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 now. 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.