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 he 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.

The most reasonable question about Lyra Malfoy would be how likely would she be to be a good enough person for Potter to fall in love with, if she starts as a scary girl spouting Death Eater ideology and routinely insults his friends?

That’s actually the easy part. Just imagine a sweetheart girl born in a loving family of Nazi war criminals.

You see, the difference between Draco and Lyra is that Draco is taught that he’s a pureblood and this gives him value. Lyra is taught that she has to be a good girl in order to be a proper pureblood. She’s taught to know the family tradition, respect her parents and elders, know history, practice magic, be knowledgeable about society, respectful of her peers and all the right people, be proud of their wealth, and despise lower people, who are nothing like they are.

So, basically, she identifies being pureblood with all kinds of virtues, and assumes that muggle-borns are deficient in those virtues and that’s why they are worthy of contempt. They are ignorant, disrespectful, uneducated, don’t know magic properly, and are poor. Also, her parents loved her and treated her gently and kindly, so she obviously adored them. In her mind, they were the best people in the world who knew best and could do no wrong. Also, at the point where she went to Hogwarts, she was eleven.

So, you have a wonderful, pretty, loving sweetheart of a girl who keeps hating on Jews and saying “Heil Hitler” every now and then, completely oblivious how it comes across. When people tell her that her parents are evil, she knows it’s not true because her parents are wonderful. When they tell her that Voldemort is evil, she knows it’s not true because her parents wouldn’t worship him if he was evil. Those people are just nasty, filthy, jealous and poor and that’s why they are slandering everything that’s good.

Did I say she’s eleven? Please, go look at some children who are eleven and you’ll see what I mean. They are old enough to be able to independently do basic things, but they need to keep growing their brains for quite a bit before they are to be taken seriously. Their ability for abstract thought, perspective and nuance is all but nonexistent. They know what their parents taught them. If that’s wrong, wait until they are older teenagers for them to start figuring it out. Even if it’s not wrong, wait until they are older teenagers for them to start figuring out why it’s correct and what it means.

So, Harry Potter sees this little princess and thinks she’s a horrible, spoiled bully who is cruel to good people for no reason, because her parents are servants of Voldemort, and his first reaction is to absolutely hate her. On the other hand, he can’t get his head around the fact that she’s pretty, smart, polite and very competent. That makes her scary and threatening, but as they are talking, he learns to respect her, which mostly makes her even more scary, but she’s also kind with him, she knows lots of things he doesn’t, and as long as they keep the conversation away from blood purity, he really likes her company. They are very competitive at Quidditch, and she’s very good, which makes her both threatening and respected. They are both smart, energetic kids, who love their parents dearly, only his are dead and hers worship the lunatic cult leader who killed his parents. So, he can’t actually understand that she’s a very loving person, because to him it’s all evil and nightmarish horror show. To her, in her naive ideas about nobility and purity, the fact that someone is not pure is taken quite literally – she thinks they are deficient in virtues. She think it denotes lacking moral character. To Harry, she sounds evil and insane, but he can’t quite reconcile that conclusion with how she seems to be as a person. She doesn’t act evil and insane, she’s just very selective about who she’s being nice to. What he doesn’t understand is that he’s the same way, only with different people.

So, they have a weird relationship that’s part friendship part hostility; the friendship part is based on the fact that he likes how she feels as a person, and the hostility part starts when she sees a muggle-born person and opens her mouth.

You see, it’s easy. People are complicated. A child of Nazis can be a sweetheart; it’s just that she thinks that Jews are filthy evil scum and Hitler is a demigod sent by the destiny to save the Aryan race from this evil infestation. Other than that, if you play with her, she’s warm, kind, smart and feels completely great to be around. It makes Harry’s head hurt with cognitive dissonance. Basically, he’d really want them to be best friends (he’s too young to have a concept of a girlfriend), only if she would stop believing and talking evil shit.

This all changes after the Goblet of Fire, when Voldemort comes back, Lyra starts seeing changes in her home, with all kinds of Death Eaters escaped from Azkaban either living there or visiting, and Harry starts dating Cho. The worst thing is, she would want to talk to him because her new experience is starting to confirm his words, that used to sound completely nasty and unhinged, about how everything about Voldemort is evil. Well, looking at the Lestranges and others, that sounds exactly right. Also, everybody is in fear of Voldermort’s moods because he’s unpredictable and when he’s angry, he’s unreasonably cruel even with his followers. He doesn’t respect people and just wants servants, and that’s the language they all use. Are the Malfoys supposed to be servants? Aren’t they the pureblood nobility that is supposed to have others serve them? There’s all kinds of things wrong there and she’s starting to understand that something horrible is looming, and she would love to hear Harry’s thoughts on it. However, he’s in the enemy camp and talking about those things with him would be treason. And then she saw him dating another girl, and she felt so hurt and betrayed, that she wouldn’t even look at him. Harry would think it’s a terrible year for him – everybody is accusing him of making things up for attention, he’s being humiliated and tortured, he has terrible nightmares about what happened at that graveyard, Voldemort is trying to hack his brain so he has terrible headaches, Cho is all weird and other than the physical attraction they don’t click in any way, and Lyra frowns at the sight of him, turns away and doesn’t even acknowledge his existence. It coincides with the return of Voldemort, and he has the darkest explanation – she picked her side, and there’s no more room in her life for friends on the other side of the war.

He thinks he has it hard, but he doesn’t know that she’s not having it any better. Her life is starting to look like a horror show, with her ancestral home starting to look like headquarters for dark freaks and all sorts of evil scum. Everybody is nasty, and her father barely has enough authority to keep them at bay. However, after the night in the Ministry, when he failed to redeem himself by getting the prophecy, he loses all standing before Voldemort and this becomes a terrible nightmare for her, a darkness with no end in sight. She would tell Harry he was right, but he is the enemy now and he hates her. She saw the look. He thinks she’s a servant of Voldemort and there’s no softness in his eyes for her any more. And she’s also hurt and furious because he saw him with another girl now. He sure is having his fun. She feels betrayed, hurt, in constant danger, and she can’t even feel safe in her own home. She overheard the Death Eaters commenting her as if she were a tasty prize to be given for one of them, for good service to their lord, and she felt unimaginable horror. And during all that, she imagines Harry having all sorts of fun with Ginny in the headquarters of the Order of Phoenix, somewhere safe. She’s crying herself to sleep every night, but the darkness doesn’t end. It actually gets worse. Voldemort calls her personally. His cold, cruel demeanour gives her the creeps, and he offers a path to redemption for the Malfoy family. If she swore allegiance to him, took the Dark Mark, kill Dumbledore at school, and found a way to smuggle his servants inside, all would be forgiven and they would be reinstated to a place of honour. She feels the darkness tightening around her, but she agrees, because the alternative looks like her parents will be killed and she will be either raped or eaten by some werewolf.

And as she is trying to pull off this terrible, suicidal plan that looks more like a cruel way to torture her than something that has a realistic chance of success, she sees Harry following her, spying on her, with cold eyes full of hatred and suspicion, and she’s surprised to find out that her heart can hurt even more. He was supposed to be someone to share a life with her, someone she could confide in, someone who would help her. How did it come to this? At least she’s no longer at home, or whatever that place is now. She no longer has to apply five protective charms to her bedroom door every night, just to feel safe. She doesn’t have to fear walking the corridors alone. She wondered how much it would hurt to have her face chewed off like Bill Weasley… or something worse, because she was a girl.

Her mother had her practice offensive and defensive magic. They would practice unforgivable curses on farm animals. Imperius was funny; she made pigs roll over and try to jump. Cruciatus was satisfying. She imagined making Voldemort suffer. She imagined making that scum that made her scared to walk alone in her own home suffer. She made a pig squeal, and imagined it being Fenrir Greyback. But Avada Kedavra was the worst. She hated it, and yet she had to practice it in order to become capable of fulfilling her mission. It’s a terrible spell; you need to have a heart of a cruel, hateful murderer in order to do it. She didn’t want to have a heart of a cruel, hateful murderer. She wanted to cry her heart out on her husband’s shoulder, but he hates her now. Why does he hate her? Doesn’t he know? Of course he doesn’t. He warned her about Voldemort, about her parents who followed him, and what it meant. She thought he was wrong, that he doesn’t understand. She was wrong. She wanted to tell him that she knows now, ask him to help them, but he hates her and the softness that was there for her before now exists only for others. She hates him. “Avada Kedavra!”

Green light flashed, and a cow dropped dead. Her mother was pleased. She felt dirty and ashamed of herself. She will never do that again.

She became quite a good duelist, and her mother made her practice protective charms. She thought she might be as good as the Granger girl now. Maybe as good as Potter? No, Potter was in another league. He held his own against Voldemort at multiple occasions. He cornered aunt Bella at the Ministry. Potter was deadly, he was faster than her, he was so well trained he actually had students of his own. Death Eaters were told never to face him alone, always in twos and threes. She was proud of him, and it hurt, because he’s not hers to be proud of. Other women could learn spells from him, while she was the enemy.

Well, at least she’s back at school now. No need to apply protective charms to the bedroom door at night, and remove them in the morning. She still had the nightmares, though. About failing the mission, and watching her parents executed by Voldemort. Being given as a trophy to some more deserving “pureblood” Death Eater. Being given as a toy to a werewolf. Being violated in her own bed. Seeing suicide as the only way out. She hated sleeping.

Her anger flared when she saw Potter, surrounded by friends, acting like he’s having it hard. He’s having such a terrible life – he has to spy on the evil Malfoy girl who’s conspiring to kill Dumbledore. Of course he figured it out. He likely had some kind of clairvoyance ability that let him spy on enemies from a distance and see their plans. Rumours were, her could see through the eyes of the Dark Lord, because of that scar. And she was the evil enemy he had to keep under surveillance. She wanted him to suffer like she suffered, to see what it’s like.

He cornered her in the girls’ bathroom when she was crying to Moaning Myrtle because she had nobody else to talk to. It was all close, she had to act soon because Voldemort was getting impatient. She almost fixed the cabinet. She felt like a cornered animal, hurt and afraid, with nobody to turn to, and then she saw his self-righteous face and wanted to remove that smirk from his face, a smirk that said “I caught you, you villain”, while the “allies” she was supposed to bring to school were the very monsters that turned her home into a frightening dungeon. She used the Cruciatus curse on instinct – she poured all her pain and heartbreak into it and wanted him to feel it, but then she felt distant, her body like a faint echo as a wall hit her and she felt the cold wet floor, and something warm flowing down her arm. She didn’t feel pain, just numbness, and everything was distant, as if it were happening to somebody else. Of course he won. Of course she lost. She expected him to gloat as she felt a metallic taste of blood in her mouth, and shortness of breath as her lungs filled with blood. She saw his face as in slow motion, in a distance, and he didn’t gloat. He panicked, called for help, begged her not to leave him, to stay there with him. Her heart stopped aching, but everything was cold and distant, and then Snape was working the counter-curses and then everything went dark.

After Dumbledore’s death, she felt even worse. She saw Harry’s numb grief at the funeral, and she thought he will never be able to forgive her. She will never be able to explain her intentions there in the tower. He will think she’s the worst person in the world. Everything she felt in the bathroom will be forgotten. He will never be able to see through his pain and loss now. After all, he was Dumbledore’s personal protegee, he was taking special lessons in private. It would be like her losing her parents, and knowing Harry did it. It’s all over.

Then she saw him approach her, and she had the darkest premonitions. He asked her to go with him and have a word. He would kill her and leave her in the woods. And then he whispered in her ear and the words were something she never even dared to dream or hope. He loves her, and he is hers if she will have him. But, after the war, because nobody must know. Of course; they would use her as a hostage to get to him if they knew. She looked at him – he knows everything. He knows she loves him, and he knows she chose him all those years ago, and he knows what happened in the tower. Of course; the cloak. He was there, he heard her begging Dumbledore to save her and her family from the hell they were in, and then hell came to visit.

All the cracks in her heart were healed. It was better than she could ever hope. He figured it out; that she always loved him, that she chose him, that she used to be a stupid child who didn’t know, and he knew all the horrors she witnessed, he knew that she understands now and that she’s on his side, but can’t do anything about it. He can’t yet free her, but he’ll be working on it. There’s hope. There’s light. She just needs to survive long enough. What is he actually asking? Whether she’ll have him? Oh, he realises that he wronged her, that he dated other girls and treated her like an enemy. He’s the one asking if she’ll still have him? She didn’t get it in time to reply and he was already gone, but her inner light went back on. She was still in a desperate situation, afraid and threatened, but her heart was now healed and radiant. Of course she will have him. She was his since she was eleven. All he ever had to do is ask for her hand.

Now, she just has to endure hell until he wins. Hopefully, without getting raped, murdered or bitten by a werewolf. If she had to bet on those odds, she’d normally pass, but now, she actually smiled.

I was trying to render out the emotional history between the two characters, because what I did so far felt unconvincing and incomplete, so here goes.

When they first met, Lyra had her short list of boys from acceptable lineages in her head, and was very polite and considerate with them. However, somewhere around her first Quidditch match with Harry, or when she dropped her books and he quietly picked them up from the ground, handed them to her, looked her in the eyes and nodded, she locked in her choice onto him, and since then, her list contained only one name. The thing with her is that she’s incredibly loyal, and she never wavers; in that respect she’s the mirror image of Harry. The difference is, he never knew, because she wasn’t allowed to tell him. The political reasons prohibited it, and it would be treasonous. In her mind, she’ll wait until he changes sides, or the war is over, but her choice was locked in by the time she was eleven years old; in her mind, she was already married to him – before puberty, before the teenage hormones, before the first kiss. It wasn’t a teenage infatuation; it was a life-long choice. It was never a crush. It was never skin deep. There would never, ever be anyone else for her.

But she didn’t tell him. She argued with him, made his life difficult, competed with him, belittled his friends, but she was always polite and dignified about it… until he started dating other girls. This hit her so hard, that she started outright avoiding him. She wasn’t just jealous; she felt betrayed and heartbroken. Hermione figured it out immediately, and when Harry asked why is Lyra avoiding him and changing direction whenever she sees him, Hermione started paying attention and told him that the girl is secretly in love with him, and it’s actually deep stuff; she recognized the look Lyra had when Harry kissed Cho and later Ginny, and it was heartbreak, not hatred or revulsion as Harry thought. Unfortunately, it coincided with Voldemort’s return, and Harry thought that Lyra decided to stonewall him when her Dark Lord returned, since she’s committed to becoming a Death Eater and the only thing he can expect from her now is a violent ambush in some dark corner of the castle. He acted on this belief, and when Lyra understood how he interpreted it, she went furious and it added another layer of heartbreak. She thought about retaliating by dating someone else, but she felt immediate revulsion at the idea. She was absolutely loyal and she made her choice. It was always meant to be forever, and there can never be anyone else. She was additionally frustrated because she knew it was her fault. She never told him. He didn’t figure it out. She never told him that she chose him, but that it needs to wait until after the war. For all he knows, she hates him. So, in her frustration, she lashed out, she was hissy and nasty and he of course interpreted it all as confirmation of his conjecture.

The first thing that ever broke his self-righteousness was when he witnessed Snape’s worst memory: when he understood that his idealised father was a school bully, of exactly the kind that he hates the most. His black-and-white world in which everybody is perfectly sorted out in separate camps broke.

And then there was the incident in the bathroom. When he ambushed her there, she was reduced to crying her heart out to Moaning Myrtle, and then she saw him, with his self-righteous look, now dating Ginny Weasley, looking at her like she’s a villain, and she poured all her frustration and heartbreak in “Crucio!”; but he was always faster and he intercepted her spell with “Sectumsempra!” which hit her like a wall of knives, instantly ending all her frustrated emotions.

There’s something about the physical, sensual reality that tends to snap people out of the nonsense that they have in their heads. When Harry saw that beautiful girl turning pale and sweaty from shock, drowning in her own blood on the floor, all his self-righteous theories immediately left him. She no longer felt like a conspiring Death Eater he was cornering. She felt like a dying victim, completely vulnerable, and his instinct broke out when his mind failed to work; he realised that he loves her, and would give anything to heal her and have her back.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to talk to her later; he had to go hunt Horcruxes with Dumbledore, and had to watch Dumbledore drink that terrible potion, and all for nothing since the real Horcrux had already been taken by R.A.B., and a dummy was left in its place. They barely arrived at the bell tower, when Lyra ambushed them, and Harry had to watch, body-locked and hidden in the invisibility cloak, as Lyra disarmed Dumbledore to give herself the time to speak, and then begged Dumbledore to save the lives of her family, explaining what she was forced to do, apologising for it, but not avoiding guilt. She laid herself bare in front of the Headmaster and begged for her life and the lives of her family. But then the Carrows came, and it was all over; she could no longer speak her mind openly. As terrible and traumatic the death of Dumbledore was to Harry, he unfortunately doesn’t have a one-track mind. He can experience multiple tragedies at once. So, after he went after Snape, and experienced a humiliating defeat adding to his loss, he also started going back in his memories, reliving everything about Lyra. The thing with Harry Potter is this: he has terrible self-control, but he has the memory of an elephant. He remembers everything in clear detail. So, he revised all the things he remembered of her, now understanding that she was motivated by loyalty and love, not hatred and malice. Then he remembered Hermione’s explanation of her actions, and he stood in shock. He then went even further into the past, and realised that she always loved him, but she was inhibited by her love and loyalty to her family. He understood that she was hurt when he started dating other girls, but her hands were tied. She couldn’t say anything, and could only suffer in silence, in addition to other kinds of suffering she had to endure, with her parents being enslaved, and werewolves and thugs prancing in her ancestral home, where she understood that Voldemort will eventually gift her as a prize to one of the disgusting people there. Harry was completely horrified. He didn’t know. She thought herself his forever since she was 11, and he knew nothing about it. He thought her an icy Princess with a stone heart, and in reality, her suffering mirrored his own the entire time.

So, after Dumbledore’s funeral, he approached her and asked for a word in private. She nodded and went with him, and he whispered in her ear that he loves her, and is hers forever if she will have him, but there’s a war looming, it’s going to be dangerous, he wants her to be safe, so nobody must know. She looked at him with wide eyes, and nodded, not trusting her voice.

When he was brought to Malfoy Manor as a prisoner along his two friends, and she refused to identify him, she gave him the look – it said “please win”. It also said “yes”. No hedging, no restraint, no holding back, no reservations – “yes, I’m yours, go win”.

I won’t go into the part when she thought he was dead. She’s a fictional character, and yet the emotions involved are so terrible that I’m compelled to protect them, because people witnessing them would be compelled to turn aside and protect her privacy, because of how bad that was. There were other terrible things in the series – death of Sirius Black. Death of Fred Weasley, of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, Snape crying while holding Lily’s dead body. This was worse.

So, I basically wrote it as a broken mirror of the tragedy of Lily and Severus, where Lyra made a similar error; and she had to watch her love dead, knowing it’s the end of her life, because it was always forever. I didn’t write it as a romance, I wrote it as an almost-tragedy, because that’s the only way it works.

In the end, Harry makes it up to her for not figuring her out in time; he makes their surname Malfoy-Potter, in order to protect her heritage and family name, because she always felt guilty for being a girl and thus causing the family name to be extinct. So, he decided to preserve it, bring it out of the mud where her father buried it with his foolishness, and restored her family honour.

Honestly, I think it’s a better story than the original. 🙂

Biljana argued that my reading of the possible outcomes with Malfoy as a girl is not the only possibility. For instance, they could click together earlier and she could run away from her parents and hide at the Weasleys.

That’s true, but I didn’t choose this option because it would change the story so much, it would no longer be the same universe. Also, there are problems.

When does she actually decide to run away? When they’re 12? 14? Lucius would raise hell at the Ministry. He would claim she’s kidnapped. She would have to testify at the Ministry or in fact at the court, against her parents, denouncing them as actual Death Eaters. She would have to commit actual treason against her parents, be rejected by her entire former friend group in Slytherin, be exposed to extreme bullying at school, be ostracised, lose all the privileges she’s accustomed to, and find herself pressured and persecuted like Harry. Also, the Ministry wasn’t actually inclined to accept Voldemort’s return as a fact. Her story would be met with suspicion. Other causes would be sought. Weasleys would be in trouble because of her. Also, she spent years parroting her parents’ opinion of them and insulting them. They weren’t exactly on good terms. It would be a total shit show. I mean, it’s possible, but unlikely and extremely out of character. I think she would be too young and immature to actually diverge from her parents’ propaganda and influence before the Half Blood Prince times, which is exactly when I find it possible for Harry to change his opinion of her and find her interesting – no longer a stereotypical enemy, but an actual person in serious trouble. He even has understanding for Draco at that point, and gets it. He holds Draco in contempt, but he understands his predicament. So, if we follow the logic of things, this is the first point in the timeline where anything romantic could develop between the two, but they actually don’t have the time to work it out. They are almost always separated. They cross paths in the bathroom and the bell tower. The story in the bell tower is similar enough, yet different. The trembling, frightened Lyra actually begs Dumbledore for help, she asks him to save her parents because they are held hostage. She admits everything and doesn’t even pretend to be there to kill him, but then the Carrows and other scum arrive and interrupt them, as in the books. Then Snape arrives, kills Dumbledore, and all hell breaks loose. Harry is already smart enough to understand that Draco is essentially acting at gunpoint there, but with Lyra, he would feel very protective of her and I think this is the point where he starts working with the idea that they might be a thing, but he doesn’t know her opinion because they never get to talk. Also, he’s so traumatised by the events that anything romantic is the last thing on his mind. So, this is where I feel that the divergence from the Draco timeline is realistic. Before… I can imagine all sorts of things, but they are basically enemies and Harry would perceive her as scary and dangerous. He would not be mature enough for subtlety. However, if she were as nasty with him as Draco in the past, nothing would come out of it. There have to be double meanings and hints that left him awake at night trying to figure her out, things that make sense only in hindsight, so that when he revises his opinion of her, he can look at the past and say “oh wait…”.

It’s actually not easy to work out the details, because if I make them too friendly, the story doesn’t work, and if I make them too hostile, it also doesn’t work. I have to make her just hostile enough, and just friendly enough. She would help him with Potions homework, and he’d be surprised at the matter-of-factness and lack of hostility and condescension in the act. He would pick up her books when she dropped them, return them and she would say “thanks”. There would be a level of civility between them, a level of acknowledgment and respect. However, they are both too young, too indoctrinated into black and white thinking and cultist propaganda, to be able to actually figure out anything subtle. Sirius has to remind Harry that the world isn’t cleanly separated into good people and Death Eaters. He needs to understand that his father used to be a school bully. He needs to understand that Snape was his mother’s childhood friend. Before that, he’s simply too immature to understand anything. Also, Lyra needs to experience tragedy that resulted from her parents’ choice for Voldemort. They need to be humiliated and suffer in their own home, surrounded by werewolves and thugs. They need to be degraded, humbled, and afraid for their lives. Only then can they understand that they were wrong, that their side was wrong all the time, and then she starts understanding that Harry was right, that he’s actually fighting for her freedom, and stop hedging – this is the point where she’s all in. I can’t see it before. The characters aren’t at the right mental place, they are too young, the events have not progressed sufficiently. Also, I don’t see Lyra as girlfriend material for Harry. I don’t see them dating. It either doesn’t work at all, or it’s instantly much deeper. They switch to husband and wife on a click. When they’re too young, he’s too immature to understand that she left the door open for him, he doesn’t understand the subtle messages beneath her actions. He understands the Death Eater propaganda she spews, he understands the racial insults against his friends, he understands that her parents serve Voldemort and she seems thrilled to join them in that respect as soon as she’s of age. She’s scary. However, she’s also a beautiful, vital, polite and respectful young lady who occasionally just happened to do something nice for him without making it weird, and he can’t figure her out. The idea that they could date at that time is just so out of character and so out of storyline that I just can’t make it work. Later, in hindsight, he gets it. She felt respectful because she actually was. However, she was also an immature brat, she also believed in an evil ideology, and her parents were actually Death Eaters. None of that can be just washed away. They all had to change.

The last article about the female Malfoy made me think. I assumed the girl would be brought up with better manners than Draco, because propriety, manners, social standings and histories of important families and their members would be something to always keep in mind. After all, Narcissa was a Black, and they had that family tree posted prominently on the wall. Who is who is the cornerstone of their world. You want to maintain connections, be good with the right people, and even if important families are on the other side in a wizard war, you don’t want to burn the bridges permanently. You want to leave doors open. You don’t want to create mortal enemies with careless words, which is easy to do if you’re ignorant and arrogant.

So then I thought, wouldn’t Draco need to know most of that, as well? And wouldn’t that child have a governess, or a tutor, who would make sure that they know all that when you wake them up at 3AM in the morning, the way Black children were constantly taught that?

Apparently not, because Draco went around making enemies and antagonising people, while honing alliances with the children of Death Eaters. Almost everything he did was a social faux pas of some kind, or he made a fool of himself by making wrong assumptions due to ignorance. For instance, he assumed that Potter is poor because he’s hanging out with the Weasleys. First of all, it’s not going to work as an insult if it’s not even remotely true; Potter is one of the wealthiest people in the world, he could buy a small country if he felt like it. Second, you don’t antagonise the last heir of the only family in the world that can actually threaten yours in stature. Third, if you don’t have anything constructive to say, shut the fuck up. It’s amazing that Malfoy just went around with his two henchmen who were dumber than rocks, and antagonised people. That’s not what noble or wealthy people are supposed to be doing at school. You’re supposed to build connections, alliances, your future network. If you can’t make someone a friend, at least don’t make them an enemy. Stay on neutral terms. Leave the doors open. Whatever you currently think of someone, you’re in the same school. You’re in approximately similar social class. You’re in the same social circle. Be nice to people. If you can’t be nice, be neutral or distant.

Basically, Draco Malfoy is such an unclouth brat, that he really goes out of his way to make enemies of people, and without any need for it whatsoever. It’s amazing. For instance, yeah, mock Potter by saying he’s a little baby crying for his mommy. That’s going to help you with someone whose parents were murdered by your parents’ demonic cult leader, so he had to grow up without them since he was a year old. That sounds like a crash course in things to avoid because you had a tutor as a child, someone who told you what things you should never do unless you want to make enemies for life who will eventually find a way to end you.

Then I cross-referenced the Harry Potter universe with the Salvos universe by Melas Delta, and sure, the nobility there have personal tutors or butlers who take care of their manners, presentation, etiquette and keep them informed about the people they are encountering. Saffron, for instance, is a Lady of the Merryster family, a wealthy noble; she has Matthew, her butler, around her at almost all times, and he watches that she doesn’t do something stupid. Sure, she’s arrogant and I suppose she’s a rich brat like Draco Malfoy, and she addresses servants and subordinates in a pretty arrogant manner, and she’s also whiny, demanding and conceited, at least in the beginning. However, when she meets an important person she doesn’t know, her first assumption is that this might be someone much more important later on, and she’s polite, graceful, and creates a place for a social connection for later on, if that materialises. For instance, when she meets Salvos, Salvos is of very local notoriety, but impressive, and seems to climb the social ladder very aggressively. Saffron is very kind with her, doesn’t act pompous or distant, and creates a friendship that proves to be the most important one she ever made, because when they met again, Salvos was a lvl. 105 Liberator of the Plaguelands, famous and wealthy, and they ended up being roommates in the same school, and soon thereafter Salvos saved her family from Belzu when they would have otherwise all died. So, by acting with poise and tact and befriending a currently marginally important person she made the best move in her entire life. She could as well have told Salvos that she’s not anywhere near important enough for her to talk to, and that would be that.

Later, Saffron teaches Salvos exactly the things somebody should have taught Draco Malfoy – don’t offend people with your careless actions. Treat their emotions with tact. Don’t make enemies. Try to make friends when possible. Cultivate your image as a smart, competent, reasonable and kind person, rather than a foolish, careless idiot who offends people when that brings nothing, and kindness wouldn’t cost you anything really.

Salvos universe, honestly, makes much more sense than the Harry Potter universe in that sense – here, the nobles actually act in a manner that’s constructive if you want to have a good network of social connections, be able to navigate on that network later on by offering services, calling on favours and so on, and not making enemies where that’s not useful or necessary.

Even with enemies, if you can’t actually kill them, it might be a good idea to not annoy them constantly. If you annoy them, they will remember that you’re a problem and focus their attention and energy on destroying or disrupting you. If you leave them alone, they will likely not think of you and do something else that won’t bother you. If someone’s an enemy, insulting them to the point where they make their mission in life to ruin you is the worst you can do.

In the Harry Potter series, Malfoy keeps going out of his way to cultivate his enemy roster. It’s like he has a list of the most important people on the other side of the wizard war, and insults them in ways that will stick. Eventually, his family is defeated, loses its social standing, and barely escapes prison. Well done, mate. 🙂

So, that’s the limit of the Lyra Malfoy thought experiment I made in the last article. If there’s no governess to drill that stuff into the child from early on, and the parents spoil them, the result is Draco Malfoy, and it’s not magically better when it’s gender-swapped. A spoiled girl with poor manners, that commits a social faux-pas with every stupidly arrogant move will still make enemies everywhere.

So, I made certain assumptions in my thought experiment that have no basis in the original books, but I needed them in order to produce a functional person that would make the concept work. I made the assumption that a girl would have more training in social grace, because of one single difference: if Malfoys have only one female child, they will become extinct in the male line. The name Malfoy dies when she’s married. Their wealth and family heritage merges into those of her husband. Absolutely everything depends on the quality of the man she marries. This wouldn’t apply for the male child. As long as he brings in someone decent as his wife, everything is fine. The family name, wealth and fortune continue undisturbed. Draco’s choice of a wife is up to him, and it doesn’t matter, as long as she’s not a muggle-born. He has all the choices in the wizard world. Lyra does not. It has to be someone that could be trusted with the continuation of the Malfoy heritage. There are only a few families important enough for her to marry into, wealthy enough for it not to be a terrible mismatch, and they have male heirs of her age. Harry Potter is firmly entrenched at the first place of that list. He’s descended from the Peverell family that became extinct in the male line, and a Deathly Hallow is his family heirloom. His origins are tied to the roots of the history of the wizard world. His wealth is enormous, and his social clout is even greater.

So, I made an assumption. Narcissa Malfoy, nee Black, who memorized that Black family tree since she was a child, would begin teaching that to her daughter before she’s walking. To a pureblood supremacist like herself, that would be the most important thing in the world to learn. Lyra would learn that the most important thing for her is to marry a person suitable for continuation of their family line, and she would know all the suitable candidates by name, with their entire family history. She would know what Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom and the other one or two candidates had for breakfast when they were five. She would know never to make fun of them, never to hurt them with anything personal enough to stick, never to make fun of Harry Potter for his dead parents, or make fun of Neville Longbottom for his parents being tortured to insanity by her sister.

A boy would be taught that he represents the Malfoy name and needs to hurt their enemies and make them afraid. He would go around and cultivate the enemy roster, regardless of how unwise that is strategically, because he would be a spoiled brat, and that would be because family line depends on him marrying anyone. It doesn’t depend on him marrying a person from a specific, very short list. Lyra would, therefore, be taught better, by her mother, or by a governess. It would be the air she breathes. When she talks to Harry Potter, she knows she’s talking to the single most desirable man for her to marry. She also knows he’s at the very top of the list of family enemies. The way to reconcile the two is to show the flag, but do it in a very precise, tactful way, that will hurt Potter enough to make him reconsider his political position, and yet never hurt him personally in a way that would close that most important door. Lyra would be trained as a supreme diplomat. Her social skills would be dark, but precise and focused. She would be under a lot of stress to maintain all that posturing and facade, and she would have an outlet in Quidditch, where she would get sweaty, dirty, rained on, flown into a wall by Harry, or ploughing his head into the dirt in return, and after they would be patched up in the hospital wing and cleaned up, she would look pristine in her school uniform, with not a hair out of place, and Harry would wonder if that’s even the same person. He would be slightly better than her as a Seeker, because he is better than Draco, and I think it would remain that way with Lyra, but it’s close. What’s not close is the difference in their verbal skills, where she absolutely pulverises him when they have an exchange of quips. His are blunt and emotional, and hers are an icy scalpel. She would politely greet him in the corridor, look at Hermione beside him, and say “You have a very nice pet hamster, Potter. Did you buy it at Diagon Alley, or did it follow you home on its own?”, to which he would fume impotently trying to figure out a way to defend his friend’s honour, but nothing coherent would come out, to great entertainment of the crowd. He also wouldn’t have the option to kick her teeth in, the way he would with Draco. With a girl who never got into his face, remained calm, poised and at a polite distance, physical violence is never an option. There’s no exchange of ambushes that end up with bloody heads, no wand duels. She never draws a wand at him, ever, until that fateful day in the bathroom, which is why that would have a devastating impact on him later. They don’t have a history of violence between them outside of Quidditch court, and that’s always contained within the rules of the sport. The first ever violence between them is her using Cruciatus curse, but interrupted by a faster duelist using Sectumsempra, slaughtering her and having her survive only because the spell missed her neck, and because Snape happened to be nearby. Harry would not be able to brush that one away the way he could with Draco – it was war, he was dealing with a Death Eater who conspired to kill Dumbledore and let a horde of Death Eaters into Hogwarts. They had a history of violent encounters between them, and Draco was using Crucio as his opening move. Sure, Harry wouldn’t have used Sectumsempra had he known what an evil spell that is, and that thing is so evil you get to Azkaban for using it on a human. Using it on Draco was really bad, but he managed to get past it. Using it against that dignified, capable girl, who never before even thought of violence against him, because she was defensive about being caught crying in a girl’s bathroom, and reducing her to drowning in her own pooling blood on the floor, that’s something you don’t just get over, that’s an injury you can repay only if you marry her and care for her your entire life. That event changes things between them forever, because here, Harry loses his white knight aura. He always assumes he’s the good guy, the enemy is the bad guy, and things never change. Now, he did something that makes him the bad guy in his own eyes. Lyra was trying to keep herself and her parents alive when they were the hostages of Voldemort in their own home, and she was crying because she was forced to do something she didn’t want to, but if she didn’t, her family would be killed for treason. It’s not exactly an enemy he imagined, and seeing her bleeding on the floor didn’t make him feel like a white night slaughtering a dragon, it made him feel like Jack the Ripper.

Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t guess what that spell does – its name translates to “be sliced apart forever”, which can’t be good however you put it. I think the reason why Potter used it was because Malfoy’s use of Crucio put him in the same mode he was in the last time that was used against him, by Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. That spell means fight to the death for him, and he used the worst thing he had at the top of his tongue. It turned out to be much worse than he intended.

So, here’s where the things between them change. He no longer feels like a victim of a cold Princess who insults his friends. He feels he owes her, big time. So, he sees her future actions with much more understanding and less judgment than he used to. He already saw through Voldemort’s eyes that her family are prisoners in their own home, and now that really clicks. He starts feeling for her, and understands what a terrible position she is in, and only trying to save her family now. It’s no longer an ideological war, where she’s at the opposite side. Sure, her parents kind of had it coming, but she’s innocent in all this, and was always just trying to be a good daughter. Also, when he and his friends were captured and brought to Malfoy Manor, she refused to positively identify him, risking everything to save him, thus putting him into even more debt – and the look she gave him, meaning “please win”, felt like complete surrender. Harry is very intuitive in a crisis, and he read everything in that look; it was a look of a wife putting all her trust in her husband. Her life, her family, her entire future. There was no longer any balancing between the two lists, and he understood then that he could always feel some of that look in her, and it always haunted him because he couldn’t figure it out. He could never figure out why her insults always tore at everything around him, while making a protective shell around him, making him feel precious. Her insults made him feel like a great noble Lord who is demeaning himself by the company he keeps, and it would have been so much easier for her to tear at him personally, with how good she was at it, and how vulnerable he was. Others did it all the time, but never her.

When he returned to Hogwarts in search of the Horcrux and students had to choose sides, she came to his side without hesitation, without a second thought. No drama; she held his hand briefly, but the intimacy of that moment was staggering, because in their hearts they were already married at that point. And then he went to the woods alone to be killed, and she had to watch Hagrid bringing him there as if dead, and she had to watch.

Later, he would joke that he owes her three times over, for the bathroom, for the Manor, and for putting her through that. She got serious. “No, that’s not true. In the bathroom, I had it coming. I used Crucio against you, and when my mind turned on enough to realise what I had done, I felt I had it coming. I deserved to be hit by that horror. It was also a payback for all the insults over the years, when I felt I had to be terrible with you because you’re the enemy and I had to show the family colours. I deserved punishment. Also, when I refused to identify you, I was already on your side in the war. I was not saving an enemy, I was just doing the only thing I could in the war against that evil. I couldn’t do it openly yet, but don’t think I changed sides only when I could openly stand at your side. I was almost there even before the bathroom, and I was definitely there after Dumbledore’s death. We just didn’t get to talk, and my parents were prisoners. But for putting me through those moments when I thought you were dead, you will repay me for as long as you live”.

But of course, this ending would only be realistic if Lyra received a proper upbringing, of the kind Saffron received in the Salvos universe. Saffron can be seen acting as entitled and arrogant as Draco. She’s also a coward who freezes and freaks out when she’s physically threatened. However, Saffron was taught proper behaviour and she had Matthew to make sure she behaved. A properly raised Malfoy girl would still be a pompous, arrogant, spoiled little Princess, but she would also be taught what you never do. You never strike at soft targets when the person you’re arguing with is someone whose children you might want to bear one day, and this needs to be the undertone of every argument with male heirs of noble families you will ever have. If you want to preserve your status as a Lady, you need to address a heir of a noble family as a Lord. He might currently be your enemy, but those things can change, and his status as high nobility remains. A boy would be taught to just show the family flag to the enemy. A girl would be taught that as well, but also that there are only a few people who can be trusted to carry that flag and keep her family in a place of honour with her at their side. If you insult such a man in a way that will stay with him forever, you may just have destroyed your family’s future.

So, there’s the limit of the gender-swap. It would only work if the girl was brought up properly and learned to be considerate and mindful of those things since early childhood. A Malfoy boy at 10 can be a spoiled brat. A Malfoy girl at 10 is also a spoiled brat, but she’s had it hammered into her head the exact names of boys she is never, ever allowed to be a spoiled brat with. With them, even if they are currently enemies, she needs to be respectful and considerate. Sure, she would insult Ron and Hermione horribly, demeaning their humanity in every way. Harry would be so mad he’d go pound a pillow in his bedroom until his hand hurt. But the infuriating part would be the way she greeted him every time, before proceeding to tear at his friends. There was something in her stance that made him feel precious, respected and cherished, and he couldn’t understand how that can coexist with the vitriolic contempt she has for his friends. So, that’s the difference that would have to exist for them to be romantically involved later, because we have to have in mind that Harry and Draco never really became good friends, despite being allies in war at some point. They were polite and cordial, but that was it. In order for there to be more, you can’t just make Malfoy into a cute girl and expect that to override everything, because it wouldn’t. You can’t have that girl be disrespectful and demeaning to him personally, insult his mother and ridicule his deep wounds, and expect them to get over it just because hormones are flaring. You can’t have her be a total bitch and have him like her. There must be that something that’s haunting him from early childhood, where she never tears at his obvious soft spots despite having the ability to do so. There must be the fact that she never hits him, she never fires a hex at him in anger, never gets into his face, despite the fact that she could. He needs to keep wondering why, despite being angry at her, and despite knowing she’s the enemy. She needs to be very precise and selective about being an entitled bitch. Saffron is an excellent example of a character of that kind, written well.