He gets in a different carriage, on that fateful first journey to Hogwarts. Rather than meeting Ron, or encountering Hermione or even Draco Malfoy, his company is a single girl, his age, eleven and fresh-faced, enthusiastic about going to Hogwarts but not as giggly or excitable as the other girls he'd known back at his Muggle primary school. She's different, a little mysterious, a little more adult than the rest of them—much like him, although he doesn't know it—and her name is Daphne Greengrass.

They part into Hagrid's boats as friends, the sort of friends eleven-year-old boys and girls make with people they've only known for hours. She's sorted into Slytherin, but even though he hasn't met Malfoy, he still becomes a Gryffindor – one mention by the Hat it was where both his parents came from and he will accept no other.

They encounter one another in hallways occasionally, always civil; prejudice is not enough to temper his memories of a nice girl who wasn't a Slytherin when he met her, and she is too calculating to dismiss what she hears about Harry Potter and what she knows of him.

He still becomes friends with Ron and Hermione, for that is as fated to be as the prophecy which unknowingly hangs over him, but even Hermione is too young to wonder why he can detest Draco Malfoy and yet speak to a Slytherin girl whose face she does not recognize with what she would consider as friendship, if she'd ever had enough experience with that to tell it exists simply by the way it sounds.

After all, Harry Potter is not the only one who had a friendless childhood. He is not even the only one to have had any potential friends scared away. He is merely the only one to have had them scared away by someone else.

His year proceeds much as it would have if he hadn't known her, and eventually he faces off against Quirrel and returns victorious, if making your first kill at eleven years old could possibly be counted as a victory. Over the summer, he sends her an owl, just in case – she does not reply, just like Hermione and Ron. He finds out later, of course, that Dobby was intercepting his mail, and by then he has forgotten about sending it.

There is a slight diversion to the course of second year when it comes to finding out if Draco Malfoy is or isn't the Heir of Slytherin. Before they decide on Polyjuice, Harry decides to be as bold as his House suggests, and uses his Cloak to pass a message to the elder Greengrass, although at the time he is not aware she has a sister.

His gamble pulls off, though for different reasons than he suspects - he thinks of lingering friendship and she thinks of a potential favour from the Boy-Who-Lived (that is what she tells herself, and she certainly does not remember a young, awkward boy from her first trip to the school). And so, it turns out Malfoy is not the Heir, after all: Tom Riddle was, but even the young Voldemort is not enough to stop Harry from vanquishing him and his Basilisk to save Ginny Weasley.

Third year comes around, and this time his letter is returned; if anyone knew, they would be greatly surprised that Daphne Greengrass and Harry Potter sent the other the occasional friendly letter. But no-one does know, and so a friendship builds in secret. Daphne is a mixture of Hermione and something else, wickedly intelligent and as Slytherin as they come—perhaps too Slytherin, thinks the part of Harry that could have been sorted there, surely nobody is naturally like that—but she has a sense of humour, and it is in fact she that warns him about Sirius Black before he even knew he had a godfather.

He still inflates his Aunt and escapes to the Leaky Cauldron, and apart from overhearing Arthur Weasley confirm much of what Daphne had told him, his stay there is relatively average for the life of Harry Potter.

The Dementor still comes on the train, and he still faints, but when Malfoy performs his impression for all of Slytherin, Daphne Greengrass turns her head to one side – not to hide a smile, but to hide the fact she isn't smiling. She does not personally think there is anything amusing about what he no doubt sees; it does not take a genius to figure out his worst memory would be his parent's death.

The rest of year three equally proceeds the same as it would have done had he never entered her compartment first; they still exchange the occasional civil word in the corridors and hallways of Hogwarts, but their interaction is circumscribed by a mixture of House prejudice, Gryffindor self-sacrifice and Slytherin manoeuvring.

It is still Harry, Hermione and Ron who find out the truth about Scabbers, still they who are interrupted by Snape, still they who manage to save Sirius and Buckbeak in one fell swoop. Daphne does not feature in it anywhere; she does not even suspect Harry had anything to do with his godfather's escape. She has no reason to, after all, and even a mind like quicksilver, even a mind capable of thinking through corkscrew twists and Seeker turns does not make connections without reason.

It is year four where the divergences begin. They owl one another over the summer, and he finds himself becoming fascinated with the way she writes, the way she spins words like flax upon a loom; she does not use the lofty diction and formidable vocabulary of Hermione, but he thinks she does not quite need to.

She is the firstborn daughter of Lord Greengrass, after all—a subject on which many of their letters touch is her educating him on the world he should have been born into—and she does not need to prove herself to anyone. He is quite glad he has managed to prove himself to her.

The World Cup comes and goes, the fiasco with the Death Eaters no different than it should have been, and along comes the Triwizard Tournament. His so-called friend, Ron, shuns him, and Hermione flits between the two like a bumblebee between flowers, but he spends the majority of his time alone in the library, trying to figure out what the hell he's supposed to do.

It is there she joins him; they don't talk, not really, merely sit at the same table, but if the books she brings to study from—because everyone knows Daphne Greengrass can be regularly found in the library, and if she is there with Harry Potter, it is only because no other tables are free—are more suited to the sorts of challenges the Tournament might hold (it seems it goes by a pattern, a challenge of the body, the heart, and then the whole), well, nobody sees him borrow them.

It is around the time of the Yule Ball that Hermione begins to wonder if he fancies a certain black-haired girl, because he seems to be constantly looking in her direction (she does not care who he likes, but she enjoys knowledge in all its form). But for all her observance, she is not trained in the art of Harry-watching, not like Ginny Weasley, who notes where he looks right after he looks at Cho Chang. She, too, wonders if he fancies someone, and she also wonders how she is supposed to compare to some like her.

She is not talking about a fifth-year Ravenclaw.

The First Task comes and goes, Harry reconciles with his friends, and in the Second Task it is still Ron Weasley who is sent down into the lake; it turns out the 'hostages' do know what is going to happen to them, and they do have a right of refusal. The Third Task equally proceeds as it otherwise would have, and Voldemort is once again reborn.

So comes the summer before fifth year; though Dumbledore has given Hermione and Ron and anyone he knows would contact Harry instructions, he knows nothing about Daphne Greengrass (so what if she was Harry's first hostage? She is a pretty girl and Harry is a teenaged boy), and so the two owl one another with almost-astonishing frequency until Harry finally makes it to Grimmauld Place, at which point he sends her a letter saying he is under a Fidelius Charm. She obviously does not send a reply.

The trial passes and he is cleared, as even Umbridge knows he should have been, although she does not care for truth or justice or anything that gets in the way of the Minister's instructions or her own ambitions. And so begins fifth year, a year in which he is ostracized by anyone and everyone save his closest friends.

And even they do not know he occasionally sneaks out in the middle of the night to meet Daphne Greengrass on the top of the Astronomy Tower. They do not kiss or even touch, merely talk in person in a way they have never done previously. He thinks she is beautiful contrasted with the icy night; moonlight shimmers off golden hair that he compares to spun sunlight in his more poetic moments.

Her eyes glint blue in a way the daytime sky cannot match as she studies him staring off into the distance, watching the Dog Star and wishing his godfather wasn't so equally far away, and she wonders what it would be like if he looked at her with such intensity.

Their conversations are easy, free-flowing; they dance between subjects, flitting from Umbridge to Voldemort to what it's really like being a Slytherin (or a Gryffindor), and he can make her laugh with his sincere awkwardness in a way that Nott's driest wit cannot, even when aimed at Malfoy or Parkinson.

Eventually the DA begins, and it is during one of their late-night rendezvous that he asks her if she's going to attend; she smiles at him sadly and shakes her head. He does not push—he can understand her decision, even if he doesn't like it—and they pass the rest of the night in relative silence. And if one of her hands slowly finds its way into his, well, neither of them particularly notice, for the night is cold and they are not averse to another's warmth.

One day, he asks her if she knows Occlumency, and of course she does; after a little prodding, he hesitantly confirms he asked her because he wishes to learn. And so, though his lessons with Snape do not help at all, he nonetheless slowly masters the skill. The rest of the year passes fairly quickly, and in no time at all he is riding Thestrals to the Ministry of Magic. The battle flies past in a blur, Voldemort is revealed, he loses Sirius and discovers a prophecy he thinks he should have been told about a long time ago.

The summer before sixth year is horrible, brightened only by his letters to (and from) Daphne, although his friends do their best as well. They are close friends now (in their hearts, perhaps more), in some ways closer than Ron and Hermione, although the reality of Voldemort and Slytherin and Gryffindor mean they must be forever apart.

It is at the Burrow he finally notices Ginny Weasley. It is not when she flits through the air like a spirit, spiralling around Ron to score with the Quaffle, nor the way she debates Charms with Hermione much the way another friend of his would. It is not even when she hugs him on his birthday and he is made aware that she is no longer a young girl.

No, he notices her when the night is late and he is thinking of other things. Flames crackle from broken branches, reflected firelight dancing in her eyes the way amusement does; fire is her motif, it seems, in personality and appearance. She is pretty, far prettier than his best friend's little sister should be, and he thinks that there are men in the world who would deem her beautiful.

This, he thinks, is his problem.

Ginny Weasley can be seen to be beautiful.

Daphne Greengrass is beautiful, seen.

The youngest Weasley notices his observances. How can she not? Even if she still hadn't quite quashed that soft hope in her heart, they are friends—good friends, just like Neville and Luna—and friends are aware of what their other friends do. But she remembers her old experiences of Harry-watching, and she knows the faint strangeness in his eyes is not quite him seeing her as a woman for the first time. No, she knows him well enough to be able to tell it is because he is looking at her and seeing someone else.

The thought does not bother as much as it once might have. She is secure enough to not be dependent on his opinion; she has his friendship, she's fought alongside him against Death Eaters, and there is a casual easiness to their conversations. And if he sometimes starts to say the wrong name when they're in the middle of some intense conversation, well, Harry Potter (not the Boy-Who-Lived, she is not Luna, living in a world of fantasy) is worth knowing anyway. He is a good man, after all, and there are precious few of those in the world.

Sixth year begins, and Harry has his lessons with Dumbledore, the trials and tribulations of being Quidditch Captain, a suspicion of Malfoy and the general life of one who has been proven spectacularly right where almost every authority in the land has been proven wrong.

He still meets her atop the Astronomy Tower once a week, and if they have ended up sitting such that she rests against his chest while their breath puffs out in snow-white gusts as they talk, well, how is it that much different from the way he hugs Hermione, or Ginny, or Luna? One moment, they talk of the most inconsequential things (her favourite colour is green, and his is an icy cobalt that definitely doesn't match her eyes), the next subjects far more serious – she confirms Malfoy is a Death Eater, but there is nothing Harry can do about it.

One night, their conversations turns to romance – not between them, of course, never that.

"You know, you have almost every girl at Hogwarts chasing after you this year," she says, voice lilting with amusement and something else he cannot identify. "Why don't you let one of them catch you?"

He is silent, a long and languid noiselessness as he considers his response.

"I don't want any of them," he says, opting for the truth.

"Oh, is your eye on someone then, Potter?" she asks, using his last name as she always has.

"You could say that," he replies, looking anywhere but at her.

"Someone unattainable, then?" she deduces; her mind is like a diamond, all glinting brilliance and sharp edges. "Not the Weasley girl?"

He laughs uncomfortably. "In another life, perhaps."

She is silent, not replying until it is well past the time for them to head back to their respective common rooms. She does not even bid him farewell, not with words, merely a kiss on the cheek so featherlight he wakes up the next day sure he simply imagined the whole thing.

The rest of the year proceeds much as it otherwise would have – they never reverse the conversation and discuss her own love-life, and Harry makes it his mission to get the memory out of Slughorn. He succeeds, accidentally breaking up Dean and Ginny in the process (there is no chest-monster this time around, but fate has funny ways of knowing the future), and his lessons with Dumbledore proceed apace until they go to retrieve the third Horcrux and disaster strikes.

The Death Eaters attack, Snape is revealed as the traitor he was supposedly pretending to be and Dumbledore is slain. The world falls to pieces, and it is only at the funeral that he finds some measure of stability – fittingly enough, it is through her, a constancy of ice he clings to in the tempestuous ocean of his life. It is not some grand romantic gesture, and there are no butterflies or angel's trumpets, merely a nod from one Slytherin to one Gryffindor, but they have long surpassed the stage of needing words to converse.

He knows she is wishing him good luck in whatever he has to do, and perhaps even telling him to come back alive; he raises a hand to bid her farewell as he leaves alongside Ron and Hermione, and he thinks she knows what he's trying to say, even if he's not quite sure himself. They do not owl one another over these summer holiday, for it is far too dangerous, and she is almost Slytherin enough to pretend to herself she does not miss it. Almost.

His Horcrux hunt begins, and so does her school year (she is Slytherin and pure-blooded, and the Dark Lord does not particularly care if you are neutral or not provided you do not get in his way). As he is gallivanting across the countryside, she is pretending to listen to the Carrows as they teach her the Dark Arts and tell her to hate Muggleborns. As he is breaking out of Gringotts on the back of a dragon, she is hoping no news is good news.

As he is watching a name on a map, she is wondering if he is thinking of her.

Eventually, the Final Battle arrives, and she decides to make the stand she should have made long ago, sneaking out of the Slytherin camp and moving to join the DA – she is almost hexed to smithereens, but interestingly enough it is Ginny Weasley who tells her compatriots to stand down. The girl smiles at Daphne, a mixture of welcome and faint regret, and she thinks that perhaps she has found a kindred spirit. They fight Death Eaters side by side, until she notices an enemy about to curse Harry and turns her attention away from her own battle to save him.

The light that strikes her as she saves his life is a colour she remembers from her dreams.

Daphne is beautiful even in death, he thinks, when he finds her body. Nobody has bothered to close her eyes – a travesty, because they are pale-sky blue when they should be arctic cobalt. Her hair is no longer—will never be again —lustrous in the moonlight, stained as it is by blood and dust and the rest of war's macabre decorations.

She will never again be warmth in his arms against the icy night, never again weave words and wit like she's knitting with a corkscrew, and never again call him Potter, the almost-silent tenderness in her voice unacknowledged by either of them.

His life without her is like fractured glass, all broken pieces and sharp edges; he'd repair it if he could, but it's hard to fix something when you don't really want to.

I leave it up to you, the readers, to imagine for yourselves whether or not Harry still ends up marrying Ginny. I have my own opinion, but the story's natural end precluded me writing it in.