From the Cupboard to the Castle (and Back Again) by waitingondaisies



Summary: The story of how one Harry Potter was whisked away from a life of drudgery, pain, and neglect by the Princess Ginevra (but call her Ginny) with the help of Hermione, Daphne, and Harry's Fairy Dogfather. If only he could bring himself to actually believe it was true and that he deserved it.
Rating: PG-13 starstarstarstarstar
Categories: Alternate Universe
Characters: None
Genres: None
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Published: 2020.01.01
Updated: 2020.01.25


From the Cupboard to the Castle (and Back Again) by waitingondaisies
Chapter 1: An Invitation is Issued and a Decision is Made
Author's Notes:

Harry woke with a start. He hastily rolled over to check the watch that he kept hidden under his measly stack of clothes; the face of the watch had been smashed by his cousin, Dudley, years ago and Harry had smuggled it away. Somehow, it still worked despite the smashed face and the years that had passed, and why it still functioned was a mystery to Harry.

Odd little things like that were commonplace for Harry. For instance, he kept a tiny stub of a candle in his cupboard for purposes such as this one, and despite months of continued use, the candle was still useable. It had been nearly completely burnt out when it’d come into his possession, and yet here it was, still useable.

He finally managed to light the candle with a match and was able to see the watch to check it. Thankfully, the watch confirmed that he had continued his streak of managing to wake up early enough to get a head start on the food for the day. Occasionally, he slept in long enough that Petunia had to wake him up. Those were terrible days.

Harry sighed to himself and dismissed this useless train of thought.

He got undressed, carefully folding and stowing the apparel. Really, the clothes he slept in were hardly fit to be called clothes, since they were the rags that even Harry deemed unfit for daily apparel. But they were all he had, and they did their job adequately enough. Thankfully, though the clothes he was now pulling on were hardly any better, they were good enough that he could go out in public in them.

Fully dressed, Harry stepped out his cupboard, making sure to close the door very carefully, as the door was directly under the stairs. From this location, sound carried easily up the stairs and into his relatives’ bedrooms. And the last thing he wanted to do was wake them up early.

Walking into the kitchen, Harry began to mentally plan the meals for the day. Since many of the meals Petunia approved of required hours of preparation, he had to start making them early in the morning to be done in time for dinner.

Breakfast and lunch were much easier— he could make hotcakes and eggs and bangers in his sleep, and lunch was usually something light, like soups or sandwiches.

Harry made it to the kitchen, and opened the cold box, a luxury item enchanted to keep food cold for days. He wasn’t sure how the Dursley’s had afforded it, but it simultaneously made his life easier and more unpleasant.

Because they were able to keep meat fresh for days at a time, he no longer had to make near daily trips to the market. This gave him more time to complete his chores, but also greatly restricted his chances to see his only friends.

He pulled out the ingredients for the bread he made daily, and for pot roast, the dish he’d decided on for dinner, and began cooking.

Despite being the one to make all the food, Harry rarely got the chance to actually taste the results. Vernon and Dudley were fond of ensuring that there were no leftovers for Harry to eat, and the few times he'd tried to make simply too much for the two to eat, he'd been made to regret it— and not gotten to eat any of the leftovers.

After his parents died in a carriage crash, he’d been sent to live with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, and his life had gone downhill from there. For as long as Harry could remember, he’d been treated as a slave to the Dursley family. His life revolved around cooking and cleaning for them. And doing his best to avoid pissing Vernon off enough to earn himself a beating, he mentally added as he absent-mindedly rubbed at the nearly-healed belt mark on his ribs. This particular beating had been for making ham for dinner, when Vernon had wanted turkey a couple weeks ago.

Apparently, Vernon had mentioned it before he’d left work that day, but Harry knew that Vernon had simply been looking for an excuse to vent his frustration at the safest available source: Harry.

After beatings like that one, pointless ones that Harry didn’t deserve, when he was laying alone in his cupboard nursing the wounds, he would dream of escaping. Of picking up and leaving and never coming back. Those dreams never lasted long. Harry had no money, no education, no talent. If he left, he’d find himself on the street, bereft of even the occasional meal, hand-me-down rags, and dry place to sleep that he received here.

Harry supposed that endless servitude and irregular beatings were a price he was willing to pay to avoid that fate.

He put the bread in the oven and set the pot roast to cook slowly in his pre-made marinade. Then he went to collect the ingredients for breakfast. He’d decided on omelets- and started cracking eggs.

As he was removing the omelets from the pan and putting them on plates, Petunia swept into the kitchen. Harry finished arranging the omelet on the plate, and turned to face her, though he was careful not to look her in the eye. Gaze focused on her waist, Harry said, “Breakfast is almost served Miss Petunia, if you’d just take a seat, I’ll bring it to you.”

She liked to think of herself as some sort of queen and too good to be looked to have the likes of him look her in the eye. Her insistence on this had come in handy more than once for Harry, when his eyes would have revealed his true thoughts and landed him in trouble, but keeping his gaze fixed anywhere other than her face kept her from noticing his mutinous gaze.

Harry could feel her sharp eyes scanning the kitchen and his appearance, looking for anything she could call him out on to get him into trouble. His stomach flipped and he clenched his hands into fists, as he remembered the dishes still sitting in the sink from marinating the pot roast.

Petunia cleared her throat pointedly, wordlessly telling Harry that she had spotted his failure. He shifted anxiously and forced himself to unclench his fists. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten the dishes like that, but before he could manage to put together an excuse or apology, Petunia said, “I’ll be in the dining room. You will set the table for breakfast, then come back here clean up this mess. You can forget about getting breakfast.”

Honestly, it was a better verdict than Harry could have hoped for, especially since Harry had long had the habit of sneaking some of the food he was cooking as he cooked it. The last time Harry had failed to make sure the kitchen was completely tidy by the time Petunia woke up, she had alerted Vernon, and nothing good had come of that. Whatever her reason for deciding to handle the situation herself, Harry was glad she had.

Petunia had swept out of the kitchen and into the dining room, which was the cue for Harry to bring the breakfast platters in after her.

Following her carefully, she took her seat as he began setting the table. After he set all the necessary plates down, he asked Petunia, “Do you need anything, or may I go get the condiments and beverages?”

Petunia pursed her lips, and Harry crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping that she allowed him to escape to the kitchen before she found something to get him trouble for- or worse, Vernon came down before he finished setting the table with breakfast.

He had the fleeting thought that this was why she had let him off so easily about the dishes: because she had planned to delay him long enough for Vernon to get mad at him anyways.

With a sour look on her face, Petunia motioned sharply at the door to the kitchen, and Harry exhaled sharply in relief.

He was incredibly grateful to be wrong but felt no remorse at misjudging Petunia. She could just as easily have left him to the shark known as Vernon Dursley and would likely do so in the future.

Once in the kitchen, Harry collected the rest of the things that the Dursley’s would need for breakfast and made his way back to the dining room. Petunia had her nose buried in the daily newspaper- an owl must have come and dropped it off while he’d been in the kitchen— so Harry was able to deposit his load on the table and make a quick getaway.

As Harry was finishing up the dinner preparations and clearing up his mess from everything, he heard the Dursley men join Petunia in the dining room. The snatches of their conversation made Harry quite glad that he wasn't forced to be in the room with them, because he would likely have done something, like laugh in their faces at their stupidity or fall asleep from boredom, and invite Vernon's wrath. Which was something he very much needed to avoid doing today, since he'd messed up once already.

He moved onto cleaning the dishes in the sink once he was done wiping the counters. This gave him a clear view of the back garden out the window, and he noted that he needed to go through and weed again soon. Gardening was one of his favorite chores to do because it kept him well out of the way of the Dursley's. They hated being outside so they rarely ventured out to harass him, and there was something pleasant about being outside with just the plants for company.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sharp sound of something shattering in the dining room where the Dursley’s were finishing up breakfast, and Harry's heart sunk.

Thankfully, he still had the presence of mind to gently set the dish he was cleaning down. He could only imagine Vernon's reaction if, in Harry's efforts to clean up one broken dish, he broke another. Then he rushed to the dining room, grabbing a rag as he went.

Looking around, Harry was able to spot the mess immediately and hurried over to it, falling to his knees to gather the shards of what appeared to be a teacup from the fine china set.

How the fine chine set had even been in danger was a mystery to Harry, since he’d laid out the everyday set, but he pushed the useless thoughts away as cleaned the mess as quickly as he could. The glance he'd thrown at Vernon as Harry had rushed into the room had told him that Vernon was in a foul mood. His speed came at the cost of collecting a mass of nicks on his hands where he grabbed the pieces.

It didn’t take long for Harry to finish collecting the shards, carefully keeping his blood off anything but himself, but his efforts weren’t enough.

As soon as he'd gotten down to clean the mess, he'd sensed the massive presence of Vernon behind him, and once he finished, a large hand grabbed him by his upper arm and whirled him around into the wall. The large hand remained in place, pressing Harry's shoulder into the wall with such force that Harry knew it would bruise.

“How dare you. That was a piece of the fine china that’s been in Petunia’s family for generations and is worth more than your life,” Vernon ground out, swelling with rage and his face changing rapidly in color from a crimson red to a horrid shade of puce.

Harry started trembling with fear. His hands were still bleeding sluggishly, despite his efforts to stop the bleeding by pressing his palms against his pants. A distant part of his mind was terribly bewildered at how the glass was broken, but he knew that protesting his innocence would make no difference. Vernon was clearly itching to take something out on him, and anything he said would likely be used to further justify Vernon's actions.

So, he stood in silence while Vernon continued his nonsensical rant and waited with mounting heart-rate for the order to go out back that preceded most beatings. He wasn't absolutely certain it was coming, but it had been so long since the last time it had happened, that Harry felt a certain inevitability about it.

After a period of time measured only by the decreasing space between his own heartbeats, Vernon released Harry's shoulder and pointed in the general direction of the back of the house with a quivering finger and commanded Harry to wait for him outside.

Harry hoped that Vernon wouldn’t take too long to follow him out back and get the ordeal over with. Most of the time, Harry was still expected to complete all his chores, regardless of how long Vernon took or if Harry was released from the beating promptly afterwards, so if Vernon took too long, Harry would find himself in trouble again.

He settled in to wait, sitting cross legged on the grass that covered the lawn beyond the garden. He wasn't far from the tree that Vernon liked to use as a whipping post. Harry did his best to distract himself from what was going to happen by occupying his thoughts with the humor of Vernon's absolutely hating the outdoors and absolutely hating Harry, but still choosing to go outside to deal with Harry. He knew that this was because Vernon didn't want to disturb Petunia or Dudley, but he preferred to think of it as two negatives making a positive. For Vernon, that is.

Eventually, Vernon must have gotten bored of making Harry wait. As Vernon stomped over to where Harry was waiting, Harry noticed that Vernon's face was once again its normal shade of carnation pink. Then Harry's heart well and truly plummeted when he saw the whip Vernon held in one hand and the coil of rope in the other.

Harry sprung to his feet and hurried over to stand next to the tree with his heart in his throat. It had been several weeks since Vernon had been angry enough to bother with the whip and rope. Without waiting for Vernon to tell him to, Harry began to strip off his shirt, in the vain hope that it would please Vernon and make him go easier on Harry. Then he turned to face the tree and put his hands on the cross-post that Vernon had taken great pleasure in ordering him to nail to the tree at just the right height.

It had been a couple years ago when Vernon had issued the order, saying that Harry was finally old enough to take a 'real beating'.

His train of thought came to an abrupt halt when Vernon tied his hands to the post.

And then, the beating began.

He heard the whip whistling through the air and attempted to relax his muscles so the impact of the whip left less damage, but there was only so much he could do to fight his natural human instinct. Inevitably, the whip cracked against his back, and Harry sucked in a breath.

He let it out slowly as Vernon wound up again. He should have known that it would be like this when Vernon had come out of the house looking so calm. Vernon rarely took his time and put all his strength behind each and every blow, resting just enough to prolong the beating by a few painful lashes, but the couple times in the past that he had had left Harry aching for weeks.

Time began to blur together.

Harry felt a drop of sweat crawl down his face.

He heard a bug buzz around his back. He hoped absently that it would clear out before Vernon killed it.

He heard the whistle of the whip time and time again, heard the thud from its impact.

But it was like he wasn’t there.

The blessed detachment wouldn’t last for long, and Harry eventually came back to himself. He tasted blood and realized that he'd nearly pierced his lip biting down on it to prevent any sound from escaping. This was about the only thing he could control, and Harry got some cheap satisfaction from refusing to give Vernon the satisfaction of knowing how much he hurt Harry.

Eventually, he heard the glorious sound of Vernon throwing down the whip, panting heavily from the effort.

He moved around the tree, making eye contact with Harry as Vernon spat, “You’re damn lucky Petunia stepped in, else I’d have just snapped your neck for what you did, you useless, worthless freak.”

It seemed that Harry had missed Petunia’s intervention. He wondered what had driven her to intervene, but didn't waste any energy on being thankful to her. He knew that she would have had her reasons that didn't have anything to do with sparing Harry from pain.

After a moment's thought, Harry decided that she must have intervened to stop Vernon from escalating to murdering Harry. Because despite his low status in life, there were people that knew him— like Hermione and Daphne— and they would notice and raise a ruckus if he went missing. And murder is murder, regardless of the class of the person murdered. And Petunia was smart enough to know this, so she'd stepped in to stop Vernon from landing himself in prison.

Before he left, Vernon spat at Harry, luckily just missing his face, and stalked into the house.

Several minutes later, during which Harry had hung motionless from his bonds, he began to regret doing so much prep this morning. It wasn't like he’d had a choice, but still. His efforts would make it incredibly simple for Petunia to make meals for the rest of the day, and even for tomorrow.

And, since she had interfered to stop Vernon from murdering Harry, she would probably want to keep Harry out of Vernon's way, to prevent Vernon from becoming murderous again. It could be hours, if not days, until she freed Harry.


Despite the fact that the bonds had somehow loosened just the tiniest bit, enough to allow some blood flow, Harry was still inescapably trapped and unbearably uncomfortable.

It had been at least five hours since Vernon had gone into the house, judging by the position of the sun and the noises Harry could occasionally hear from the residents of the house. Harry was focused intently on fiddling with the knot by his hands in the vague hope that he could loosen them further, when he heard an unexpected sound: the doorbell was ringing.

Harry turned his attention from his hands, where it’d been directed for quite some time now, to the conversation that would soon take place.

Fortunately for Harry’s purposes, it was summer, and every window in the house had been thrown wide open to tempt a breeze in.

After a few more rings, seemingly the mystery visitor was quite impatient, Harry heard the door open. This sound was closely followed by Petunia’s annoyed voice asking, “What do you want at this hour?”

So it must be later than Harry had thought it was. The sun stayed in the sky for so long that it was hard to tell.

A deep, slightly pompous, voice replied, “I am here by order of the King and Queen. All eligible young men and women, between the ages of 17 and 22, are henceforth invited to a royal ball. The princess, her royal highness Ginevra Weasley, is soon to be of age and is looking for a spouse among the Kingdom’s citizens. The ball will commence on Saturday, the 3rd of September, at 8 in the evening and will last all night. Of course, the parents of the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes are also invited to attend.”

It sounded to Harry as if the poor guard delivering the message was exhausted. He spoke faster and faster as he went, and his voice had no inflection at all.

After the guard finished speaking, Harry heard Petunia thank him, and the sound of her closing the door.

The next thing Harry heard was Petunia loudly telling Vernon to read something. Harry assumed that the guard must have given her a written copy of the invitation. Then, to Harry's relief, he heard Petunia to tell Vernon that he ought to go relax in his study. Harry assumed that this meant Petunia intended to release Harry.

Even though the immediate consequence of the invitation had been his release, Harry was now more concerned than ever for his general well-being. The Dursley’s would surely be trying to get the Princess to marry Dudley, and when they inevitably failed, the fall out would be distinctly bad for Harry's health.

Harry shook his head to clear it and closed his eyes. He did his best to ignore the pain radiating from his back so he could enjoy what would likely be the last few calm moments he’d have for the next month.


The next day, Petunia completely banned him from the kitchen, as some revenge for being forced to release him early the previous day. She rarely did this because doing so meant she had to do work that Harry ordinarily did, thus hurting her in addition to hurting Harry, but he supposed that, this time the pros outweighed the cons.

Harry’s stomach grumbled loudly as he mowed the front lawn. It had been several meals since Petunia had banned him from the kitchen, and with no end in sight, Harry was rapidly weakening.

To avoid thinking about his current circumstances, Harry allowed himself to drift off into his memories- mowing the lawn was one of those chores that required practically no mental input.

Perhaps because of the hunger he could feel clawing at his insides, his mind chose this particular memory.

Once, several years ago, Harry had been sent to the market on a particularly nasty day to purchase groceries for the Dursley household. It was back before they had purchased the ice box, so Harry hadn’t yet felt the need to ensure he saw Hermione every time he came to the market. Especially since he didn’t want her to feel obligated to join him in the cold, misty weather.

He had finished purchasing the groceries and was making his way back to the Dursley's house, when he saw, through the haze of the persistent mist, a child huddling under a tree.

Despite the slow rate of rainfall, it had been misting for long enough that the tree no longer provided shelter from the rain, and the child was soaked and chilled to the bone. Looking back, Harry could recognize that he had hardly been in better shape than she had been, nor had he been much older, but at the time he’d felt as though he were significantly better off and older.

He had slowly approached the child, careful not to frighten her, and had asked, “What are you doing out here in this kind of weather?”

The child had jumped at the sound of his voice and Harry had grimaced at his failure to avoid scaring her.

“Don’t have anywhere else to go,” the child had responded flatly, after she had steadied herself against the tree.

Harry had hoped she was simply lost, but it had seemed he was not the only one with abysmal luck. By then, Harry had come close enough to see that she was shaking almost violently, most likely due to the cold. Then had he caught sight of the thin wrists she had wrapped around her body, and had a sinking feeling that she was shaking from hunger too.

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” Harry had asked, refusing to be deterred by her standoffishness.

“Dunno. Maybe a day or two. Had a piece of toast at the market on Sunday,” she had replied again, with no more inflection than she had had before.

It had been Tuesday, so it had been a couple days since she’d even had toast. Harry had looked down at the bags of produce he was carrying and steeled himself to do what he knew was the right thing to do.

He had pulled out the bunch of bananas he’d intended to make banana bread with and offered them to her. She snatched them out of his hand and scuttled away from him, out of arm’s reach, as if he would change his mind and take them back at any moment.

His gut had twisted with empathy.

She had already opened the ripest banana of the lot when she had paused and said, “I can’t pay you back for this, you know.”

“I know,” Harry had agreed quietly.

He had been avoiding watching her eat the banana, when a thought had suddenly occurred to him. With nobody in the world to take care of her, she really would have been better off at the orphanage. Even if all the horror stories Vernon had liked to tell him were true.

“Actually, there is one thing you can do for me,” he had said in a rush, determined to ignore the frightened look that had crossed her face, “go to the orphanage. No, listen, just go and try it out for a little while, and if it’s terrible, just run away. But at least go and try it,” he had finished lamely.

The girl had eyed him warily while she finished another banana. Once it was gone, she had nodded curtly and said, “Alright.”

Harry had released a sigh of relief at her acquiescence, relieved that she would at least soon be out of the rain. “I have to go now,” he had told her, turning away to get back on the road.

She had called after him that he had forgotten the remaining bananas, but Harry had done that meant to do that, knowing that she had needed them more than him.

He forced his mind back to the present, before his mind could follow the memory to its conclusion. The Dursley’s had not been happy that he had come back with a receipt for bananas, but no bananas in sight. He had considered getting rid of the receipt, but the missing money would have been just as incriminating. The punishment had fit the crime, and he had ended up as hungry then as he was now.

He glumly got up from where he had stowed the grass cutter away underneath a shelf in the shed, patiently waiting for the spots to clear from his vision, before he headed back into the house. Maybe, he thought as he walked, Petunia would finally allow him in the kitchen again.


It was a couple of weeks since the Dursley household had received the invitation to the ball. He had not had a moment of rest since being cut down from the tree by Petunia; he had been kept incredibly busy taking measurements, running errands, generally maintaining the household, and being a carrier pigeon for the Dursley’s and their gossip network.

Most nights, Harry ended up falling asleep before his head hit the folded-up rags he used as a pillow. Today was the first day in weeks that he had had enough energy to lie awake on his cot under the stairs and think.

Inevitably, his thoughts took him to the ball, since his life had been utterly consumed by it for so long.

Harry knew it was pointless to even imagine going; the Dursley’s would die before they let him go to something so enjoyable that would simultaneously involve being seen in public with him, but he couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like.

He’d heard that the castle was stunning on any normal occasion, and it was sure to be even more amazing on the day that the kingdom’s beloved princess sought her life-companion.

His thoughts turned to the royal family next. The princess Ginevra was the youngest of seven children, but she was the only daughter that King Arthur and Queen Molly had had and Harry could only imagine the celebrations following her birth.

The King and Queen were beloved by all in the Kingdom, in part because they believed in autonomy and choices for their subjects. Luckily for their children, this belief extended to them as well.

Prince Bill, the oldest, had renounced his heirship and left to be a curse-breaker in a far-off land. Prince Charlie, the next oldest, had also renounced the heirship when it was passed to him by Prince Bill; his interests lie in caring for Dragons.

For a while, it had seemed as though Prince Percy would be the next King of the country, but then he disappeared after a state function.

The citizens only found out about this when the letter he left behind was published in the papers- it turned out that he had fallen in love with Crown Princess Audrey of France and they had eloped together. Since Princess Audrey was an only child, he renounced his heirship to the crown of England, and became the Prince Consort of France.

Nobody had ever seriously thought that Prince Fred or Prince George would hold onto the heirship. It had been clear since they were children that their interest lay in making people laugh, and in a move surprising no one, departed the castle to open their joke shop soon after they came of age.

When they left, the heirship fell on Prince Ron, and he took up the mantle with grace. He was well known for his strategic mind and his fairmindedness. The citizens of England had nothing to worry about when it came time for King Arthur to pass on his crown, and it was clear from the general cheer of the country that the citizens knew that.

Because of the sheer number of Weasley’s, there was little concern about the line ending, and therefore little reason to marry Princess Ginevra off to some random foreign Prince. And, given that England was currently at peace with most of its neighbor’s, they also had no need of the treaty a marriage with a foreign dignitary would provide. All this added to extraordinary freedom for the Princess to choose her partner.

Since there was clearly a ball being held, and since each citizen within a few years of the Princess’s age was expected to attend, it was clear that the Princess would be looking for her match among her own Kingdom's citizens.

Harry knew that Hermione and Daphne were planning on going to the ball because he’d had the luck to run into the two of them when he was dropping off the Dursley’s dress robes for adjustments, and they’d taken the time they were in line to discuss the ball. Mostly, it was Daphne trying to convince Harry to try and sneak out to go, but Harry knew that it just wasn’t worth the risk of being caught.

For some reason, though, Daphne kept insisting that the Princess deserved to meet Harry. And that by not letting him go, the Dursleys’ were somehow restricting her choices. Harry had been unable to stop himself from letting out a short laugh at that. The thought that he would even be an option for the Princess was nothing short of ridiculous.

He ignored the small part of his mind that insisted that, as a part-time companion for the Princess, Daphne would know what she was talking about.

Harry knew, without a doubt in his mind, that he was utterly worthless. He wasn’t particularly smart, so it wasn’t like he’d be able to make the next great invention. He had no magical power, and all the Weasley’s- by blood or by marriage- were well-known for their magical prowess. He wasn’t attractive and he wasn’t funny, he really wasn’t even all that likable, otherwise why would the Dursley’s- no. He stopped this train of thought in its tracks.

Altogether, he had no useful skills, making him useless for anything but menial chores. There was clearly nothing about him that would make him even a remote possibility to become the next Prince. And, even if by some chance he happened to meet the Princess, he would never even want to be considered. She deserved better than him, and so did the Kingdom.

He also ignored the feeling that he was being awfully defensive about his lack of suitability to be the prince.

Harry rolled over so he was facing the spot on the wall where his hand-drawn picture of the castle would be. Though he had never seen it himself, he had liked to imagine it as a child and the paper contained his childish imaginings that he'd scratched onto paper using Dudley's quickly discarded pencils.

Harry heaved a sigh. It was rare, even ordinarily when he had more time to himself, that he allowed himself to be so self-absorbed.

He supposed that all the thoughts had built up while he was so busy, and honestly, it didn’t hurt him that much to let himself be self-absorbed occasionally, here in the privacy of his cupboard.

Harry sighed again. He could admit to himself that he was sad that he wouldn’t get to be at the ball; it was certain to be fun and magical and everything his everyday life was not.

A few seconds later, Harry realized that going to the ball didn’t necessarily have to entail meeting the Princess or even joining in the main festivities. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if he were to slip out of the house after the Dursley’s left. And it would get Daphne, and Hermione, since it was clear she agreed with Daphne, off his back for refusing to even try to go.

Harry rolled onto his back and stared blankly upwards. Could he do it? Probably, yes. Could he do it without being caught? Less likely, but still possible. Could he live with consequences of being caught?

Harry shuddered and reached out a gentle hand to glance off the picture on the wall. He held the image he knew was depicted in the picture in his mind before allowing the memories of past punishments to sweep it away.

This left him shaken, but certain that, yes. He could live with the consequences.

It was decided then. Harry would go to the ball


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