Her smile turned into confusion. "Jim?"
Harry blinked. "Oh, right, you two only met Wisdom." He went over to a hammock and began trying to get comfy. "Well, Jim is a great guy. Wrath has edges, but he is a part of me."
Tracey gave a look at the desert behind her. Harry's mental friends later, for now... She grinned. Sand Castle. Oh yeah. Harry awoke with a jerk. Something... Daphne. Jim was giving a silent alert.
He got out of the hammock. "Tracey, I will be back in a moment, alright?"
A tiny voice from the top of a... VERY tall sand castle. More complicated than Hogwarts, it twisted and... oh his head. Sand was shaped in a way that was... just NOT possible. "...y, no problem"
Well... good.
Moving quickly, Harry retreated to his own mind directly before moving to Daphne's...
Her cave was full of dark eyed monsters.
Teeth were everywhere, many rotting or blood covered. Deeper inside the mine, he could FEEL someone... crying.
Harry's eyes darkened, leaving only an ember of green... but that ember was AFLAME. His body rippled, and he flexed each hand as the fingers sharpened. No big techniques, he was inside a mind after all.
Reaching the first creature, he waved a hand and created a reinforced glass bottle with a huge funnel on top. His other hand ripped into the darkness, pulled it snarling over the bottle... and SQUEEZED.
All the creatures paused as the thing... SCREAMED. Black ooze began flowing into the bottle, leaving a gray and weak corpse in his hand. Harry wasn't even looking at it, his eyes already looking at the next creature... and they were looking afraid.
They should be.
Daphne was curled in a ball, feeling those teeth, those claws... they kept cutting into her, kept hurting. Over and over...
Suddenly there was screaming. The cutting paused, the creatures froze... and several began running toward the entrance of her mind. Daphne could barely pay attention, as she wrapped her arms around her torn body.
As the screaming got louder, somehow she felt... lighter. Less hurt. Less sad. As she was about to try and sit up, she stiffened as two arms reached around her... a hug. Warm. She leaned back into it, gripping those arms that wrapped her in warmth, crying.
She had uncovered the memory of her mother's death.
Harry didn't know what to do. He had extracted the emotion from the memories, dozens of them, and secured it pretty easily since it wasn't his own fear, sadness, hate, and loneliness... but here was Daphne, wrapped in a ball on the ground. Having handled so many of the memories, he didn't need to ask why.
Thinking of the years alone, he gave in and wrapped her in his arms. As he gripped her tightly, he could feel her tears soaking into his shirt, her sobs wracking her body, even as he used his threads to heal her wounds.
As he worked, he tried pushing out his emotions... his concern for her, his respect for having survived such an experience, his secret desire to have had a mother long enough to grieve for her death. He hugged her as she shook until she began falling asleep.
Lifting her gently, he used cords of power to gently float toward her door. Moving through his mind, Harry reentered Tracey's mind carrying the sleeping girl.
Tracey shook some sweat from her forehead. Somehow this sand castle had gotten... complicated. But what castle was complete without a moat? And archery range? And bowling alley? And taco bar? She frowned.
There were not enough taco bars.
Still, she could come back later. She had found some memories in the sand, sea shells. The nicest ones went in the treasure room, the sharp and bloody ones she put in the dungeon. The random pretty ones were decorations on the inside and outside of her Sandcropolis.
Maybe a break. She felt like she had been doing this... well, forever really. Or an hour. Long time, regardless.
As she slid down one of the south tower slides, she only screamed a LITTLE. Sand roller coasters, those had to be possible, right?
Most of her thoughts came to a stop when she reached the trees. Daphne was in a hammock, Harry was standing over her looking worried... and she had tear marks.
Before she could say anything, Harry noticed her and waved her over to the side. "Got a silent alarm from Jim that she needed help. Apparently while sorting her memories, she found some she had been repressing." He unconsciously began wiping his hands as if it would help somehow. "They were literally hurting her, tearing her apart. I squeezed the emotion out of each memory and stored it separately, which should help a lot... but she was hurt. I brought her over as soon as she fell asleep."
Tracey gave a short nod. She felt like she could guess exactly what memory the poor girl was repressing. It had been a sad time for her family as well, since the Greengrass and Davis families were so close. It was back when she first started acting like the "Ice Queen".
Carefully moving toward Daphne, she looked at Harry and made some hand gestures. Getting the idea, the boy gently lifted Tracey into the hammock with the girl... who wrapped around Tracey like she was the last teddy bear on earth.
Harry stood a distance away, watching the waves. Behind him, he could hear two friends having a quiet but tearful conversation. He gave a sad smile... she was a lucky girl. If only there had been someone for Harry back then, before he had learned to do it all himself, before he had to fight darkness.
Still, it felt good to be someone else's support. Harry leaned against one of the other trees and relaxed.
Daphne woke again, feeling the same terror for a moment... no. She was with Tracey, and Tracey was making it all right. Her eyes fluttered open, seeing the normally hyperactive girl snoring slightly, a little drool coming out of her mouth.
Oh. It had been a while since she had been in a hammock. It was strange that Tracey had found one, since her home was pretty far... uh. Ocean?
"Where the bloody hell ARE we!?"
Tracey squeaked and flailed, nearly flipping the hammock. Daphne frantically tried to balance herself, somehow getting caught in the strings and half pulling Tracey to her side, while she had one leg over here and an arm over THERE and...
Oh. "Good... Good morning Mr. Potter."
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