where were you last night, mate?" Ron asked at breakfast the next morning. Harry was tired, but not more than usual for a morning after one of Daisy's half-hearted attempts to get him killed.

He was pretty sure that Daisy didn't need to sleep and Ginny had tapped into some latent ability that let her substitute chaos for rest - much like the twins. Professor Lockhart was probably the one that came closest to commiserating with him, but the older man obviously knew charms that kept him looking his best in spite of it. Harry wondered if the man could teach him some of them. It seemed frivolous, but he had to admit there was a difference between secretly feeling like dung and having everyone around you know that you felt like dung.

"It was Halloween," he said as though it answered everything. In a way, he supposed that it did because Ron nodded knowingly and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

He didn't know if it was Daisy's explicit intention or not, but he never really dwelled on his parent's deaths. He hadn't known them, so he wasn't really able to 'miss' them. The Dursleys weren't great, but lots of families were worse, if the newspaper was anything to go by. He tried to focus on the fact that while his childhood hadn't been particularly enjoyable, it also hadn't been that terrible, either.

He just wished that she didn't keep finding crazy monsters to throw at him.

oOoOoOoOo

One of the good things about Daisy being a terrible actor was that Harry could tell when she was serious about something. That was why, when she flopped down at the table for breakfast looking pale and shaken, he was immediately concerned.

"Is everything alright?" he asked gently, trying not to spook the normally volatile girl.

"It's… yes, it's fine. It's… well, it's just Luna Lovegood."

Ron was sitting right there, as well, and hurriedly chewed the food in his mouth and swallowed before answering. That was a habit that Daisy had drilled into him during their first year, though Ron had gotten really evasive the one time Harry asked him how she'd done it.

"Luna? Always going on about made up creatures? She's barmy. but she's harmless. Nicer than my sister, at least." Ron's survival instincts kicked in at that point and he looked around for said sister, though he lucked out and she was sitting too far away to have heard.

"They aren't made up," Daisy mumbled and shuddered, her eyes focused on something in the distance that wasn't there. "Not made up at all."

Again, Harry's curiosity tempted him to ask for more information, but after a moment's consideration, he decided that sometimes he really didn't need to know.

oOoOoOoOo

"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened? Enemies of the heir beware?" someone read aloud. Harry was near the back of the crowd clustered in the hallway outside of the Great Hall. It was mid March and the school year had been relatively peaceful after Halloween. That deranged house elf had shown up a few more times, but Daisy seemed to have a sixth sense for him and had so far stopped anything stupid from happening.

"That sounds terrible," Daisy said from behind Harry. She was doing that thing where she talked to someone like it was a private conversation but spoke loudly enough so that everyone around them could hear her. In other words, she was up to something. "The Chamber of Secrets is said to house Slytherin's Monster, and the last time it was opened, a student died."

Draco Malfoy - who was Harry's rival in the sense that he was convinced he was Harry's rival and ignored the fact that Harry didn't care if he lived or died - laughed loudly. "You mudbloods had better watch out! The Heir of Slytherin will be coming for you, first. Then he will come for the blood traitors!"

"Oh, no!" Daisy interjected, though Harry picked up on her poor acting yet again. "As a beautiful and talented Muggleborn, I am very worried for my safety."

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. Whatever idiocy Daisy was up to this time, he wanted no part of it. At least she'd stopped doing that thing where she made him repeat weird phrases to the stuffed snake she had been carrying around since Christmas.

oOoOoOoOo

"Fear not," Professor Lockhart declared, his voice heavy with grim determination and glorious purpose. "I will find a way to breach the Chamber and rescue Miss Granger." Unlike Daisy, he was actually a great actor, which Harry appreciated.

Harry would have been more worried if Daisy had not explicitly mentioned something about this around Halloween. There had been a lot going on so he hadn't remembered to ask for details at the time and now he kind of wished he had. On the other hand, it was clear that Professor Lockhart had an arrangement with Daisy, and this part didn't need to involve Harry himself, so he was happy to let it just go on without him.

"Do you think she'll be alright, mate?" Ron asked worriedly.

"They'll be fine." Harry both appreciated Ron's concern and envied his innocence.

oOoOoOoOo

"Are you sure that you are going to be okay, Harry?" Daisy asked, and the genuine concern in her voice made him listen up for once. They were sharing a compartment on the train ride home, a few days after Daisy's miraculous 'rescue' from the Chamber of Secrets and their respective emotional support Weasleys had vanished to look for their brothers.

"Why wouldn't I be okay?" he asked carefully. It was important to listen to what Daisy wasn't saying as much as it was important to listen to her actual words.

"Well, it's just… you haven't killed anyone all year. I know about your," she lowered her voice like she was mentioning a secret, "urges."

"I don't have any 'urges'," he protested. "And we did kill a bunch of giant spiders."

"Well, that was months ago and those hardly count. They might have been able to scream in pain, but they were also maneaters to the core. Culling the swarm ultimately saved loads of lives, even if you just count the centaurs, so it was practically your civic duty to help kill them."

"It was fine," Harry tried. He really didn't want to have this conversation anymore, but there wasn't an easy way out of it.

"I just don't want you suffering from murder blue balls," she offered. "Want to go find Draco? He's not not on my list, and I can add him if you need a fix. We can probably make it look like an accident."

Harry took a deep breath and counted to three. The phrase 'murder blue balls' was forcibly pushed out of his mind in the process, and he hoped it never wedged itself back in there. "Being a jerk isn't a good enough reason to murder someone," he said after a moment.

Daisy pouted and crossed her arms over her chest dramatically. "It should be."

Spoiler: Notes

When I fall out of write/edit mode, I fall out hard. Ultimately, I blame Skitterdoc, but it's complicated. No promises on when the next one will hit as next week is full of audits.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Oof."

Harry recognized Daisy's voice immediately. That and the fact that she was the only person he knew that would invade his room at Privet Drive were the only reasons that he didn't jump when he heard her flopping onto his bed in the middle of the summer. Instead, he just kept working on his broomstick with the cleaning kit he'd gotten for Christmas the previous year.

"Hey, Harry. Did you know that wizards have only really had plumbing for a couple of centuries? They actually stole the idea from the muggles, and before that, they used to just shit themselves whenever they needed to go and Vanish it after."

Harry's lip curled up at the idea. "They haven't taught us to Vanish stuff yet."

Daisy laughed. "Nope. It's a fifth year spell. So do you think they used to shit in buckets up until fifth year or did everyone walk around with crap all over them until they could find someone to do the spell for them? If they used buckets, do you think that when they finally learned the spell, they were like 'finally, now I can just shit myself like a grownup' and started doing that?"

Harry had to admit that of the things that Daisy randomly threw at him, it was one of the more amusing. Absurd and disgusting, but still amusing.

He started putting away his cleaning kit and put his broom back into the case he kept it in.

"So, Daisy, to what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked as he turned to face her and the girl's face lit up.

"Dance with me, Harry!" she squealed and hopped up from the bed, grabbing his hand and twirling him around when he rose.

Harry laughed. When she wasn't trying to get him killed, he almost liked her. She certainly made his life more interesting, at least.

"It's your birthday! Happy birthday!" she giggled. "I promised Luna that I'd come by later and take her and her father into a dungeon to look for exotic creatures."

"Didn't you say that her creatures are terrifying?" he asked, vaguely remembering a pale and shaking Daisy from the previous year.

"Oh, they're horrible!" Daisy declared happily. "But they're worth a lot of experience points, and I only have the option when I'm with Luna. Ginny is going to meet us there, too, since they're practically neighbors."

Harry was again at that crossroads he stood at entirely too often. Down one path, the one a sane man would walk, he'd tell her 'no'. That path was safe and less likely to lead to nightmares. The other path, though, held the unknown and as much as he would outright deny it if asked, he had a burning curiosity that couldn't be denied.

There was a reason the hat had insisted he belonged in Gryffindor, despite his half-hearted protests.

Harry sighed dramatically. Curious or not, it wouldn't do to let Daisy think he was too eager to join her. "Alright, let me pack."

oOoOoOoOo

Harry was never quite sure how 'real' the dungeons that Daisy created were. They looked real. They felt real. However, the creatures they contained could be absolutely unreal in appearance and often refused to follow the laws of physics and magic.

It was a large part of why he'd convinced himself that Daisy and her dungeons were figments of his imagination when he was younger. Even knowing that magic was real and having other people meet Daisy had only mostly convinced him that he wasn't still imagining things.

That had never been more true than when he let Daisy haul him along for an 'expedition' with the Lovegoods.

"Oh, those are Umgubular Slashkilters!" the cheerful blond declared as a trio of creatures resembling nothing so much as pony-sized praying mantises burst into the clearing.

"Right you are, pumpkin," her father declared followed by the 'floosh' noise of his wizarding camera's flash going off. "Beautiful specimens, too!"

The things hissed a challenge and charged right at the group only to be counter-charged by Ginny. The redheaded girl was even smaller in build than Harry was, but she made up for it with an almost impossible level of energy and a terrifying level of viciousness.

"Ginny, tunnel vision!" Daisy yelled from beside Xenophilius where she was 'supervising'.

Ginny, for her part, continued to have tunnel vision, and Harry had to step in to swipe at one of the creatures with Griffy - as Daisy had so eloquently renamed the Sword of Gryffindor - before it could finish the pincer maneuver that it intended. The things were tough, but Griffy was a magic sword.

Between Harry and Ginny, one of the creatures soon lay dead and the other two had fled into the surrounding forest after taking a few injuries.

He took a moment to catch his breath, only to feel a sudden burst of heat behind him.

"Oh, daddy, look! Heliopaths!" Luna cheered.

Harry groaned.

"Marvelous!" Mr. Lovegood also cheered, followed by the 'floosh' of his camera.

oOoOoOoOo

The train shuddered to a halt and everything fell eerily silent.

"What's going on?" Harry asked, his eyes cutting to Daisy. She usually knew these things.

"Only the answer to my prayers," she said and rolled her head as she loosened up her neck. "I was worried that after the whole thing during our first year that this wouldn't happen, but the Ministry is even more incompetent than I expected. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Dementors in the wild? They're all on an unplottable island which I can't find for obvious reasons and no one will tell me where it is because it's a 'government secret'."

"What?" he asked, even more confused by her rambling than normal.

"Unplottable. It's an enchantment that keeps a place from being mapped-"

"No, not that. What are Dementors?" The room started to feel very cold with frost creeping over the window. Ron was looking as worried as Harry was starting to feel.

"Hermione?" Ginny asked as she looked at her mentor for support. Her breath was fogging in what had been a warm room just a few moments before.

"They're basically grim reaper monsters that devour human souls," Daisy said in a tone of voice that was entirely too happy for such a statement. "The wizarding government uses them as prison guards which would be an inspired critique on the prison industrial complex, but it isn't because they're not doing it with even a hint or irony, which I thought was impossible for the British. No, they're just insane and use them to guard prisoners, one of which was Peter Petigrew up until a few months ago. They somehow managed to let him escape and now they must be convinced that he's hiding on this train. At least, that's what I assume is happening. I'm going to go beat up a few of them."

"Oh, right," Harry managed as it seemed that all of the color was draining out of the room. He wasn't feeling so good and Daisy could certainly handle herself.

"You guys just stay here. I'll lock the door behind me." She at least had the grace to look sympathetic about it as she moved toward the chilled door. "Here, chocolate might help," she offered and tossed a few bars at them from her inventory.

Then she was out the door and gone.

oOoOoOoOo

The mood at the welcoming feast was rather subdued. The Dementors hadn't eaten any students, as far as Harry could tell, but several of them had to be given calming draughts and everyone needed some hot chocolate to go with their meals.

Things were back to normal, more or less, the next morning.

"Think you're so great, Potter?" Draco Malfoy sneered as he aggressively flopped a copy of the Quibbler on the table in front of Harry. The cover image, below the headline "Heliopaths and Moore Revealed!" was a picture of Harry fighting a couple of the Umgubular Slashkilters at one point in the expedition.

Since it was a wizarding picture, it showed a short animation. Picture-him slashed Griffy through the arm of one of the creatures, severing it neatly, before he had to duck under the scything claws of the second one. He then put his wand to his neck and the air rippled as he opened his mouth and the modified Sonorous charm literally blasted the second monster apart. He rose back up and brandished Griffy at the now one-armed creature that was still standing. That's when the loop repeated.

"Ugh," Harry groaned. Why had Mr. Lovegood had to use a picture of him at all, much less on the cover? That had been more than half way through the dungeon run and he hadn't been in a particularly good mood so he certainly wasn't smiling. He looked like a complete dork, with his hair all messy, a streak of blood on his face, and his shirt all torn, too. He was working on some of the grooming charms Professor - well, former Professor - Lockhart had recommended but they had all worn off well before that point in the expedition.

Draco went to pick up the magazine and continue his rant, but a small hand shot out and stopped him. "Leave it." It was Ginny, and she had the same kind of look in her eyes that Daisy got when she was willing to kill something to get what she wanted. Harry felt a small bit of sympathy for his 'rival'.

Draco opened and closed his mouth and then slowly backed away, his magazine left behind.

Ginny slipped it into her bag with a flat expression on her face but a faint blush dusting her cheeks.

Harry gave her a small nod of sympathy, though she probably didn't notice. He was sure she intended to look through the article later to make sure there weren't any embarrassing photographs of her in there.

Spoiler: Notes

The wizarding toilet thing is canon. Well, at least, it was put on twitter by Pottermore which was sort of official. It's also moronic.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Draco," Daisy almost purred, and that made Harry look at her like she had two heads. "I can call you Draco, right?"

"I would rather you didn't," the blond boy answered stiffly. They were walking between classes and rather accidentally ended up going in the same direction at the same time. Harry's embarrassment about the scruffy-looking photos in the Quibbler had faded, and for some reason, Draco hadn't brought it up again. In fact, the blond seemed to be avoiding him. Harry was sure that he was still being made fun of in private, given the number of girls giggling over copies of the magazine and casting glances in his direction, but only Malfoy had tried to make something of it to his face.

"Okay, Draco. I just need to ask… your mom. Is she happy at home? I mean, with your dad. She doesn't have… unfulfilled needs?"

Harry looked between the two, not at all sure what he was witnessing. Mrs. Malfoy had taken the post as their Wizarding Culture teacher for the year and was proving to be surprisingly knowledgeable and had a flair for teaching he hadn't really expected out of a Malfoy. Certainly, she was doing a better job of it than Professor Dawlish was doing as the temporary Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. As an auror, the man was decently knowledgeable, but he didn't really know how to teach that knowledge to children.

"Do not speak of my mother, mudblood," Draco growled, and Harry found his hand drifting to his wand without even realizing it.

"Calm down there, killer. Just because half the school wants to bang your mom doesn't mean you should get all defensive. She's a stone cold fox. I bet half the boys and a lot of the girls in the school have rubbed-" she continued.

"Ah, stop! Just stop!" Draco sounded almost hysterical, really.

"Fine, be a baby about it," Daisy grumped. "Out of respect for your mother's deliciously tight booty, I'm going to give you a warning. The m-word? The one you just used? You want to take it out of your vocabulary. Just forget it entirely. It'll be better for your health."

Draco looked a little queasy at the mention of his mother's behind, though Harry did have to admit that Daisy had a point. Mrs. Malfoy was more attractive than he would have expected her to be, though Draco's problem wasn't that he lacked good looks. It was just everything else about him that was repulsive.

The other boy composed himself quickly from Daisy's verbal assault. "I'll say what I want to say, mudblood," he hissed and then stalked away.

"Your funeral," Daisy commented with a shrug.

After a beat of silence, Harry turned to her. "Daisy, what did you do?"

Daisy shrugged, but wouldn't meet his eyes. "So, hypothetically, let's say that there was an object that was a really amazing accessory. It goes with pretty much everything plus it's really well enchanted to boost your stats, right? And some jerk of a dark lord decided to add a big curse to it so that anyone that did a certain action - like teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts classes - within a few miles of the really amazing accessory would have bad luck?"

Harry nodded slowly. "That does sound like something which might be true." He sighed and added, "Hypothetically."

Daisy nodded. "And let's say that, hypothetically, an amazingly talented and beautiful witch figured out how to tweak the curse so that it targeted a different action - like, say, saying the m-word."

Harry sighed again. It was a testament to how long he had associated with Daisy that he didn't doubt the truth of what she was saying, no matter how improbable it sounded. "Hypothetically, would this result in a bunch of Slytherins being dead at some point?" he asked. While there were no real brakes on the Daisy-train, it was possible to convince the engineer to stop feeding orphans into the boiler sometimes.

"Hypothetically, no? At least in hypothetical theory, if the same amount of magic is behind the curse in both cases and the second version is spread around a bunch of people instead of just focused on one, it would result in each victim getting a milder dose of punishment. Even the original version - hypothetically - didn't really hurt people until they'd been at it for most of a year or maybe more so it probably wouldn't be that bad?"

Harry closed his eyes. On one hand, he really should try to talk her out of it. On the other hand, the racism amongst wizards really was obnoxious. Even Uncle Vernon had used veiled language to talk about people he didn't like, only uttering a rare slur in the kind of hushed voice that said he knew he shouldn't be using it - which was oddly self-aware for Vernon. The purebloods shouted their racism loudly to anyone that would hear them suffered any sort of consequence for it, and even then it was just a few lost house points.

It wasn't even that he felt a compelling need to defend Daisy. She was more than capable of doing that herself, and he could very much understand people disliking her - he had moments of that, himself. It just rubbed him the wrong way that they would focus on the one thing about her that she had no control over while ignoring the many, many things she did of her own volition to drive people mad.

"Just… don't let it get out of control." It was a compromise, but the one that he felt he could live with. Daisy didn't need defending, but she was far from the only muggleborn in the school.

"Of course not, Harry. Hypothetically, I mean."

oOoOoOoOo

Daisy placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "I'm so sorry, Harry."

Harry's eyes widened as he glanced around the common room to see if anyone was missing. She looked like someone had died. "Daisy, what…"

"Tomorrow is Halloween and I don't have anything planned," she admitted and Harry found himself relaxing.

"Oh. That's fine."

"I mean, we could go into a dungeon and kill some stuff, but it's just not the same. I know I shorted you last year and then this year, there just aren't any good targets. We could incinerate another batch of Acromantuals, but a repeat of last year seems even worse than doing nothing."

"Really, it's fine," Harry reassured her, though he had no idea how he got into the position of assuring someone that he didn't need to murder someone every year.

"Oh, maybe we'll get lucky and Petigrew will try to kill you tomorrow!" Daisy perked up at the idea, though Harry cringed inwardly. "That gives me an idea…"

He started to protest, but it was already too late. She was running in the direction of the exit and he didn't really feel like trying to chase her down. It couldn't be that bad, could it?

oOoOoOoOo

Hogsmeade was an interesting experience, Harry had to admit. His aunt had signed the permission slip with only a little grumbling and he was glad he'd remembered to get her to do it before vanishing with Daisy at his birthday. The fact that he only saw his relatives for a couple of months a year seemed to make the relationship work much better, though it still wasn't a welcoming environment by any stretch.

"Come on, let's go get some candy and then I have a surprise for you," Daisy declared before slipping her arm through his and hauling him forward. Ron shared a look of sympathy with him but didn't do anything to rescue him from her clutches. A different Harry might have thought him a coward, but this Harry could only respect his self-preservation instincts.

The Honeydukes candy shop was magical, both figuratively and literally. While Harry had been in a similar shop in Diagon Alley called Sugarplum's, Honeydukes was much larger and clearly designed to take advantage of the multiple visits the unaccompanied students of Hogwarts paid to it each year. Harry almost found him paralyzed by indecision at how many delicious things were on offer.

"Here," Daisy said a few minutes into his browsing as she shoved a box into his hands. He turned it around to see that it said Pepper Imps and had a picture of a cartoonish little devil breathing fire on it. "You need to give these to Ginny when we get back."

"Why me?" he asked. He vaguely recalled seeing Ginny looking like a neglected puppy as the majority of the older students made their way out of the castle, but he didn't make a habit of watching her closely. There was something about the way she looked at him that made him feel a little funny in ways that he didn't have a name for.

"Because she looks up to you," Daisy supplied, smirking that insufferable smirk she used when she was being annoying.

That was mildly surprising. "She looks up to me? But you're the one training her."

Daisy nodded. "And I'm amazing at it, but sometimes…" She seemed like she was on the verge of revealing something interesting, but then just stopped and smirked wider. "I'll explain it when you're older."

Rather than fight, Harry added the box to his own growing basket of candy. "Fine."

Spoiler: Notes

This one's a bit on the short side. And late. But it's up!

 

[Swordchucks]

"This was the surprise?" Harry grit out while being careful not to stop smiling.

"I'm hoping that Petigrew takes the bait. If he pops up and tries to kill you, that'll solve a whole bunch of problems at one time," Daisy supplied helpfully. It did explain her logic, after a fashion. "Plus we both end up getting paid for this. More or less."

"Last year, when I returned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry not as a student, but as a professor, I knew I would be helping to mold some of the finest young witches and wizards that the world has to offer. It was there that I had occasion to meet one of the rising young heroes in our world, Mr. Harry Potter." Gilderoy Lockhart paused for the brief wave of applause to end, smiling the whole time. Harry had to admit that the man made handling a crowd look effortless. He wouldn't say that he'd learned a lot of magic from the man, but the lessons in dealing with the public seemed like they would be useful. "Mr. Potter and I shared a few adventures together, and you can read all about them in my newest book, Habitating at Hogwarts."

With a flourish of his wand, the man caused the sheet covering the display of books outside of Tomes and Scrolls, the main bookseller in Hogsmeade, to fly off. Harry was well aware that his percentage of the book sales was small, but he also didn't have to do much to get it.

"Now, as a special treat, Mr. Potter has agreed to say a few words in his first ever official public appearance and stay with me to sign the first twenty copies of my - no, our new book."

Harry took a deep breath to steady his suddenly jangled nerves. In the half hour or so between revealing her surprise and 'go time', Daisy had coached him on what to say, but it hardly seemed like enough time to prepare. He was sure that she had waited to tell him her plans until the last minute so he didn't have time to chicken out. Somehow, after the other things she had put him through, a little public speaking didn't seem so bad.

He just tried to picture the crowd as a horde of ravenous monsters and it helped a little. He could deal with ravenous monsters.

"Hello," he started and gave the crowd his best smile and a little wave. He was sure he came across as a bumbling fool, but the crowd didn't seem to mind. "I'm sure that some of you have heard of me."

That got a mild chuckle from the crowd. "Well, I have always avoided publicity because I know that what I'm famous for was something I didn't really have an active role in. I think my dad and my mum were responsible, or maybe it was just luck, or fate. Whatever it was, I don't think I deserve any credit for that. If I'm going to be known, I want it to be for the things I do on purpose. That is why when Professor Lockhart-"

A warm hand landed on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, I'm not your professor anymore. You can call me Gilderoy."

"I'm sorry, Professor, it doesn't feel right. After you taught me so much, you'll always be a Professor to me," Harry replied. It was an exchange which Daisy had coached him on nearly word-for-word, and he had to admit that the crowd seemed to eat it up. He didn't have to fake looking bashful as he turned back to the crowd. It offered him an easy exit from the speech he had been fumbling through, anyway. "I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought there. In any case, please enjoy the book!"

He waved to the onlookers and stepped back a little as one of the bookshop workers started to marshal the line of people that all wanted books. Daisy gave him a big thumbs up and a smile, which had him rolling his eyes and shaking his head in amusement.

oOoOoOoOo

"My disappointment defies description," Daisy grumbled as she walked through the portrait with Harry later in the afternoon. Despite her hopes, they had not been attacked by an escaped Pettigrew.

Harry, for his part, was lost in thought. He had chosen his words during his first - nerve wracking - public speaking engagement in an attempt to dissuade people from praising him for 'defeating Voldemort' when he was a baby, but it hadn't entirely worked. On the other hand, it hadn't quite gone like he'd thought, either.

The idea that he was special because he'd somehow survived Voldemort's killing curse - and he still had no idea how people seemed to know so many specific facts about that night - had always put him off. It had gotten him a lot of stares from his classmates and random bystanders in Diagon Alley, but he had never really talked to people about what they thought about him. The students he interacted with weren't really aware of what had been going on back then, though many of them lived with the consequences. The few adults he interacted with regularly were aware - mostly the professors and Mrs. Weasley - but avoided mentioning it.

It was interesting. Being exposed to Daisy for so long had given him a sense for reading people beyond the surface, and it had come in handy again as he'd signed books along with Gilderoy. The ones that had brought it up always spoke of it in the context of what they had lost or what they had been afraid of back then. When he'd first entered the wizarding world, he'd assumed that people really did think he was responsible, but he was coming to understand that it was more that they saw him as a symbol of the end of a bad period of time. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but it seemed like the kind of thing that was worth some serious thought.

Suddenly, Daisy was forced to catch a redheaded missile that she then twirled around. "You're back!"

"Ginny, we were only gone for five or six hours," Daisy giggled. "No one even tried to kill us." The last part was said with clear disappointment like only Daisy could manage.

That got a laugh from Ginny, too. "It was boring here, too. Almost everyone was gone and even Luna got special permission to leave with her dad for the day," she whined.

Daisy looked meaningfully at Harry's hands. The hands he was using to carry the bags holding his shopping from earlier. He nodded and fished the box of Pepper Imps out of his Honeydukes bag. "We, ah, thought you might like these," he said as he offered them to the younger girl.

Ginny's face lit up and she took them from his hands. "Oh, I love these. Thank you, Harry!"

Then she leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek before turning to run up the stairs to her dorm room.

He ignored the maniacal grin on Daisy's face as he watched her go, a thoughtful look on his face.

That had certainly been interesting, too.

oOoOoOoOo

"Mister Potter," Professor McGonagall addressed him from across her desk. It was getting colder as Christmas drew near, but her office was nice and warm. "I wanted to talk to you about a… sensitive matter."

"Yes, Professor." Outwardly, he was calm, but inwardly he was trying to figure out which of Daisy's shenanigans had brought about this talk. The fact that he couldn't come up with one just made his feeling dread worse.

"Are you familiar with the name Sirius Black?" she asked after a moment's pause and Harry's thoughts came to a halt as their previous direction proved incorrect.

"I… I think so, Professor, but just in passing." He had heard the name before, but he couldn't remember when or where.

She nodded to him. "Mr. Black was one of your father's best friends when he was in school. It was James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and," her mouth twisted in distaste, "Peter Pettigrew."

"Ah," Harry said in vague agreement. That explained where he had heard the name.

"During your first year, it was revealed that Mr. Black was not, in fact, responsible for the deaths of your parents. In truth, it was Mr. Pettigrew that committed that deed, and Mr. Black was wrongfully incarcerated in Azkaban for almost a decade because of it. Azkaban is… not a pleasant place, and Mr. Black has been recovering from that experience ever since his release. He has been doing well and I have been asked if you would be open to meeting with him and Remus Lupin over the Christmas holidays."

Harry didn't even have to think about it. He wasn't really fixated on his departed parents, but he was curious to hear about what they had been like. Talking with one of their close friends seemed like a good way to find that out. "Of course, Professor. I'd like to meet him."

oOoOoOoOo

"Have you ever kissed a girl, Harry?" Daisy asked, seemingly out of the blue.

"Why?" he asked, suddenly getting suspicious. Harry had seen enough of the antics of older students over the last two and a half years at Hogwarts to get a general idea of what boys and girls did together, though he didn't entirely see the appeal. Lavender and Pavrati certainly seemed to be at that stage, though. The idea that Daisy was now joining them was mildly horrifying.

"Just answer the question," she pressed.

"Fine. No, I haven't," he admitted. She almost certainly knew that already since he spent the majority of his free time with either her or Ron and he had no desire to kiss either of them. In fact, the thought rather turned his stomach.

"Alrighty, then. Ginny," she said and Harry realized that he'd missed the other girl's entrance to the corridor they were in. "Have at him."

"Don't I get a say in this?" Harry protested. While Ron and Daisy were definitely not kissable, he didn't necessarily have that same feeling about the slightly younger redhead. He just hadn't really thought about it before.

"If you really don't want to, I won't make you," Daisy admitted. "However, there's all of this mistletoe around and kissing repels the Nargles."

Harry shuddered. During their dungeon expedition, he had seen the Nargles and the idea of them lurking around invisibly was terrible. "That's… a good point. I guess… one little kiss won't hurt anyone."

Ginny's smile got bigger and what followed next was a bit awkward and damp, but pleasant enough.

"Good, good. Now that this won't be your first kiss, come here, Harry," Daisy declared and before he could really protest, she turned him around with her hands on his shoulders.

"Daisy, I love you like a sister, but-" he tried.

"Oh, not that kind of kiss," she cut him off, and he saw with horror that her eyes had turned milky white. Something strange was happening to her mouth and before he could muster a second protest, her lips descended on his forehead.

There was a moment of horrible pain and then he blacked out.

Spoiler: Notes

I got distracted. Like... really distracted. Anyway, here's the next bit of this. I'll try to finish it out this week. I blame Skitterdoc as it was what started the whole derail.

 

[Swordchucks]

"It does look like Dementor exposure," a voice was saying as Harry struggled back to awareness.

"Do you think it's one of the rogues? The Ministry has been hush-hush on that ever since the incident on the Express, but I've heard that almost a dozen of them went missing afterwards. No one is willing to outright confirm it, but the rumors have been persistent. Between that and the whole mess with my cousin, the Minister is hanging on by a thread." The second voice was more familiar as he heard it several times a week in class. It was Professor Malfoy.

The feel of soft, freshly pressed sheets under him was a comfort, at least. It meant he was somewhere nice and not on the floor of a corridor or something equally as awkward. The witches moved a little farther from him and he couldn't quite make out what they were saying, though he believed that the second voice was the matron of the school hospital wing. Fortunately, he had only needed to see her a few times since starting school and always for something minor.

He groaned softly as he tried to get up but found himself painfully weak.

His brief attempt at getting upright had apparently been enough to draw attention, however, and the curtains that had been giving him some privacy were swished aside as Madam Pomfrey came walking in. "Mr. Potter. How are you feeling?"

"Tired," he groaned. "Weak."

She nodded. "Your friend Miss Granger brought you in. She said she found you collapsed in a corridor and my tests indicated that you were suffering from something very much like Dementor exposure. Do you recall how you came to be in such a state?"

Harry recalled something of the incident, but he didn't quite get what had happened. Telling anyone that Daisy had tried to eat his soul didn't seem like it would go over well, so he decided to not do that. "Not really," he offered instead. It was truthful enough since he didn't know the specifics. Specifics he very much intended to extract from his friend as soon as possible.

She gave him a nod. "You've already been here for most of the night, so I would prefer to keep you until curfew is over. I'll be back with some chocolate, which might help a little." She turned and nodded back through the curtains. "Narcissa, if you could watch him and make sure he doesn't go running off?"

"Certainly, Poppy," the regal woman declared as she came sweeping through the curtains, as well.

A few moments later, they were alone.

"Are you certain you didn't see anything, Mr. Potter?" she asked slowly, almost gently.

"No, Professor," he answered. He really didn't know what Daisy had been up to, but involving teachers seemed like a bad idea. If he decided that he had to go that route, he could always 'remember some details' later.

"If you do, please let me know. I hope you know that I take the safety of the students here very, very seriously," she said and he was a little surprised at the undercurrent of anger there. Fortunately, it didn't appear to be directed at him.

"Yes, Professor," he offered and the conversation died for a moment.

Eventually, Narcissa broke the silence. "I heard that my cousin has asked to pay you a visit," she said and it took Harry another moment to connect the dots. Given that only one person had asked to visit him, it wasn't that hard.

"Sirius is your cousin?" he said with some amount of surprise. He had never expected that.

"Yes. He is the head of the House of Black, what is left of it, anyway. We have spoken a few times since his release, in fact," she admitted. "We had… a lot to talk about. In fact, he is the one that convinced me to apply for the job I have right now."

Harry's eyebrows rose at that. Something about Narcissa Malfoy didn't fit with the mental image he had of a professor, but she was doing a good job of it in his estimation. "Well, he was right. I rather like your class."

Professor Malfoy's lips ticked up in a small smirk and Harry immediately saw a bit of Draco in her, but not in a bad way. "I appreciate that. Did you know that you also have ties to the House of Black, Mr. Potter? Your grandmother was my great aunt. I believe that she was also the great aunt of Sirius, for that matter." That did shock Harry and it must have shown on his face because Professor Malfoy laughed lightly. "Don't look so surprised. Our society is… close-knit. You can probably trace a relationship through blood or marriage to most of the purebloods and halfbloods within the school. It doesn't mean that much."

"It's just a bit unexpected," Harry admitted. What he didn't say was that it made him wonder why he had been placed with his muggle relatives instead of one of the magical families that apparently had ties to his own. Certainly, he hadn't heard about a magical relation as close as an aunt or uncle, but he couldn't see a wizard willingly sending a child to live with muggles if there was any other option.

Sounds of movement from outside the curtains presaged the arrival of the Matron with a bar of chocolate that looked like it could have crushed a goblin. Well, not a Gringot's goblin, but one of the variety that appeared in Daisy's dungeons. He had a disturbing amount of knowledge on what it took to crush one due to a series of experiments that he really tried not to think about.

"It has been pleasant, Mr. Potter. Please try not to injure yourself further, and please send me an owl in the new year. I'm sure I can find time to speak with you more over tea."

"Thank you, Professor," Harry said and watched Professor Malfoy leave.

He really hadn't expected any of that.

oOoOoOoOo

"Explain," Harry demanded.

To her credit, Daisy didn't even try to act innocent. "Yeah, that was a bit much, Harry. I'm sorry."

He'd been trying to figure out what the hell Daisy had done to him and coming up short. She'd thought it necessary to get him to kiss Ginny - which he still hadn't quite processed - and then she'd done something horrible to him. Or, at least, whatever she had done to him left him feeling horrible.

"Well?" he prompted as her explanation faltered before it even really began.

"Well…" she trailed off as she looked around to make sure that no one was listening in. The common room wasn't particularly crowded, but it wasn't empty, either. "Actually, this is a bad place for this. Let's go somewhere private."

Harry almost hesitated to follow her, but his trust in her was just wounded, not destroyed. Over the years of their association, Daisy had hurt him several times, but it was always an issue of her not thinking things through and never willful. This incident seemed to straddle the line, but he wanted to hear her side of things before deciding how angry he was. "Alright."

Some time later, Daisy paced in front of a rather garish tapestry and that action somehow created a door to appear opposite to it. It was far from the weirdest thing he had seen the castle do, but it also wasn't something he had seen before. "I'll explain everything in here," she said.

Inside, the room appeared perfectly normal with a pair of plush armchairs in front of a warm fire. Harry circled the sitting area once before plopping down in one. He still wasn't completely recovered and the walk up to the seventh floor had been long. "I'm waiting."

"Yeah, yeah, sorry. It's just… there's a lot to talk about, and I have to pick somewhere to start." She was thoughtful for a moment before she seemed to reach a decision. She pulled a black book out of her inventory that was almost familiar. "Remember this?"

Harry stared at it for a moment but came up blank. "Only vaguely. What is it?"

She handed the book over to him and he found the dark green - nearly black - leather cover to be surprisingly cold. The name TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE was embossed on the front in gold and it had golden corner guards. He realized that he'd seen Daisy take it from Ginny the previous year, which just made it even weirder that it was what she pulled out now. "That is something called a horcrux," she said as though it were a great secret.

"And what is a horcrux?" he asked slowly. There was a faint of magic coming from the book, but it was subtle.

"Are you aware that souls are a real thing? Not in the religious 'we can't prove they exist but believe they do' sense, but in the 'wizards have verifiable proof that they're real' sense."

"I've seen ghosts, Daisy." Harry couldn't help rolling his eyes. She seemed to be really dragging this one out.

"Ghosts aren't… well, they are… ghosts are just the impression of a soul and not really a soul. Not a whole one, at least. If they were, they would have the capacity to learn and change and I don't know if you've noticed, but ghosts are pretty static. Some of them are a bit more adaptable than others, but even those aren't really people, just like the paintings aren't really people. If they were, at least some of them would be trying to get themselves brought back from the dead."

"And that's a thing souls could do?" Harry asked, his morbid curiosity leading him on yet again.

Daisy nodded. "You've seen one already. A soul that was more than a ghost and looking for a way to come back to life."

"Voldemort." Harry shuddered at the memory of Quirrel melting away and the thing that had been living on the back of his head slinking away as an inky black mist.

"Exactly. Voldemort." She nodded to the book in his hands. "Here, let me…" She used her wand to draw fiery letters in the air and the name - Tom Marvolo Riddle - rearranged itself into 'I am Lord Voldemort'. Harry very nearly dropped the book as he realized what he must be holding.

"Say a soul is a boat. You're alive and the boat is on dry land. You die and the boat gets put into the water where it's really windy. The wind wants to blow you out to sea - to the next life. Well, a horcrux is like an anchor. As long as it's there, your soul-boat hangs out near the shore and you can maybe find a way to row back onto land."

He had a sinking feeling as he looked at the book. "And that's why Voldemort is still around?"

She nodded. "When you murder a fellow human being - not just kill them in self defense or a fit of passion but really go out of your way to murder someone for purely selfish reasons - it frays your soul a little at the edges. It's something that will usually heal in time, but if you take a bit of magic and perform the right kind of ritual, you can just pop a little piece out of it. It isn't much, but if you bind that piece into an object like this, it acts as that anchor that will keep your soul from passing over."

Harry's lip curled in distaste. He had a feeling he really wasn't going to like where this was going given the reason she had started talking about this in the first place.

"Souls aren't easy to quantify. You can't really measure them and taking a piece or two or three out of a soul isn't the same as taking a slice out of a pie. It still has an effect, but it's not the same. You don't 'run out' of soul, though breaking pieces off certainly changes what is left. Mr. Riddle decided he wanted to be extra safe so he created a lot of anchors. So many that, there at the end, his soul was kind of used to it. When whatever your parents did caused his curse to rebound on him, it knocked a piece loose and it ended up lodged in you."

Harry's hand went to his forehead. He didn't need to tell him exactly where that soul-piece had been lodged. His scar that never healed and hurt sometimes was a clear enough clue. "Then I'm-"

"I had to find some Dementors first." She talked over him rather than let him voice the panic he was feeling. "I needed to know how to suck a soul out of a person without injuring them. Dementors leave the body completely undamaged - which is almost more horrifying than the alternative - but it was still the best method I could come up with. So I caught a bunch and I've spent most of the semester working out how to get it to work. I got it down and sucked the one out of my hat-" she gestured to her diadem. The thing being a horcrux made a horrible sort of sense. "-which is how I figured out Voldemort put the curses on it in the first place. The soul fragments aren't complete people, but they hold echoes of the person's personality and knowledge at the time of their creation. It's a vulnerability that I imagine he was unaware of. Then once I was sure I could do it without hurting you…"

"So… sucked out the soul fragment?" he asked in confusion. It made a degree of sense though it was still insane.

She nodded. "Exactly. You can think of this as the first time a girl sucked on you hard enough that your soul left your body."

Harry blinked as his brain tried to parse that statement. Then he gagged. "Ew. That's gross, Daisy."

She giggled. "Don't knock it until you try it. You won't think it's gross in a year or two."

oOoOoOoOo

"How was Sirius?" Daisy asked not long after she'd gotten back from Christmas. She took up an armchair in the common room while she played another game of chess with Ron. She never seemed to take it that seriously, but she won more often than not.

"It was… fine. He seemed nice enough, but I think he is still suffering from what he went through," Harry admitted. Sirius had only slipped up and called him James once, but it had been enough for Harry's heart to ache. A few minutes of Dementor exposure that he had personally experienced had been horrible, and the thought of having to deal with that for a decade was almost unimaginable.

"Bloody Azkaban," Ron grumbled as he eyed the board more carefully. "Mum says they're talking about doing a full review on everyone thrown in there after what happened to Black. It's a horrible place, and people weren't so upset about it when they thought they were all guilty, but if there's one…"

"Good," Daisy declared. "Prison should be for reform, not punishment. If you need to punish someone that badly, just kill them. It would be kinder."

"There's probably a middle ground," Ginny chimed in. She was sprawled across the couch with her socked feet in Harry's lap, though he wasn't exactly certain when she'd put them there. She was busy reading a Quidditch magazine and didn't even seem to notice. "But yeah, it's turning into a big stink. Dad said the Ministry is on edge because this coming election is going to be a bloodbath if something doesn't change."

"I hope he meant that figuratively," Harry joked, though it was a little worrying when no one laughed.

"Maybe, maybe not," Daisy said. "Fudge's biggest opponent for Minister in the last cycle was Barty Crouch, and his fingerprints are all over Sirius's fate. That's probably the only reason why there hasn't been a serious attempt to recall Fudge over it. Neither side is looking great right now."

Harry lapsed into silence. It was a lot to think about but there wasn't a lot he could do about it.

oOoOoOoOo

"Mate, we need to talk about my sister," Ron declared as he flopped down beside Harry in the common room. "You and my sister, I mean."

Harry looked at his best friend and moved away slightly. There were any number of things that Ron could be talking about so he decided it was better to ask for clarification before accidentally confessing to anything. Daisy had taught him that one the hard way. "What about us?"

Ron's face was a bit red. "Look, mate, I know she has a crush on you, alright? And I need to warn you about that."

Harry raised his hands defensively. He'd heard about the kind of thing where guys would threaten to kill other guys for daring to date their sisters. "Is that what's going on?" he tried innocently. At least Ron didn't know about the kiss in the hallway. It also wasn't like he knew for sure that she liked him. He had strong suspicions about that, but he'd never really asked and Ginny had never explicitly told him. "We're not… There's nothing going on, Ron."

"I know that, mate, but I'm warning you." The redhead took a deep breath. "You've got to run if she tries anything, mate. She's bloody terrifying. The twins don't even bother her and they provoke Snape every other week. If she tries anything, just do whatever you have to do to survive the situation and then make your escape as soon as you can. Don't provoke her and whatever you do, don't let her know you're afraid of her."

Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. That hadn't sounded anything like the speech he would have expected, but if he considered 'warning' someone that was interested in Daisy, it probably would have gone much the same way.

"Thanks for the warning," he said instead of the other things on his mind.

"No problem, mate. Us blokes have to look out for each other, right?"

Spoiler: Notes

To the kind souls giving me corrections, I haven't been making them yet, but I will go through when I get the next (final) chapter up and doing so. Getting stuff published when I'm not in 'writing mode' is hard and exactly why I am not a professional writer.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Daisy, is that what I think it is?" Harry asked, doing his very best to keep the horror he was feeling from completely distorting his voice.

"It depends on what you think it is?" she said as she looked up from where she was sorting through what looked like a pile of pouches and wands. It was the morning after the Quidditch World Cup and they were in the main room of the tent that Sirius Black had them staying in after the game. Ron's father had also invited them, but Sirius had seemed so hopeful that Harry didn't have the heart to turn the man down.

"It looks like a whole bunch of severed arms." If it had just been a bunch of dead limbs it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but they were still moving.

"Oh, then yes, it is a whole bunch of severed arms," she agreed and went back to what she was doing. She tipped another pouch over and coins spilled out onto the table. She sifted through them a moment before they vanished into her inventory.

"Why? Why are there a whole bunch of severed arms on the table?" he asked slowly, as though trying to explain to a cat why the blood mouse carcass didn't belong on his pillow.

"I had to disarm a bunch of Death Eaters," she said and his brain momentarily froze.

"You didn't do this just so you could make that joke, did you?" he asked after a long moment.

"Well, not just so I could make that joke," she admitted with a grin. "But I have to admit that it was well worth it. I've been sitting on that one for years."

Harry let out a deep breath. "Alright, well, why are they still moving, then?" he asked.

"They aren't actually cut off, just… separated. Their owners still control them, more or less, and their bodies don't really register that they are gone. It makes it nearly impossible to fix with magic."

"And why… oh, right, Death Eaters." He poked one, causing it to roll over on the pile. "Is that what a dark mark looks like?"

"Yeah, kind of edgelord, isn't it?" Daisy said as she put down the last of the purses she had no doubt mugged off the now one-armed Death Eaters. "So, last night after people started to turn in, I heard a bit of a commotion and found a whole bunch of drunken assholes tormenting some Muggles and setting tents on fire. I… took care of it. I kind of wanted the dark marks for a little experiment, anyway."

Harry rubbed his temples. This was just the kind of thing Daisy got up to when she was left unsupervised.

"Bloody hell," Sirius declared as he stumbled into the room looking quite hungover. Instead of commenting on the pile of body parts, he just stumbled into the kitchen area and fumbled through bottles until he found one with some firewhiskey left. "It's like being back at home with mum and dad," he grumbled as he took a pull off the bottle without bothering to pour it into a glass.

oOoOoOoOo

"Harry, I have excellent news," Daisy almost purred as she flopped herself into one of the armchairs in the common room. "Take a guess."

Harry thought for a moment but couldn't come up with anything. "I have no idea. What is it?"

Daisy huffed dramatically. "You could at least try to guess."

Harry shrugged. "Is it about the other schools arriving next week?" he ventured.

"Not really, but it is about next week," she said, grinning widely. "Halloween."

He closed his eyes. "Ah, yes. Halloween."

"Your anniversary," she helpfully added.

"Yes, my… anniversary." Daisy's wild idea that he was addicted to murder and needed to celebrate the anniversary of the first time he had 'killed someone' was definitely unhinged, but it was pretty much par for the course with her.

"I just wanted to let you know that I have the whole evening planned out and it is going to be amazing."

Harry cringed inwardly at the idea. He was pretty sure there was no getting out of it and it wasn't even like he could get help. Who would even believe him if he tried to explain it?

oOoOoOoOo

Harry had seen plenty of impressive things over the years, though it felt wrong to count dungeons sometimes. They weren't 'real' in the same way that reality was real, after all - a concept he was probably going to have to explain to a therapist at some point.

The great flying carriage that delivered the Beauxbatons students to Hogwarts definitely ranked up there, though. The ship that Drumstrang used was also cool, but if there were two options, Harry would always vote for the one that flew.

On the other hand, the Beauxbatons uniforms were less impressive, as they lacked cloaks and were obviously too lightweight for the weather. "They look cold," he commented, but when Daisy said nothing in return he looked over to find that she was, in fact, not beside him any longer.

By the time he spotted her, most people were walking back into the great hall for the feast. She was in the middle of the Beauxbatons students - each of which was now wearing an expensive looking cloak in their school colors with a delicate fur trim. Wandering closer to see what she was up to, he found her chattering with them in rapidfire French. The students, for their part, looked much happier than they had just moments before.

He picked out his name in the conversation right before she leaned out to haul him in. "This is my best friend, Harry Potter. Harry, these are the students from Beauxbatons." She then went on to introduce them faster than he could keep up with. They were all a few years older than him, most likely their equivalent of seventh-years, but they seemed friendly enough. If he hadn't been sort-of-dating Ginny, he might have been a bit more fascinated by how pretty a couple of the girls were, but he tried to ignore that fact. Respectfully.

"We should hurry up if we want to have somewhere to sit during the feast," he declared and pulled on Daisy's arm.

Daisy said something in French as she was pulled along and a couple of the students laughed as they started moving along with the group.

Just as he had feared, the Great Hall was quite full by the time they got inside and it took a bit of maneuvering to get himself, Daisy, and most of Beauxbatons students a place at the Gryffindor table. A few of them went to the Ravenclaw table, instead, where they apparently already knew people.

The conversation over dinner was odd. Harry wasn't used to people speaking something other than English around him. Daisy apparently had no problems with French, which was mildly surprising, but Daisy having a new skill was never too surprising. She seemed to pull skills out of thin air more often than not.

On the other hand, a couple of them seemed quite intent on practicing their English and Harry got Ron and Ginny in on the discussion once they figured out that everyone involved loved Quidditch. Sports really were a universal language.

oOoOoOoOo

"We made it," Daisy cheered. The morning after the feast, she had hauled him out of bed entirely too early and they'd left the common room only seconds after curfew lifted. All so they could be in the great hall first thing in the morning.

Harry could tell exactly why Daisy had wanted to be there, too. The goblet from the night before had been placed on a stool in an open section of the hall - probably the same one that was used for the sorting, if Harry had to guess. Professor Dumbledore had his wand in his hand and was casting an intricate spell which was causing a faint golden line to draw itself upon the floor.

"He said he was drawing the age line last night," Harry managed around the yawn that was spilling out with it. "To keep the underaged students out. Which is fine with me."

"You have no idea what you're saying, Harry," Daisy grumbled back. "Just think of the challenges you could face in the tournament. The things you could kill!"

"M' fine, thanks." He really was fine without more adventure in his life. He had too much as it was, really.

The headmaster finished his work and stepped back to admire his handiwork. With it finished, the line just looked like someone had drawn it upon the floor with some chalk, though it was more even than Harry could have managed that way. Having seen it cast, though, he was sure it was pretty impressive from a magical perspective.

"Professor!" Daisy half-yelled as she rushed up to the ancient wizard. "I wanted to ask you a question!"

To Harry's slight surprise, Professor Dumbledore's smile at Daisy seemed to be genuine. "Miss Granger, it is nice to see you this morning. You, as well, Mister Potter." Harry gave him a small smile back. Professor Dumbledore had always been nice to him, though they rarely interacted.

"So, I know you said the rules said that we couldn't put our names in if we were underage and I know you just drew an age line and all of that, but what kind of trouble would we be in if we did manage to get our names in the goblet?" she asked in something of a rush.

The headmaster chuckled. "You think you have a way past the protections? I can think of a few ways, myself, but are you sure that you and Mister Potter would want to enter a tournament of this sort? The age limit is there for your protection.

Daisy shook her head. "I was just being vague. Me. I want to enter. Harry has no desire because he is boring."

That made Harry laugh and shake his own head. "I have plenty of excitement in my life already," he interjected.

"Well, Miss Granger, I am interested in seeing what that mind of yours has come up with. I found our discussion earlier this year on the use of magic circles as a casting aid to be most intriguing and I have to admit that some of your ideas have given me ideas of my own. If you think you can get past my age line and put your name into the goblet with your own hand, I'll make sure that no one causes any trouble for you," he said and Harry's eyes widened slightly in horror. He had expected the headmaster to shut her down immediately, not actively encourage her.

"Yes!" Daisy cheered even as Harry tried to plead for sanity under her.

"Headmaster, isn't the age limit a ministry rule? It doesn't seem fair that she can avoid that…" he trailed off as the feeling of Daisy's death glare got to him. He refused to look at her, but he could almost feel her staring at him in annoyance.

For his part, Professor Dumbledore just chuckled again. "Oh, they made a rule, but some rules are weaker than others. However, Miss Granger," he fished in a pocket of his robes and produced an oversized silver watch. "My offer is open for… five minutes."

Daisy's grin was back in full force. "Oh, no problem. See, the problem with an age line-" she disappeared in the middle of her sentence, but reappeared about three seconds later. Right beside the goblet. "-Is that if someone can just bypass it, they entirely bypass it." Then she dropped a piece of paper into the goblet and vanished again.

Professor Dumbledore was impressed, judging by his expression. She reappeared a second later beside Harry. "Well, Miss Granger, a deal is a deal. I suspect that if your name comes out of the goblet tonight, we will do Hogwarts proud."

oOoOoOoOo

"Surprise!" Daisy declared and made an expansive gesture in the direction of an older style baby carriage.

"Daisy, I'm not going to kill a baby." He could just feel the headache pressing in on him from all sides. After the mess with the Goblet, he would have rather gone to bed than go on Daisy's little expedition, but he had never been able to tell her 'no' very well.

"Harry, what kind of friend do you take me for? Killing a baby would be too easy and wouldn't even come close to slaking your bloodlust. I got you something much better!"

She grabbed the carriage and tipped it over so that the contents spilled out onto a table. The blanked-wrapped lumped squealed and Harry had a momentary fear that she had, in fact, just tossed a baby around.

"Ta-da!" she declared as she pulled at the blankets and something horribly misshapen was revealed, instead.

"It's… a living turd?" he ventured, not sure at what he was looking at. It seemed to be alive, but its color was off and it didn't look like any baby he had ever seen.

"Yes, but also no. This," she pointed at the lump which was mewling piteously, "is Lord Voldemort."

"That's Voldemort?" he asked, giving the thing another look. It certainly didn't seem any less disgusting on a second look.

"Well, it's the vessel he was attempting to use to come back to life. Nasty business and it involved killing a number of people in frankly horrific ways, but that's him. The main part of his soul." When Daisy described something as horrific, he knew better than to ask for clarification.

"Won't he just…" he made a wavy motion with his hand like something was flying away.

"Want to kill him and find out?" she asked and handed him a wicked looking knife.

Harry hesitated for a moment. He really didn't feel great about stabbing a baby, even a misshapen lizard-thing like the one in front of him. On the other hand, there was no doubt in his mind that this thing was Voldemort. Daisy wasn't often wrong, and it really looked like the kind of idiocy a dark wizard would get up to. The thought of trying to turn him in to the authorities crossed his mind, but they hadn't been able to contain Pettigrew, who had been fairly incompetent by all accounts. The chance that Voldemort, even as a misshapen baby, would also escape was too high.

Eventually, he took the knife. He might not have been fixated on his parents' deaths, but it did seem like this was his burden to carry. He just didn't want to do it. For her part, Daisy was quiet and supportive but also no real help.

Five minutes later, he finally just closed his eyes and leaned forward, letting his body weight do the rest. Voldemort squealed one last cry before Harry felt the air go colder as black mist rose up from the as a malevolent wraith pulled itself free of the body.

It seemed to stare at him for a heartbeat before turning to flee, only to run straight into a pale-eyed Daisy's wide open mouth.

In seconds, the most feared dark lord in several decades was no more.

Daisy smiled for a moment before her face fell and she gagged. "Oh, gross. That's horrible. I think I'm going to be sick." She bent over as she retched, but didn't actually throw up anything.

Then, as macabre as the whole situation was… Harry laughed. It seemed like a shadow which might have fallen over the world was now lifted.

Spoiler: Notes

And that's the end of the story. I had high hopes of doing a different POV for a year 4 continuation, but it just didn't work very well. Yes, Daisy would have ended up in the tournament and absolutely crushed every task, but... it just didn't work for me. Instead, I wrote a different story under the working title Hermione Granger: Gamer (Not Monster). It's a very different story from this one, though it's obvious that certain aspects remain the same. I need to add more to it, clean up the early chapters, and start posting them... but it will probably be a bit. I also need a better title for it...[/spoilers]

 

[Swordchucks]

After a lot of sitting around and collecting dust, I've started posting the "sequel" to this story over here. The second story is a canon divergence after third year with Hermione getting video game powers, told in third person and taken more seriously than this story was.