Like Fire and Moonlight - Chapter 02: The Announcement

There was a science to seating in the Great Hall, a social ritual layered beneath the clatter of plates and the glow of floating candles — and Daphne Greengrass had mastered it by fourth year. You never sat too close to the heads of power unless you intended to be seen as a challenger. You never sat too far from them unless you were declaring yourself irrelevant. There was a band of space — roughly two to four people removed from the apex — where one could exist as an equal without appearing overeager. That was where Daphne positioned herself: not beside Pansy or Draco, but just down the bench, close enough to be included, far enough to remain untouchable. Influence did not shout. It lingered.

She slid into her place without rustling her robes, the motion fluid and exact, eyes already cataloguing the room. There were new banners this year — some tasteful bastardization of all four house crests into a circle, as if unity could be solved by symmetry. The candles floated slightly lower. The enchanted ceiling had been adjusted to shimmer more warmly, like autumn trapped in amber, though it still did nothing to dull the infernal chatter from the Gryffindor table. They were louder than ever. Potter, naturally, was the epicenter.

He sat like he thought the table had been built around him — elbows spread, laughing unchecked, eyes gleaming with the easy confidence of someone who had never once had to consider whether he belonged. Daphne’s gaze narrowed. His hair, windswept and irritatingly effortless, caught the candlelight in a way that looked designed. He wore his school robes like they were casual dress and leaned in close when speaking, always reaching, always drawing people in with that magnetic arrogance that passed for charm in Gryffindor circles. It should have looked sloppy. It didn’t. It looked like power not needing to try.

She turned away, expression unreadable, and served herself a modest portion of roast vegetables and pheasant — elegant, composed, no sauce. Her plate was a message. Every choice was. At her side, Blaise arrived with a faint smirk and a flick of his wand that turned his goblet to obsidian black. Subtle, theatrical. Pansy entered next, voice already rising with faux delight over someone’s hair, someone’s weight, someone’s choice to wear off-the-rack dress robes to a school feast. Draco followed in silence, expression blank but controlled — the calm before a deliberate storm.

Daphne did not greet them first. Pansy noticed.

“Daphne, darling,” Pansy drawled, sliding in beside her with the grace of a cat already planning which bird to shred. “You’ve been positively ghostly this summer. Too many family salons? Or did your mother finally lock you in the greenhouse for unbecoming posture?”

Daphne gave her a measured glance. “You should know. She mentioned your name during tea. Something about vocal pitch and its correlation to early-onset migraines.”

Blaise choked discreetly on a cherry.

The game was easy. Keep Pansy amused but cautious, Draco reassured without being flattered, Blaise engaged without being let in. The rest of Slytherin would follow the temperature she set. It was all familiar, and comfortingly so — until the double doors at the end of the hall swung open once more and the faculty emerged in procession behind Dumbledore, who walked not like a man of power, but like a man who had outlived it. His expression was whimsical as always, but Daphne noticed — as she noticed everything — that his pace was slower, his beard less immaculately charmed, his gaze more often lost to the ceiling. His time was ending. The new era was forming in the gaps he would leave behind.

Professor McGonagall flanked him, posture perfect, face unreadable. She moved like a knife hidden in velvet, and Daphne respected her for it. The woman was predictable in the way only truly intelligent people could afford to be — rigid, principled, and terrifyingly efficient. She took her seat with no fanfare, but Daphne felt it — the tension that threaded through the staff table like a pulled string. Something was coming. The air was too careful.

Astoria caught her eye from the Ravenclaw table and waved once, brightly. Daphne did not wave back. Instead, she tilted her chin half an inch, subtle acknowledgment, just enough to keep her younger sister from pouting. She had told her once, years ago, that a Greengrass did not wave across rooms. They made others come to them.

She reached for her goblet — water, not pumpkin juice, never pumpkin juice — and took a slow sip, eyes returning to Potter just as he tossed his head back laughing, arm slung too comfortably around the back of Hermione Granger’s chair. Not a romantic gesture. Just possessive. Territorial. Like he owned space, and no one had ever told him otherwise.

It would have been laughable, if it hadn’t been effective.

The toast ended. Dumbledore spoke — meandering, sweet, irrelevant. A few jokes about cauldrons, a confusing metaphor about time-turners and teacups. Then he turned to McGonagall and nodded. The true announcement, then. The real purpose behind the banners and rebranding. Daphne folded her hands in her lap and prepared to listen.

She had already guessed the broad strokes. Inter-house initiatives. Mixed responsibility pairings. A forced camaraderie campaign to make Hogwarts look modern and magnanimous. What she had not yet seen was the mechanism — or the trap.

Across the table, Harry met her eyes — just briefly.

And smiled.

~HP~

Dumbledore concluded his speech with a flourish of his hands, sending a final sparkle of enchanted fire spiraling toward the ceiling. It burst overhead in a pattern vaguely reminiscent of a griffin doing a somersault, to scattered applause from the Gryffindor table and weary silence from most others. The old man sat down with the satisfied air of a man who had said absolutely nothing, yet would somehow be quoted in five separate student essays by morning. His beard settled like draped linen over his chest, and his fingers laced together as though he were simply another spectator now, uninvolved in what was coming next. But Daphne knew better. He had always been the master of grand silences. The real message was never in what Dumbledore said — it was in what he handed off.

And now, he was handing it off.

Professor McGonagall stood from her chair with a nod so small it might have passed unnoticed, her expression calm, lined, and severe. She tapped her wand once against the side of her goblet — a clear chime, far too delicate to command attention and yet it silenced the room instantly. That was her power: precision over force, economy over excess. Even the Gryffindors stopped chewing. Somewhere near the far wall, a Hufflepuff froze with a spoon of mashed potatoes halfway to their mouth. All eyes turned toward her.

Daphne straightened, spine clicking into alignment like a blade sliding into its sheath. She kept her face carefully blank, the picture of noble attentiveness, but inside, her focus narrowed to a scalpel’s point. This was it. The unveiling. The social deck was about to be reshuffled, and she intended to know the new rules before the others finished blinking.

“As many of you are aware,” McGonagall began, her brogue clipped and cool, “our world has spent too long marred by division — division rooted not only in blood, but in belief. It is our responsibility, here at Hogwarts, to prepare future generations not only to cast spells, but to build legacies that do not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.”

A faint rustle passed through the Hall — some vague discomfort, some eye-rolls — but Daphne didn’t blink. These speeches always began with virtue. What mattered was what came next.

“This year,” McGonagall continued, her gaze sweeping across the sea of faces like a commanding officer appraising troops, “we will begin a new tradition — one designed to foster leadership, cross-house collaboration, and public responsibility. I present to you the House Concord Initiative.”

The words rang out like a Ministry decree. Whispers sparked instantly, like dropped firecrackers.

Daphne’s hands remained folded, unmoved. She allowed the noise to wash over her and did not join it. The House Concord. An intentionally chosen phrase — not unity, not harmony, but concord. A political term. A ceasefire. This wasn’t about warmth. This was about optics. About control. About redefining the school’s legacy in the absence of war by creating a new kind of hero: not a fighter, but a diplomat. A manipulator of goodwill.

She had expected this.

She had not expected what came next.

“The following students,” McGonagall said, lifting a scroll with clear distaste for what it represented, “have been selected by faculty recommendation and performance history to serve as Concord Pair Leads. These partnerships will serve as examples of inter-house collaboration and will be responsible for coordinating events, mentoring younger years, and representing Hogwarts in external academic exchanges.”

A pause. A breath. And then:

“Padma Patil and Ernie Macmillan. Draco Malfoy and Susan Bones.”

Polite applause. The two were both competent, respected, safely predictable — Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, the soft-spoken bridge between ambition and caution.

“Hermione Granger and Blaise Zabini.”

A more intrigued ripple — Blaise smirked behind his goblet, and Hermione sat up a little straighter, the very image of polite horror disguised as curiosity.

“Ronald Weasley and Hannah Abbott.”

Several Slytherins coughed in disbelief. A few Ravenclaws looked thrilled at the potential for chaos.

McGonagall didn’t pause. She pressed forward like a sword driven into soft soil.

“And lastly—Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass.”

The words dropped like a spell gone wrong.

The Hall didn’t erupt, not exactly. It inhaled. A single, stunned breath of collective disbelief — too sharp, too synchronized. And then came the whispers, the unmistakable swell of sound: stifled gasps, hushed commentary, laughter in the back rows, wide eyes turning from red and gold to green and silver and back again. Her name. His name. Paired. Declared. Official.

At the Slytherin table, every fork seemed to freeze. Pansy tilted her head so slowly it bordered on theatrical. Blaise looked almost pleased. Draco, beside him, went very still.

Daphne did not move.

Her heartbeat, however, offered its own opinion.

She didn’t look at him, not yet. To do so now would be to acknowledge the theater. To confirm the tension. She could feel the heat of his gaze across the room, though — a sunbeam through glass, focused and sharp. He was looking at her. Not with horror, she was sure. Not even confusion. He would be grinning. Or smirking. Or — worse — intrigued.

She kept her expression unchanged, her limbs relaxed, her breath even. She picked up her goblet and drank. Water, not wine. Wine would have betrayed nerves.

The room continued to buzz around her. Someone at the Gryffindor table cheered — Seamus, probably. Idiot. Astoria’s face at the Ravenclaw table had gone from excited to frozen in the span of a heartbeat. Pansy leaned in toward her, lips parted with the kind of predatory delight that meant questions were coming.

Still, Daphne did not move.

She was not rattled.

She was not flattered.

And she absolutely, under no circumstances, would look at Harry Potter.

Not yet.

~HP~

Every eye in the room might as well have turned to her physically — heads swiveling, necks craning — but it was the weight of their attention that pressed hardest. No visible movement, and yet she could feel it: the hall thick with a wordless pivot, conversations still murmuring but mouths no longer aligned with eyes. She didn’t need to scan the room to know they were watching — not the staff, not the first-years, but the ones who mattered. Seventh-years, prefects, power players from every house. They didn’t care about inter-house unity. They cared about optics, about social territory, about what it meant that Daphne Greengrass — unshakable, untouched, bred for elegance and held apart from scandal by sheer force of will — had just been publicly shackled to Harry Potter in front of every influential student at Hogwarts.

Her posture remained flawless. Chin high, hands resting lightly at the edge of her plate, one ankle crossing the other beneath the table. She breathed through her nose. She did not blink. She could feel Pansy’s stare burrowing into her temple like a drill and could practically taste the sarcasm vibrating behind Blaise’s still-raised goblet. Draco, at least, had the decency to stay silent — but that silence wasn’t protection. It was a warning. Explain later.

She could almost hear the script being written in the minds around her — not the official one, not the McGonagall-approved tale of cross-house leadership, but the real version. Potter and Greengrass: fire and frost, golden boy and pure-blood heiress, chaos magnet and strategist. It would be in the common room gossip chains before dessert. Some would speculate it was punishment. Others would claim secret romance. Pansy would probably invent both.

Still, Daphne didn’t let her eyes stray toward the Gryffindor table. She focused instead on her goblet, on the slow curve of silver in her fork’s handle, on the way the steam curled from the still-warm food that no longer looked edible. Her appetite had vanished, not from nerves but from sheer contempt for theatrics. They had made a spectacle of her. They had made her visible. And visibility was a risk.

Then, finally — because she felt it like a tug behind her sternum — she allowed herself one glance.

Across the Hall, Harry Potter was leaning back in his chair as if it were a throne and he was very tired of how hard the world was trying to impress him. His expression was the very definition of casual arrogance, one hand curved around a goblet of pumpkin juice that he raised now, in her direction, with the precise weight of a toast. Not mocking. Not warm. Merely... recognition. As if the two of them had just shared a joke no one else in the Hall was clever enough to understand.

She stared at him across the tables, across the chasm of roaring house banners and floating candles and whispered speculation — and for a single, cursed heartbeat, she realized he had managed something very dangerous.

He had made her part of his story.

The room would remember this moment as one of his: Harry Potter, smiling coolly at his new Slytherin co-lead, charming the world one scandal at a time. He had turned the spotlight to gold, and she — unwilling, unflinching, furious — was now caught in the reflection.

Her lips parted just slightly, her nostrils flaring with the effort it took to keep her composure from tipping into reaction. It wasn’t that he had bested her. It was that he hadn’t even tried to. He had done it effortlessly. His smirk was barely a smirk. His toast had no flourish. He didn’t need to provoke a scene because the scene had been waiting for him all along.

She turned back to her plate.

“Daphne,” Pansy said sweetly, “are you going to faint or just take him to bed and get it over with?”

Daphne didn’t look at her. “Your fixation on Gryffindor boys is beginning to make sense.”

Blaise let out a low, appreciative hum, and someone at the far end of the table snorted.

But the damage was done. The moment was sealed. The Hall would remember the look they had exchanged. They always did, when it was Harry Potter — and now, unfortunately, they’d remember her too.

~HP~

By the time the final course arrived — a glittering arrangement of spiced apple tartlets and toffee-crusted pears — Daphne had already rebuilt the inner scaffolding that held her composure aloft. She was composed to the point of sculpture now, a girl carved in patience and poise, responding only when spoken to, nodding at the right moments, occasionally lowering her gaze with just enough modesty to remain unapproachable. She did not eat dessert. She did not react to Pansy’s increasingly transparent barbs. She did not, under any circumstances, glance back at the Gryffindor table.

It was not dignity. It was controlled. Dignity had to be earned. Control could be weaponized.

Around her, the conversation had loosened — the kind of post-announcement haze where people whispered more freely and cast glances they didn’t bother to hide. Draco was muttering something to Theo about House point revisions; Pansy had launched into a detailed monologue about how undignified it was to be “paired off like a first-year project.” Daphne remained silent. Blaise, for once, said nothing either. He simply watched her with that half-smile he reserved for moments of quiet catastrophe — like a man waiting for the second half of a duel to start.

And then — because of course it had to happen like this, publicly, unapologetically — Harry stood.

He didn’t excuse himself from the Gryffindor table. He didn’t speak to Hermione or Ron. He just rose, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to stroll across the Hall with all eyes on him and none of it seeming to matter. He moved like someone who belonged to the attention he received — a boy so used to being watched that he’d long since stopped registering it as real. The conversations dimmed by degrees as he passed each table, a wave of awareness spreading from right to left. By the time he reached Slytherin’s end of the hall, even the staff had paused, some bemused, others weary. Dumbledore was smiling faintly into his wine. McGonagall’s mouth had thinned into an edge.

Harry stopped directly in front of her.

He didn’t bow, thankfully. He had just enough instinct for self-preservation to avoid theatrics. But he did smile — that same maddening curve of the lips that said he knew exactly how this would be interpreted and had decided to enjoy it anyway. One hand in his pocket, the other still loosely holding a goblet, he regarded her like a friend he hadn’t seen all summer.

“Well,” he said, voice light but carrying. “Guess we’re stuck with each other.”

Daphne did not rise.

She looked at him from her seated position, head tilted slightly, gaze distant in that particular Greengrass way that could make a person feel miles below sea level. She let the pause stretch, just long enough to make it uncomfortable, then spoke with a voice laced in arctic silk.

“Not stuck. Assigned.”

“Right,” he said, unbothered. “Assigned to not kill each other in public. Sounds manageable.”

She considered standing — and hated that she was considering it. To stand would mean conceding to the performance. To remain seated would let him speak down to her, literally and socially. He had forced her into a position with no elegant exit.

So she rose.

Not quickly, not with indignation, but with the fluidity of a slow-moving tide — deliberate, inevitable, impossible to ignore. Every eye in the vicinity was now on them. She could feel the breathless attention of younger years, the sharp curiosity of housemates, the burning gaze of her sister across the hall. She didn’t look away from him.

“If you think for a moment,” she said quietly, though every syllable cut through the air like fine glass, “that I will play along with whatever Gryffindor circus act this is, you’re mistaken.”

Harry lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug. “Oh, I know. You don’t play. You calculate. But the professors seem to think we’re the future, so… let’s give them a show they won’t forget.”

She could have slapped him. Or turned. Or walked away. All of those would have been expected. All of them would have given him more power than he already had. Instead, she reached for her goblet, raised it to the level of his, and tapped the rim against his with a sound so soft it might have been imagined.

“To the show,” she said, her voice a thread of silk through poison.

Harry’s grin widened.

And the Hall — damn them all — applauded.

~HP~

The Slytherin common room was quieter at night than anywhere else in the castle. The lake pressed its weight against the curved glass like a sleeping leviathan, dulling every sound until even the flick of a quill or the shift of fabric felt invasive. Candlelight never climbed higher than a whisper on the wall — it flickered low in sconces like reluctant sentries, illuminating only what needed to be seen. Down here, shadows weren’t ornamental. They didn’t dance. They waited. They listened. They moved like an intent given form.

Daphne stood by the hearth without her shoes. Her heels sat beside the nearest chair, placed with the same deliberate neatness that marked everything she touched. Her robes had been draped with surgical care over the back of the armchair, her blouse unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbow in a quiet act of rebellion she didn’t have the energy to disguise. She wasn’t tired, though her bones suggested she should be. She didn’t sit. Sitting invited collapse. And she could not afford to unravel — not tonight, not in front of witnesses.

The firelight painted her reflection into the black curve of the lake-facing window: water-warped, green-edged, just wrong enough to be familiar. She stared at it without expression. That, at least, remained intact — her face composed, unreadable. Inside, her thoughts were a knot drawn too tight to pull. Every movement of memory — the dinner, the announcement, the echo of McGonagall’s voice, the way Harry Potter had looked at her — looped again and again, without answer or exit.

From one of the alcoves, Pansy’s voice carried like perfume — too loud, too lazy, intentionally unfiltered. “He practically toasted her like they were betrothed,” she drawled, to the sound of glass clinking and Millicent’s dry, phlegmy laughter. Robes rustled. Cushions shifted. Slytherins didn’t gossip — that was far too crude. They curated. They refined rumor into weaponry. And right now, they were polishing hers to a mirror sheen.

Daphne didn’t turn. She didn’t flinch. If Pansy wanted a reaction, she would have to work harder for it. Bleed for it.

Instead, she folded her arms, letting her eyes drop to her hands. The skin across her knuckles still felt stretched — a lingering tightness from how long she’d kept them clenched during the feast, resting gracefully on the table like they didn’t want to crush glass. That was the tax of composure. Hold still long enough, and it leaves a mark.

The stairs behind her creaked — a familiar pattern, lighter steps, slower rhythm — and then a voice: quiet, careful, meant for her alone.

“Daph?”

Tracey Davis. Not whispering, but close to it.

Daphne didn’t answer right away. Her gaze stayed on the glass, on the dim shimmer of firelight inside it. When she spoke, her voice was almost flat.

“You should be upstairs.”

Tracey descended another step, robe belt dragging lightly across the stone. “I was. But Pansy’s getting... theatrical.”

“I’m aware.”

“She’s not wrong, exactly.”

Daphne blinked once.

“She’s exaggerating,” Tracey amended. “But that’s her way. You know that.”

There was no reply. Tracey moved closer, slipping into the edge of her peripheral vision — a blur of deep green, one slipper scuffed at the toe, her hair braided unevenly like she’d undone it in frustration halfway through. She wasn’t as sharp as Pansy, or as cunning. But Tracey saw things. More than Daphne liked sometimes.

“He didn’t look at you like it was a joke,” Tracey said quietly.

The words hung in the air.

Daphne exhaled, slowly, evenly. “He doesn’t know how to look. That’s all it is.”

Tracey tilted her head, watching her. “He looked like he was waiting for something. Like you were supposed to meet him there.”

The fire cracked softly.

“He’ll learn not to,” Daphne murmured. Her voice carried no heat. Only resolve.

Tracey didn’t push her. That was why she had followed her downstairs instead of joining Pansy. Tracey didn’t need to win every conversation. She just wanted the silence not to win either.

“I could tell them to back off,” she offered.

Daphne shook her head. “They’ll twist it if you do. Let them play.”

Tracey hesitated, then nodded. She turned, bare feet whispering against the stone. At the base of the stairs, she paused.

“He meant it,” she said, without turning. “The way he looked at you.”

And then she was gone.

Daphne stood a moment longer, still facing the window. The lake was silent, its surface calm. But deep beneath, something moved.

She didn’t go upstairs until the fire burned down to nothing.