Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches

Chapter 42: Daphne's Birthday, Work and Play - Part One

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text
Mountains. Mountains as far as the eye could see — snowy topped, jagged, desolate. Daphne Greengrass sat, cross-legged on a craggy ledge, overlooking a sheer cliff, and fought every instinct in her still human body, not to jump.

A bitingly fresh wind whirled Daphne's hair around her face. She hooked several strands around her ear and relaxed as best she could against the cliff wall behind her. She rarely sat cross-legged — it wasn't something she'd been brought up to do. Her mind seemed to know this very well. Even in her dream-scape, her muscles protested at the unusual position she was asking them to take.

The stone floor she was sitting on was awfully hard too...

Her vision blurred and a wave of dizziness hit her.

She was waking up.

Daphne opened her eyes, blearily, and sat up in bed. Her plushy snake uncoiled itself from her body and coiled itself up one of her four-poster pillars. The torches flickering on the wall had changed from dim green to bright orange. It was morning and the Slytherin girls dormitory was mostly empty. That was unusual. Usually, she was among the first up.

"They're all upstairs preparing your surprise birthday wave-off," called a nasally voice from the bathroom.

Daphne cursed under her breath. "Thank you so very much, Parkinson," she said sarcastically. "I will do my best to act suitably surprised."

She put Pansy out of her mind and smiled, because it was her birthday — her thirteenth birthday — which meant lots of things for a witch, but the one thing it meant above all for her was that Harry was taking her out adventuring.... Well, eventually, anyway.

Actually, he was going to take her out adventuring after they'd finished the important business of the day. Just her luck that her birthday was the only day they had to give the submarine sales pitch to MaCUSA.

But! After that, it would be just her and Harry, and it would be almost all a surprise. Only almost, because, at some point, she'd be doing her thirteenth birthday ritual. She knew that was going to happen. Choosing which ritual to perform had taken weeks. Thinking about it still caused her to blush.

Daphne swung her feet off the bed and slipped them into the pair of fluffy slippers.

She really hoped the business stuff wouldn't last too long.

Ignoring Pansy, she showered, towelled herself down, wrapped said towel around herself, sat down in front of her bedside mirror, applied her cosmetic charms, then stood back up, and walked to the trunk beside her bed, retrieving something else she'd been looking forward to for a long time.

The something else was a long, frilled, scarf-like length of material in emerald green, soft and stiff at the same time. The silky material quivered in her hands, giving the impression of life trapped in fabric. Her mother had given it to her the night before she'd caught the Hogwarts Express back to Hogwarts.

Daphne walked back to the mirror, dropped the towel around her ankles, and smiled. Yes, she definitely now had breasts, no question. It was impossible to say that she didn't. They'd been growing steadily for a couple years now, and, if her memory from her time under ageing potion served her correctly, were about half their final size.

Daphne brought the scarf up to her chest, let the smallest amount of magic flow into the material and gasped as it leapt from her fingers, flowed around her body, and moulded itself snugly, but not tightly, around her chest. It was an odd feeling, but not unpleasant, which was just as well. She'd be wearing it everyday now.