Chapter Text
2010, first night of camp:
Harry stared up at the ceiling of the Gryffindor boys cabin and willed himself to sleep. It wasn’t working. The camp was a lot quieter than where he lived - a lot - and he just wasn’t used to trying to sleep without the sounds of cars or other people outside. This was the first time he was away from home - on the other side of the country - and he was a little excited.
This was the camp his dad, Uncle Sirius, and Uncle Remus all became best friends at. It was the place where they and Peter Pettigrew first came up with the idea that would turn into the game, Marauders Map. His mom had gone to this camp too, but she’d hated his dad and his uncles back then.
“Lily thought we were idiots,” Uncle Remus explained to him once.
Uncle Sirius laughed loudly. “We were little shitheads.”
His parents died when he’d been a baby in a car crash with Peter. He didn’t remember them and he…well, it wasn’t like he thought going to Camp Hogwarts would make him remember them. Soccer didn’t do that either and his dad had loved that too. It was more he wanted to feel connected to them.
Like the three of them shared something.
But also what was not helping him sleep: that Neville kid was snoring loudly.
Harry tried for what felt like another five minutes, before he gave up. Quietly, he climbed down from his bunk bed and changed from his pajamas and into his red camp shirt and shorts. He soared a glance at Ron, sleeping in the lower bunk, but his new friend was deeply asleep. It’d take too long to wake him up and he didn’t want to wake up the other boys doing so.
He felt pretty stealthy as he left his cabin and…almost immediately had to duck around to the other side of the cabin as he saw two counselors. It turned out that he shouldn’t have bothered as neither of them would have noticed him. They were too busy sucking each other’s faces to see him.
Ugh.
Harry rolled his eyes and walked around them . He headed for the lake and was surprised when he saw a girl sitting with her legs hanging off the dock. Her camp shirt was green, which meant she was one of the girls in the Slytherin cabins. She had earbuds in and didn’t turn around when he got closer.
“Hi?” he called out. The dark-haired girl jumped and twisted around to look at him.“Sorry, I didn’t want to scare you. I guess I sort of did.”
She scrunched her nose. “I wasn’t scared. You surprised me. What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Listening to music,” she said and tapped one of the earbuds. “I couldn’t sleep. I like the lake.” She shrugged. “So what are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep either and I didn’t want to stay in my cabin.” He scuffed his sneaker against the dock. “I like the lake too. Can I sit here?”
She didn’t answer directly; instead, she pushed herself to the left, and gave him space to sit. He smiled shyly but she wasn’t facing him. “What are you listening to?”
Her face turned pink. “Um…my mom made me a playlist.”
Harry wondered what it would be like to have a mom who did things like make playlists for their kids to listen to at summer camp. Would his mom and dad have done stuff like that? Uncle Sirius played music for him, but he couldn’t imagine his godfather sitting down to make a playlist. “That’s nice of her.”
The girl stared at him for what felt like thirty seconds at least; she looked at him like a math problem at school, before she finally smiled. “Do you want to listen too?”
“Sure!”
She moved closer to him, held out an earbud to him, and he placed it in his ear. “I’m Daphne,” she said, before she pressed play on a song called ‘Island in the Sun’.
“I’m Harry.”
2018, 3 days before the start of camp:
Harry arrived in Maine a day before the other counselors. Ron invited him and Hermione over and the three had hung out at the Weasleys’ home before driving down to camp. Ron and Hermione were two of his closest friends since their first year in the Gryffindor cabins, in and out of camp, and he was not passing up the chance to hang out with them before work started.
All three of them lived in different states: Harry was in California, Hermione in New York, and Ron lived in Maine. They were all going to different colleges too. Harry would be at Wake Forest, Ron at University of Florida, and Hermione at Harvard. It was going to be nice to see them after a year of long distance communication.
He wished his other good friend from Pennsylvania could have joined but she wasn’t as close to Ron and Hermione as he was. He was going to see Daphne at camp when she and her sister got there, and she was going to UNC in September. This was going to be the first time he and Daphne were going to be in the same state outside of summer, which kind of felt weird but also exciting.
But for now, at least he got Ron and Hermione.
He’d barely walked up the steps to the front door before Hermione had practically tackled him with her hug, over Ron’s laughter and shout of, “Jesus, Hermione, he needs to breathe”. From there he was being fussed over by Mrs. Weasley and had greetings called out to him by Ginny and the twins who were back home from college for the summer. When he got home from the garage, Mr. Weasley was just as welcoming.
The night before they reported to camp, Harry, Ron and Hermione sat out in the Weasley’s backyard. He was still happy and full from the kind of dinner Mrs. Weasley wouldn’t be cooking at camp, until the subject of other counselors came up. “Malfoy is going to be here this summer?” he groaned.
Draco Malfoy, despite being his sort of but not really cousin through Sirius, was his nemesis - he could practically imagine Hermione tossing popcorn at him for being dramatic - and had been since practically minute one of their first year at Camp Hogwarts. He thought Draco was a spoiled brat, Draco hated him standing up to him, and after that they competed in everything.
Including arts and crafts.
Ron snorted. “Yep. I’m surprised mommy and daddy let him slum it with the peasants.” Ron had only ever been able to go to Camp Hogwarts because his mom worked there every summer, and it was a bit of a sore point with him. So he had little patience with Draco and Draco directed a lot of barbs his way over the years.
Hermione decided to cut in there. “Hey! As fun as it is to hear you both complain about Draco Malfoy, can we please talk about something else. Except soccer,” she finished, eyes narrowed. He and Ron, who were both going to be playing in college, pretended to groan in dismay and this time Hermione did jokingly throw popcorn at them. They tried to catch the popcorn in their mouths and all of them were completely distracted from camp talk.
The next morning, they were all up early for a big breakfast before leaving the Weasleys’ home. After demolishing a stack of pancakes, he went to get his stuff from Ron’s room, but not before he checked his phone to see if Daphne had texted him. And yes, she had: I’ll be there in a couple hours. I’m looking forward to seeing you! :)
Harry smiled and sent back a response: Me too. Hi Astoria, if you’re reading this over Daphne’s shoulder.
The next text was the hand waving emoji. He smirked to himself as he imagined Astoria taking the phone out of her sister’s hands to send that text and then Daphne forcing her to give it back. Shaking his head, he put away his phone and looked up as Ron said, “Let me guess. Talking to Daphne?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Nothing.” Ron had a slight smirk on his face. Harry had no idea what he was amused about and Ron didn’t give him a chance to find out. “Come on, we’ve got to load everything into the car.” Harry shrugged as he lifted his duffel bag and followed Ron. After they got their and the girls’ bags into the trunk, Ron got in the driver’s seat with Ginny taking the front. Harry got in the back with Hermione and they were off.
The drive took them through the town of Hogsmeade, which they could go to when they had time off. It wasn’t a big town, but going there would be something to do. Finally, they had pulled up to the camp and Harry was once again at his home away from home.
They were the first three of the counselors to get there and they walked to the counselors’ cabins to unpack. Harry claimed one of the top bunks for his own, and Ron took the lower bunk on the same bed. The first day here was going to be light on things they had to do since the other counselors were going to be arriving throughout the day. He thought there was going to be some sort of dinner they all had to go to, and there would be orientation tomorrow. There were probably going to be other small jobs and stuff, but the real work only going to start when the campers actually got here.
Harry, Ron and Ginny ended up playing around on the soccer field while Hermione read a very large book called Words of Radiance on the sidelines. Hermione called it light summer reading; Harry thought it was thick enough to be used as an improvised weapon.
They stopped around lunch, which was when the other counselors started showing up. More than a few had been people Harry had been going to camp with for years, for better or for worse. The Patil twins and Lavender Brown arrived together and all three waved before going back to their conversation; Pansy Parkinson barely looked over as she passed by, as she was too busy digging around in her purse for something; Blaise Zabini was the first of the male counselors to show up. “Hey,” he greeted Harry and Ron, coolly, before busying himself with unpacking. Man of few words, that Zabini guy, unless there was someone he wanted to flirt with around.
Harry decided that he did not want to be around to exchange insults with Draco Malfoy, whenever he showed up, so he broke off from the others to walk around camp. Nothing about it, from the cabins to the grounds, had changed at any point during the last eight years. He wasn’t very interested in the horseback riding part of the camp, but seeing the horses was nice, even if he didn’t love them like a certain person he knew. After he walked the entire grounds, he decided to head back to the cabins. He was going to have to get over the shock of having to sleep under the same roof as Draco sooner rather than later.
He walked back towards the mess hall when he noticed two girls walking ahead of him towards the cabins and woah. The one on the right had her back to him, but damn she had nice legs, and a cute-
The girl looked behind her and he felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him. It was Daphne, who grinned as she saw him, and her pretty - no, stop it - ocean blue eyes practically lit up in happiness. “Harry!” She dropped her bags on the ground and hurried over to him. Both his brain and mouth had stopped working in shock and that was before she hugged him.
Daphne Greengrass was his friend. Harry reminded himself of this fact as he returned her hug. Friends did not stare at other friends' long legs, or like the way their hair smelled of vanilla, or notice how their bodies pressed into yours. This was going down a very dangerous line of thought and Harry fought back against it hard. “Hey Daph,” he finally said. Harry mentally congratulated himself on how casual he sounded.
Daphne finally took a step back, a smile still on her face. “I missed you,” she said softly. Harry would have said something in kind, but he was distracted by a flash of silver. “And everyone else,” she added, possibly a little too quickly. That part flew over his head as he was more focused on the flashes of silver he saw when she spoke. It took a few seconds, but then the answer finally clicked into place.
“Did you get your tongue pierced?”
“Yeah, right after my birthday,” she said, smiling.
That broke him out of his stupor enough to ask, “Your dad was alright with that?” He’d never met the man in person but, from how his daughters talked about him, it was very hard to imagine him being cool about Daphne getting her tongue pierced, or not making her take it out.
“I didn’t tell him,” she said a little sheepishly and tugged on one of the bracelets on her right wrist. “It was a pain in the ass hiding it from him for the first three weeks. But it was also the most we got along since mom died, thanks to me having to keep my big mouth shut,” she finished, her tone more sarcastically self-deprecating at the last bit. It was no secret that she and her dad had been butting heads for years. “Well, mostly, luckily Tori was there to run interference. But it was worth it.”
Her smile took a mischievous turn, the way it always did right before she teased him, except it looked more sly than playful now. “Do you like it?” Her lips parted to give him another view of her now pierced tongue.
His face felt hot. “I…yeah, it looks good on you.” She grinned at him and he felt his heart skip a beat. This was edging right into forbidden territory and he had to change the subject now. His mind had gone blank, but there was someone around to save him.
“Hey, I’m here too!” said a girl in an exaggeratedly annoyed voice. Both he and Daphne turned around - but he completely missed the small scowl on Daphne’s face - and he flushed again as he realized he completely ignored Astoria. She smirked at Daphne for some reason he wasn’t getting before she smiled more genuinely at him. “Hi Harry.”
He wasn’t as close to Astoria as he was to Daphne, but he still considered her a friend. Or sometimes the annoying younger sister he never had. He was a little afraid that whatever insanity hit him when he saw Daphne would start again with her, but it never came. He knew Astoria was pretty, but he wasn’t drawn to-
No. He wasn’t going there.
“Hey Astoria,” he said with a smile. “Sorry. It’s nice to see you too.” She set her own bags down to hug him and he returned it more easily than he had with Daphne. “How’ve you been?” he asked as she stepped back.
“I’m doing alright, thanks. Except I had to sit through a Friday the 13th marathon last night because that was someone’s idea of fun.” She rolled her eyes at Daphne and Harry smiled; re-watching Friday the 13th was something of a pre-camp ritual Daphne started doing when she was twelve.
Daphne shrugged, before she picked her bags back up. “Name a better way to celebrate the start of camp. And no one was making you watch with me, or give commentary. Don’t let her fool you, Harry, she had fun too.” She glanced between them as she said, “Now if you both don’t mind, I’d like to get to the cabins so I can put my stuff down.”
Astoria picked her own bags back up and the three of them walked back towards the counselors cabins. Harry was quiet on the way, more than fine with listening to Astoria and Daphne poke at each other as he tried to forget his awkward reactions to Daphne. He knew Daphne was pretty, the same way he knew Hermione was smart and that Ron kicked ass at chess, but that had always been the extent of it. He didn’t understand why that would change.
It was just because it was the first time he was seeing her in person in a year, he decided. Yeah, that had to be the reason.
Astoria split off from them to head to the girl’s junior counselor cabin and they continued right on. Daphne glanced at him and said, “You’re quiet today. Something wrong?”
Harry shrugged. “Nah. Sorry, I was just thinking about something else.” You, he thought un-helpfully. Once again ignoring his traitorous thoughts, he asked, “Are you happy being back?”
“Of course. Like I said I missed all of you and I always have fun here. What about you?”
“Yeah, same. I love this place. I guess I missed you too,” he added. He didn’t miss the way she smiled then and he said quickly, “I missed Ron and Hermione too of course. Summer wouldn’t be the same without all of you.”
“Hmm.”
They were finally at the girl’s cabin and Harry wanted to sigh in relief but that would be weird. “Well, this is my stop. I’ll see you later, Harry.”
“See you.” Harry waited for her to disappear inside the cabin before covering his face with his hands. He was acting like an idiot and he knew it, and that only grated on him more.
This was stupid. Daphne was his friend and that was it. Getting feelings involved would mess that up and he didn't have those types of feelings for her anyway. So that was that.
Nothing had changed.
Absolutely nothing.