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 she 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. 🙂