Let’s go back to Lyra Malfoy character.

I designed her with two basic guidelines. The first is that she ends up as Harry Potter’s wife. The second is that I keep the narrative as faithful to the books as humanly possible.

The way I imagined her, really, is the way Lucius Malfoy is depicted in the first movies. He’s Mr. Darcy. He has arrived. He comes to Hogwarts, demands to talk to the headmaster, and holds him accountable for the events at school. He comes to the Ministry and everybody bows to him. His self confidence is next level; it’s not something that looks trained, the way Americans train body language and think it means anything. He’s the wealthiest, most important person in his world, and he knows it. It’s a combination of dignity, arrogance and power.

His daughter would breathe that air from birth. Since I worked under the assumption that she’s Harry Potter’s ideal counterpart, I made her a pure, innocent soul that just happened to be born in that family. However, all of this rubs off on her, and this is what she is when we encounter her in the first book. She assumes power, dignity and nobility, and it comes off horribly to Harry who is fiercely egalitarian and grew up with the Dursleys so he doesn’t like pompous pricks. She rubs him off in exactly the wrong way, and they start at the wrong foot instantly. To him, she’s just wrong. She looks like all the bullies and assholes in his life, and he instantly hates her, and politely tells her she’s bad news and wants nothing to do with her.

To Lyra, this is a shock. You see, her mother taught her all about “who’s who”. You don’t date Lyra. You court Lyra. In order to have an implicit permission to even get to talk to her, your name needs to be on a list. In order to be considered her peer, you need to be on an even shorter list. Harry Potter is no1 name on that list. Nobody, ever just dismisses Lyra and tells her she’s all wrong, or bad news, or unworthy of their company. She offered her company to Harry recognizing him for what he is, and he coldly turned her down. To her, this is a heavy blow. I mean, it’s a heavy blow to Draco, but to Lyra, it strikes differently. If the no1 person on her list coldly dismisses her and tells her she’s unworthy, it means she’s unworthy as a person and unworthy as a girl. It makes her squirm with a combination of humiliation and fury. However, she can’t say “who are you to talk to me like this”, because her mom already told her who he is. He’s the most important boy in the world, and it’s her duty as heiress to the Malfoy family to make a good impression. She feels doubly humiliated, because she failed, and she doesn’t even understand why.

So, she sulks, and watches. She observes what Potter is doing. She sees that he’s brave, protective of his friends, that he gets into trouble by disregarding the rules, but he is obviously leading his team, already on an important mission, and he is successful. She watches him flying and he’s obviously doing it for the first time and yet he’s unrealistically good. Within minutes, he’s relaxed and actually good. After a few hours of practice, he’s better than she is, and she’s been doing this at home all summer. His bearing when he’s pressured or injured shows great personal dignity, courage, ability to conduct himself gracefully under adversity, and he disregards stupid criticism with stubborn contempt. All in all, he’s the most noble, dignified boy her age she ever saw, and she made her decision. He is the only one worthy of her. Nobody else exists for her. He’s not just her peer; he’s her superior, and it’s the first time she ever looked up to a boy her age; before, it was just her parents. However, he rejected her, and now she has to prove herself to him, and she doesn’t actually know how.

So, she does what an intelligent young girl would normally do. She engages him in casual conversations in the hallways, works with him in classes, tries to interact and see what he’s actually like. The problem is, whenever she actually talks about the things she’s proud of, like her parents, her pure blood and wealth, he reacts as if she personally insulted him. She would be incredibly frustrated by it, especially since he would also insult her parents and their ideology and call them evil. This would upset her to the point of crying into her pillow and not knowing what to do or what’s wrong. It’s like they live in different worlds and talk different language, and to him black is white and vice versa.

Also, we need to have in mind that the entire Harry Potter wizarding world is an anachronism. They are all living in the past. The muggleborns live in the late 20^th century; Hermione and Harry have a common experience, they know the same fairy tales, same TV shows, same shopping malls. When one of them makes a reference, the other gets it immediately; Ron, on the other hand, looks at them like they grew a second head. He doesn’t know who Monty Python is. He doesn’t know what the cold war is. He doesn’t know who Cinderella is. And mind you, Ron’s dad is obsessed with the muggles and how they do things. He even enchanted a car to fly. However, their worlds have a very small intersection.

For instance, in the wizarding community there is no sex before marriage. Like, at all. Not heard of. There are no teen pregnancies. No abortions. No sexual infidelity. The couples stay together until death. It’s a very old school world, and even in that context, the Malfoy family is an anachronism. They are such an anachronism, they could fit perfectly in a Jane Austen novel. Lucius Malfoy might as well be Mr. Darcy. In fact, Lyra is something of the sort, in her context. She just assumes Regency era social rules, and Harry just assumes late 20^th century. They each look at each other as a classmate and assume they are in the same world, but that’s an illusion. Their fundamental assumptions are so different, it’s bound to create misunderstandings. For instance, Lyra assumes Harry has to know who he is to her, because she assumes he had to be informed about the “who is who” of the wizarding community, the way she was. She had no idea. She can’t even begin to comprehend how fundamentally ignorant he is, because she sees that he’s as intelligent as she is. He’s quick, bright, focused. She knows he’s a high-born wizard of immense wealth and social clout. She can’t understand that he perceives himself as a poor orphan and a bullied underdog. To her, the assumption would be as foreign as him thinking he’s a horse or a book. So, she assumes all kinds of things, and they are all wrong.

She assumes he knows what it means when she politely approached him in the hallway, curtsied and started a conversation. It means she recognizes him as her equal or superior, and they are engaged in a subtle process of feeling each other out in the early stages of courtship. But he doesn’t know she would never just approach anyone that way, that she has special social rules of conduct. Nobody just gets to talk to Lyra. Lyra, especially, doesn’t just approach someone, bow, and talk to them. It’s all significant behaviour, and it all flies over his head completely because he’s in the wrong century. He perceives her actions as pompous and arrogant, because she addresses his friends as inferiors or even sub-humans. The fact that she addresses him differently isn’t an honour, it’s an insult to his egalitarian mindset. And she doesn’t know what she did wrong. In her mind, she was doing everything right and he acts like she offended him. So, she cries herself to sleep and tries again tomorrow. He thinks she’s being pompous, rude and offensive, and she’s out of her mind with frustration, trying to figure things out. However, she’s smart. Harry takes a while to figure out the wizarding community and their eccentricities, and she doesn’t take much longer to figure him out to the same degree. She understands that he was brought up by the muggles who have their own rules of behaviour, and that he’s from the same world as Hermione. She watches, she picks things up, she adjusts. OK, egalitarian stuff. She hates it, but she adjusts. They start getting along much better. They cooperate in school very easily, especially since they are quite similar in abilities. They beat each other to a pulp at Quidditch, and she likes that – the ability to vent her frustration with him in some real way is very pleasant. It’s actually more sincere than trying to talk through a minefield of forbidden topics.

There’s an implicit assumption she has, because to her it’s like assuming the air is there for her to breathe, and the gravity points downwards. The assumption is that they are courting. He did certain things that encouraged her – picked up her books and returned them to her looking her straight into the eyes; holding her protectively when she was afraid in the forbidden forest. She even interpreted his acts of valour and courage as him showing his worth to her. To her, there were only a few boys who would ever be allowed to court her. She implicitly assumed he had the same list. She assumed she had to be no1 on his list. She also knew every single girl that would be on the list his parents would explicitly or implicitly give him, only his parents were dead and he was raised by the Dursleys. She didn’t see him exchanging any special courtesies with the other young ladies on his list. They, however, acted like competitors and peers, which she interpreted as a love language – something weird and “modern”, muggle-influenced, but he’s weird that way, so she adapted. She would bump shoulders with him and smile, instead of bow. As far as she knew, they were courting each other, proving each other’s worth, waiting for the war to end, for the sides to shift, for them to grow up so that he could ask for her hand in marriage. That was her world, and she was happy.

As I said, Lyra doesn’t date. You don’t get to ask her out, unless she already considers you for marriage. You don’t get to grab her and pull her off her broom and crash her into the ground unless she already wants to marry you. She has context, assumptions and a special world she lives in, except it’s a Jane Austen novel and not the mid to late 1990s. Harry knows absolutely nothing of this. He’s clueless as a doorknob. He’s in fact terrified of her because she’s a scary Death Eater child who praises the Dark Lord who killed his parents. Her power, skill, dignity and brains are intimidating, because she’s the enemy and will eventually try to kill him. If he could abstract the scary part, he’d think she’s the most beautiful girl he ever saw, and she’s basically his twin in abilities and character, only he never thinks this consciously. He likes her company on an instinctual, physical level, but she’s scary. She’s as scary as a Dark Lady of the Sith would be to a Jedi. It’s someone who’s incredibly skilled, dark and wants to kill you. The fact that her body is beautiful and exactly your type just adds to the scary part rather than detract from it. She perceives herself as a gentle, romantic soul who is playing a very subtle game with her chosen husband. He’s trying to be friendly with the scary girl so that she doesn’t ambush him in some dark place and bury his body in the woods.

The thing is, she’s not like a modern girl who would be frustrated because he doesn’t get her hints. She just assumes he does, because he’s as smart as she is, but she also assumes that he can’t show it openly because they are in opposing camps and the war is about to break out. It’s just how it is now. They flirt by playing Quidditch against each other. They need to keep the other stuff quiet.

And then two things happen. Voldemort returns, and Harry starts dating other girls.

Lyra had only vague ideas about the Dark Lord. She heard her parents whisper about him in a worshipful tone at home, and they described him as powerful and dark. Her parents were powerful and dark, so she imagined him to be like them, only more, because they bow to no one. She thought he had to be the most admirable, noble and pure person in the world, and dark, to her, was a goth aesthetics; not a state of spirit. Dark meant using spells and potions that did powerful, forbidden things. It meant being able to hurt and kill your enemies. She liked how decisive that felt. Being able to finish the job when you hate someone sounded only reasonable. Why would anyone even be against that?

And then she saw Voldemort meeting with her parents in their home. They bowed to him like servants, and he treated them dismissively, and with cold, dark indifference which she found chilling. Something cold grabbed her heart, and she felt an ominous premonition. She tried to shake it off, say it’s just an impression, but then she saw some of the people coming to their home. She finally understood what the word “dark” actually meant. It wasn’t dark because they were into goth fashion. It was dark because it’s cold, ruthless evil, without sophistication, manners, love, empathy or kindness. It was devoid of spiritual light that was her entire life. For the first time in her entire life, she was truly afraid.

She rolled back her memories of the talks she had with Harry – things she said that offended him, things he said that offended her. The Dark Lord killed his parents and it was reasonable that he hated him and thought he had to be evil, but she thought it was a misunderstanding of things that happen in a war. His parents were on the wrong side and were killed. He assumed their killer had to be evil, but that didn’t mean it was actually so. However, she now remembered Voldemort. He actually felt evil, in the most fundamental, undeniable way he could possibly comprehend. He was cold, cruel, dismissive, and lives meant nothing to him, even the lives of good people. He cared only about service, about what’s of use to him for his purposes. But if Harry is right and Voldemort is evil, what does that mean? Does it mean that her parents are wrong? That they are evil? She shivered from the thought. They loved her and cared greatly for her. They were always kind, generous and understanding. She loved them with all her heart. They can’t be evil. But even good people can be mistaken, they can do wrong and foolish things if they are misguided. So, she allowed for this possibility, because it both matched reality and was emotionally palatable. She will need to talk to Harry about this, but carefully, because it would be treasonous to her parents to say too much of what’s happening at home. It would also expose her parents to Dark Lord’s retaliation, and that had to be avoided at all cost.

And then the school started, and she saw Harry looking at other girls, and she froze. It was a terrible betrayal to her. How could he do it? It took her a long time before she understood that it was a misunderstanding. He didn’t know how she felt about him. She never told him. He didn’t have the cultural context to understand her love language, because it was too subtle. He didn’t understand that she considered herself his alone, that she just waited for the war and school to end, and he would ask for her hand in marriage and she would say yes. So, he acted as if there was nothing between them, and lived in the 20^th century and asked other girls out for a date. He never asked her.

So, on one hand she had Voldemort and the ominous, evil and vulgar creatures visiting her ancestral home, and she had her chosen husband break her heart. Her life stopped being a fairy tale, and started being a Lovecraftian horror story. The safety of the assumption that she was on the right side that her parents knew best, that all she had to do is convince Harry to switch to the right side of the war, it was all gone. She didn’t yet understand what it all meant, what all the implications were. She would need to talk to somebody, and there was nobody to talk to. Anyone on the Death Eater side would consider her thoughts treasonous and she would be punished along with her parents. Even if they saw her talking to someone from the other side would be perceived as treasonous. There was only Harry, because everybody knew they were rivals and constantly fighting about something. She would so like to talk to him, to confide with him, because nobody would assume what they were talking about. And then he saw him with Cho, and her heart withered.

She was in a daze. Her heart ached so much, that the entire world went dark. Everything she felt added to her depression; hearing the birds chirping annoyed her. When she stubbed her toe at the doorframe and it hurt, it blended together with her heartache and she intentionally made herself feel worse because she wallowed in her misery. When she had menstrual cramps, it all blended into her nightmarish darkness. Her head wasn’t a fun place. So, when she saw Harry passing out from the pain of his scar, she sneered malevolently; he deserves it. Let him have some of the pain she’s having. Let him see how it feels. However bad he’s having it, it’s nothing compared to her waking nightmare.

He saw her sneering, and his eyes went hard with hatred, which made her feel worse, and return the look with such hatred he never, ever saw in her eyes before. It looked like she wanted to kill him on the spot, and he felt genuinely afraid for his life. After all, her Dark Lord returned, and she must be encouraged and empowered now, in her choice of sides. No more friendly talks in the hallways. Just war and murder.

There are two main differences between Draco and Lyra. First, Draco is not in love. Second, Draco never had to fear being raped in his own home. Unfortunately, Lyra started understanding what the latter felt like when Death Eaters and worse scum started roaming the hallways of her home, and her mother started teaching her wards and protective charms to use. When entering the bathroom, always cast the revelio charm, to show if there’s someone hiding in there. Enter. Close the door. Apply barrier charm. Apply sensory shield to prevent spying. Only then you’re safe. Only then you don’t have to fear being ambushed, raped or murdered in the bathroom. When entering your bedroom, same process. Flush anyone who’s possibly already there. Lock the door. Make it a fortress. Block spying. Shield against anyone teleporting in while you sleep.

She thought about preparing an escape route; a portkey; a broom; a protective charm. But then she understood the problem: her parents were hostages against her bad behaviour. If she ran away, they would be punished or killed. She could be blackmailed to return lest they be killed.

She heard the creeps talking about her in the hallways. Discussing which one will get her as a prize from the Dark Lord for their service. She was to be a trophy. And if she killed herself, her parents will be executed. She shivered with terror.

Fenrir Greyback passed her by in the hallway once. She happened to be on her period. He sniffed lustfully and said “I smell your blood. Yummy. I wonder what you would taste like.” Alecto laughed: “I have a spell that will make her last longer, so you can have fun with her innards”. She ran away, bunkered herself in her bedroom, and wept with humiliation, fury and terror. She swore eternal vengeance: she will hunt them down and kill them, all of them, and if someone kills them first she will owe them a favour and repay it manifold. She will hunt them down like the rabid dogs that they are and put them all down. But she was weak and helpless now, and she hated it so much that her tears burst once more, and she hugged herself in her terror. Harry knew this. He warned her. He told her what they are, and she didn’t believe him. She was on his side now, and he thought her an enemy who got what she bargained for. He hated her, and would kill her if he could. This fact felt like such additional humiliation, that her vision narrowed and she went unconscious on her bed. She didn’t even hear the tortured prisoners screaming that night.

All the while, Harry though he’s having it so bad, nobody could possibly understand his pain, while lying in his bed at No. 12 Grimmauld Place, surrounded by friends.

The most reasonable question about Lyra Malfoy would be how likely would she be to be a good enough person for Potter to fall in love with, if she starts as a scary girl spouting Death Eater ideology and routinely insults his friends?

That’s actually the easy part. Just imagine a sweetheart girl born in a loving family of Nazi war criminals.

You see, the difference between Draco and Lyra is that Draco is taught that he’s a pureblood and this gives him value. Lyra is taught that she has to be a good girl in order to be a proper pureblood. She’s taught to know the family tradition, respect her parents and elders, know history, practice magic, be knowledgeable about society, respectful of her peers and all the right people, be proud of their wealth, and despise lower people, who are nothing like they are.

So, basically, she identifies being pureblood with all kinds of virtues, and assumes that muggle-borns are deficient in those virtues and that’s why they are worthy of contempt. They are ignorant, disrespectful, uneducated, don’t know magic properly, and are poor. Also, her parents loved her and treated her gently and kindly, so she obviously adored them. In her mind, they were the best people in the world who knew best and could do no wrong. Also, at the point where she went to Hogwarts, she was eleven.

So, you have a wonderful, pretty, loving sweetheart of a girl who keeps hating on Jews and saying “Heil Hitler” every now and then, completely oblivious how it comes across. When people tell her that her parents are evil, she knows it’s not true because her parents are wonderful. When they tell her that Voldemort is evil, she knows it’s not true because her parents wouldn’t worship him if he was evil. Those people are just nasty, filthy, jealous and poor and that’s why they are slandering everything that’s good.

Did I say she’s eleven? Please, go look at some children who are eleven and you’ll see what I mean. They are old enough to be able to independently do basic things, but they need to keep growing their brains for quite a bit before they are to be taken seriously. Their ability for abstract thought, perspective and nuance is all but nonexistent. They know what their parents taught them. If that’s wrong, wait until they are older teenagers for them to start figuring it out. Even if it’s not wrong, wait until they are older teenagers for them to start figuring out why it’s correct and what it means.

So, Harry Potter sees this little princess and thinks she’s a horrible, spoiled bully who is cruel to good people for no reason, because her parents are servants of Voldemort, and his first reaction is to absolutely hate her. On the other hand, he can’t get his head around the fact that she’s pretty, smart, polite and very competent. That makes her scary and threatening, but as they are talking, he learns to respect her, which mostly makes her even more scary, but she’s also kind with him, she knows lots of things he doesn’t, and as long as they keep the conversation away from blood purity, he really likes her company. They are very competitive at Quidditch, and she’s very good, which makes her both threatening and respected. They are both smart, energetic kids, who love their parents dearly, only his are dead and hers worship the lunatic cult leader who killed his parents. So, he can’t actually understand that she’s a very loving person, because to him it’s all evil and nightmarish horror show. To her, in her naive ideas about nobility and purity, the fact that someone is not pure is taken quite literally – she thinks they are deficient in virtues. She think it denotes lacking moral character. To Harry, she sounds evil and insane, but he can’t quite reconcile that conclusion with how she seems to be as a person. She doesn’t act evil and insane, she’s just very selective about who she’s being nice to. What he doesn’t understand is that he’s the same way, only with different people.

So, they have a weird relationship that’s part friendship part hostility; the friendship part is based on the fact that he likes how she feels as a person, and the hostility part starts when she sees a muggle-born person and opens her mouth.

You see, it’s easy. People are complicated. A child of Nazis can be a sweetheart; it’s just that she thinks that Jews are filthy evil scum and Hitler is a demigod sent by the destiny to save the Aryan race from this evil infestation. Other than that, if you play with her, she’s warm, kind, smart and feels completely great to be around. It makes Harry’s head hurt with cognitive dissonance. Basically, he’d really want them to be best friends (he’s too young to have a concept of a girlfriend), only if she would stop believing and talking evil shit.

This all changes after the Goblet of Fire, when Voldemort comes back, Lyra starts seeing changes in her home, with all kinds of Death Eaters escaped from Azkaban either living there or visiting, and Harry starts dating Cho. The worst thing is, she would want to talk to him because her new experience is starting to confirm his words, that used to sound completely nasty and unhinged, about how everything about Voldemort is evil. Well, looking at the Lestranges and others, that sounds exactly right. Also, everybody is in fear of Voldermort’s moods because he’s unpredictable and when he’s angry, he’s unreasonably cruel even with his followers. He doesn’t respect people and just wants servants, and that’s the language they all use. Are the Malfoys supposed to be servants? Aren’t they the pureblood nobility that is supposed to have others serve them? There’s all kinds of things wrong there and she’s starting to understand that something horrible is looming, and she would love to hear Harry’s thoughts on it. However, he’s in the enemy camp and talking about those things with him would be treason. And then she saw him dating another girl, and she felt so hurt and betrayed, that she wouldn’t even look at him. Harry would think it’s a terrible year for him – everybody is accusing him of making things up for attention, he’s being humiliated and tortured, he has terrible nightmares about what happened at that graveyard, Voldemort is trying to hack his brain so he has terrible headaches, Cho is all weird and other than the physical attraction they don’t click in any way, and Lyra frowns at the sight of him, turns away and doesn’t even acknowledge his existence. It coincides with the return of Voldemort, and he has the darkest explanation – she picked her side, and there’s no more room in her life for friends on the other side of the war.

He thinks he has it hard, but he doesn’t know that she’s not having it any better. Her life is starting to look like a horror show, with her ancestral home starting to look like headquarters for dark freaks and all sorts of evil scum. Everybody is nasty, and her father barely has enough authority to keep them at bay. However, after the night in the Ministry, when he failed to redeem himself by getting the prophecy, he loses all standing before Voldemort and this becomes a terrible nightmare for her, a darkness with no end in sight. She would tell Harry he was right, but he is the enemy now and he hates her. She saw the look. He thinks she’s a servant of Voldemort and there’s no softness in his eyes for her any more. And she’s also hurt and furious because he saw him with another girl now. He sure is having his fun. She feels betrayed, hurt, in constant danger, and she can’t even feel safe in her own home. She overheard the Death Eaters commenting her as if she were a tasty prize to be given for one of them, for good service to their lord, and she felt unimaginable horror. And during all that, she imagines Harry having all sorts of fun with Ginny in the headquarters of the Order of Phoenix, somewhere safe. She’s crying herself to sleep every night, but the darkness doesn’t end. It actually gets worse. Voldemort calls her personally. His cold, cruel demeanour gives her the creeps, and he offers a path to redemption for the Malfoy family. If she swore allegiance to him, took the Dark Mark, kill Dumbledore at school, and found a way to smuggle his servants inside, all would be forgiven and they would be reinstated to a place of honour. She feels the darkness tightening around her, but she agrees, because the alternative looks like her parents will be killed and she will be either raped or eaten by some werewolf.

And as she is trying to pull off this terrible, suicidal plan that looks more like a cruel way to torture her than something that has a realistic chance of success, she sees Harry following her, spying on her, with cold eyes full of hatred and suspicion, and she’s surprised to find out that her heart can hurt even more. He was supposed to be someone to share a life with her, someone she could confide in, someone who would help her. How did it come to this? At least she’s no longer at home, or whatever that place is now. She no longer has to apply five protective charms to her bedroom door every night, just to feel safe. She doesn’t have to fear walking the corridors alone. She wondered how much it would hurt to have her face chewed off like Bill Weasley… or something worse, because she was a girl.

Her mother had her practice offensive and defensive magic. They would practice unforgivable curses on farm animals. Imperius was funny; she made pigs roll over and try to jump. Cruciatus was satisfying. She imagined making Voldemort suffer. She imagined making that scum that made her scared to walk alone in her own home suffer. She made a pig squeal, and imagined it being Fenrir Greyback. But Avada Kedavra was the worst. She hated it, and yet she had to practice it in order to become capable of fulfilling her mission. It’s a terrible spell; you need to have a heart of a cruel, hateful murderer in order to do it. She didn’t want to have a heart of a cruel, hateful murderer. She wanted to cry her heart out on her husband’s shoulder, but he hates her now. Why does he hate her? Doesn’t he know? Of course he doesn’t. He warned her about Voldemort, about her parents who followed him, and what it meant. She thought he was wrong, that he doesn’t understand. She was wrong. She wanted to tell him that she knows now, ask him to help them, but he hates her and the softness that was there for her before now exists only for others. She hates him. “Avada Kedavra!”

Green light flashed, and a cow dropped dead. Her mother was pleased. She felt dirty and ashamed of herself. She will never do that again.

She became quite a good duelist, and her mother made her practice protective charms. She thought she might be as good as the Granger girl now. Maybe as good as Potter? No, Potter was in another league. He held his own against Voldemort at multiple occasions. He cornered aunt Bella at the Ministry. Potter was deadly, he was faster than her, he was so well trained he actually had students of his own. Death Eaters were told never to face him alone, always in twos and threes. She was proud of him, and it hurt, because he’s not hers to be proud of. Other women could learn spells from him, while she was the enemy.

Well, at least she’s back at school now. No need to apply protective charms to the bedroom door at night, and remove them in the morning. She still had the nightmares, though. About failing the mission, and watching her parents executed by Voldemort. Being given as a trophy to some more deserving “pureblood” Death Eater. Being given as a toy to a werewolf. Being violated in her own bed. Seeing suicide as the only way out. She hated sleeping.

Her anger flared when she saw Potter, surrounded by friends, acting like he’s having it hard. He’s having such a terrible life – he has to spy on the evil Malfoy girl who’s conspiring to kill Dumbledore. Of course he figured it out. He likely had some kind of clairvoyance ability that let him spy on enemies from a distance and see their plans. Rumours were, her could see through the eyes of the Dark Lord, because of that scar. And she was the evil enemy he had to keep under surveillance. She wanted him to suffer like she suffered, to see what it’s like.

He cornered her in the girls’ bathroom when she was crying to Moaning Myrtle because she had nobody else to talk to. It was all close, she had to act soon because Voldemort was getting impatient. She almost fixed the cabinet. She felt like a cornered animal, hurt and afraid, with nobody to turn to, and then she saw his self-righteous face and wanted to remove that smirk from his face, a smirk that said “I caught you, you villain”, while the “allies” she was supposed to bring to school were the very monsters that turned her home into a frightening dungeon. She used the Cruciatus curse on instinct – she poured all her pain and heartbreak into it and wanted him to feel it, but then she felt distant, her body like a faint echo as a wall hit her and she felt the cold wet floor, and something warm flowing down her arm. She didn’t feel pain, just numbness, and everything was distant, as if it were happening to somebody else. Of course he won. Of course she lost. She expected him to gloat as she felt a metallic taste of blood in her mouth, and shortness of breath as her lungs filled with blood. She saw his face as in slow motion, in a distance, and he didn’t gloat. He panicked, called for help, begged her not to leave him, to stay there with him. Her heart stopped aching, but everything was cold and distant, and then Snape was working the counter-curses and then everything went dark.

After Dumbledore’s death, she felt even worse. She saw Harry’s numb grief at the funeral, and she thought he will never be able to forgive her. She will never be able to explain her intentions there in the tower. He will think she’s the worst person in the world. Everything she felt in the bathroom will be forgotten. He will never be able to see through his pain and loss now. After all, he was Dumbledore’s personal protegee, he was taking special lessons in private. It would be like her losing her parents, and knowing Harry did it. It’s all over.

Then she saw him approach her, and she had the darkest premonitions. He asked her to go with him and have a word. He would kill her and leave her in the woods. And then he whispered in her ear and the words were something she never even dared to dream or hope. He loves her, and he is hers if she will have him. But, after the war, because nobody must know. Of course; they would use her as a hostage to get to him if they knew. She looked at him – he knows everything. He knows she loves him, and he knows she chose him all those years ago, and he knows what happened in the tower. Of course; the cloak. He was there, he heard her begging Dumbledore to save her and her family from the hell they were in, and then hell came to visit.

All the cracks in her heart were healed. It was better than she could ever hope. He figured it out; that she always loved him, that she chose him, that she used to be a stupid child who didn’t know, and he knew all the horrors she witnessed, he knew that she understands now and that she’s on his side, but can’t do anything about it. He can’t yet free her, but he’ll be working on it. There’s hope. There’s light. She just needs to survive long enough. What is he actually asking? Whether she’ll have him? Oh, he realises that he wronged her, that he dated other girls and treated her like an enemy. He’s the one asking if she’ll still have him? She didn’t get it in time to reply and he was already gone, but her inner light went back on. She was still in a desperate situation, afraid and threatened, but her heart was now healed and radiant. Of course she will have him. She was his since she was eleven. All he ever had to do is ask for her hand.

Now, she just has to endure hell until he wins. Hopefully, without getting raped, murdered or bitten by a werewolf. If she had to bet on those odds, she’d normally pass, but now, she actually smiled.

I was trying to render out the emotional history between the two characters, because what I did so far felt unconvincing and incomplete, so here goes.

When they first met, Lyra had her short list of boys from acceptable lineages in her head, and was very polite and considerate with them. However, somewhere around her first Quidditch match with Harry, or when she dropped her books and he quietly picked them up from the ground, handed them to her, looked her in the eyes and nodded, she locked in her choice onto him, and since then, her list contained only one name. The thing with her is that she’s incredibly loyal, and she never wavers; in that respect she’s the mirror image of Harry. The difference is, he never knew, because she wasn’t allowed to tell him. The political reasons prohibited it, and it would be treasonous. In her mind, she’ll wait until he changes sides, or the war is over, but her choice was locked in by the time she was eleven years old; in her mind, she was already married to him – before puberty, before the teenage hormones, before the first kiss. It wasn’t a teenage infatuation; it was a life-long choice. It was never a crush. It was never skin deep. There would never, ever be anyone else for her.

But she didn’t tell him. She argued with him, made his life difficult, competed with him, belittled his friends, but she was always polite and dignified about it… until he started dating other girls. This hit her so hard, that she started outright avoiding him. She wasn’t just jealous; she felt betrayed and heartbroken. Hermione figured it out immediately, and when Harry asked why is Lyra avoiding him and changing direction whenever she sees him, Hermione started paying attention and told him that the girl is secretly in love with him, and it’s actually deep stuff; she recognized the look Lyra had when Harry kissed Cho and later Ginny, and it was heartbreak, not hatred or revulsion as Harry thought. Unfortunately, it coincided with Voldemort’s return, and Harry thought that Lyra decided to stonewall him when her Dark Lord returned, since she’s committed to becoming a Death Eater and the only thing he can expect from her now is a violent ambush in some dark corner of the castle. He acted on this belief, and when Lyra understood how he interpreted it, she went furious and it added another layer of heartbreak. She thought about retaliating by dating someone else, but she felt immediate revulsion at the idea. She was absolutely loyal and she made her choice. It was always meant to be forever, and there can never be anyone else. She was additionally frustrated because she knew it was her fault. She never told him. He didn’t figure it out. She never told him that she chose him, but that it needs to wait until after the war. For all he knows, she hates him. So, in her frustration, she lashed out, she was hissy and nasty and he of course interpreted it all as confirmation of his conjecture.

The first thing that ever broke his self-righteousness was when he witnessed Snape’s worst memory: when he understood that his idealised father was a school bully, of exactly the kind that he hates the most. His black-and-white world in which everybody is perfectly sorted out in separate camps broke.

And then there was the incident in the bathroom. When he ambushed her there, she was reduced to crying her heart out to Moaning Myrtle, and then she saw him, with his self-righteous look, now dating Ginny Weasley, looking at her like she’s a villain, and she poured all her frustration and heartbreak in “Crucio!”; but he was always faster and he intercepted her spell with “Sectumsempra!” which hit her like a wall of knives, instantly ending all her frustrated emotions.

There’s something about the physical, sensual reality that tends to snap people out of the nonsense that they have in their heads. When Harry saw that beautiful girl turning pale and sweaty from shock, drowning in her own blood on the floor, all his self-righteous theories immediately left him. She no longer felt like a conspiring Death Eater he was cornering. She felt like a dying victim, completely vulnerable, and his instinct broke out when his mind failed to work; he realised that he loves her, and would give anything to heal her and have her back.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to talk to her later; he had to go hunt Horcruxes with Dumbledore, and had to watch Dumbledore drink that terrible potion, and all for nothing since the real Horcrux had already been taken by R.A.B., and a dummy was left in its place. They barely arrived at the bell tower, when Lyra ambushed them, and Harry had to watch, body-locked and hidden in the invisibility cloak, as Lyra disarmed Dumbledore to give herself the time to speak, and then begged Dumbledore to save the lives of her family, explaining what she was forced to do, apologising for it, but not avoiding guilt. She laid herself bare in front of the Headmaster and begged for her life and the lives of her family. But then the Carrows came, and it was all over; she could no longer speak her mind openly. As terrible and traumatic the death of Dumbledore was to Harry, he unfortunately doesn’t have a one-track mind. He can experience multiple tragedies at once. So, after he went after Snape, and experienced a humiliating defeat adding to his loss, he also started going back in his memories, reliving everything about Lyra. The thing with Harry Potter is this: he has terrible self-control, but he has the memory of an elephant. He remembers everything in clear detail. So, he revised all the things he remembered of her, now understanding that she was motivated by loyalty and love, not hatred and malice. Then he remembered Hermione’s explanation of her actions, and he stood in shock. He then went even further into the past, and realised that she always loved him, but she was inhibited by her love and loyalty to her family. He understood that she was hurt when he started dating other girls, but her hands were tied. She couldn’t say anything, and could only suffer in silence, in addition to other kinds of suffering she had to endure, with her parents being enslaved, and werewolves and thugs prancing in her ancestral home, where she understood that Voldemort will eventually gift her as a prize to one of the disgusting people there. Harry was completely horrified. He didn’t know. She thought herself his forever since she was 11, and he knew nothing about it. He thought her an icy Princess with a stone heart, and in reality, her suffering mirrored his own the entire time.

So, after Dumbledore’s funeral, he approached her and asked for a word in private. She nodded and went with him, and he whispered in her ear that he loves her, and is hers forever if she will have him, but there’s a war looming, it’s going to be dangerous, he wants her to be safe, so nobody must know. She looked at him with wide eyes, and nodded, not trusting her voice.

When he was brought to Malfoy Manor as a prisoner along his two friends, and she refused to identify him, she gave him the look – it said “please win”. It also said “yes”. No hedging, no restraint, no holding back, no reservations – “yes, I’m yours, go win”.

I won’t go into the part when she thought he was dead. She’s a fictional character, and yet the emotions involved are so terrible that I’m compelled to protect them, because people witnessing them would be compelled to turn aside and protect her privacy, because of how bad that was. There were other terrible things in the series – death of Sirius Black. Death of Fred Weasley, of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, Snape crying while holding Lily’s dead body. This was worse.

So, I basically wrote it as a broken mirror of the tragedy of Lily and Severus, where Lyra made a similar error; and she had to watch her love dead, knowing it’s the end of her life, because it was always forever. I didn’t write it as a romance, I wrote it as an almost-tragedy, because that’s the only way it works.

In the end, Harry makes it up to her for not figuring her out in time; he makes their surname Malfoy-Potter, in order to protect her heritage and family name, because she always felt guilty for being a girl and thus causing the family name to be extinct. So, he decided to preserve it, bring it out of the mud where her father buried it with his foolishness, and restored her family honour.

Honestly, I think it’s a better story than the original. 🙂

Biljana argued that my reading of the possible outcomes with Malfoy as a girl is not the only possibility. For instance, they could click together earlier and she could run away from her parents and hide at the Weasleys.

That’s true, but I didn’t choose this option because it would change the story so much, it would no longer be the same universe. Also, there are problems.

When does she actually decide to run away? When they’re 12? 14? Lucius would raise hell at the Ministry. He would claim she’s kidnapped. She would have to testify at the Ministry or in fact at the court, against her parents, denouncing them as actual Death Eaters. She would have to commit actual treason against her parents, be rejected by her entire former friend group in Slytherin, be exposed to extreme bullying at school, be ostracised, lose all the privileges she’s accustomed to, and find herself pressured and persecuted like Harry. Also, the Ministry wasn’t actually inclined to accept Voldemort’s return as a fact. Her story would be met with suspicion. Other causes would be sought. Weasleys would be in trouble because of her. Also, she spent years parroting her parents’ opinion of them and insulting them. They weren’t exactly on good terms. It would be a total shit show. I mean, it’s possible, but unlikely and extremely out of character. I think she would be too young and immature to actually diverge from her parents’ propaganda and influence before the Half Blood Prince times, which is exactly when I find it possible for Harry to change his opinion of her and find her interesting – no longer a stereotypical enemy, but an actual person in serious trouble. He even has understanding for Draco at that point, and gets it. He holds Draco in contempt, but he understands his predicament. So, if we follow the logic of things, this is the first point in the timeline where anything romantic could develop between the two, but they actually don’t have the time to work it out. They are almost always separated. They cross paths in the bathroom and the bell tower. The story in the bell tower is similar enough, yet different. The trembling, frightened Lyra actually begs Dumbledore for help, she asks him to save her parents because they are held hostage. She admits everything and doesn’t even pretend to be there to kill him, but then the Carrows and other scum arrive and interrupt them, as in the books. Then Snape arrives, kills Dumbledore, and all hell breaks loose. Harry is already smart enough to understand that Draco is essentially acting at gunpoint there, but with Lyra, he would feel very protective of her and I think this is the point where he starts working with the idea that they might be a thing, but he doesn’t know her opinion because they never get to talk. Also, he’s so traumatised by the events that anything romantic is the last thing on his mind. So, this is where I feel that the divergence from the Draco timeline is realistic. Before… I can imagine all sorts of things, but they are basically enemies and Harry would perceive her as scary and dangerous. He would not be mature enough for subtlety. However, if she were as nasty with him as Draco in the past, nothing would come out of it. There have to be double meanings and hints that left him awake at night trying to figure her out, things that make sense only in hindsight, so that when he revises his opinion of her, he can look at the past and say “oh wait…”.

It’s actually not easy to work out the details, because if I make them too friendly, the story doesn’t work, and if I make them too hostile, it also doesn’t work. I have to make her just hostile enough, and just friendly enough. She would help him with Potions homework, and he’d be surprised at the matter-of-factness and lack of hostility and condescension in the act. He would pick up her books when she dropped them, return them and she would say “thanks”. There would be a level of civility between them, a level of acknowledgment and respect. However, they are both too young, too indoctrinated into black and white thinking and cultist propaganda, to be able to actually figure out anything subtle. Sirius has to remind Harry that the world isn’t cleanly separated into good people and Death Eaters. He needs to understand that his father used to be a school bully. He needs to understand that Snape was his mother’s childhood friend. Before that, he’s simply too immature to understand anything. Also, Lyra needs to experience tragedy that resulted from her parents’ choice for Voldemort. They need to be humiliated and suffer in their own home, surrounded by werewolves and thugs. They need to be degraded, humbled, and afraid for their lives. Only then can they understand that they were wrong, that their side was wrong all the time, and then she starts understanding that Harry was right, that he’s actually fighting for her freedom, and stop hedging – this is the point where she’s all in. I can’t see it before. The characters aren’t at the right mental place, they are too young, the events have not progressed sufficiently. Also, I don’t see Lyra as girlfriend material for Harry. I don’t see them dating. It either doesn’t work at all, or it’s instantly much deeper. They switch to husband and wife on a click. When they’re too young, he’s too immature to understand that she left the door open for him, he doesn’t understand the subtle messages beneath her actions. He understands the Death Eater propaganda she spews, he understands the racial insults against his friends, he understands that her parents serve Voldemort and she seems thrilled to join them in that respect as soon as she’s of age. She’s scary. However, she’s also a beautiful, vital, polite and respectful young lady who occasionally just happened to do something nice for him without making it weird, and he can’t figure her out. The idea that they could date at that time is just so out of character and so out of storyline that I just can’t make it work. Later, in hindsight, he gets it. She felt respectful because she actually was. However, she was also an immature brat, she also believed in an evil ideology, and her parents were actually Death Eaters. None of that can be just washed away. They all had to change.