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Daphne resented being a last-minute shopper. Wedged between frazzled witches and wizards, she trudged along Diagon Alley, sulking. For the first time in years, she was in England for Christmas, and her merry little trip was off to a miserable start, all because someone had misplaced her portkey.
She was determined to turn things around, though, starting at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
Wading through a sea of children with ripped jeans and “hoodies,” Daphne felt downright old-fashioned in her burgundy wool robes and felted pillbox hat. She spotted a sphynx cookie jar for Draco. Perfect. He loved cookies and hated riddles—it was diabolical. A “Can of Eternal Stench” for Goyle? Absolutely. Astoria was hard. She was sensitive about fun.
“Thanks, mate. The Broadcast Club is gonna love this,” said a voice—bright and confident—of a man she absolutely did not have time for today. She ducked beside a shelf, feigning interest in a Talking Worm. But, oh, she could hear him, laughing about mics and mixes, and, damn, if his voice wasn’t like a hot cup of coffee, breaking through the chill of the past nine years. She wanted nothing more than to breathe him in until she was warmed through. Or to disappear.
“Daphne?”
“Lee!” she smiled. Too much, Daphne, be cool. But once she saw him, she couldn’t be cool at all. Lee Jordan was beaming like she was his favorite present. The nerve of this man, looking fit in worn jeans and a goldenrod Weasley jumper. He was levitating a huge, old trunk, which conveniently gave her something to look at, rather than ogling him.
“Think it's big enough?” she asked. God help her, he winked.
“Just some gear George found from the early days of Potterwatch and the joke shop. It’s going to my kids at Hogwarts. Not my kids…my students.”
“You? A Hogwarts professor? Well…with the Disappearing Act getting back together and Scotland winning the Cup, all your worst nightmares have come true.”
“And then you walked in.” He flashed her his come-play-with-me smile, and she knew she was in trouble. He leaned in, suggestively. “Want to see my trunk?”
She should have said no.
“You can have five minutes.”
With his hand on the small of her back, he steered her to a storage room, where the house elves’ delivery Floo was barely visible behind piles of packages. Lee set the trunk down and flipped the lid open.
“We tossed all sorts of things in here. Remember this?”
“The first Skiving Snackbox!” Daphne held the squashed box gingerly and instantly felt sixteen again. “Are those whizbangs?!”
As they dug around, unburying prototypes and order forms, ads and sketches, his hands kept brushing hers, and her eyes kept finding his. She ignored the responsible voices telling her this was a mistake and she was leaving in two days.
At the bottom of the trunk was a gilded picture frame that Daphne didn’t recognize. They both reached for it, and she suddenly had the sensation of tumbling forward while being shrunk.
She landed on Lee’s chest in an undignified heap. Sitting up, she found herself in a painted pine forest. Warm, no breeze, no smell. It was like being on a stage. A beautiful backdrop surrounded them, dense with trees, but to the sides and above, there was black nothingness. In front of them was an implausibly large gold frame, through which she saw the shop ceiling.
Lee groaned. “We’re inside the picture. Fred’s ‘Spy-on-the-Wall’—for lurking in plain sight. It never worked. Someone has to let us out.”
She tried her wand. Nothing.
She could hear the house elves bustling, then the frame lurched, and Lee toppled into her. With a whoosh of smoke, the trunk went through the Floo, straight to Hogwarts.
“I just don’t want to miss Scorpius’s first Christmas. Stop laughing, it's a fine name.”
Lee had offered her a dozen apologies (which she didn’t accept, because she blamed Fred) and a hug (which she also didn’t accept, for reasons). The plan was to wait—however long—to be rescued. In the meantime, they were swapping life updates. His brother had gotten a dog. Her sister had married one. He had a niece. She had a—
A man with blonde hair and leather trousers stumbled into their portrait. He consulted his crystal ball, then said, “Must’ve made a wrong turn,” before striding into the black.
“Ha! He looked like the goblin king from Labyrinth.”
Daphne wasn't sure about goblins, but Lee was right, Hogwarts was a labyrinth. They could travel the portraits to find help!
“It must be like Platform 9 ¾. We just walk through,” she said. It was hard to move in winter robes. She unfastened her hat and slid off her robes, leaving her sheath dress. Lee whistled.
“If that’s what you wanted, you could have just said so.”
“Cheeky.” She investigated the black nothingness. Lee wrapped a forearm around her waist and pulled her away from the edge.
“Assuming this is my office, that way lies goblins. Follow me.”
He offered his hand, and, even though she knew better, she took it.
“Can we get hurt in here?” she asked.
Lee ran a thumb over her knuckles, like he had when they were younger. “Let’s not find out.”
They jumped.
It felt like falling up. They landed in a painting of a Quidditch pitch, lit green by the northern lights.
“British Nationals, five years ago,” he explained, leading her across the frame. “One of the most magical things I’ve ever seen.”
The lights looked so real, mesmerizing. She wished she could stay. “Did you take Pops?”
“Yeah. He pitched a fit. Wanted them to get on with it.”
“I’m sorry you lost him,” Daphne said.
“And I’m sorry about your Mum.” Lee was just being nice. Pops was a grouchy old saint. Her mother was a monster. But, still, Lee had sent flowers—purple daphnes—and they’d made her cry.
“Come on, girl. Gotta get you home for Christmas.”
They crossed another Quidditch painting and one of The Orb, a music venue where they'd had their only real date. She remembered the piano on that stage, kissing on that balcony, the chaos of the attack, the Dark Mark in the sky. That night, huddled in his bed, he swore he’d keep her safe. A promise he kept, weeks later, when he’d showed up with a portkey (stolen), visas for her and her sister (real, surprisingly), and transfer papers to Ilvermorny (partially forged).
To her, he was still 19, full of hope and love and all the things she’d stopped believing in. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. He was looking down at her with such kindness, and, worried she might just kiss him, Daphne hurried to the next portrait.
“Aha! Intruders!” A knight on a pony clumsily drew his sword.
“Sir Cadogan! It’s me, Professor Jordan.”
“Professor? From what century?”
“This one!” Daphne said. “We’re humans who got stuck in a portrait.”
The knight, bless him, believed her. “Ah, you’ll need the ground floor. They’re all in the Great Hall. I’ll take you as far as the Hall of the Wondering Why’s. Calista the Cozy will show you the way.”
“You mean 'The Wandering Wise’?” she asked.
“You've got it! Onward!”
Sir Cadogan led them past erumpents and hippogriffs and down a jaunty flight of still-life fruit bowls and pasta plates. Daphne and Lee joked about eating either the pasta or the hippogriffs, which Sir Cadogan didn’t appreciate.
The knight, who was apparently searching for a Minotaur, led the way. Lee helped Daphne over giant toadstools and through clinking treasure chests. She kept them entertained with songs, sung poorly.
“Two drifters…all around the world... Are those the words?”
“Not even close. What did they teach you at Ilvermorny?” He jumped down a painted riverbank, almost landing in it. Something was distracting him. “Did…did you get to Ilvermorny alright?”
“Of course.” For someone as spontaneous as he was, Lee was a meticulous planner.
He leaned against a giant tree, under the light of the moon. “I replay it in my mind, giving you that portkey. It was the right call, I think. The Carrows would have been too much for Astoria.”
She didn’t want to do this.
“I never knew what happened after you took the portkey,” he said.
She wanted to yell, I was desperately in love with you and never saw you again. That’s what happened.
After all this time, did it even matter?
She still adored him, so maybe it did.
The Hall of the Wandering Wise housed 32 of the most celebrated minds in magical history, and, Sir Cadogan was right, they were all quite inquisitive.
They were also completely sloshed.
Lee and Daphne split up, searching each side of the hall for Calista the Cozy. Daphne’s search was slowed by a deluge of questions. They started off easy, like her opinion on the number seven, but the questions got more personal, with affectionate Agrippa and weepy Ptolemy quizzing her on her family and her dreams of love.
She had worked herself into quite a mood by the time she found Calista’s frustratingly empty picture frame. It was a quaint cottage decked with wreaths and garland, and, through the locked window, she could see a staircase winding down toward the ground floor.
She was just about to have a good cry when a ghost floated by. Professor Binns squinted at her. “Who are you?”
“I don’t even know,” she said.
“Don’t know? Well, you seem modern…”
“Far too modern, if you ask my mother. Though, you can’t, because she’s dead.”
“Aren’t we all.”
“Is it so wrong to want to find myself? I mean, we had a history together!”
“Had history together? At Hogwarts?”
“For just a year, but then I went to Ilvermorny and he stayed to fight a war.”
“Ilvermorny. War. Quite a puzzle…”
“You have no idea. And the worst part is—”
“Hope the Hopeless?”
“Exactly, I am hopeless!”
Binns grimaced at that. “...weren’t you terribly crushed?”
“Horribly so. And now I’m hopelessly caught between what I want and what I should do. I should just be honest, right? Seeing as we’re both trapped—oh! You can help! Professor Binns?”
But he had already glided away.
When Lee finally made his way across the hall to Calista’s cottage, she hugged him tight.
“Hey,” he said, “don’t worry, we’ll get you home for Christmas.”
“I kind of like being stuck with you.”
They sat on the porch steps together, his arm around her waist. She laid her head against his shoulder and watched the moon—the real one—through the castle window. It was snowing out there. They sat in sweet, comfortable silence.
Lee was the first to spot the mistletoe hanging above them. He dropped his forehead to hers, and took a deep breath.
“Please, just…tell me you’re not still married,” he whispered.
But that was the thing, she couldn’t.
“My darling little escape artist, did you enjoy America?” her mother had said. “I hope so. I’ve arranged for you to stay.”
The war had been a maze, and they’d done the best they could. Had the walls twisted differently, during the war and after, maybe Daphne and Lee would have made it out together. She had tortured herself with a thousand imagined “what ifs,” but one thing she’d never doubted.
Given the chance, she would have loved him all her life.
In the morning, the students would run through the halls for Christmas breakfast, and their shouts would wake two painted dreamers, who had slept holding hands. McGonagall would set them free with a stern scolding that would soften when they mentioned Fred Weasley’s pranks. They would part ways at the Floo, with forced smiles and empty promises to keep in touch.
But a part of Daphne was still in the labyrinth, and she wondered if she would ever get out.