Disclaimer: The legal rights to the Harry Potter books, characters, and locations belong to J. K. Rowling, and the legal rights to the movies belong to Warner Bros. Studios. I own nothing here. I claim only the story idea as my intellectual property based off of Rowling's work, and I seek no financial compensation. I only seek to produce some smiles among the fans.

Rating: T (PG-13-equivalent) for a brief suggestive moment – probably brief enough that this story could be a K+, but T just to be safe.

A/N: This story is canon-compliant, albeit EWE since Harry is in a relationship with Luna, with various plot points from the books fleshed out where I felt more detail was needed. Unlike my other fics posted here, it's not an H/L story per se, but nonetheless Luna is mentioned, and I hope all of her fans will appreciate seeing her. This isn't a "new" story, since it dates from a couple of years ago before I joined this site, but as it's never been posted online before, it'll look new to you. Since it may be a while before I debut another fic here (I'm starting my next semester of grad school soon, and I'll also need more time to brainstorm other fic ideas), I thought I'd dive into my older stories that were gathered on my hard drive and see if I could find something to tide you over. Most of what I found seemed rather mediocre and unoriginal to me – like most other fic writers, I went through a period where I was just mimicking other stories I'd read – and those stories shall remain in the vault where they belong. Something about this idea, however, stood out, so I gave it a small bit of revision, and I present it to you now.

Flower and Serpent

Five years after defeating Voldemort, Harry Potter's life was relatively quiet. With few Dark wizards still active (or, at least, willing to do anything that would draw attention to themselves), most of his work as an Auror consisted of confiscating and destroying Dark artifacts and occasionally working alongside the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to track down any Dark creatures that were terrorizing the public. Although Harry was immensely proud to have a career that kept people safe, he had to concede that, for the time being, his fiancée Luna Lovegood had a more exciting job: as a magizoologist, she frequently went on expeditions to far-flung places in search of endangered and unknown animals, and she was one of the youngest and most respected people in her field. She had already definitively proven the existence of the Gulping Plimpy, and most of her time at home was spent researching their courtship and breeding habits in the small pond by her and Harry's small white cottage.

They lived in the very southeast of England, in Kent, not far from Canterbury. Luna, who had wanted to live in a cottage ever since she had stayed with Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour, had instantly fallen in love with the pastoral setting, and had almost as instantly decorated the inside of the house with the flashiest of color patterns and the most bizarre decorations. It's the Lovegood family tradition, I suppose, Harry thought silently every time she re-painted a room or brought a new piece of décor home – and yet he found that he didn't mind Luna's eccentricities being scattered around the cottage like this, because whenever she was away on an expedition, he could look in any room and feel like she had left parts of herself behind so he wouldn't be lonely.

On one particular Friday night in winter, when Luna and her team of magizoologists were away on an expedition in the Amazon, Harry sat at home in the dining room, looking over the letter that she had sent home via an extremely exotic bird whose species he could only guess at. Luna had left immediately after Christmas, and the last thing she had given Harry was a bright red poinsettia, which he had placed lovingly on the table in the center of the sitting room. Together they had chosen to name it Neville after their friend Neville Longbottom, due to his new job as Herbology professor at Hogwarts, and Harry had promised to take care of it until Luna returned.

Dearest Harry,

My Lionheart, My Love,

It is so incredibly lovely in the Amazon right now – much hotter than you might suspect, because it's actually summer in this hemisphere! I wish you could see all the amazing animals and ruins we've come across; I'll send you some photographs later, of course, but I still wish you were here in person. I miss you every single day. The team can be a bit negative at times, and dear Rolf in particular seems a tad irritated over some of the things that have happened – but you and I both know that's only the Heliopaths causing people's tempers to flare up and their thoughts to get all heated. I suspected Heliopaths might thrive in a warm environment like this. Don't worry, love, I'll be back home in about two more weeks (minus however long this bird takes to get to you). I do hope you're continuing to water Neville – the plant, not the person, of course. I don't think Neville the person would like it if you poured water on his head – oh! – which reminds me that I'm also bringing home some floral specimens from the jungle for him – the person, not the plant, of course.

Sending you home my love,

Your Brightest Moonbeam,

Luna

Harry set the letter down and chuckled, both at his fiancée's whimsy, and at the sharp contrast between this and the letter he had received, via the same bird, from their mutual friend Rolf Scamander:

Dear Harry,

I have always known dear Luna to be quirky, but this specific expedition has made me concerned that she is a tad insane. Brilliant, yes, but insane. To provide just the briefest of summaries of what she has done in the past week: 1) led us into quicksand to follow what she thought was a Fleeblebunch (it was a butterfly); 2) attempted to pet / hug a jaguar because she thought it needed a friend (we had to Stupefy it before it got too close to her); 3) LIT MY HEAD ON FIRE because she said it was the only way to scare away the Nargles raiding our campsite (I have NO additional comment on THAT). Thank goodness we know all the spells we do, because we have managed to all stay uninjured (except for the aforementioned Nargle-scaring incident). I had always wanted to accompany Luna on an expedition, and I don't suppose I'll ever forget this experience, but I say this as your friend and hers: I am greatly troubled by her deliberate flouting of standard safety protocol. I don't know how you handle being her partner, but I'm glad it somehow works for you both. I will write again later; if you'll excuse me, I need to re-bandage my head.

Fond Regards,

Rolf

Harry had begun to write a reply to Rolf, with the intention of writing a longer, more private reply to Luna later. She's as sane as you are, he had written so far, recalling something Luna had said to him the first day they met, and I guess I've just always been prepared to embrace her daring side, no matter what she does, because I've never really been afraid of facing danger, either. Did I ever tell you about the time when – at her suggestion, of course – we rode from Hogwarts all the way to London on thestrals when we were only fifteen? Harry was about to begin writing out that story when he suddenly heard a loud thump in the backyard, accompanied by what sounded like a woman's yell. Grabbing his wand, he set aside the two letters and his own letter-in-progress, and dashed out the back door, silently performing a Lumos spell so that he could use his wand as a light.

A witch lay on her side in the middle of the backyard, wearing a dark green sweater and black slacks and clutching a broom, her fall cushioned by a fresh layer of snow. Her left leg jutted out at an odd angle, and Harry could notice through her curtain of shoulder-length dusty-blonde hair that she had a pronounced scowl of pain on her face. "Miss?" he called as he moved closer, before realizing that her face was actually quite familiar. They had gone to Hogwarts together, and now she worked in the Department of Mysteries as an Unspeakable; he saw her in the elevator at work occasionally…

"Daphne?" Harry asked, now bending down in front of her. She looked up into his face, and he saw a pair of bright green eyes much like his own. "Daphne Greengrass? What happened to you?"

"I got tired, lost control of my broom, and fell; why else would I be in this position?" Daphne said in a haughty, aristocratic tone that Harry thought was somewhere between that of Fleur and a female version of Draco Malfoy. "And I don't need your help or your pity, Potter, I can – " Here she tried to lift herself up and collapsed again. "Ow, ow, dammit, ow, my leg's broken… if I can just stand up, I can Apparate to St. Mungo's… ow!" Daphne tried to raise herself and collapsed a second time, and she now appeared close to crying.

"Daphne," said Harry softly, "You don't have to go to St. Mungo's, alright? I can take you inside and fix you up tonight, and it's no burden. I want to help you. Please?" He reached out his hand to her, and after a few seconds of silence, Daphne took it, gripping her broom with her other hand. "Come on, up we go…" After Harry had raised her into a semi-standing position, Daphne put her arm across his shoulder, and he put his arm around her waist and led her into the house. After leaning Daphne's broom up against the back door, Harry led her into the sitting room, set her down on a soft sky-blue sofa, and moved the table holding Neville the Poinsettia over so he could set her broken leg on it.

"I've had to learn basic healing spells as an Auror," Harry informed her gently as he knelt beside her, "and I can take care of your leg if you let me… now, it's most effective if the wand touches bare skin, so if you could, er, raise your pant leg…" Daphne had a tight-lipped expression on her face, as if she either suspected lechery on Harry's part or was thinking of a snippy comment to make, but she finally reached down and pulled her pant leg up to her knee. Harry took his wand and silently ran it over both the top and bottom of her lower leg before pulling her pant leg back down, and Daphne now had a more satisfied expression on her face, approaching a smile.

"The bone will mend itself overnight," said Harry, standing up. "You'll feel some pain as it does, but it won't feel any worse than a typical cramp. But you're in no condition to go back out on your broom tonight: you'll need to rest here."

"Would your fiancée approve of another woman spending the night here while she's away?" Daphne asked, a sardonic smile finally emerging. The earlier haughtiness also seemed to have dropped from her voice, replaced by a gentler, yet still dignified, tone. "I might try to seduce you, you know. After all, you've already seen my leg."

Harry was taken aback by this comment, and as he tried to formulate a response, he silently conceded that Daphne was fairly attractive when one considered her blonde hair, lithe figure, and general air of sophistication. Had one of his more tactless friends, such as Ron or George or Lee Jordan, been there, he suspected they might have used the phrase smoking hot – a phrase which, in general, tended to get them slapped or hexed, both by their girlfriends and by the women they referenced as such. But it doesn't matter how attractive she is, because she's not Luna, Harry thought. "Er…" he began to say, "I'm not about to cheat on my – "

"Oh, get over yourself, Potter!" Daphne snarled, but in a way that somehow made it a chuckle at the same time. "That was a joke! I have far too much class to be a home-wrecker, and besides, I can positively assure you that you're not my type – and even if I didn't and you were… ouch…" Moving the poinsettia out of the way, she had shifted her broken leg over to the sofa and was now sitting with both legs taking up the sofa's full length. "…Well, do you know anyone who would fancy shagging with a broken leg?"

Harry scratched his head. "Well, not in normal circumstances, no," he mused, "although who knows what someone would do if they were under the influence of Amortentia. That stuff's practically a weapon, I swear. I've been trying to petition the DMLE to start cracking down on people who manufacture and sell it, just in case any Dark wizards try to use it in some scheme… although I think it'd be a good idea to crack down on it in any case." He and Daphne both laughed, and Harry asked, "Now, er, can I get you some hot chocolate? No Amortentia included, I promise."

"I'd love some," Daphne smiled, now looking around the house for the first time. "Your home is very nice. Some of this décor's a bit less… subdued than what I prefer, but well… this is about what I expected from someone who lives with Luna Lovegood. It's eye-catching, I'll give you that – and this poinsettia is quite lovely."

Harry had wandered over to the kitchen, where he was now using his wand to pour two mugs of hot chocolate. "Luna and I like having flowers in the house," he said. "We both feel that having living things in the house makes the house itself more alive." He walked back into the sitting room, handed Daphne her mug, and took a sip from his own as he sat down in a loveseat opposite her.

"What are your favorite flowers?" asked Daphne curiously.

"I like lilies, since Lily was my mother's name," said Harry, "and Luna likes sunflowers because she says they're the 'brightest' and 'happiest' flowers. She's a bit of a sunflower herself, come to think of it… she's certainly dressed like one at every wedding we've ever been to."

"Ah, I see," Daphne intoned quickly before taking a sip of her hot chocolate. There was a long interval of silence, with neither saying anything, before she finally spoke up again in her sweetest tone yet: "Er… listen, Harry…" (He noticed she was now using his first name.) "I… I wasn't very nice when you came up to me, and I sincerely apologize. I didn't think you'd show me this much kindness, and… well, I'm very touched. Thank you, Harry. Thank you so very much. To be quite honest… I was afraid you might feel animosity toward me from… what we were in our schooldays."

"What?" Harry asked. "Just because I was a Gryffindor and you were a Slytherin? That was years ago – and besides, we're not in school anymore. I mean, at some point we have to set aside old rivalries and move on with our lives."

"Well, it's not just the rivalry," Daphne said nervously, "it's the fact that… there were very bad things associated with Slytherin back then – and… well, it… it wasn't a very nice place to be, sometimes." She had noticeably lowered her voice for the second half of this sentence, and, as he usually could, Harry sensed that he was talking to somebody who had a good deal of hidden pain in her life.

"Well, you never really bothered me or my friends," he replied. "To be quite honest, I don't remember much about you, other than you were a very quiet person. All I really know about you is that you're an Unspeakable at the Ministry, and I think Draco Malfoy's engaged to your sister…" Harry set his mug down on the table and began snapping his fingers. "…oh, shoot, I can't remember her name… Wisteria? No, Astoria!" He picked his mug back up. "I can't say Draco is my friend, exactly, but we are on speaking terms. We were right there at the darkest moment of the fight, and we did help each other out in the end, so… that did have an impact, I think. Up until then, he'd always just seemed like a rich, snotty git."

"Ugh," Daphne said with a disgusted look on her face. "Draco was horrible in his teenage years. I always kept my distance from him in the common room. But… Astoria's definitely changed him for the better. He's let go of all that old prejudice – although Lucius and Narcissa aren't all that fond of her as a result. It's very sad: the Death Eaters are gone, but the attitudes that produced them are still there – even in my own parents – who weren't Death Eaters, mind you, but they certainly had no objections to Voldemort's ideals. And I'll openly admit that, yes, I was a bit of a pureblood snob my first year at Hogwarts. But when I saw the non-purebloods being targeted in our second year… that was when I started to change. I realized, for the first time, exactly what prejudice could do."

"Well," sighed Harry thoughtfully, "as long as enough of us, in this generation, think differently, maybe there won't ever be another Grindelwald or Voldemort. And even if there is… well, I'll be ready for them, and so will all the other Aurors. So… er… what do your parents think of the match?"

Daphne, after sipping from her mug, answered: "They don't object to it. Draco's from an upper-crust family, after all – and besides, this way, someone will carry on the Greengrass family line, in blood if not in name." Harry found this last statement rather cryptic, but something else about Daphne was intriguing him even more.

"So…" he asked, "where exactly were you flying tonight when you crashed?"

"Well, if you must know," Daphne said, regaining some of her earlier haughtiness, "I was leaving England for good. I resigned from the Ministry earlier today, and I've accepted an invitation to teach Charms at Beauxbatons."

"You're moving to France?" asked Harry, scratching his head. "Do you speak fluent French, then? And why are you leaving for good?"

"Oui, je parle français," Daphne said, "and it's one of the rare things about coming from a pureblood, elite, supposedly 'cultured' family that's actually come in handy for me. As for why I'm leaving… I want to start my life over. I want to go somewhere where nobody cares that I'm a Greengrass, where nobody calls me a 'bigot' or a 'traitor' just because of who they think I am. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm a Slytherin, but… I want to show them all what being a Slytherin is supposed to mean."

"What do you mean by that?" Harry asked, now using his wand to refill their mugs. Daphne grimaced as her hand went to her leg; the bone-mending spell was starting to take effect.

"Oh, you'd have to hear my entire life story," she groaned, "and I highly doubt you'd be interested in that."

"Actually, I would," Harry smiled, "and the night's still young, so why not tell it?"

Daphne looked at Harry thoughtfully for a moment, and then began: "Well, alright then, I've already given you some family background, so that saves us some time. The only thing I didn't mention, which will probably be useful to know, is that my family has a long history of being sorted into Slytherin – aside from a few Ravenclaws, here and there. When I came to Hogwarts, I was also hoping to be a Slytherin. It wasn't out of desire to please my family, although I knew they'd be happy about it; rather, it was because I was a little girl with big dreams, and I'd always heard that Slytherin was a place for clever and ambitious people. I was looking forward to meeting other career-focused classmates – but what Slytherin was turned out to be very different from what I expected it to be."

"Now, aside from my conversion to a less bigoted way of thinking in our second year, there's really not that much of note to say about my first five years individually. They all just seemed to blend together into one long, unpleasant experience. I did well in my studies, but I didn't make many friends, even within my own house – although I discovered that you didn't make friends there so much as you made cronies, or became someone else's crony. If you ever thought Crabbe and Goyle were Draco's friends, you thought quite wrong. He simply had the brains they needed – or what seemed like brains to those dimwits – and they had the muscle he needed. That was all there was to it. While most – but not all – of the people in Slytherin clung to their pureblood ideals, I clung to my own ideals. I still valued my cleverness, and my ambition, but I now realized that 'ambitious' people often pushed other people aside to get what they wanted. And, in correlation to that, I realized that there were only two types of people who ever ended up in Slytherin: the ones who stepped on people to achieve their goals, and the ones who were clever enough to maneuver around all that and not get stepped on. Therefore, as I had no intention of stepping on people, I decided there was only one thing to do: I needed to out-snake the snakes."

"And how did you do that?" asked Harry.

"I think a quote from the Muggle playwright Shakespeare might explain it best," said Daphne, massaging her leg. "You are familiar with Shakespeare, I take it? He's quite famous, even among wizards – although he depicted witches rather inaccurately in Macbeth. An understandable mistake; as most Muggles do, he probably confused us with hags – although he displayed a remarkable knowledge of potions ingredients in that play. Those were the days before the Statute of Secrecy, of course."

She would probably get along well with Hermione, thought Harry, who was finding Daphne to be a very intelligent and insightful companion. "I know him," he said, "and I know that play."

"Good," grinned Daphne, "because Macbeth is the exact play I was thinking of. You recall how, when Macbeth is uncertain whether he will be able to kill the king without his conscience betraying him, his wife says, 'look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it'?" Her eyes drifted over to the poinsettia as she said this.

"I remember that," nodded Harry, "and I also remember that things would have worked out better if Macbeth hadn't taken that advice."

"Well, yes," Daphne chuckled, "in that scenario, it was very bad advice. It strikes me that the Macbeths had about the same flaw as Voldemort: they were determined to make a prophecy come true, whether it was or not. But to get back to my story and my scenario: I found the advice very helpful. The trick was to be pleasant enough to my fellow Slytherins that they would think I was cozying up to them, rather than trying to undermine them. In reality, I was doing neither. I was being a snake in the best sense of the word, slithering around all the traps that the others laid. I was no flower, nor was I innocent: I could see how they were all jockeying for position, and I understood how their world worked. But they never saw that I saw: all they ever knew was that I was quiet, studious Daphne Greengrass."

One of the few vague memories that Harry had of Daphne had suddenly surfaced in his mind. "So… when you hung around with Pansy Parkinson and those other girls…"

"We were not friends," said Daphne scornfully. "I don't honestly think any of those girls were her friends – except Millicent Bulstrode; they might have found a shared kinship in meanness. Pansy disgusted me as much as Draco did, and had I been in any other house, I suppose I would have confronted her – but Slytherin was not the place to make enemies. You don't want to know what happened to the Slytherin girls who crossed Pansy."

"I suppose teenage girls can be mean everywhere," sighed Harry, "even in Ravenclaw, which was supposed to be the 'smart' house. Do you know, the other Ravenclaw girls would steal Luna's things and scatter them around the castle?"

"I do," said Daphne with a sympathetic, nearly tearful look in her eyes, "because year after year, I was one of the people who would help her get her things back. I always saw her wandering around, putting up posters, and I just felt so sad – because I saw someone else who didn't seem to have many friends, and I saw how badly she was being stepped on, and I knew she would have had it even worse in Slytherin, so I wanted to help her. But I never asked her to be my friend. I wish I had – but by that point I'd learned how people outside of Slytherin felt about us, and… I didn't think she'd accept me."

At that moment, Harry realized how much he liked Daphne. "Luna would have accepted you, Daphne," he told her tenderly. "She just has this way of seeing what's inside people's hearts and she would have known you were a good person. She would've been your friend if you'd asked – in fact, she'll be your friend now. It's never too late to make friends. In fact, I'm starting to consider you a friend, too."

A large smile threatened to creep across Daphne's face, but she held it back with aristocratic poise. "Thank you, Harry," she said pointedly, "but I feel like real friends do things for each other. You have taken me into your home and healed my leg, but I have done nothing for you. I deeply thank you for considering me a friend, but I believe I owe you a similarly kind gesture before we are truly even. First, however, I still have some of my story left to tell. Now, as I was saying, I didn't have many friends in Slytherin, but fortunately, I didn't have any enemies either. Keeping to myself was working fairly well, although even I couldn't escape some amount of teasing. Pansy and Millicent called me 'the Ice Queen of Slytherin' because I would never accept any boy's invitation to a dance or on a date – never mind why I never accepted."

"Wait a minute," interjected Harry, suddenly recalling some things Daphne had said earlier in the night. "I can positively assure you that you're not my type… This way, someone will carry on the Greengrass family line… Daphne, do you… um… prefer women?"

"Impressive job piecing that all together, Harry!" Daphne beamed. "Clearly, befriending Hermione Granger and then getting engaged to a Ravenclaw sharpened your mind! Now, it's getting quite late; are we almost through with interruptions?"

"Almost," said Harry, "but, er… I guess I have two follow-up questions. First: I didn't think people in the wizarding world really got hung up on that sort of thing? And, second – because I've always wondered but I've never had anyone to ask: do you, er, respond to a Veela the same way that I would?"

Daphne chuckled. "Oh, I don't know why people are so interested in Veelas; somehow I always get asked that question! But the answer is yes – and let me tell you, it took a great deal of poise to keep cool in front of my parents at the Quidditch World Cup! That was probably the trickiest I've ever had to be… and yes, you are correct that it's mostly just Muggles who raise a fuss about who other people like to shag… but still, when you're from a pureblood family, anything that equates to 'I'm not giving you an heir' is not a statement that will be received well. I stayed fairly quiet about it right up until Astoria started receiving suitors – my biggest nightmare was that she might also end up fancying women, but fortunately for me, that wasn't the case. Let's see, then: all I really have left to tell about is my last two years at school and then a little bit afterward – so the story's almost over, although those two years were probably the most eventful."

"When Professor Slughorn came to the school in our sixth year, I was optimistic for the first time since I first arrived at Hogwarts. I didn't take his Potions class, because I was too busy taking N.E.W.T.s in Charms, Ancient Runes, Transfiguration… everything I'd need to be an Unspeakable. I was encouraged by how he didn't show favoritism to purebloods, or even to his own house, and I thought that perhaps he could help bring Slytherin back to what it was supposed to be. And for a while, there were encouraging signs: someone in the common room would say something disparaging about a non-pureblood, and someone else would pipe up and say, 'well, hold on, you know, Slughorn likes that person and he's got connections…' And then it would turn into an argument about 'well, just because Slughorn likes them still doesn't make them the right sort!' So the prejudice was still there, but more of us were starting to argue against it. The next year looked promising… but then Dumbledore died."

"I was probably one of the few Slytherins who was genuinely distressed over Dumbledore's death, because I realized what it meant: that the 'pureblood-only' crowd had won. Strange that I should feel distress, you might think, when I myself benefitted from it – but by that point, I didn't want to benefit from it. I was tired of it, of all the rhetoric, of anything to do with purebloods. And my seventh year – the one you didn't attend, when the Death Eaters controlled the school – that was the absolute worst year for me."

"They only thought they controlled the school," said Harry, "and for a while, we all thought so, too – but it turned out Snape was an even better double agent than we'd given him credit for. Talk about 'out-snaking the snakes'…" By this point, both mugs were empty once again; with a swish of his wand, Harry levitated them to the kitchen and set them in the sink. "So, er…" he asked, "what did you do during the Battle of Hogwarts?"

"I'd like to say that I, alone of my house, stood up and fought on your side," Daphne sighed, "and I'd like to say I trusted the other Slytherins enough to go with them during the evacuation – but I suspected it might be a trap. The truth is, I just ran. I grabbed Astoria and searched for a way out of the castle. I finally found it, escaping through a passage behind a statue of a one-eyed witch. I didn't know where we were going, and I could hear all sorts of horrible noises above us, but finally we emerged in the basement of Honeydukes. I couldn't tell from there which side was winning; I silently hoped it was yours, but the most important thing to me at the time was that I'd saved my sister. I knew she'd be safe no matter what happened – we both would, yes, but I cared more about her than myself. And then, after you defeated Voldemort and I graduated, I started working as an Unspeakable – doing what, I can't tell you – and at first that job felt like where I wanted to be."

"But there was too much from my past that still haunted me; there were too many looks of scorn sent in my direction just because I was a Slytherin, and too many accusations that I must have been a blood-traitor or a Death Eater sympathizer, based on who was doing the accusing. Finally, I saw an opportunity outside of England, and I decided to live up to my own ideals and do the most ambitious thing I could think of: cut my family ties and become somebody based on my own merit, and not through any pureblood connections. And that brings us up to tonight, and I suppose that's where my story ends. Tomorrow I'll arrive in France, and I can be who I want to be, love who I want to love, and finally live to please myself – not my parents, nor any backstabbing classmates – just me."

She yawned and stretched herself out on the sofa. With a call of "Accio blanket!" Harry brought in a blue-green blanket from the hall linen closet, unfolded it, and laid it over Daphne. "I think you're a good person, Daphne," he said, "and I think you're going to fit in just fine at Beauxbatons. If you want my opinion, I think you represent not only the very best of Slytherin but the very best of Hogwarts. You remind me of something Dumbledore told me almost a decade ago now: he said that 'it is our choices that show what we truly are.' You chose to make yourself a better person than those around you; you chose not to become something you hated, even when you were surrounded by it. You may say you were the serpent, Daphne, but… I think you were the flower all along. Goodnight, and good luck tomorrow."

Harry had turned off the lights in the cottage and was headed to bed when he heard Daphne call: "Harry?"

He turned in the hall. "Yes?"

"Goodnight – and… and thank you for calling me a flower."

When Harry woke up the next morning, he wandered into the dining room, where he again saw Luna's and Rolf's letters and his letter-in-progress to Rolf on the table. Oh, that's right, he thought, I was working on those last night before Daphne showed up. Daphne… I wonder if she already… A glance at the back door confirmed that her broom was gone. Walking to the sitting room, he saw that she was gone from the sofa as well, with the blanket folded up where she had sat last night. And then, sitting on the table next to Neville the Poinsettia, he saw a green crystal vase full of lilies and sunflowers, with a letter tucked inside of it. Feeling both touched and startled, he picked up the letter, which was written in an elegant hand, and read:

Dear Harry,

My leg is all better now. Sorry I didn't say goodbye, but I had a long day's journey ahead, so I left very early this morning. Just before I left, I conjured this vase of flowers as an expression of my gratitude – and as I now believe we are even, I am extremely happy to call you my friend. Some of your Gryffindor friends may scoff, or even be angry with you, for being my friend – but it's like you said: "at some point, we have to set aside old rivalries and move on with our lives." Everything you did for me and said to me last night was so unexpected, and I will always deeply treasure this friendship – more, I think, than words (or at least MY words) can adequately express. I did not intend to be a guest in your house, but I insist on returning the favor at a future date and having you and Luna stay with me in France. This summer, perhaps? You are both also welcome to visit me at Beauxbatons whenever you wish. I shall think fondly of you every day, and I send both of you my love, my respect, and all my best wishes.

Most Cordially Yours,

Daphne

PS. I found your cottage so delightful, I believe I shall acquire one of my own – perhaps on the other side of the Channel so that we are only a short flight away from each other?

Wiping a tear from his eye, Harry brought the vase of flowers back into the dining room with him. He had another letter to write.

Afterword: "Aha!" you're thinking, "Plot twist! You made Daphne a lesbian!" Indeed I did. I've found that, in many cases, the best LGBT+ characters are the ones you didn't realize were LGBT+ when you started writing them: their sexual orientation just emerged organically, rather than being the single defining trait around which everything else was written. As I crafted Daphne's backstory, this just seemed to fit with everything else I'd come up with about her, so I went with it – and I liked it. Since all the characters in HP thus far confirmed to be LGBT+ are men (Dumbledore = gay, Grindelwald = gay, Charlie Weasley = most likely asexual), I decided: "Yeah, it would be a nice balance to add a lady-loving lady to the cast as well! Why not?" As I had no evidence of her having a husband or kids in canon when I wrote this (and is there is still no evidence of such), I felt I could depict her this way and it would be realistic. If Rowling ever provides more information about Daphne on Pottermore that states otherwise, all I can say is: I wrote based on what I knew at the time. Thank you for reading, and I hope I did this mostly unknown character some justice, didn't turn her into a stereotypical Ice Queen™ (despite what Pansy and Millicent called her), and didn't stray too far from the realms of possibility.

(Also, one final footnote for those of you out there who are real sticklers for detail. Some of you are possibly wondering, "Where's Kreacher?" I considered fitting him in here, but he just didn't seem to work anywhere I tried. So, if you like, make up your own theory about where he is. Maybe Harry set him free, or sent him to Hogwarts to work full-time, or maybe he's on the expedition with Luna, or whatever else you like. Giving lots of detail in your stories is nice – but it's also nice to give people some room to imagine, so I'm turning this particular little detail over to you, dear reader.)