Borrowed Time

kishijoten

Story Summary:
Harry sets out to find the missing horcruxes, encountering unexpected allies, enemies, losses, and revelations along the way.

Chapter 08 - Chapter Eight

Posted:
07/16/2007
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166


As they climbed the stairs, Harry tried desperately to remember if anything magical might be lying about the rented room. He didn't think that there was, but he needed to be sure. He paused before opening the door.

"My friends are staying here with me, and well...I'd better be sure it's safe to go in," he said. He peered inside, and quickly scanned the room. "All clear," he said, opening the door wide.

"This is quite nice," Daphne said as she stepped in and surveyed the room. "Very cosy." She sat down the nearest bed, which happened to be Harry's. It was then that Harry realised that there was no where in the room to sit other than the beds.

Daphne toed off her shoes and scooted up to sit with her back against the headboard. Harry sat down on the edge of the bed facing her, one leg tucked under him and the other dangling off the side of the bed.

"So," Daphne said. "What are you doing in Godric's Hollow?"

"My parents lived here. Well, I guess I did, too, only I was too young to remember. I guess I'm just...trying to get a sense of my past. And you? Do you live here?"

"No, thankfully. I'm just here visiting my Gran. Mother thought my being here might keep me out of trouble," Daphne replied with an impish grin. She scooted closer to Harry. "She obviously doesn't know me nearly as well as she ought."

Something in Daphne's voice caused Harry to glance up from studying the uneven grain of the floor. There was a glimmer in her eyes that reminded of him of something, of someone.

Ginny. It reminded him of Ginny, of the look she sometimes used to get in her eyes just before....

She leaned in and kissed him. And Harry forgot all about Ginny Weasley and mischievous glances and Horcruxes and Voldemort and his parents and everything else. He lost himself in kissing this girl, this stranger, surprised at how right it felt.

Somehow they ended up sprawled on the bed, his glasses chucked who-knows-where, his shirt in a crumpled ball beside the bed. Harry was in the process of ridding Daphne of her blouse when the door opened.

"What in Merlin's name are you doing?" Ron all but shouted.

"Ron, keep your voice down!" Hermione admonished, quickly shutting the door behind her.

"You can't just go behind Ginny's back and shag any two-knut whore that comes along."

Harry was on his feet in a flash, shoving Ron back against the wall. "She's not a whore," he growled. "Take it back."

"You've known her for all of five minutes! And this isn't about her. It's about you and my sister."

"Ron, please," Hermione tried to interject. Both boys ignored her.

"I'm not with your sister. We're not together."

"But she loves you. And she deserves better than this," Ron replied, gesturing vaguely toward Harry's bed.

"So I'm not allowed to get lonely, is that it?"

"But Ginny," Ron began.

"You know why I can't be with Ginny," Harry hissed. "This," he indicated the young woman still sprawled across his bed, "is all I get. Likely all I'll ever get."

"Harry, don't say that!" Hermione cried.

"It's the truth," Harry snapped. "And it's time we start facing the hard truths. Like the fact that my days are numbered. I'm only hoping I can take Voldemort down with me. As soon as we find and destroy those Horcruxes, I'm done for."

"Horcruxes?" came a shocked whisper from the bed. "Plural?"

And suddenly three pairs of eyes were trained on Daphne, who'd paled considerably.

"What do you know about Horcruxes?" Harry asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"Shit," Daphne whispered. "Er...actually, I don't know anything about Horcuxes. Not a single thing. At all," Daphne added, the words bumping together in her rush to speak. "They just sound rather nasty is all."

With an expression of fierce determination and utter loathing hardening her features, Hermione brandished her wand and pointed it at the other girl. "You're a very poor liar. I suggest you answer again. And this time, I'd try the truth, if I were you."

Daphne swallowed hard, her eyes darting nervously around the room. "I don't really know anything much about Horcruxes. Just ran across them in one of my father's books, is all." She slipped her hand into the pocket of her skirt, and Hermione tightened her grip on her wand.

"Ran across them in your reading did you?" Harry asked, rescuing his glasses from the windowsill and jamming them onto his face.

"Yes, yes that's it exactly," Daphne replied, her gaze shifting from Harry, to Hermione, to Ron. As she glanced around the room, her eyes suddenly went wide, and she drew her hand from her skirt pocket. She held a small, opaque vial.

"Ablegatio!" Ron cried, sending the vial skittering away across the bed.

"No!" Daphne yelled. She dove after the vial, but Harry caught her around the waist and hauled her back. He reached for the vial himself, but Ron sent it flying with another banishment charm.

"Don't touch it, Harry," Ron cautioned. "She's probably one of them. There's no telling what sort of enchantments she's put on it."

"Or what's inside," Hermione added.

"Please," Daphne half-whispered, her doe-like brown eyes turned up in an air of supplication. "It's...it's a medicinal potion. I need it."

"I don't believe you," Harry replied, shoving Daphne away from him.

"Fine," she said, her demure façade giving way to a steely glare. She rose gracefully from the bed, her chin lifted in defiance. With her eyes fixed firmly on Harry, she reached back to unzip her skirt and shoved it down gracelessly.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked incredulously, staring at the strange girl who now stood dressed only in stockings and a half-buttoned shirt that reached mid-thigh.

Daphne didn't reply. Instead, she skimmed off her underpants, giving the boys only the briefest flash of what lay beneath, and then snatched the duvet from the bed to wrap up in.

"Ronald Weasley!" Hermione hissed.

Harry glanced around at the sound to see Ron standing with his mouth hanging slightly open and his wand pointing more toward the floor than Daphne. He turned his attention back to the strange girl; she had more than a bit of explaining to do. What he saw stripped him of his ability to speak.

Before his eyes, Daphne's body began to change, and within moments she was no longer there at all.

In her place stood Draco Malfoy.

Suddenly Ron raised his wand again. "Incendio!"

"Protego," Harry countered, neatly blocking Ron's spell.

"Ron, what are you doing?" Hermione cried. "That isn't a spell you cast on a human being."

"I wasn't trying to cast it on a human being. I was trying to cast it on Malfoy. Only, now Harry's snogged him, he's gone all soft on the git."

Draco raised his head from where he was now cowering on the floor. There was still fear in his eyes, but the beginnings of a smirk had appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Harry, for his part, looked a bit green at the realisation that he had, indeed, snogged Draco Malfoy. And liked it. But that was of little consequence at the moment. "Thinking it would be a bad idea to set Malfoy on fire does not mean I've gone soft on him," he snapped. "We're trying to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, remember? Burning down the inn isn't the best way to avoid notice."

"Harry's right," Hermione said. "It's a wonder we haven't brought the management down on us with all the yelling; we certainly don't need to push our luck."

"Maybe," Ron conceded, his wand still trained on Malfoy.

"Put that thing away before you get someone killed," Harry said. He turned his own wand on Malfoy. "Get up."

Taking care to keep the duvet wrapped round him, Draco struggled to gain his feet. Harry seized him by the arm and dragged him the rest of the way upright. "Where's your wand?" he demanded.

Draco kicked one stocking-clad foot out from beneath the duvet. "There," he said.

Swallowing down a wave of nausea, Harry flicked his wand toward Draco's leg. He took a certain grim satisfaction in seeing Malfoy flinch, although the spell had been innocuous enough; a simple diffindo split the stocking open, and Malfoy's wand clattered to the floor. "Accio," and the wand was in Harry's hand.

"Now," Harry said, slipping the wand into his back pocket. "What the hell are you playing at?"