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He quickly dived back into his homework as the rest of the compartment talked, joked and laughed. He didn't join them. He had to get his homework done otherwise his entire night had been wasted and he wouldn't achieve what he'd wanted when he'd first started.

"You're very quiet." Daphne Greengrass told him as the four Slytherins exhausted their topics of conversation for the moment and had lapsed into silence.

Harry looked at her and bit his tongue at the immediate urge to scream at her. He hadn't had much to do with Daphne since the start of term, he mostly stayed with Draco and Blaise, but he'd had a bit of interaction with some of the other Slytherins outside of them too, mostly Daphne, Pansy, and Theodore Nott. Harry liked the unusually quiet Slytherin and every time he'd caught sight of Daphne flirting with yet another boy, he'd felt angry on Theodore's behalf. He didn't deserve such disrespect and humiliation from his own betrothed.

Despite not having much interaction with the other Slytherins, however, he was still kept well-informed of the latest gossip through Draco, who was very, very gossipy. Daphne had been shamelessly loud and vocal in bed with a Slytherin fifth-year the last he'd heard and the entire of the Slytherin house knew of it and still Theodore Nott thought the sun shined out of her arse.

He was sure that she was only sleeping with other people now because she knew that she could get away with it. Of course, it was Theodore's fault as well, he should have given himself a bit more dignity and self-respect. He didn't deserve to be betrothed to someone who would sleep with anything just because they could get away with it, whether he was madly in love with her or not. Harry wouldn't even dream of disrespecting Rabastan in such a way. Then, he supposed that that was the difference between a betrothal of convenience and a betrothal where those involved actually felt attracted to one another and were coming to love one another.

"I'm just thinking." He replied to her quietly. "You might want to try it occasionally."

The rest of the compartment laughed at her because that was what Slytherins did. As soon as one was singled out and belittled, they compounded that fact by joining in, even if it was just laughing at others' misfortune.

The hat might have been right in a way, he had the ambition and ruthlessness that suited Slytherin house and he would have done well there, but he ultimately failed at being a Slytherin because they were like a pack of ravenous jackals. Any sign or the merest hint of weakness and they leapt upon it, made it worse and drew everyone else's attention to it just to make themselves look better by comparison. He just couldn't do that.

Harry sighed before he stood up on the seat and dug in his open trunk, up in the trunk rack, for his Herbology textbook so he could sort out the piece of homework that he was currently working on. He'd done most of his homework last night, staying up as long as he possibly could so that he could knock off several assignments. He'd used his head and he'd done all of his hardest essays first, while he was still at the school and able to take advantage of the library and the expertise of the professors. He'd then done his easier essays. The written essays took up the longest amount of time, after all. Doing that had left him with just a couple of question sheets to answer, a translation for Ancient Runes, and several calculations for Arithmancy along with his Defence assignments and a piece of homework that he couldn't actually complete yet as he had to observe the night sky twice a week over the holidays and note down the positions of the planets and the meaning of their positions for Astronomy.

"Why are you doing your homework now, we're on holiday!" Blaise told him, looking at him as if he were completely mad.

"You might not have heard, but my betrothed is staying over for the holidays. I don't want to waste time that I could be spending with him on homework." Harry said simply as he flipped open his Herbology textbook and set about answering the questions that Professor Sprout had set them. They were quite simple to answer as the textbook told him everything that he needed to know. He just had to embellish the clinical information that he read to give an answer that didn't look like he'd just copied it straight from the book. His scrap parchment came in very handy for doing that perfectly.

"Don't remind me." Daphne sighed grumpily. "I'm staying over at the Nott's manor for Christmas this year. My parents think that I'm old enough now to spend the holidays with him alone, so they won't be there. It's completely ruined my holidays. I don't want to spend Christmas with him or his ugly father! I'm going to use my homework as an excuse to get away from him as much as I can."

"You should count yourself lucky that you even have a betrothal still." Harry told her through gritted teeth, unable to continue holding his tongue when she spoke so candidly about avoiding her own betrothal partner. Especially when he knew that Theodore was looking forward to spending the time with her and was excited to spend the whole of the Christmas holidays with the woman he loved. It made him so mad, more particularly because he himself was doing his absolute all just to ensure that he and Rabastan spent as much time together as possible during the holidays. "Just because you're happy with your match doesn't mean that everyone else is." Daphne snapped back.

"If you're not happy with your match then break the contract yourself and find someone else, because absolutely no one deserves to be disrespected in such a way." Harry answered, his voice rising a touch as his anger was stirred.

"It would be a different story if your betrothed was doing the same as…"

"If I ever found out that Rabastan was so much as entertaining the thought of being with another person while we were betrothed together then I'd break our contract faster than he could think to apologise for his disgusting behaviour." Harry spoke over her, his eyes hard and cold at the very thought of Rabastan sleeping around with other people. "I deserve better than someone who would treat me so appallingly, just as Theodore deserves someone better than you, and if our situations were the same and I were doing that shameful act behind Rabastan's back, then I would most definitely expect him to throw me out on my arse! You cannot treat someone in such a way and still expect the same level of respect afterwards. It just doesn't work that way."

"It's just sex, it doesn't mean anything." Daphne tried to defend.

"Sex always means something." Harry told her bitingly. "Even if you think it doesn't, it does. You entered a formal contract, you signed on the dotted line, didn't you? You made a promise to the person who you were entering that contract with and then you just shit all over it and all over him by fucking as many people as you could without any thought, without even considering your actions or the consequences of them. This contract is a pathway to potential marriage, not an opportunity for you to mess about before the marriage ceremony to someone you are betrothed to and know you're going to be marrying at the end of said contract. You're disrespecting him with every action and even every thought that you are doing nothing wrong as you stick to your meagre defence of 'oh, it's only sex. It doesn't matter.' Because it does matter and one day, you'll fuck the wrong person or just one person too many and Theodore will be gone and you'll have absolutely nothing left to fall back on. You'll be unmarriable and then what will you do?"

The compartment remained silent and Harry kept his burning eyes on Daphne for a moment more before he went back to his Herbology questions.

"What assignments do you have left?" Draco asked him over ten minutes of utter silence later as Harry had finally answered all twenty-five Herbology questions with several decent-sized paragraphs for each.

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