Like Fire and Moonlight - Chapter 03: Terms of Engagement

Harry didn’t knock. He never knocked on McGonagall’s office door. Something about knocking implied you were uncertain you belonged there, and Harry Potter — whether by blood, charm, or sheer force of myth — had never been in danger of seeming uncertain. He opened the heavy oak door with one hand and a half-apologetic shrug, his satchel slung over his shoulder at an angle meant to suggest he’d rushed, though he hadn’t. He was exactly as late as he meant to be, which was five minutes — just long enough to make the room aware of his absence and forced to register his entrance.

It was, unfortunately, the wrong kind of room for that kind of tactic.

Daphne Greengrass was already seated, of course. She sat like she’d been carved from one of the darker marble statues in the entrance hall — perfect posture, limbs folded in a way that spoke of breeding rather than comfort. Her robe collar had been pinned with a silver serpent clasp, tasteful and likely centuries old, and she was speaking in a voice too low to carry. Opposite her sat Hermione, brows slightly raised in that expression she wore when listening intently to someone she didn’t yet trust, and beside her — looking painfully disinterested — was Draco Malfoy, legs crossed at the ankle and face fixed in the bored disdain of someone who believed all meetings were beneath him but had shown up anyway to keep the family name from slipping further into oblivion.

Harry let the door drift closed behind him and didn’t announce himself. He just strolled toward the nearest chair like he hadn’t noticed he was late, pulled it back with a soft scrape, and collapsed into it with the casual sprawl of someone who knew exactly how much trouble he could afford to cause before anyone tried to stop him.

“I see we started without me,” he said.

Daphne didn’t look at him. “We started on time. You arrived without us.”

Hermione’s sigh was inaudible but palpable, the kind of exhale that said this year will shorten my lifespan.

“I was told this would be a planning session,” Harry continued, tugging out a folded parchment from his satchel with exaggerated care. “Not a committee audition.”

Draco gave him a look like he was something unpleasant found in a potion vial. “How very Gryffindor of you — to confuse preparation with bureaucracy.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Harry replied. “You lot are still defining ‘initiative’ as whatever happens after your family lawyer finishes redlining the rules.”

“I can’t imagine how your House managed without you last year,” Draco murmured, inspecting his sleeve.

Daphne spoke before Harry could retort, which was probably for the best. “If you’re quite finished,” she said, her voice dry as parchment left too long near flame, “we were reviewing the requirements of the Concord Initiative. You may be surprised to learn this actually involves responsibilities.”

“I’m not surprised,” Harry said, leaning back in his chair. “I just don’t believe the Ministry’s latest rebranding of ‘tolerance’ needs to be project-managed like a war campaign.”

“Only Gryffindors confuse disorganization with freedom,” Daphne said, still not looking at him. She had a thin, elegant quill between her fingers, and she tapped it lightly against her parchment like a clock counting down the seconds until she could leave.

Hermione, ever the weary diplomat, stepped in with a voice that carried a smile sharp enough to cut stone. “Let’s perhaps agree that the goal is cooperation, not mutual assassination.”

“Speak for your side,” Draco said. “I’m only here because Mother thought it would look good on parchment.”

“Then leave,” Daphne said mildly, her eyes still fixed on her notes. “No one invited you to supervise.”

“On the contrary,” Draco said, gesturing lazily toward the fireplace. “McGonagall sent me specifically to observe him. Apparently, Hogwarts’ favorite weapon of mass attention needs adult supervision.”

Harry grinned at that. “Touched. But if I’m a weapon, I’d like to be upgraded from a blunt object.”

“Then stop acting like one,” Daphne murmured, so softly only Harry and Hermione caught it.

He opened his mouth — maybe to fire back, maybe to laugh, he didn’t know — but the door opened behind them before he had the chance.

And just like that, the temperature dropped half a degree.

~HP~

Professor McGonagall entered with the quiet precision of someone who knew the weight of her presence did not require theatrics. Her robes were pressed into such rigid pleats it seemed impossible that she had sat down at all that day, and her spectacles gleamed with that dangerous, surgical clarity reserved for either delicate magical transfiguration or institutional discipline. She crossed to her desk without acknowledging their expressions — not the calculated serenity on Daphne’s face, not Draco’s cultivated ennui, not the faint, tightening tension in Hermione’s jaw, and certainly not the lazy amusement Harry hadn’t bothered to disguise.

The door clicked shut behind her with a sharp, final sound, and when she turned to face them, she did so with a single file folder in hand and a look that had quelled riots among sixth-years and crushed more than one snide Slytherin with nothing more than silence.

“Mr. Potter,” she said, as she set the folder down, “I appreciate your punctuality.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, almost grinning. “I thought I was late.”

“You are,” McGonagall said crisply. “Which, for you, amounts to consistency. And that is the most charitable interpretation I am prepared to extend this morning.”

He decided not to push it. Daphne, to his left, seemed to inhale without moving.

McGonagall opened the folder and produced a scroll of official Ministry-validated parchment that unfurled itself on the desk between them, covered in impossibly neat cursive and Ministry seals that shimmered faintly in the candlelight. It looked like a contract, which it was. Magical, binding, and laced with clauses that Harry instinctively dislikes the look of.

“You have been selected as co-leads of the House Concord Initiative,” she began, reading as if it were law, not invitation. “Your responsibilities include, but are not limited to, organizing and executing five inter-house events across four terms, co-authoring a monthly student leadership report, attending quarterly evaluations with myself and the Concord Review Board, mentoring two cross-house junior pairs, and coordinating the Founder Reenactment for this year’s annual Ball.”

Harry blinked. “Sorry — what?”

“The reenactment,” Hermione said automatically. “It’s a new addition. Each Concord pair is expected to research and perform a historical debate or event involving two of the original Hogwarts Founders. A symbolic gesture of reconciliation through interpretive performance.”

He stared at her. “Interpretive?”

“I assure you,” McGonagall said without looking up, “you may interpret it with your wand holstered, Mr. Potter. This is a diplomatic initiative, not a dueling championship.”

Harry let out a breath through his nose. “So we’re co-captains of Hogwarts: The Theatre Production.”

Daphne, who had not spoken since McGonagall’s entrance, finally lifted her gaze. “Perhaps if you spent more time reading the brief,” she said calmly, “and less time preemptively mocking it, you might realize you’ve been handed the opportunity to lead something that will be archived, cited, and judged by the next generation of magical policy reformers.”

Harry met her eyes and leaned forward just slightly, resting his elbows on the table with studied casualness. “Or perhaps this is another Ministry PR stunt, and the only thing we’re leading is a photo op in better robes.”

“Your cynicism,” she replied, “is only charming to people who’ve never had to negotiate with legacy families while pretending not to hate everything they stand for.”

“Children,” McGonagall said, with no change in volume and yet an immediate drop in temperature, “if I wanted to listen to your philosophical differences, I would have invited Professor Binns and a bottle of wine.”

Silence. Draco, to his credit, looked vaguely entertained. Hermione was stone-faced.

“You are not permitted to divide tasks and submit individual work,” McGonagall continued. “The purpose of this initiative is collaboration. You will draft your proposals together, revise them together, present them together. If one of you fails, the other is penalized. If one of you excels, the other is rewarded. This is a joint assignment. Consider your fates educationally entangled.”

Harry resisted the urge to groan. He could feel Daphne’s posture beside him grow even more upright, if that was possible. She radiated the kind of stillness that wasn’t peace but suppression.

“And before either of you ask,” McGonagall said, turning to glance at them over the rim of her glasses, “no, you may not switch partners. No, you may not appeal to your pairing. And no, Mr. Potter, you may not charm the parchment to spontaneously combust. We tried to prepare for everything.”

Harry made a small, polite gesture of surrender. Daphne remained motionless, eyes narrowed just enough to suggest she was already cataloguing the timeline for deliverables.

“This office is available for your planning sessions if required,” McGonagall added. “You will be expected to submit your first event proposal by Friday. And if I hear of either of you attempting to sabotage this effort—” she paused, folding the scroll back into its protective binding with a snap, “—I will make detention seem like a vacation.”

She turned, retrieved a second scroll, handed it to Hermione — a copy of the guidelines — and nodded once at Draco, who hadn’t moved in ten minutes.

“That will be all for me,” she said. “I suggest you begin immediately.”

And just like that, she was gone.

The door clicked shut behind her.

And the room felt calm just before a duel.

~HP~

The moment the door closed behind McGonagall, the air in the office shifted — not loudly, not dramatically, but with the subtle, unmistakable tension of four people realizing they no longer had a chaperone. For a few seconds, no one moved. The silence was not peaceful. It was watchful, like the kind of quiet you find just outside a courtroom or just before a Quidditch match. Daphne adjusted the angle of her quill without looking up. Hermione was already spreading out a roll of parchment over the table between them with quiet efficiency. Draco remained exactly where he was, statuesque and supremely bored, the ghost of a smirk still playing around the corners of his mouth as if he were only present for the pleasure of watching someone lose.

Harry cleared his throat and leaned forward, arms folded across the table, adopting the air of someone who didn’t intend to contribute much but was perfectly willing to judge everything presented to him. “So,” he said, dragging the word out just slightly, “what sort of disaster are we planning first?”

Hermione shot him a look that could have sharpened steel. “The first event is supposed to be a House History evening,” she said, pulling a second scroll from her satchel and unrolling it beside the Concord terms. “Each pair is expected to organize a collaborative lecture or performance that showcases a significant moment in inter-house history — ideally something the students wouldn’t learn in class.”

“Like Godric Gryffindor dueling Salazar Slytherin over whose beard was more intimidating?” Harry offered.

Draco scoffed. “Please. If you’re going to reference the Founder conflict, at least choose something with actual political relevance.”

Harry didn’t even glance at him. His eyes were on Daphne, who had begun sketching a timeline on the edge of the parchment in neat, angled lettering, her penmanship so exact it looked typeset. She hadn’t said a word since McGonagall left, which was somehow more unnerving than her sniping. Her silence felt like a test, and Harry had never particularly enjoyed being tested.

“So,” he said again, this time directing it to her. “Do I just stand here looking handsome while you write the entire thing and judge my posture, or do I get a pen?”

Daphne didn’t look up. “If you’re capable of offering ideas with structure, clarity, and historical relevance, I’ll let you borrow a quill.”

“Tempting,” Harry said. “But I left my sense of inferiority at the train station.”

Hermione pressed a hand to her temple. “Could we maybe try five consecutive minutes of cooperation?”

But Harry was watching Daphne now, and something about the quiet concentration in her expression, the cool detachment with which she annotated the margin of the scroll, made something flicker behind his usual bravado — not annoyance, not attraction, but something far more dangerous: curiosity.

He reached for the inkpot between them and, without asking, pulled the scroll an inch toward him. Daphne’s eyes flicked up then — sharp, assessing, prepared to deliver a correction.

Instead, he said, “The night Salazar walked out of the castle — most of the records call it a philosophical break. But there was a letter. Private, from Godric to Helga. It was in the Department of Magical Archives last year. He didn’t talk about politics. He talked about betrayal.”

That made her blink.

It wasn’t much — barely a pause — but he saw it. That brief hesitation. The calculation stalled. The smooth rhythm of her control interrupted, even for a heartbeat. She studied him properly this time, like she was reevaluating something she thought had been settled.

“And what did he say?” she asked, voice cool, but thinner at the edges.

Harry leaned back, spinning the quill in his fingers. “He said that Salazar was never wrong about the threats outside the walls — but that he couldn’t forgive a man who mistrusted the students already inside them. ‘Fear will build you a fortress,’” Harry quoted softly, “‘but only trust makes it worth guarding.’”

The room stilled.

Hermione looked at him with something like pride, though she tried not to show it. Draco rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath, but didn’t contradict the quote. Daphne — Daphne said nothing. Her expression was unreadable, her posture still perfect, but her fingers had stilled on the parchment, and the ink at the tip of her quill had begun to blot.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Still think I only exist to smile for the Prophet?”

Daphne didn’t rise to the bait. Not fully. But her voice, when she finally spoke again, had shifted. It was quieter. Measured. And just slightly different.

“You read letters from the Founders?”

Harry shrugged. “I skim. Boredom’s a powerful motivator.”

She studied him for one long moment, then returned to her notes. “That quote should be in the opening speech.”

And just like that, the first brick of mutual acknowledgment slid into place — not trust, not friendship, but a pause in the hostility. A recognition of intellect. Of possibility.

For Harry, it felt a bit like scoring in the first minute of a match you hadn’t realized had already started.

~HP~

The rustle of parchment was the only sound for a long stretch after the quote settled between them. Hermione, satisfied now that the pair were no longer openly threatening each other’s existence, began repacking her notes with the stiff, efficient movements of someone trying to contain both her relief and her suspicion. Draco, whose attention had already wandered somewhere past the room and into the mirror-polished recesses of his own ego, rose without comment and smoothed the sleeves of his robes with more elegance than necessary.

“I have better things to do than watch a Gryffindor struggle with critical thinking,” he said to no one in particular.

“And yet,” Hermione replied, without looking up, “here you are.”

Draco raised an eyebrow, but didn’t reply. He left with the same elegant boredom he’d arrived with, door clicking softly behind him.

Hermione hesitated. Her gaze flicked between Daphne, who was still writing without acknowledgment, and Harry, who had gone very still, eyes fixed on the parchment but clearly no longer reading. She adjusted the strap of her bag over her shoulder, lowered her voice just enough to sound maternal.

“Play nice,” she murmured to Harry, then added, with a pointed glance at Daphne, “or at least intelligently.”

And then she was gone too.

The silence that followed was different. Not empty. Just unbuffered — no political audience, no third party to moderate the air. It felt dense, the kind of silence that had presence, that demanded something be said or risked devouring the room whole. The candles on McGonagall’s desk flickered in the draft Hermione had left behind, casting elongated shadows across the table’s surface. For the first time since he’d sat down, Harry noticed how still Daphne could be when she wasn’t speaking. She didn’t fidget, didn’t shift, didn’t perform the illusion of movement. Her presence wasn’t loud, but it was commanding. Like the tension before a spell was cast.

“Are you always that hard on Malfoy?” he asked, finally, his tone light but not mocking.

“I’m hard on everyone,” she said without looking up. “It saves time.”

Harry watched her for a beat. “Efficient.”

She made a faint sound — not quite a laugh, but something that suggested agreement cloaked in disdain. “I prefer not to pretend people deserve more patience than they’ve earned.”

He tapped the quill against the side of the table, watching the ink stain from a tiny spot on the wood grain. “So how do you decide who’s earned it?”

She paused mid-stroke, eyes still on the parchment, but her hand stilled.

“They stop trying to impress me,” she said.

The quiet after that felt different. Not hostile. Not tense. Just heavier.

Harry leaned back in his chair, let the silence stretch a little, then said, “So what about me?”

Daphne looked up then, slow and deliberate, her eyes cool but unreadable. “You still haven’t decided whether you want to impress me or annoy me.”

He grinned. “What if it’s both?”

She didn’t smile. But she didn’t look away, either. “Then I suppose I’ll have to decide whether to tolerate it.”

Another pause, but this time it wasn’t about power. It was about something unspoken — something shifting in the air between them that neither wanted to name.

Harry tilted his head slightly. “Why don’t you trust anyone?”

It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a challenge. It was too honest for that.

Daphne’s lips pressed together — not in anger, but in calculation. He could see the wheels turning, the elegant machinery of her mind deciding whether to react, to deflect, to dismiss.

She set the quill down.

“Because trust is the first step toward vulnerability,” she said quietly. “And I’ve yet to see anyone survive that without bleeding.”

Harry didn’t respond right away. He felt that answer more than he’d expected to. It didn’t sound like a rehearsed philosophy. It sounded like an experience.

He nodded once. “Fair.”

She picked the quill back up, returned to her notes as though nothing had happened — as though she hadn’t just offered him a glimpse of something very private, very sharp, and very real.

Harry leaned forward again, this time not to provoke, but to collaborate.

“Let’s start with the reenactment,” he said, voice low. “You pick the moment. I’ll pick the angle.”

Daphne’s eyes flicked to him once more — not cold this time. Not calculating.

Just… assessing.

“Deal.”

~HP~

The last of the ink dried with a soft hiss as Daphne lifted her wand and tapped the parchment, sealing their outline with a preservation charm so clean and subtle it barely shimmered. Across the table, Harry watched her without pretending not to — the precision of her spellwork, the lack of wasted movement, the way she rolled her scrolls tight and bound them with a flick of her wrist. She wasn’t rushing. She didn’t need to. There was something about how she worked — methodical without being mechanical — that made him think of dueling. Not flashy, not improvised, but lethal in its efficiency.

He was still leaning back in his chair, one foot hooked around the leg of the table, half-scribbled notes in front of him that had never quite matched the polish of hers. But she hadn’t commented. She hadn’t criticized his handwriting or corrected the phrasing of the paragraph he’d drafted — which had surprised him. Instead, she had quietly taken what he offered, revised it only where necessary, and moved forward. No theatrics. No fanfare. Just a clean, cold acceptance of capability.

He sat up slowly as she stood, smoothing her robes and tucking the scroll into the interior of a slim leather binder. The way she moved suggested layers of training — not just in etiquette, but in restraint. Her expressions were edited in real time, her words selected for weight, not warmth. And yet, something about the way she glanced at him now, brief but unguarded, held a new undertone: a shift from dismissal to calculation, from reluctance to tolerance. Not approval. But acknowledgement.

“Well,” Harry said, stretching his arms over his head as he stood. “That wasn’t a total disaster.”

Daphne gave him a look that could’ve curdled wine. “The bar you set for success is concerning.”

He shrugged, adjusting the strap of his satchel. “I like to be impressed by small things. Keeps life exciting.”

She paused at the door, hand resting on the handle, and for a moment he thought she was going to leave without saying anything. But then she turned slightly, just enough that he could see her profile against the polished wood, the clean line of her jaw, the faintest glint of steel in her eyes.

“Your input was unexpectedly useful,” she said. “I’ll let that stand.”

Harry grinned. “Was that a compliment or a mercy ruling?”

“It was an observation,” she replied, and opened the door.

The hallway beyond was dim and mostly empty — classes had begun shifting, and the castle was beginning to breathe again. Voices echoed faintly from a corridor two floors down. Somewhere above them, a portrait yawned.

They walked in silence down the long hallway, side by side, not quite in step but no longer deliberately out of sync. The silence wasn’t the same as before. It wasn’t combative, or brittle. It's simply… was. The kind of quiet that didn’t need to prove anything.

They reached the staircase just as a group of third-years paused at the bottom landing, their conversation stuttering to a halt as they caught sight of the two of them walking together — Harry Potter, effortless in his Gryffindor red, and Daphne Greengrass, all quiet elegance and calculated motion. The third-years stared. One of them whispered something. Another nudged her friend and looked ready to ask for an autograph.

Daphne didn’t react. Harry gave them a wink.

When they rounded the next landing and the younger students were out of sight, she spoke without looking at him.

“You enjoy it. The attention.”

He didn’t answer right away. Then, softly — “I enjoy choosing when it happens.”

She glanced at him, expression unreadable.

At the base of the stairs, their paths split — Gryffindor tower to the left, Slytherin dungeons to the right. They stopped. No goodbyes, no promises.

Daphne adjusted the binder under her arm.

“I’ll send you the revision draft tonight.”

Harry nodded. “I’ll pretend to edit it.”

She almost smiled.

And then she turned and walked away, her footsteps fading into the stone like she’d never been there at all.

He watched her go.

Impossible girl.

But not wrong.