Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches

Chapter 36: Bonus - Daphne Goes Down to the Village

Notes:

IMPORTANT AUTHOR NOTE:

This week's chapter is NOT a continuation of the current season. It is instead a shortish, fluffy bonus chapter that was originally posted to the Gray Mailing List on June 25th, 2017. It takes place towards the end of the first summer, less than one month before current events, and features Daphne and Astoria Greengrass. I've posted a more detailed explanation of why we're having a bonus chapter instead of a normal one this week on my website — [www * LeadVonE * com]

This chapter will stay as the most recent chapter for the next two weeks before being switched to where it belongs in the overall story chronology a few hours after the next chapter is posted.

My apologies for everyone who was desperately waiting for the continuation, but I hope this will be a satisfying alternative while I sort stuff out.

Enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text
Daphne Greengrass stared at the parchment-work in front of her. Her bedroom desk groaned under it. Some of it was important. Some of it was useless, and quickly found its way into the bin beside her. But most of it occupied the frustrating space in-between — probably too important to throw away, but probably not important enough to read — and impossible to tell one way or the other without committing oneself and possibly getting it wrong.

Outside her open window, soft, fluffy clouds melted into blue summer sky. Birdsong gently tweeted away in nearby trees. A faint breeze ruffled the lush grasses, wafting up through the window and playing with a long strand of Daphne's blonde hair, flicking it this way and that — a constant reminder that she was in here and not out there.

Daphne hooked the errant strand around her ear. "Milly!"

A small, female house elf popped into being beside her. She wore the Greengrass house elf uniform — a neatly pressed tea towel emblazoned with the Greengrass crest. "Yes, Mistress Daphy?"

"Has there been any word from Harry?"

"No, Mistress Daphy. There has been no more word from Lord Slytherin since last time you asked."

Daphne sighed. "Thank you, Milly."

Milly nodded and popped away.

Daphne stared, once again, at the piles of parchment in front of her.

Urgh.

She glanced at the perfect weather outside and then back at the pile of parchment again, then back to the open window.

It called to her. The outside — it called to her in a voice she knew well — the call to adventure — to explore. She'd had just about as much of the parchment-work as she could take.

Daphne turned and her gaze fell on the fluffy snake Harry had given her during the winter festival, still coiled around her bedpost. The toy snake met her gaze and tilted its head as though in question.

But Harry wasn't here right now. He was off — somewhere — doing Lord Slytherin stuff — and without him she was stuck inside, bound to the familiar — to those places she already knew well — the manor, Diagon Alley, her friend's houses, those places with a friendly floo connection — those places to which the only journey was a boring ten to fifteen minute whirring about inside a bland grey pipe.

Daphne returned to the parchment and was halfway through reading the latest update on the mandrake supply crisis when she snapped, threw the parchment down, pushed her chair back, and stomped over to the window.

Why!?

Daphne stared out over the forest that protected Greengrass Manor.

Why? She'd done so much in her first year at Hogwarts — had battled a troll and tangled with the dark lord. She and Hermione had helped Harry break past the best defences Albus Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel could devise, and would have succeeded in claiming the philosopher's stone, if Flamel hadn't used a fake. Why then, was she sitting here like a delicate flower, waiting for an escort from her future husband? Was she so weak that she couldn't even conceive of doing something as simple as... as even stepping outside the manor's front gate?