A/N: See end for some notes! Thank you to Goldzar for being the best Beta I could ask for!

Chapter 11

Harry's POV
As they stepped out onto the streets of Hogsmeade, Harry noticed that the crowds of students had begun to recede. 'Thank Merlin' he thought, 'Less crowds equal fewer fans'.

He felt a tug on his arm to disturb him from his thoughts.

Turning to his left he looked at her. "Sorry, what?"

She smiled at him with laughter dancing in her eyes "I said, what do you want to do next Harry?"

He took her hand and pulled her towards Honeydukes, and said "Let me treat my date to some chocolate" Daphne laughed, and let him pull her inside.

Entering Honeydukes Daphne then grabbed Harry and pulled him towards the chocolate section and began to pile several items into his arms. "Woah, Daphne, slow down, I may be the boy who lived, but I'm not made entirely of money."

Daphne just flicked her hair over her shoulder, and smiled at him playfully, "How do you expect me to act Mr. Potter, it is the man's duty to provide the lady with whatever she desires."

Harry couldn't help but smile, "Well then Miss Greengrass, what do you desire?"

The smile on her face had turned sinful, and she approached him slowly, then reached up and pulled him closer, her mouth going near his ear. "What I desire, Mr. Potter, only a man can provide."

Harry felt himself react to the heat her voice projected and swallowed. "Then we shall continue this at a later time."

Daphne pulled away and laughed. "In that case, it's shopping time!" She then grabbed him and pulled him to the counter to pay for the chocolate. After doing so, they left Honeydukes and make their way over to the bookstore. They spent about half an hour browsing the shelves. Harry was tempted to take Daphne up on her offer at that time, but they still had another stop to make. They made their way over to Spinnet's Clothing for all Occasions, which was a new modern clothing store owned and run by Harry's old teammate Alicia Spinnet. Entering the brightly lit shop, Harry was led over to the menswear section by an excited Daphne. "It's time to get a suit for the ball Harry." Harry groaned; he had forgotten that there was a Yule Ball coming up before the students went home for the holidays.

*FLASHBACK*

The students had just finished up dinner when McGonagall tapped her glass for everyone's attention.

"One last announcement before you all disperse for the evening. This year we will be hosting another Yule Ball before the Winter Holidays for any students. The theme this year is 'Looking forward to the Future' so I'd like to see everyone trying out some new fashions of the future, or in our case, the mundane world." The exciting chatter around the hall increased in volume, until McGonagall had to release a cannon blast from her wand. "Silence!" The hall quieted down quickly, and she waited until it was completely silent. "We are only allowing students Fourth Year and above, but!" She held up a hand to prevent any protest from the younger years "We will be having a separate event for the younger years hosted by Professor Black, he promises not too much chaos will be created." She noted dryly. There were lots of cheers after that announcement. Now then, I wish you all a good night. The students all began to disperse to their common rooms, many of them discussing the upcoming festivities.

*END FLASHBACK*
Harry and Daphne spent almost an entire hour, which was very embarrassing for Harry. Daphne had him model multiple different suit combos, but they eventually settled on a black three-piece suit with a gray shirt and an emerald tie with a black waistcoat. As he looked in the mirror that the shop provided, he thought he looked very handsome in his opinion, and when he stepped out of the dressing room with it on, the way that Daphne stared, he knew that she also thought so. Harry made the purchases and they made their way out of the store. When they stepped out into the street, Harry grabbed Daphne's arm. "Hang on Daphne, what about your dress?"

Daphne smiled and tapped the side of her nose, "It's a secret, you won't see it until the actual dance." She then proceeded to make her way back to the path leading back to the castle. Harry looked up and noticed that the sun was getting low, so he hurried up to catch her. As they made their way up, Harry noticed Hermione walking towards them from the other side of the village.

"Harry, wait up!" The two of them stopped as Hermione made it up to them. "Harry do you mind if I talk to Greengrass for a second?" Harry arched an eyebrow, curious he looked back at Daphne, who smiled and nodded at him.

Harry turned back to his best friend, "Sure no problem, I have some business to take care of back at the castle anyway, I'll catch up with you later Daphne."

He pulled her into a hug, feeling her reciprocate, he heard her whisper, "Thank you for the date Harry, I had a great time."

He pulled away and turned back to Hermione. "She's all yours." He proceeded to wave goodbye and continued up the path to Hogwarts.

DAPHNE'S POV

Daphne turned to where Granger was standing, watching Harry move up the path. She noticed Daphne looking and she smiled at her, Daphne arched her eyebrow appraisingly.

"So how can I help you Granger?" Daphne asked cautiously. Granger placed a hand on Daphne's shoulder, which made her finger her wand. Granger immediately let go and raised her arms in surrender, showing she meant no harm.

"I just wanted to talk about Harry, that's all." Daphne motioned for Granger to walk with her. Falling into step, they headed up towards the castle in silence. After a couple more moments, with the only sound being the crunching of the path beneath their feet and the sounds of afternoon birdsong, Granger broke the silence. "Before we go any further, I just want you to know that even though we've never been friends, you are dating my best friend now, and to be honest, I've never seen him this happy in a long time."

Daphne couldn't help but smile, but kept her tone curt. "Okay, well get to the point Granger."

The other girl smiled and said, "Please, call me Hermione, we should at least be on first name basis if we are going to be spending a lot of time around each other, after all Harry is important to both of us."

Daphne couldn't help but smile in return and stated, "Then please call me Daphne." With the initial awkwardness out of the way, Hermione began to question Daphne, who now realized that this was the closest thing to a sibling interrogation that Harry could get.

"What are your intentions with Harry? I know you weren't involved with Malfoy or Parkinson much during school, but you were in Slytherin."

Daphne rolled her eyes, "I understand your concerns Hermione," she replied, "but I have no ulterior motives towards Harry, I have been interested in him in a while, and now that I've really gotten a chance to know him better as a person, it is making all the things I heard in Slytherin mainly from Malfoy very, very wrong."

Hermione looked at her, "and what were the things that Malfoy was saying about him?"

Daphne shrugged, "Basically, the same things that Professor Snape would say, that he was an attention-seeker, he was arrogant, you know, generic jealousy stuff." The two girls giggled at that statement, and she continued, "I decided in third year that I didn't want to allow my views to be shaped by someone like Malfoy or Professor Snape, so I decided to spend a lot of time observing how Harry acted around his peers and in classes. I noticed mostly that Harry kept to himself, but was very good at performing the practical parts of our classes, and yet he always seemed to keep the same kind of genuine kindness to everyone he talked with that treated him the same way."

Daphne could see the relief spread across Hermione's face as she talked, and after Daphne finished Hermione was beaming at her. "That's awesome to hear Daphne, I'm so glad that you seem genuine, and don't have any malicious intent towards Harry."

Daphne couldn't help it, but she bit her lip and said "Unless he's into that."

Hermione immediately blushed and punched Daphne's arm softly "Gross! Keep your private activities with my best friend to yourself!"

Daphne laughed and patted Hermione's shoulder. "I'm only half joking Hermione." They had reached the castle at that point and Daphne turned to make her way towards the Ravenclaw tower, but Hermione stopped her before she could reach the stairs "Wait, which half were you joking about?"

Daphne laughed and waved as she kept moving, "Figure it out 'smartest witch of our age'." With that said, Daphne headed up the stairs, reaching the top of the stairwell close to their dorm, Daphne saw Harry slouched against the wall, arms crossed and his eyes anxiously watching the stairs. As she approached, he spotted her and his eyes lit up, and he pushed away from the wall and walked towards her.

When he reached her, he pulled her into a hug, he kissed her cheek and she felt his breath move against her ear. "I was about to head back out to look for you, your talk took longer than I thought."

Daphne involuntarily shuddered and she then pulled away and looked him in the eyes. "Worried about me, were you?"

Harry snorted and moved back towards their dorm, "Hardly, I was more concerned you and Hermione would start exchanging curses." Daphne laughed and slapped his arm.

"Prat, we just talked about us and we have formed what I think is a tentative friendship." She heard Harry release a sigh of relief. "That's good, I'd hate to have the two most important women in my life right now to be at odds." Daphne couldn't help but feel a warmth spread through her at his words. She hugged him and took his hand, "C'mon, let's sit down for a bit and get some work done, we have a meeting with McGonagall in about 2 hours."

Harry groaned in response, "Right, almost forgot about that, how about we grab some parchment and get some primary ideas down before hand." Daphne agreed and she headed into her room, dropping off the chocolate Harry had bought her, she grabbed her bag and headed back out into the common area. Sitting down in one of the chairs by the fire, she got a quill and parchment out, and Harry joined her. They worked through the patrol schedule for the next hour and a half. They finished with a few minutes to spare and made their way to McGonagall's office.

After exchanging pleasantries with the Professor, they got down to business. "Okay Professor, we have come up with a patrol schedule that should aid in promoting inter-house relationships, while also balancing out patrols in a way so that the same people won't be patrolling too much or too little."

Daphne pulled her parchment out of her bag and handed it to the Headmistress. "Our plan is pretty simple, we have 8 prefects per year and 4 years of prefects as well, so we can really space out how it works. Each week we will have a team of 2 prefects patrol two floors, we'll spread out the floors based on year. So, for instance on Mondays we have the 5th and 6th year prefects patrolling. The 2 teams of 6th years take on floors 6 and 7, the ground floor and the dungeons, while the 5th years patrol floors 2, 3, 4 and 5. Tuesdays the 7th and 8th years patrol, Wednesdays the 5th and 7th years, Thursdays are the 6th and 8th years, Fridays are the 5th and 8th Years, and Saturdays are the 6th and 7th years. Finally, the Professors patrol Sunday nights, we can have you handle how those are situated." McGonagall read through the plan and looked up at them.

She smiled, "This looks very good you two, I'm very impressed with the thought that went into it, but I do have one question." She took a sip from the cup of tea on her desk. "How will this promote inter-house relationships?"

Daphne looked at Harry, who reached into his bag and pulled out his leaflet of parchment, he handed it to McGonagall. "Here is our plan for that professor. We want to have alternating houses do their patrols. With 4 houses and 8 total prefects, that would mean that even though their year is patrolling 2 of that year's prefects won't have to patrol. We plan on having a rotation that consists of Gryffindors with Slytherins, and Ravenclaws with Hufflepuffs, then the next rotation of that year will have Gryffs with Ravens, and Slytherins with Puffs. Finally, on the last patrol day of their schedule, it'll be Gryffs with Puffs, and Slytherins with Ravens That will allow for each house to interact with each other as they patrol, and will hopefully remove favoritism towards members of their own houses with another house prefect there to prevent bias. Then the next week it'll be back to the same pattern, so for example, the 8th years will have Gryffs and Slytherin's together on Tuesday, on Thursday we will be with the Gryffindors, and on Friday the Gryffindors will be with Hufflepuff."

Daphne couldn't help but feel pride flow through her as the Headmistress's face got brighter and brighter as Harry spoke. She knew that this was an awesome plan, and that it would work really well. "Of course," Harry continued, "If we do have any issues with this schedule, we are encouraging the prefects to approach us with their grievances and we can mix things around if issues pop up."

Daphne looked over in surprise, 'This wasn't part of the original plan' she thought, but she couldn't help but agree with what Harry said, it made perfect sense to her. McGonagall stood up and motioned for the two of them to as well. She shook both Daphne's and Harry's hands and smiled widely.

"This is something that could really help shape Hogwarts into a more inclusive environment for all students, and I couldn't be prouder of the two of you working to make that a reality. I approve your plan and will inform the other professors of their patrol duties on Sundays."

She clapped her hands. "Now, it is getting late, and you have a meeting to hold for the prefects to establish patrols. I'll inform the heads to send their prefects to the meeting room for you." Harry and Daphne thanked the professor and made their way to the meeting room. Daphne grabbed Harry's hand as they walked and she felt like there was nothing that could possibly ruin her mood right now.

A/N: Wow, has this been a struggle. For the last year or so of not posting I was spending most of my time working and taking classes. While that hasn't changed now, I now have a better idea on how to manage my time better, and I did have a flash of inspiration to get this done at the beginning of the New Year.
Unfortunately that doesn't mean I'll be back to consistent uploads or anything like that, my real life is very busy and I only have so much time to give to a hobby. That being said, I do have some questions for all of you (please when responding to the questions, number your answers like I number my questions, to make my life easier thanks :])

1. Now that we are 11 chapters in, how do you feel about the pace of the story, too fast? Too slow? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

2. Do you think that the relationship between Harry and Daphne is too generic/tropey? Should I try to spice things up or do you like how they're interacting?

3. Should I add more Ginny into the mix, and/or Hermione? I think the talk that she and Daphne had was a great way to hash out their differences, but I want to know what y'all think.

4. How does chapter length feel? Too little or not enough? I've been thinking about taking more time to write out longer chapters that range closer to 4k than 2k, but 2k seems to be a benchmark I hit almost consistently. Thoughts?

5. I know I asked about a new story, but I gave up on that when I figured out that I didn't have enough to expand on Thomas's universe, that being said should I add more OC's to this story, or try and expand on already existing characters?

6. Final question, Should I put this story on hold until I have multiple chapters written out and then try and get a consistent upload schedule of those chapters so you're getting content faster? It would mean maybe another year of waiting before a new chapter, but I find it hard to find time to write chapters out individually, and its harder to hash out a storyline if you're going chapter by chapter, let me know!

That concludes my ramble, hope you're having a good start to your new year, and I'll hopefully see you soon! (No promises!)

Cheers, Rei