“I’m the dumbest ass in the history of dumbassery”, Harry said to himself. “Hermione deserves the right to tell me ‘I told you so’ until I die”.

“That’s a given, but why exactly?”, Hermione smilingly approached from behind and startled him.

“You were right about me and Lyra, and I was such a stupid idiot, you should charge me an idiot tax”, he smiled back ruefully. “You see, when I started looking at other girls after the Triwizard Tournament, I felt there’s something wrong. I ignored it, because there’s always something wrong. Then she saw me flirting and started avoiding me and looking at me like she wants to kill me. I concluded her dear Voldemort is back and she can no longer afford to have me as a friend, or even a frienemy. I missed our talks and I was angry at her for breaking us up. On the other hand, whenever I tried something with other girls, something was off, and something was missing. Everything was missing, actually, and I didn’t understand what. I thought Voldemort broke my brain by trying to break into it constantly, and I freaked out. Then I started hunting Lyra when I figured out she’s trying to kill Dumbledore, until I cornered her in the girls’ bathroom and hit her with that terrible thing, and when I held her bleeding body, I felt that thing that was missing coming back to me, and everything in my memory that resembled it lit up at the same time, and it was all her. It was like half of my brain coming back from deep coma. I stopped being angry and depressed all the time, and I understood that it was all because I missed her, and it’s not what I thought it was. I never had a name for what we are to each other. It’s not like anything I felt with other girls. It doesn’t feel romantic. She feels like a body part, honestly.”

“She’s your wife”, Hermione nodded.

“What?”, Harry fumbled in shock.

“You heard me. She’s not a girlfriend. It’s not a school romance. She’s not a friend. I’ve seen you together. I never saw anyone who isn’t married for at least ten years be like that. She seems to know, but you”, she sighed, “You should be hammering nails into hard wood with your head, because your head is harder than any rock”.

“Damn”, whispered Harry. “How did I manage to mess this up?”

“You were emotionally very invested into being oblivious”. She took an apple and left.

…

“Do you see the colour of my eyes?”, Lyra asked while they sat under a tree in the park.

“Of course I do”, Harry smiled.

“It’s in my family for untold centuries. It’s one of the genetic markers of a magical lineage. It was preserved because of our pure blood. You object to my arguments regarding pure blood. Do you like my eye colour?”, she asked, playing with his hand.

“I love your eye colour. It’s beautiful”, he answered honestly.

She slightly blushed. “I’m glad to hear it. However, since you argue for intermixing with the muggles, does that mean you would like my eye colour to vanish forever? Never to be seen in future generations?”

“That’s a hard question. I have to answer ‘no’, but that’s mostly because I’m very partial. I find you beautiful and I would not want any part of you gone. However, that’s hardly a political argument, and it’s also not fair”, he smiled. “But let me use another equally unfair argument. I have green eyes, and I inherited them from my mother. You object to intermixing with muggle-borns. Would you want my eye colour gone?”

“Harry Potter, that was a low blow and you know it”, she turned crimson.

“Par for the course, I guess”, he smiled at her silver eyes. “And if you and I married and had kids, and one of them had my eye colour, would you consider it a lamentable loss for the purity of your family line?”, he snickered, watching her embarrassment.

“Harry Potter, when we get to the point where we have children, their eye colour will be the least of our concerns”, she answered seriously.

“When?”, he noticed.

“When”, she confirmed.

…

“Hermione is right”, he thought, remembering. “I was truly emotionally invested into being oblivious, because nobody can be this stupid by accident.”

…

“You were right”, Harry smiled at his wife who nursed their third child, “I never cared about their eye colour”.

“It’s a win in either case”, she smiled back.

“How many muggles are there in the world today, in your opinion? I know you would know about those things”, she asked when they sat in the hallway. She looked him straight in the eyes, completely focused on the argument, while her body automatically did its thing. In this case, she held his right hand and doodled something on his palm with her index finger. Harry thought she didn’t even notice, and he realised that, for the most part, he didn’t either. For them, this level of casual physical contact was the baseline. He was never this physically intimate with anyone else, but Lyra was different. She was just Lyra. She would hammer his head into the wall when playing Quidditch, or fall into his embrace when afraid of something in the woods. They just didn’t find it strange, or awkward.

“Oh, almost seven billion, I guess”, he shrugged. The number was growing and he didn’t actually have the current count.

“So, how many of those seven billion are wizards?”, she proceeded, holding his one hand while resting her other hand on his knee.

“I’m the wrong person to ask; I think Ministry should know”, he shrugged.

“They do, in fact. My father got me the numbers. The number is around five hundred muggle born wizards per seven billion muggles”, she pressed. “This makes probability of a muggle-born wizard like your mom or Hermione a one in a fourteen million event.”

“Wow”, Harry scratched his scar. “This is really low odds”.

“Exactly”, she nodded, doodling unconsciously on his knee. “The probability of non-magical offspring from two magical parents is somewhat below one in a hundred. Now, please tell me what it means.”

“It means that introducing fully muggle genetics into the magical community would exponentially increase the probability of squibs, eventually diluting the magical genetics until the point of disappearance, or at least non-viability of the community because of low population numbers”, he conceded, squeezing her hand slightly. “It gives legitimacy to your argument, if that’s how that actually works. However, what if muggle-born magical children have concentrated magical genes already? In that case, dilution would not be an actual threat”, he countered.

“I hear you”, her palm got slightly sweaty as she stressed over the argument, lost in thought, her eyes moving as she thought about it in real time. “Your argument is that your mother, and your Granger friend, are both extraordinary witches. They are not just average. I heard only praise about your mother, from highest places. She was a generational talent. Granger is smarter than both of us together, I think. They look like highly concentrated magical essence, not like something that would dilute pure blood. However, is manifestation of genes an indication of actual genetics? What if they merely scored a combination of recessive genes manifesting a phenotype, and it would not carry through to the next generation?”, her eyes were calm now, boring holes through his, and she intertwined their fingers.

“That’s actually a good point, and I don’t know the answer”, Harry nodded. “However, I have some empirical data. My mother was muggle-born. My father was a pure-blood wizard from an ancient line. I turned out pretty well, if I may say so myself”, he smiled.

“You turned out perfect in every way”, she smiled back, as he blushed. “However, you might be merely a statistical anomaly, and it’s a single data point. You look like you won the genetic lottery, having the best of both and no apparent drawback other than the poor eyesight. However, are you a rule, or are you an exception?”, she pushed back, doodling on his knee.

“Well, do we have data about frequency of squib births in pureblood families, vs. mixed blood?”, he countered.

“Now, that’s a pickle. It seems to be a Poisson distribution issue. We don’t actually have a good data pool on either side, considering the low absolute population metrics”, she shrugged, drawing eights on his knee.

“So, you don’t really know if there’s an actual problem, or is it a storm in a teapot? And we’re actually having a war over this?”, he smiled, playing with her hand.

“Well, it’s potentially an extinction-level problem for the wizarding community, so it warrants extreme concern. However, your argument, that an internecine war is a more urgent extinction-level problem that we seem to be rushing into, and is actually worse, with certainties rather than probabilities, is valid”, she nodded and smiled.

Hermione was passing by in the hallway, looked at them, smiled, rolled her eyes and proceeded to her arithmancy class.

“What, Granger?”, Lyra growled.

“Ten points from both Gryffindor and Slytherin for the two of you not getting a room”, Hermione replied in a convincing imitation of Snape.

“Huh?”, Lyra shrugged, looking at Harry completely clueless, while he blushed.

“She’s just weird”, he shrugged. “Let’s go to class”.

The way they argued was quite a peculiar combination of intimacy and violence. They looked physically comfortable with each other, all awkwardness between a boy and a girl removed by the frequency of physical contact while playing Quidditch. However, what they told each other looked like pure verbal violence, that would normally have children tearing at each other physically. They, however, touched shoulders and looked as if they were eating ice cream together.

“How can you even say that Voldemort isn’t evil with a straight face? He killed my parents. He tried to kill me. Your parents are his servants and boot lickers. How about facing the reality of it?”, he frowned at her.

“There was a war. Your parents were on the opposing side. People die in wars, you know? They defied the Dark Lord, fought him, and lost. Then the Dark Lord tried to kill you, and lost. You won the war. How about ceasing to whine as if you’re somehow a victim? I understand that you lost your parents. That’s awful and I feel for you. Losing them and being raised by those muggles must have been terrible for you. But please don’t try to frame yourself as a victim and me as a villain when you personally won that war”. She looked at him with clear focus and truth behind those silver eyes, and he was out of words. She really had a point there, and yet he felt as if it’s not quite right, that the war isn’t over, that he didn’t actually win anything; he just failed to die. But her argument was so clear, so persuasive and respectful, that he felt it would be disrespectful to even reply in some incoherent way, which would be only way he could at the moment, so he just lowered his eyes in silence. She always wins.

She returned to her dormitory and cried into her pillow. “He told me my parents are Voldemort’s boot lickers and servants. He holds us in such contempt.”

She remembered this now, waved her head incredulously and smiled. I was such a dumbass, she thought. He was right. I refused to face the facts. I wrapped my mind in a knot trying to preserve the innocence and virtue of my parents, and refusing to concede that they were on the wrong side seemed like the only way. And how foolish it was to assume that the war was over. The ideas that started it hadn’t been resolved. The concept that identified purity with genetics rather than personal merit persisted. How idiotic one would have to be to believe Harry to be a “half blood”, and thus somehow less pure than the Carrows? They are not fit to be dirt beneath his feet. On the other hand, the Granger girl was an excellent student, excellent spellcaster, she was brave, virtuous and loyal to him. She wasn’t jealous of the girl; merely envious, because she was with him now. They fought together. I’m fighting merely to survive, to keep my parents alive, to retain my sanity and purity in this awful mess.

She cast her usual spells to protect the bathroom. They gave her one of the spare wands, taken from the prisoners. It rejected her, made it hard to wield magic, but she shrugged. Her wand is where it should be. He is fighting for her, and this makes a part of her participate.

She actually got really good at spellcasting since her heart was healed. She smiled happily. It was as if her magic increased when she felt she had her life back. Knowing he loved her made everything easier. Even the daily indignities and humiliations were easier to bear. Things like this – there’s no quick pee for her. No, it’s a matter of military logistics. Clear the bathroom, block the door, cast sensory blocks to prevent spying, cast anti-apparition spells. Check if the spells hold. All while having to pee. May the pit of hell open beneath Voldemort and all his minions and swallow them whole forever, and may curses of all the gods fall upon their heads.

However, she was no longer casting spells the normal way. At first, it was verbal. Revelio, protego and so on. Then it was non-verbal. But then as she did it for a while, she began to develop a taste for adjacent magic, for the place where verbal and thought spells lead, and she learned its “aroma”, feeling, and learned how to invoke magic with that feeling alone. Then she learned to mix feelings of different spells and invoke the magic together. She learned how the verbal spells were originally made. Someone felt the magic directly, brought it into their mind and bound it to a verbal spell, and carved it permanently into some layer of the world that’s between the layer of pure magic and human mind. So, now it’s easy to access this taste of magical energy by accessing the words that are bound to it. If the words are in Aramaic, that’s how you invoke it now. If they are in bad Latin, that’s how you invoke it. However, you can also do it directly, if you’re powerful enough; and she was. So, she would wield the magic that would normally be behind five different spells, with a single thought and spatial awareness, and she at first checked it, and had her mother check it again, and it was perfect. She didn’t tell mom why; just that she didn’t trust the new wand.

She didn’t know any wizard other than Voldemort and Dumbledore who could do it. There were certainly others; the original authors of the spells, for instance. But she felt fiercely proud of herself for learning this. She must tell Harry.

Another thing changed when she gifted her wand to Harry. It felt so intimate, it made her so vulnerable, so terrifying and satisfying at the same time, that she doesn’t understand how she even managed it. It was an instinct, but a terrifying instinct, because that wand guarded more than just her life, and she gave it to him willingly. It felt like taking off your clothes and going out into the bitter cold of winter. However, for some reason, she stayed warm. She had a weird feeling that, somehow, she conquered fear forever when she did that. She could always escape, she could always say no, she could always cling to some protection, or illusion thereof, but when she voluntarily gave it away, she felt as if fear no longer had power over her. And, weirdly, that she had power over fear. The formulation actually crossed her mind: you are a Mistress of Fear now. She felt as if Dumbledore was watching over her. Her eyes filled with tears; I wish I finished that talk with him. I wish he was here with me now.

She flicked her borrowed wand and removed the wards. Time to go back to carrying her cross, willingly.

She initially found it weird how she could keep her secrets without any Occlumency. She soon understood why; she was always terrified. Voldemort liked his people terrified. It made him feel powerful. When he felt what he expected and liked, he looked no further. All was as it should be. She was terrified, her mother was terrified, and her father was broken. Voldemort liked his people broken, so that, too was satisfying to him. The irony is, this protected them better than a white wall of proper Occlumency ever could – Voldemort would wonder what is there to hide, and investigate. But now, as he saw everything as it should be, he relished in his power over them and asked no questions.

She was under no illusion that she could beat Voldemort in a duel. Dumbledore could. Harry could hold his own, and almost won a few times. She could likely wipe out most Death Eaters. She could probably beat aunt Bella. Probably. But she practiced hard magic for three years as if her life depended on it, because it did, and there’s a thing about practice – it makes you good. And she was very, very good. She smiled. I can stand beside my husband and feel like I belong there. I will make him proud.

She was a lithe platinum blonde with silver eyes, his height, and she felt fast, energetic, dynamic, like lightning in a bottle. He was trying to remember her appearance now that he was in a tent in the woods and there was nothing immediate for him to do. Her beautiful face had a special something to it that he tried to describe. She looked fresh, clean, like fresh snow or fruit fresh from the orchard with dew still condensed on it. Why did she always look clean? He saw her with mud on her face, sweaty and dirty after a Quidditch match, and she looked clean. No, clean isn’t the right word. She looked pure. Pure in a sense that there is no mask, there is no play, there is no deception, that her emotions play on her face in ways that make you see straight into her soul. When she would use the word “pure”, he understood it in that terrible blood purity sense where they look down on muggle-borns and half-bloods, but now he knew that this was not how she understood it, not really. She understood it in a spiritual and moral sense, where purity was something you had to actively strive for. In order to be pure, she thought she needed to be honest, truthful, brave, respectful, smart, a good witch, loving, and honour traditions, parents and family. She didn’t tell him all that; he deduced. It was also obvious that she just repeated all that pureblood nonsense from her parents and believed it because she loved them and they can do no wrong, and when she saw Voldemort for herself, it all broke down.

He remembered the tower. She ambushed them. Dumbledore had him under his cloak, and had him body-locked when she came, and she disarmed Dumbledore with a spell. She was fast. What happened then was nothing like he expected. She lowered her wand, apologized to Dumbledore for disarming him, but she couldn’t risk not being allowed to say this. She lowered herself to her knees, looked him in the eyes and begged.

“Please, Headmaster, save us. We are prisoners in our own home. Terrible creatures roam our house and I am afraid of being violated or murdered every single moment. Thugs and werewolves. We live in constant fear. My father was foolish to put his faith in the Dark Lord, who is cruel and cares for nobody but himself. He’s a shell of his former self now, and my mother is trying to keep us alive and protect me, but we have no control, no safety, no hope. Please; you’re the world’s greatest wizard. Voldemort fears you. Please come and save us, I’m begging you. I have nobody else to turn to. I would already have killed myself if not for the fact that he would torture and kill my poor parents then. I agreed to this in order to buy them a year of relative safety, but now it’s all over. They will know that I never intended to harm you. Please, Headmaster.”

It was the most heartbreaking thing he ever saw or heard. He never saw her in tears before, with that clean, pure face that told the truth. He could never imagine that powerful, aristocratic, dignified girl on her knees. And what she told was horrible, but not beyond his knowledge. He saw through Voldemort’s eyes, he saw what it’s like there. He just didn’t connect the dots and understand what it’s like for a pure, innocent girl to live there.

Dumbledore got her back to her feet. “Please stand up, my child. I am so sorry. I already feel honoured to have been allowed to meet one of your kind, but the second one… I did not think it possible.”

She looked puzzled, as puzzled as he himself felt under the cloak, and started to ask what he meant by that, but then the Death Eaters came, and the air of noble civility and purity was lost, replaced with the horrors that now live in her home. And then Snape came and Harry never got to know what Dumbledore meant by that. He had some idea. Dumbledore told him that his soul possessed the full power of that force that’s kept always locked in the Ministry – love, as a magical power. He seems to have thought Lyra to be the second such being he met. It’s incredible how stupid I am, Harry thought. I completely misinterpreted her, and it was right in my face. The feeling of cleanliness that persisted even under mud. She would smell clean like a forest after rain. The way she carried herself. And he thought she was evil because she loved her parents the way he loved his own, and she believed what they told her the way he would have believed his own. None of that was her fault, and when she could verify what they told her, it was already too late.

He covered for her. Said she had nothing to do with the Death Eaters coming to school. She just happened to be there in the tower and wanted to talk to the Headmaster, which happened to be true, if we ignore the fact that she disarmed him. What she did there was exactly what he would have done; he would have found the way to speak to the headmaster alone and ask for help. She never really did anything wrong, and he was a fool. He now knew why she was angry at him. There were monsters in her home and she had to live in a horror show, and he was dating other girls and looking at her as if she were an enemy. Of course she was furious. She felt betrayed. She felt alone in the dark with horrors approaching and he was judging her and thinking how to stop her because she’s the enemy.

It was so easy to fear her. She looked like a terrible weapon – fast, powerful, smart, with intelligence behind those silver eyes that missed nothing and cut like a knife. With beauty that intimidated him because he felt in its power. With Death Eater ideology that came out whenever she opened her mouth. He was always too intimidated with what he felt she could do, to stop and think, and see what she actually is, and what she wants.

When she laid her soul bare before Dumbledore, he understood that she merely loved her parents, and her purity wasn’t some noble affectation; it was what she actually is. She’s pure love, and Dumbledore saw it. It’s just that the parents she loved filled her head with their beliefs, and she believed them because she was a child and she knew no better. If he were born to her parents, he would have been her – or worse, because it would be wrong to presume that he would have been as good a person as her.

When he confessed to her after the funeral, it was as if a dark cloud was removed from her face, and a light illuminated her from within, just from knowing now that he loves her. That transformation was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. But he couldn’t think about that now, because there’s that last horcrux to find, and a final battle to win, and he looked at the wand in his hand.

Her wand. They had to pretend he disarmed her, but she gave it to him. It felt like she gave her entire life to him: her power, her protection, safety, everything, trusting him to save her. It felt like nothing else in the entire world, and when he took that wand and its energy took a taste of him… it didn’t oppose him, like other wands he took opposed him and made it hard to do magic. This one didn’t exactly recognize him as its owner, but as the person its owner loved since she was a child, and thought of with every spell. Using the wand felt like falling in love. His eyes filled with tears.

He needs to focus. Any more of this and he’s going to get really distracted. Let’s get this done with.

Let’s go back to Lyra Malfoy character.

I designed her with two basic guidelines. The first is that she ends up as Harry Potter’s wife. The second is that I keep the narrative as faithful to the books as humanly possible.

The way I imagined her, really, is the way Lucius Malfoy is depicted in the first movies. He’s Mr. Darcy. He has arrived. He comes to Hogwarts, demands to talk to the headmaster, and holds him accountable for the events at school. He comes to the Ministry and everybody bows to him. His self confidence is next level; it’s not something that looks trained, the way Americans train body language and think it means anything. He’s the wealthiest, most important person in his world, and he knows it. It’s a combination of dignity, arrogance and power.

His daughter would breathe that air from birth. Since I worked under the assumption that she’s Harry Potter’s ideal counterpart, I made her a pure, innocent soul that just happened to be born in that family. However, all of this rubs off on her, and this is what she is when we encounter her in the first book. She assumes power, dignity and nobility, and it comes off horribly to Harry who is fiercely egalitarian and grew up with the Dursleys so he doesn’t like pompous pricks. She rubs him off in exactly the wrong way, and they start at the wrong foot instantly. To him, she’s just wrong. She looks like all the bullies and assholes in his life, and he instantly hates her, and politely tells her she’s bad news and wants nothing to do with her.

To Lyra, this is a shock. You see, her mother taught her all about “who’s who”. You don’t date Lyra. You court Lyra. In order to have an implicit permission to even get to talk to her, your name needs to be on a list. In order to be considered her peer, you need to be on an even shorter list. Harry Potter is no1 name on that list. Nobody, ever just dismisses Lyra and tells her she’s all wrong, or bad news, or unworthy of their company. She offered her company to Harry recognizing him for what he is, and he coldly turned her down. To her, this is a heavy blow. I mean, it’s a heavy blow to Draco, but to Lyra, it strikes differently. If the no1 person on her list coldly dismisses her and tells her she’s unworthy, it means she’s unworthy as a person and unworthy as a girl. It makes her squirm with a combination of humiliation and fury. However, she can’t say “who are you to talk to me like this”, because her mom already told her who he is. He’s the most important boy in the world, and it’s her duty as heiress to the Malfoy family to make a good impression. She feels doubly humiliated, because she failed, and she doesn’t even understand why.

So, she sulks, and watches. She observes what Potter is doing. She sees that he’s brave, protective of his friends, that he gets into trouble by disregarding the rules, but he is obviously leading his team, already on an important mission, and he is successful. She watches him flying and he’s obviously doing it for the first time and yet he’s unrealistically good. Within minutes, he’s relaxed and actually good. After a few hours of practice, he’s better than she is, and she’s been doing this at home all summer. His bearing when he’s pressured or injured shows great personal dignity, courage, ability to conduct himself gracefully under adversity, and he disregards stupid criticism with stubborn contempt. All in all, he’s the most noble, dignified boy her age she ever saw, and she made her decision. He is the only one worthy of her. Nobody else exists for her. He’s not just her peer; he’s her superior, and it’s the first time she ever looked up to a boy her age; before, it was just her parents. However, he rejected her, and now she has to prove herself to him, and she doesn’t actually know how.

So, she does what an intelligent young girl would normally do. She engages him in casual conversations in the hallways, works with him in classes, tries to interact and see what he’s actually like. The problem is, whenever she actually talks about the things she’s proud of, like her parents, her pure blood and wealth, he reacts as if she personally insulted him. She would be incredibly frustrated by it, especially since he would also insult her parents and their ideology and call them evil. This would upset her to the point of crying into her pillow and not knowing what to do or what’s wrong. It’s like they live in different worlds and talk different language, and to him black is white and vice versa.

Also, we need to have in mind that the entire Harry Potter wizarding world is an anachronism. They are all living in the past. The muggleborns live in the late 20^th century; Hermione and Harry have a common experience, they know the same fairy tales, same TV shows, same shopping malls. When one of them makes a reference, the other gets it immediately; Ron, on the other hand, looks at them like they grew a second head. He doesn’t know who Monty Python is. He doesn’t know what the cold war is. He doesn’t know who Cinderella is. And mind you, Ron’s dad is obsessed with the muggles and how they do things. He even enchanted a car to fly. However, their worlds have a very small intersection.

For instance, in the wizarding community there is no sex before marriage. Like, at all. Not heard of. There are no teen pregnancies. No abortions. No sexual infidelity. The couples stay together until death. It’s a very old school world, and even in that context, the Malfoy family is an anachronism. They are such an anachronism, they could fit perfectly in a Jane Austen novel. Lucius Malfoy might as well be Mr. Darcy. In fact, Lyra is something of the sort, in her context. She just assumes Regency era social rules, and Harry just assumes late 20^th century. They each look at each other as a classmate and assume they are in the same world, but that’s an illusion. Their fundamental assumptions are so different, it’s bound to create misunderstandings. For instance, Lyra assumes Harry has to know who he is to her, because she assumes he had to be informed about the “who is who” of the wizarding community, the way she was. She had no idea. She can’t even begin to comprehend how fundamentally ignorant he is, because she sees that he’s as intelligent as she is. He’s quick, bright, focused. She knows he’s a high-born wizard of immense wealth and social clout. She can’t understand that he perceives himself as a poor orphan and a bullied underdog. To her, the assumption would be as foreign as him thinking he’s a horse or a book. So, she assumes all kinds of things, and they are all wrong.

She assumes he knows what it means when she politely approached him in the hallway, curtsied and started a conversation. It means she recognizes him as her equal or superior, and they are engaged in a subtle process of feeling each other out in the early stages of courtship. But he doesn’t know she would never just approach anyone that way, that she has special social rules of conduct. Nobody just gets to talk to Lyra. Lyra, especially, doesn’t just approach someone, bow, and talk to them. It’s all significant behaviour, and it all flies over his head completely because he’s in the wrong century. He perceives her actions as pompous and arrogant, because she addresses his friends as inferiors or even sub-humans. The fact that she addresses him differently isn’t an honour, it’s an insult to his egalitarian mindset. And she doesn’t know what she did wrong. In her mind, she was doing everything right and he acts like she offended him. So, she cries herself to sleep and tries again tomorrow. He thinks she’s being pompous, rude and offensive, and she’s out of her mind with frustration, trying to figure things out. However, she’s smart. Harry takes a while to figure out the wizarding community and their eccentricities, and she doesn’t take much longer to figure him out to the same degree. She understands that he was brought up by the muggles who have their own rules of behaviour, and that he’s from the same world as Hermione. She watches, she picks things up, she adjusts. OK, egalitarian stuff. She hates it, but she adjusts. They start getting along much better. They cooperate in school very easily, especially since they are quite similar in abilities. They beat each other to a pulp at Quidditch, and she likes that – the ability to vent her frustration with him in some real way is very pleasant. It’s actually more sincere than trying to talk through a minefield of forbidden topics.

There’s an implicit assumption she has, because to her it’s like assuming the air is there for her to breathe, and the gravity points downwards. The assumption is that they are courting. He did certain things that encouraged her – picked up her books and returned them to her looking her straight into the eyes; holding her protectively when she was afraid in the forbidden forest. She even interpreted his acts of valour and courage as him showing his worth to her. To her, there were only a few boys who would ever be allowed to court her. She implicitly assumed he had the same list. She assumed she had to be no1 on his list. She also knew every single girl that would be on the list his parents would explicitly or implicitly give him, only his parents were dead and he was raised by the Dursleys. She didn’t see him exchanging any special courtesies with the other young ladies on his list. They, however, acted like competitors and peers, which she interpreted as a love language – something weird and “modern”, muggle-influenced, but he’s weird that way, so she adapted. She would bump shoulders with him and smile, instead of bow. As far as she knew, they were courting each other, proving each other’s worth, waiting for the war to end, for the sides to shift, for them to grow up so that he could ask for her hand in marriage. That was her world, and she was happy.

As I said, Lyra doesn’t date. You don’t get to ask her out, unless she already considers you for marriage. You don’t get to grab her and pull her off her broom and crash her into the ground unless she already wants to marry you. She has context, assumptions and a special world she lives in, except it’s a Jane Austen novel and not the mid to late 1990s. Harry knows absolutely nothing of this. He’s clueless as a doorknob. He’s in fact terrified of her because she’s a scary Death Eater child who praises the Dark Lord who killed his parents. Her power, skill, dignity and brains are intimidating, because she’s the enemy and will eventually try to kill him. If he could abstract the scary part, he’d think she’s the most beautiful girl he ever saw, and she’s basically his twin in abilities and character, only he never thinks this consciously. He likes her company on an instinctual, physical level, but she’s scary. She’s as scary as a Dark Lady of the Sith would be to a Jedi. It’s someone who’s incredibly skilled, dark and wants to kill you. The fact that her body is beautiful and exactly your type just adds to the scary part rather than detract from it. She perceives herself as a gentle, romantic soul who is playing a very subtle game with her chosen husband. He’s trying to be friendly with the scary girl so that she doesn’t ambush him in some dark place and bury his body in the woods.

The thing is, she’s not like a modern girl who would be frustrated because he doesn’t get her hints. She just assumes he does, because he’s as smart as she is, but she also assumes that he can’t show it openly because they are in opposing camps and the war is about to break out. It’s just how it is now. They flirt by playing Quidditch against each other. They need to keep the other stuff quiet.

And then two things happen. Voldemort returns, and Harry starts dating other girls.

Lyra had only vague ideas about the Dark Lord. She heard her parents whisper about him in a worshipful tone at home, and they described him as powerful and dark. Her parents were powerful and dark, so she imagined him to be like them, only more, because they bow to no one. She thought he had to be the most admirable, noble and pure person in the world, and dark, to her, was a goth aesthetics; not a state of spirit. Dark meant using spells and potions that did powerful, forbidden things. It meant being able to hurt and kill your enemies. She liked how decisive that felt. Being able to finish the job when you hate someone sounded only reasonable. Why would anyone even be against that?

And then she saw Voldemort meeting with her parents in their home. They bowed to him like servants, and he treated them dismissively, and with cold, dark indifference which she found chilling. Something cold grabbed her heart, and she felt an ominous premonition. She tried to shake it off, say it’s just an impression, but then she saw some of the people coming to their home. She finally understood what the word “dark” actually meant. It wasn’t dark because they were into goth fashion. It was dark because it’s cold, ruthless evil, without sophistication, manners, love, empathy or kindness. It was devoid of spiritual light that was her entire life. For the first time in her entire life, she was truly afraid.

She rolled back her memories of the talks she had with Harry – things she said that offended him, things he said that offended her. The Dark Lord killed his parents and it was reasonable that he hated him and thought he had to be evil, but she thought it was a misunderstanding of things that happen in a war. His parents were on the wrong side and were killed. He assumed their killer had to be evil, but that didn’t mean it was actually so. However, she now remembered Voldemort. He actually felt evil, in the most fundamental, undeniable way she could possibly comprehend. He was cold, cruel, dismissive, and lives meant nothing to him, even the lives of good people. He cared only about service, about what’s of use to him for his purposes. But if Harry is right and Voldemort is evil, what does that mean? Does it mean that her parents are wrong? That they are evil? She shivered from the thought. They loved her and cared greatly for her. They were always kind, generous and understanding. She loved them with all her heart. They can’t be evil. But even good people can be mistaken, they can do wrong and foolish things if they are misguided. So, she allowed for this possibility, because it both matched reality and was emotionally palatable. She will need to talk to Harry about this, but carefully, because it would be treasonous to her parents to say too much of what’s happening at home. It would also expose her parents to Dark Lord’s retaliation, and that had to be avoided at all cost.

And then the school started, and she saw Harry looking at other girls, and she froze. It was a terrible betrayal to her. How could he do it? It took her a long time before she understood that it was a misunderstanding. He didn’t know how she felt about him. She never told him. He didn’t have the cultural context to understand her love language, because it was too subtle. He didn’t understand that she considered herself his alone, that she just waited for the war and school to end, and he would ask for her hand in marriage and she would say yes. So, he acted as if there was nothing between them, and lived in the 20^th century and asked other girls out for a date. He never asked her.

So, on one hand she had Voldemort and the ominous, evil and vulgar creatures visiting her ancestral home, and she had her chosen husband break her heart. Her life stopped being a fairy tale, and started being a Lovecraftian horror story. The safety of the assumption that she was on the right side that her parents knew best, that all she had to do is convince Harry to switch to the right side of the war, it was all gone. She didn’t yet understand what it all meant, what all the implications were. She would need to talk to somebody, and there was nobody to talk to. Anyone on the Death Eater side would consider her thoughts treasonous and she would be punished along with her parents. Even if they saw her talking to someone from the other side would be perceived as treasonous. There was only Harry, because everybody knew they were rivals and constantly fighting about something. She would so like to talk to him, to confide with him, because nobody would assume what they were talking about. And then he saw him with Cho, and her heart withered.

She was in a daze. Her heart ached so much, that the entire world went dark. Everything she felt added to her depression; hearing the birds chirping annoyed her. When she stubbed her toe at the doorframe and it hurt, it blended together with her heartache and she intentionally made herself feel worse because she wallowed in her misery. When she had menstrual cramps, it all blended into her nightmarish darkness. Her head wasn’t a fun place. So, when she saw Harry passing out from the pain of his scar, she sneered malevolently; he deserves it. Let him have some of the pain she’s having. Let him see how it feels. However bad he’s having it, it’s nothing compared to her waking nightmare.

He saw her sneering, and his eyes went hard with hatred, which made her feel worse, and return the look with such hatred he never, ever saw in her eyes before. It looked like she wanted to kill him on the spot, and he felt genuinely afraid for his life. After all, her Dark Lord returned, and she must be encouraged and empowered now, in her choice of sides. No more friendly talks in the hallways. Just war and murder.

There are two main differences between Draco and Lyra. First, Draco is not in love. Second, Draco never had to fear being raped in his own home. Unfortunately, Lyra started understanding what the latter felt like when Death Eaters and worse scum started roaming the hallways of her home, and her mother started teaching her wards and protective charms to use. When entering the bathroom, always cast the revelio charm, to show if there’s someone hiding in there. Enter. Close the door. Apply barrier charm. Apply sensory shield to prevent spying. Only then you’re safe. Only then you don’t have to fear being ambushed, raped or murdered in the bathroom. When entering your bedroom, same process. Flush anyone who’s possibly already there. Lock the door. Make it a fortress. Block spying. Shield against anyone teleporting in while you sleep.

She thought about preparing an escape route; a portkey; a broom; a protective charm. But then she understood the problem: her parents were hostages against her bad behaviour. If she ran away, they would be punished or killed. She could be blackmailed to return lest they be killed.

She heard the creeps talking about her in the hallways. Discussing which one will get her as a prize from the Dark Lord for their service. She was to be a trophy. And if she killed herself, her parents will be executed. She shivered with terror.

Fenrir Greyback passed her by in the hallway once. She happened to be on her period. He sniffed lustfully and said “I smell your blood. Yummy. I wonder what you would taste like.” Alecto laughed: “I have a spell that will make her last longer, so you can have fun with her innards”. She ran away, bunkered herself in her bedroom, and wept with humiliation, fury and terror. She swore eternal vengeance: she will hunt them down and kill them, all of them, and if someone kills them first she will owe them a favour and repay it manifold. She will hunt them down like the rabid dogs that they are and put them all down. But she was weak and helpless now, and she hated it so much that her tears burst once more, and she hugged herself in her terror. Harry knew this. He warned her. He told her what they are, and she didn’t believe him. She was on his side now, and he thought her an enemy who got what she bargained for. He hated her, and would kill her if he could. This fact felt like such additional humiliation, that her vision narrowed and she went unconscious on her bed. She didn’t even hear the tortured prisoners screaming that night.

All the while, Harry though he’s having it so bad, nobody could possibly understand his pain, while lying in his bed at No. 12 Grimmauld Place, surrounded by friends.