𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸, harry potter

˗ˋ 85

CHAPTER EIGHTY FIVE
✧
-: fifth year :-

── IN WHICH HARRY 
APPROACHES DANGER

. . .

Aviana leant against the wall as the last few people milled out of the Room of Requirement, leaving herself and Harry behind.

"I feel like a disgraced student." A smirk appeared on her lips, and her head tilted slightly as she simpered; "Tell me, Professor, am I in trouble?" She asked, all too slyly, all too familiar, and Harry's ears began to warm.

"Shut up." He grimaced, although he was pushing back the urge to smile.

"Seriously, the esteemed leader of the D.A is keeping me behind after class," Aviana flirted, all too openly, all too teasingly. "What did I do wrong, Professor?"

"Don't call me that." He insisted as she stood up, and just as he thought that he would quite like to have a chair above floor level, a couch just like the one from the Gryffindor Common Room appeared. He collapsed down into it, pulling at the tie around his neck that seemed all too tight.

"You're really not shying away from it, though." Aviana paused for a moment, before making the decision to join him, legs curled beneath her. "Walking around, making sure everyone is doing okay... you're like Professor Lupin two years ago." 

It was a glowing compliment, from her, although Harry was unsure of whether or not she knew how much that was truly mean of him. Certainly, their first true encounter came because of his interference, and now he knew why, why the Dementors had reacted to her in the same way they did to him, constantly trying to perform the kiss upon her, leave her a shell of herself, because they were looking for Sirius Black and she was his daughter. And Remus had helped her produce a Patronus... non-corporeal, though.

But that wasn't the same Aviana that sat before him. Of course, she had not entirely changed; still thoroughly annoyed with Malfoy all the time, still burdened by the hidden realities of her life. Now, though, those realities became plain, for the entire world to see. Her adoptive father a muggle-murderer,  her adoptive mother abandoning her to protect herself, her real father accused of the same crime William Rosier had done and her real mother dead. And one of the people who had so adamantly sent William to prison making her school life a living hell. 

Their friendship had been most unexpected, almost. She had been forced to begrudgingly wish him luck for his trial, he had found himself tipping his goblet to congratulate her as her own badge went unnoticed, and through the hastily thrown sarcasm and moments of complete rebuke they had somehow ended up on the same side of a fight against Umbridge and the Ministry and were snogging in corridors in retaliation. 

So much had changed, and Harry didn't even know how to approach it. 

Because she was the sole Slytherin member of Dumbledore's Army, not because they were making out in corridors but because something had happened that disrupted everything and she was fighting for the same cause and she was all that was taking up Harry's mind at the moment. She was Sirius's daughter, for god's sake, and she was so pretty and intelligent and downright confident in her own being that it seemed all entirely insane to him that, in Ron's suggestion, that she could be jealous. 

And over a fake relationship? 

To him, and the feeling that had resided in his stomach the very first time she had kissed him had been all too real, but there was always that uncertainty, and now she sat before him, and he was unable to think of much else, let alone push the question.