AN : Welcome to my first story, a collaborative fiction between myself and Noodlehammer. I hope you enjoy it. As expected we don't own Harry Potter.

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Daphne pulled on the hem of the white linen shift that her father had handed her and told her to put on. It was so thin that it almost felt like she was wearing nothing at all, but she didn't complain. Father didn't like it when she complained.

She saw his eyes narrow at her fidgeting and immediately straightened.

He kept staring at her for a few seconds longer and then nodded to himself. "Follow me."

Daphne obeyed silently, doing her best to keep an impassive countenance and not let on to how frightened she was. What was going on?

They met with a tearful Mother in another room, which didn't help settle her fears. She'd long since learned that while Mother loved her, she could not be relied on for protection. She was weak.

Even more worrying was that Astoria was with her, covered only in a white linen shift just like the one she was wearing. She still didn't dare ask.

"Daphne!" Little Tori exclaimed happily and bounded forward. She seized one of Daphne's hands in her own and smiled an adorable gap-toothed grin at her big sister.

Daphne felt a rare warmth in her heart, the kind that she only experienced with her sister, but it was quickly replaced with fear. Why was Tori here and dressed the same as her? Father had never shown much interest in her, much to Daphne's relief.

"Where are we going?" She finally dared ask out of concern for Tori. Her voice remained firm and steady despite her emotions. Father hated it when she acted meek.

"Outside." He replied in a clipped tone that warned her away from any more questions.

Daphne tightened her hold on Astoria's hand and hoped that Father wouldn't do anything to Tori. She was already far too weak from the Greengrass family curse for Daphne's taste. Even this small walk had her breathing hard and sweating.

Not that she was doing well herself. Father had made it clear years ago that he'd wanted a son and was disappointed to have received a daughter. No matter how hard she tried, he always seemed disappointed and some kind of punishment was swift to follow. The pain left quickly enough, but the weakness lingered for much longer. Some of it never left at all.

Daphne feared her father too much to complain, but her lessons with him had become a torturous exercise in trying to focus through her exhaustion. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd felt truly rested.

Daphne shivered as they passed through the back entrance and the cold December air seeped through the thin linen shift.

"Mummy, I'm cold." Astoria complained tiredly.

"You'll be warm again soon, sweetheart." Mother said with a trembling voice and picked Astoria up.

Daphne saw her father frown and kept her jaw clenched tightly to keep her teeth from chattering.

They soon reached two stone slabs sitting on a wider stone platform and she started getting a really bad feeling about this.

"What's going on?" She asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

"Drink this." Father ordered and thrust some kind of dark red potion at her. It didn't look pleasant.

"What does it do?" She asked hesitantly.

"Just drink it." Father snapped impatiently.

Daphne flinched at his obvious displeasure and reluctantly drank the potion. It tasted vaguely like blood.

Almost immediately, her mind started swimming. Everything felt like it was underwater, slow and distorted.

Kick off your slippers and lie down on the altar. A voice said. It might have belonged to Father or it could have just been her imagination, Daphne couldn't tell, but she did as the voice said anyway.

The stone was very cold, but it somehow didn't matter. She gazed blankly up at the dark sky illuminated ***by a full moon peeking out from beneath the clouds and tracked the falling snowflakes that seemed oddly clear to her sight. The way they moved in the moonlight was captivating and her attention latched on with obsessive focus.

Two voices started chanting and the sound echoed over and over in her skull until it was an impenetrable wall of noise.

It felt like it went on forever, but the falling snowflakes seemed to be barely moving inside the beams of moonlight. The cold seeped into her, from the stone under her, the cold air all around her, but somehow the brief sting of cold from a particular snowflake that landed on her lips felt like the most important.

An unusual disembodied sensation followed, as if the shining moon that she was staring at was a giant mirror through which she could see herself. Daphne somehow knew that her skin had started losing its peach complexion until it became like marble and her lips turned a faint blue, as if they were frostbitten.

There was a sudden disharmony in the chanting voices that created a jarring discordance in the strangely ordered cacophony inside her skull. The first voice broke off from the chant and said something that conveyed alarm and then the second lashed at the first angrily. The voices continued their chanting then, but the discordance remained.

Her hair started changing next, its rich dark brown color lightening as if the pale moonlight was being absorbed into it.

An unexpected surge of strength rushed into her then, making Daphne gasp at the sensation. It was a magical strength, this she understood instinctively, even as her icy blue eyes began to glow.

With the power came a flood of comforting warmth that Daphne had always associated with her beloved little sister. Realization came a moment later, it was Astoria's strength that she was feeling being drawn into her, strength that she didn't have to spare.

The panic was strong enough to break through the mind-altering fog of the potion and she surged into an upright position, desperately looking around for Tori.

She found her on the neighbouring ritual altar, still as the stone beneath her and looking completely shriveled. The horror of the sight poured into the muddled soup of her consciousness like a tidal wave as she stared and attempted to comprehend the sight in vain.

A sob caught her attention and she turned her eyes forward. Mother and Father were standing there. Mother was sobbing while Father looked on stoically.

The horror turned to an ice-cold rage. Her sister was dead and they had done it. The only warm person in her life was dead, killed by a useless weakling and a cruel monster that demanded so much and gave so little.

With Astoria's power within and the shining moon above, there was no doubt about what she had to do next. The temperature plummeted as spears of glittering ice burst from the ground to impale her parents.

Daphne turned away from them and looked back at her sister. No, that withered husk wasn't her sister. Astoria was inside her now.

Still influenced by the mind-altering potion, Daphne started walking away without a second thought or backwards glance. She had to take Astoria to a better place. Where a better place was she didn't know, but the moon was bright and beautiful, so she walked towards it.

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Harry Potter was unusually clever for a boy of eight, possessed of an emotional maturity and instinctive understanding of certain things that developed only through life experience, something that no child his age should have, no matter how gifted.

He knew, for example, that his relatives hated him with an irrational sort of hate that would not fade no matter how much he tried to appease them.

Harry hated his relatives just as much, if not more, than they hated him. He hated them with a fury that a child that young shouldn't be able to muster. Something about being under their thumb, being forced to cook for them and clean after them and take their abuse, roused something wrathful and vicious in him.

But he didn't really have a way to act on those feelings. He might be a wizard – and Harry knew that he was one with an inexplicable bone-deep certainty – but his magic wasn't yet strong enough to really do more than invite further beatings from Vernon.

Not directly at least, but there were plenty of indirect ways to use magic. Any normal child in his position would be too cowed from knowing only abuse in their short life to have the courage to act, but Harry was far from normal. The rage boiling inside him demanded a response and he was more than happy to give one.

Petunia – Harry refused to consider her family and never referred to her as his aunt, even in his mind – had recently brought home a big, fat turkey. The resident walrus and baby whale of Privet Drive would no doubt gleefully taunt him with how good it was while he was starving in his cupboard, just like last year.

We'll see who has the last laugh. Harry thought spitefully as he carefully carried the turkey out of the freezer and placed it on the table. The damn thing was heavy and he was a scrawny eight-year-old.

That task accomplished, he started working on his objective – cursing the turkey with his magic.

Harry had the vague notion that he was missing something important for this, a tool of some sort perhaps, but he pressed on regardless. He had learned that magic happened when he was very scared, desperate or angry and the results could be unpredictable, now he tried to make it happen on purpose by focusing all the hatred he felt for his relatives on the turkey.

Time passed by without his notice as recalled every wrong done to him by either Vernon, Petunia or Dudley and envisioning the dead poultry as the vessel of his revenge. He wasn't sure if it had worked, but Harry thought that he could feel his hatred sinking into the dead flesh.

That was when things started going wrong.

"What do you think you're doing, you little freak?!" Petunia's grating screech of a voice snapped him out of his near-trance.

Harry jerked as if he'd been poked by a cattle prod and paled as he caught sight of Petunia's furious expression and heard Vernon's stomping footsteps coming downstairs.

The inevitable beating frightened him, but a cold satisfaction still burned in his chest at the knowledge that he had done what he'd set out to do.

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Locked in the trunk of Vernon's car, Harry knew that something very bad was in store for him.

The fat walrus had only smacked him about the head a few times while yelling himself hoarse before suddenly going very still. Before he could start getting hopeful that Vernon had calmed down, he had been grabbed by the neck, marched towards the car and locked into the trunk.

He'd been able to hear Petunia and Dudley's indistinct voices as they probably questioned Vernon on what he was doing, but the fattest of the Dursleys didn't seem interested in replying. A few minutes later, he heard the car doors being opened and closed and then they started moving.

That had been quite some time ago, more than an hour for sure. Maybe two hours. It was hard to tell.

Finally, the trunk was opened and Harry found himself being roughly hauled out by Vernon's meaty hands.

"Where are we?" Harry asked defiantly. It was dark already and he didn't recognize the place. It took him a moment to identify the sound in the background as the ocean.

"Shut up, boy!" Vernon snarled and pulled him ahead even more roughly.

A minute later, Harry realized that they were on a secluded cliff overlooking the ocean.

"You've been nothing but trouble for us your entire life, you little freak." Vernon started ranting. "We took you in after your freak parents got themselves killed, fed you, clothed you and how do you repay us? By trying to ruin our Christmas dinner! Enough is enough, boy. If I dumped you somewhere, those other freaks would probably just dump you right back on us like they did the first time, but let's see them fish you out of the ocean!"

Harry screamed in terror as he was pushed off the cliff and flailed for something to save him.

He didn't notice himself being pulled towards the cliff face, but he did notice that it was in reach. Too terrified to consider what would happen to his hands if he tried to grab on to anything while falling, he reached for it.

The rock ripped his hands up, of course it did, and then it ripped up his feet when he used them to try slowing himself, but it didn't do so nearly as badly as it should have.

Harry breathed rapidly as he clung to the stone. It was cold, he had nothing to wear except Dudley's threadbare, oversized castoffs, his hands and feet were bleeding, but he was alive. That was the important part.

Once he calmed down a bit, he took a look towards the destination that Vernon had intended for him and swallowed fearfully at the rocks below. That would have killed him for certain.

With nothing else to do, he started climbing, grabbing for handholds and pushing himself up with his comparatively less damaged feet.

Harry quickly became aware that doing this felt...oddly familiar. Obviously he had never climbed a cliff before, yet he was certain that he had. It was confusing.

It even became easier to do, as something just clicked in his mind and the magic that he had been using to help him stick to the rocks shifted away from being inspired by fear of death and became something that he just knew how to do.

It took him about ten minutes to slowly and painfully make his way back to the top and the first thing he saw was a pair of snow-white feet.

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Daphne had been walking all night, but she didn't feel her strength diminish or her purpose waver. The moon filled her with its light and the potion distorted her thinking in a way that removed all doubt from her mind.

The moon was starting to sink beneath the horizon when she saw it. One of those muggle car things drove near the cliff she had been heading for. A very fat man stomped out and pulled a boy from the trunk.

The boy said something, defiance covering fear. His magic was strong and full of life.

The fat man snarled something back, hateful and bitter. The sound rippled out from him in dark waves, clashing against the boy's magic.

Daphne watched as the fat muggle – and it had to be a muggle, because the sounds he made lacked substance – pushed the boy off the cliff.

She felt a flicker of sadness at seeing the boy die, but it didn't matter. She had to take Astoria to a better place.

The muggle drove off, never seeing Daphne as she made her way to the very same cliff that he'd thrown the boy from.

It was as far as she could go. The moon was out of reach and about to sink below the horizon. It didn't feel like the place where she was supposed to take her sister, but there was nowhere else to go.

Her feet ached. It hadn't mattered before, but it was starting to. Daphne felt tears sting her eyes as the absolute clarity of purpose the potion had given her started fading. She tried to cling to the feeling, instinctively knowing that she did not want to face what had happened and what she'd done.

She was distracted from the increasingly hopeless battle against her returning lucidity when the boy she'd thought was dead suddenly pulled himself over the edge of the cliff.

His hands were bleeding quite badly and he looked exhausted, so she helped pull him up on solid ground.

"Thanks." He panted, looking at her with grateful green eyes.

Daphne didn't reply. Her eyes were fixed on his forehead, on the lightning bolt scar. Every witch and wizard in Britain knew that scar. This was Harry Potter.

The potion still hadn't quite faded, so she didn't stop to wonder why he was here or freeze in shock, she just jumped to a series of conclusions based on what she knew. Harry Potter was a hero, Astoria had loved hearing stories about him. He could help her.

"Please help." She whispered, finding it incredibly difficult to actually articulate her thoughts. It was all clear in her head but it felt as if language was wholly inadequate as a means of expression.

"What?" He asked in confusion.

Daphne felt desperation creeping up on her. The shadows in her mind were growing longer, threatening to snatch away the clarity that had carried her this far. Harry Potter was a hero, he would help if she could just make him understand what she needed.

"Please. Help." She tried again, but only managed to convey her desperation.

"Help you with what?" He asked. He sounded confused, tired and irritated.

Words weren't working, she had to make him see.

Daphne grabbed his face with her hands, stared deep into his eyes and pushed everything towards him.

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Harry Potter was very, very confused. This ghostlike girl that had seemingly been waiting for him on the top of the cliff wanted his help with something, but she didn't seem to know how to tell him what it was.

Not that he was in any shape to help her with anything. He was hurt, cold and stranded in an unknown location of nowhere in the dead of winter. Helping others was not on the list of things he needed to do right now.

Then she grabbed his face with ice-cold hands that were far too strong and gave him the most unnerving stare he'd ever received. The glowing blue eyes made him freeze like a deer staring at an incoming car and then the world tilted sideways.

He was overwhelmed by a tide of alien...there wasn't even a word for it. It had a little similarity to the strange feelings of knowing that he'd been having his entire life, but far more powerful. That was like remembering impressions from a hazy dream that was always out of reach, this was like being trapped in one that you knew wasn't real but couldn't escape.

It made no sense to Harry. Such a thing could only be experienced subjectively and his frame of reference was all wrong, but one set of impressions came through clearly. The yearning for home, safety, warmth.

Unfortunately, those weren't things he could help...Daphne? Or was it Astoria?...with. He'd never experienced them himself.

That thought suddenly felt untrue to Harry. He'd had a home once, where he had been safe and loved. That was something they both needed right now, so he focused all of his being on going to that place.

The two children vanished in an accidental Apparition.

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