“Hello, princess”, Harry smiled, approaching Lyra who was reading something in the hallway.

“Your graceful lordship honours me with his presence, my lord prince”, she closed the book and curtsied elegantly.

Harry froze and fumbled incoherently. “I’m, sorry, it was supposed to be a joke”.

“Oh come on, Harry. It was funny, and I went along with it. For someone who is friends with Granger, I would expect you to be able to keep it running for at least three lines”, she smiled brilliantly. She offered him her hand and he took it effortlessly, as they sat down.

“There’s a lesson for me: don’t joke with a girl who’s smarter than you”, he grinned.

“I’m not smarter than you, Harry. It’s just that I wasn’t raised in a barn.”

“Well, about that. I have a question for you. I understand that you were brought up as a pureblood aristocrat. You’re actually a proper Princess. It doesn’t even feel like a joke. I also had the chance to feel your kindness, sophistication and respectfulness. It’s absolutely lovely. However, it seems to be restricted to a very select group of people, like myself, and when you’re addressing people like Ron and Hermione, you feel like a completely different person, and I find it jarring and hurtful. Why is that? What’s your actual problem with them? You seem to think Hermione is smart”.

“Of course she’s smart. She’s smarter than me. I could hold my own in most cases but she would eventually outclass me. Her brains don’t have anything to do with it. I don’t think she’s stupid. I think she’s an existential, extinction-level threat to our civilization and our way of life”, she replied seriously.

“But why?”, Harry was utterly shocked. “She’s a good person. She’s kind, generous, protective, brave and perceptive. She would never hurt anyone”.

“It’s not about her as a person, Harry. I would actually agree with your assessment of her. However, I will have to ask your permission to use an analogy that you might find offensive or hurtful”, she looked at him expectingly.

“Go ahead. I really want to know what you really think”, he nodded.

“Do you know what a mule is?”

“An offspring of a donkey and a horse”, he offered.

“Exactly. It’s also sterile, in a sense that it can’t have offspring of its own. We wizards and witches bond for life. Unlike the horrid muggles, we don’t have marital infidelity, divorce, pre-marital sex and other horrors. Every boy and a girl is a virgin until marriage. We usually don’t re-marry if our partner dies before us, and stay alone and faithful until death reunites us. So, if we commit to the person we can’t have children with, or the child is sterile, or non-magical, two separate, precious lines of our magical world, with ancient traditions and heritage, unique stories we tell our children before bed time, magical jewellery, books and artefacts passed across untold generations, it is all gone, lost forever. There’s few of us. Each of us is precious and unique. We can’t be replaced with similar specimens. We can’t be replaced once we’re gone. Hermione is a threat to us the way a mule is a threat to a horse that mates for life. Once he commits to her, his heritage is lost forever to the sands of time, Harry. It’s potential tragedy. Not certain – there are cases like your mother, who married a pureblood wizard, and they had you. You are a glorious victory that was snatched from the jaws of a potential horrible tragedy, because if not for you, magically powerful and precious as you are, the Potter line, ancient almost as this castle, would have been lost forever”, she finished emphatically, with incredible passion reflecting in her beautiful face. Harry was stunned, completely out of words.

“I will have to think about this. I never even considered any of the possibilities that you mention. Thank you for telling me this, Lyra”, he nodded appreciatively.

“But what about Ron and his family? They are purebloods? Why the contempt? I’ve seen how your dad feels about Ron’s dad. I don’t understand the implication, other than it’s about poverty”.

She took a few breaths to calm herself down after her passionate speech. “Yes, it’s about poverty”, she nodded. “Some in the pureblood community use a term ‘blood traitor’ for magical families who don’t care about blood purity, and Weasleys qualify. However, neither I nor my father care about that”, she continued. “Arthur Weasley had many offers of promotion at his job in the Ministry. Those would come with a significant increase in earnings and prestige. He turned them all down. Do you know why?”, she prompted.

“He has an interest in muggles”, Harry offered.

“Exactly. He is treating his job as an extension of his hobby. He is ‘following his passions’, as they would put it. He’s just trying to be happy. Essentially, due to his childish selfishness, he is condemning his family to a life of poverty and squalor, because he cares more about his hobby and ‘being happy’ than the wellbeing of the family that’s been entrusted to him. He’s a terrible patriarch, and thinking about how he allows his children to suffer brings tears to my eyes, Harry, and it makes my father furious”, she looked him with eyes full of both tears and perfect honesty. “Harry, they are all about ‘feeling good’ at the moment. Molly is all about everybody having nice food, a warm bed and feeling happy. They don’t care that they can’t buy decent clothes, new books, that Ron couldn’t buy a new wand in his first year and instead had the broken one that backfired spells at him. Do you understand how much seeing this hurts my feeling of duty, decency and propriety?”, a tear dropped down her cheek. “I want to wake them up somehow and make them remember their duty and what’s right. However, they are so self-righteous that they never listen, always raising the issue of the Dark Lord as if it has anything to do with it. We are furious at them because we see those precious, wonderful pureblood children in rags and squalor while they should be princes and queens. I could never get tired of beating Arthur Weasley with a stick, even if my hand hurt”, she managed to laugh through her tears.

Harry thought he was stunned before, but never in a million years would he suspect this to be her actual reason.

He wiped her tear with his finger. “I’m really, truly sorry for misjudging you, Lyra”, he said and bowed to her, the way he saw the professors bow to each other, and hoped he did it right. “You are absolutely precious”.

She embraced him and just held him until she calmed down.