She was a lithe platinum blonde with silver eyes, his height, and she felt fast, energetic, dynamic, like lightning in a bottle. He was trying to remember her appearance now that he was in a tent in the woods and there was nothing immediate for him to do. Her beautiful face had a special something to it that he tried to describe. She looked fresh, clean, like fresh snow or fruit fresh from the orchard with dew still condensed on it. Why did she always look clean? He saw her with mud on her face, sweaty and dirty after a Quidditch match, and she looked clean. No, clean isn’t the right word. She looked pure. Pure in a sense that there is no mask, there is no play, there is no deception, that her emotions play on her face in ways that make you see straight into her soul. When she would use the word “pure”, he understood it in that terrible blood purity sense where they look down on muggle-borns and half-bloods, but now he knew that this was not how she understood it, not really. She understood it in a spiritual and moral sense, where purity was something you had to actively strive for. In order to be pure, she thought she needed to be honest, truthful, brave, respectful, smart, a good witch, loving, and honour traditions, parents and family. She didn’t tell him all that; he deduced. It was also obvious that she just repeated all that pureblood nonsense from her parents and believed it because she loved them and they can do no wrong, and when she saw Voldemort for herself, it all broke down.

He remembered the tower. She ambushed them. Dumbledore had him under his cloak, and had him body-locked when she came, and she disarmed Dumbledore with a spell. She was fast. What happened then was nothing like he expected. She lowered her wand, apologized to Dumbledore for disarming him, but she couldn’t risk not being allowed to say this. She lowered herself to her knees, looked him in the eyes and begged.

“Please, Headmaster, save us. We are prisoners in our own home. Terrible creatures roam our house and I am afraid of being violated or murdered every single moment. Thugs and werewolves. We live in constant fear. My father was foolish to put his faith in the Dark Lord, who is cruel and cares for nobody but himself. He’s a shell of his former self now, and my mother is trying to keep us alive and protect me, but we have no control, no safety, no hope. Please; you’re the world’s greatest wizard. Voldemort fears you. Please come and save us, I’m begging you. I have nobody else to turn to. I would already have killed myself if not for the fact that he would torture and kill my poor parents then. I agreed to this in order to buy them a year of relative safety, but now it’s all over. They will know that I never intended to harm you. Please, Headmaster.”

It was the most heartbreaking thing he ever saw or heard. He never saw her in tears before, with that clean, pure face that told the truth. He could never imagine that powerful, aristocratic, dignified girl on her knees. And what she told was horrible, but not beyond his knowledge. He saw through Voldemort’s eyes, he saw what it’s like there. He just didn’t connect the dots and understand what it’s like for a pure, innocent girl to live there.

Dumbledore got her back to her feet. “Please stand up, my child. I am so sorry. I already feel honoured to have been allowed to meet one of your kind, but the second one… I did not think it possible.”

She looked puzzled, as puzzled as he himself felt under the cloak, and started to ask what he meant by that, but then the Death Eaters came, and the air of noble civility and purity was lost, replaced with the horrors that now live in her home. And then Snape came and Harry never got to know what Dumbledore meant by that. He had some idea. Dumbledore told him that his soul possessed the full power of that force that’s kept always locked in the Ministry – love, as a magical power. He seems to have thought Lyra to be the second such being he met. It’s incredible how stupid I am, Harry thought. I completely misinterpreted her, and it was right in my face. The feeling of cleanliness that persisted even under mud. She would smell clean like a forest after rain. The way she carried herself. And he thought she was evil because she loved her parents the way he loved his own, and she believed what they told her the way he would have believed his own. None of that was her fault, and when she could verify what they told her, it was already too late.

He covered for her. Said she had nothing to do with the Death Eaters coming to school. She just happened to be there in the tower and wanted to talk to the Headmaster, which happened to be true, if we ignore the fact that she disarmed him. What she did there was exactly what he would have done; he would have found the way to speak to the headmaster alone and ask for help. She never really did anything wrong, and he was a fool. He now knew why she was angry at him. There were monsters in her home and she had to live in a horror show, and he was dating other girls and looking at her as if she were an enemy. Of course she was furious. She felt betrayed. She felt alone in the dark with horrors approaching and he was judging her and thinking how to stop her because she’s the enemy.

It was so easy to fear her. She looked like a terrible weapon – fast, powerful, smart, with intelligence behind those silver eyes that missed nothing and cut like a knife. With beauty that intimidated him because he felt in its power. With Death Eater ideology that came out whenever she opened her mouth. He was always too intimidated with what he felt she could do, to stop and think, and see what she actually is, and what she wants.

When she laid her soul bare before Dumbledore, he understood that she merely loved her parents, and her purity wasn’t some noble affectation; it was what she actually is. She’s pure love, and Dumbledore saw it. It’s just that the parents she loved filled her head with their beliefs, and she believed them because she was a child and she knew no better. If he were born to her parents, he would have been her – or worse, because it would be wrong to presume that he would have been as good a person as her.

When he confessed to her after the funeral, it was as if a dark cloud was removed from her face, and a light illuminated her from within, just from knowing now that he loves her. That transformation was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. But he couldn’t think about that now, because there’s that last horcrux to find, and a final battle to win, and he looked at the wand in his hand.

Her wand. They had to pretend he disarmed her, but she gave it to him. It felt like she gave her entire life to him: her power, her protection, safety, everything, trusting him to save her. It felt like nothing else in the entire world, and when he took that wand and its energy took a taste of him… it didn’t oppose him, like other wands he took opposed him and made it hard to do magic. This one didn’t exactly recognize him as its owner, but as the person its owner loved since she was a child, and thought of with every spell. Using the wand felt like falling in love. His eyes filled with tears.

He needs to focus. Any more of this and he’s going to get really distracted. Let’s get this done with.

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 she 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.