Harry Potter : An American in Hogwarts

Daphne had her usual icy beauty poker face on, while the black-haired girl beside her blinked in surprise, her dark eyes darting between them with open curiosity.

"What happened, Your Majesty?" Tyson asked, letting a lazy smile pull at his lips. "You seemed to be in a hurry. Getting some cardio in?"

"That doesn't concern you. I have places to be. Move," Daphne said coolly.

Tyson raised an eyebrow. 'Playing dumb, are we?'

"Funny," Tyson said, leaning against a wall. "Because from where I was standing, it looked suspiciously like you were running away from me. So let me be blunt. Are you avoiding me?"

Daphne's blue eyes narrowed into sharp, icy slits. "Don't flatter yourself, muggle born. You are hardly significant enough to warrant my avoidance."

"Is that so?" Tyson raised an eyebrow. "Then where were you at breakfast this morning? I kept an eye on the Hall doors just to greet you, but you were nowhere to be found."

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her chin tilting up to look down her slender nose at him. "I was simply not hungry. Hogwarts food is ridiculously heavy."

Tyson couldn't tell whether she'd prepared those answers beforehand or was coming up with them on the spot. Either way, he had to give her credit: she was damn good at keeping a straight face.

His observational skills had always been good, something he'd developed through years of martial arts training and sparring. He was used to watching people's posture, eyes, breathing, and the tiny shifts in expression that betrayed what they were actually thinking. Yet with Daphne, he couldn't pick out a single tell.

That was the kind of skill every politician would literally bend over backward for.

"Right. Perfectly reasonable," Tyson drawled. "Then what about during the class earlier? I called your name three times you know."

A flicker of mild, perfectly engineered surprise touched her features. "Did you? Then I probably didn't hear your voice. It was very loud in there, after all."

"Half the class heard me," Tyson countered smoothly. "Including your dear friend here."

He gestured toward the girl beside her.

The second his eyes shifted toward her, she looked away, suddenly intensely fascinated by the masonry of the ceiling.

"Really? Then I might have simply been too immersed in the lecture to pay attention to background noise," Daphne said, without so much as a twitch in her posture.

The sheer audacity of that statement made Tyson's brain literally glitch for a moment. Heck, even her friend beside her looked at Daphne like she had gone absolutely crazy.

Daphne remained completely unfazed under their gazes, her cold expression not even flickering.

After a long moment of silence, Tyson finally spoke, shaking his head in mock reverence. "Immersed in Binns? That is a level of academic dedication I can't even comprehend, Your Majesty. Keep that up and you'll be replacing Dumbledore by fifth year."

Daphne gave a single, dismissive snort, entirely unbothered by his sarcasm.

Tyson couldn't help but stare at her. He would have the emotional IQ of Ron if he still didn't realize there was something wrong with her, not after her chain of excuses.

To be honest, he had proposed the hundred-Galleon bet partly to knock Daphne off her high horse, but mostly because he genuinely needed some funds to buy something later this year.

He had assumed that for a daughter of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, a hundred Galleons was loose pocket change. He wouldn't have proposed it if it were someone else in her place. But looking back at her recent actions, he could be absolutely sure she didn't have enough Galleons on her to pay him.

Her actions simply didn't align with basic pureblood psychology. If she really had the gold, her class-conscious pride would demand she throw the pouch directly at his face as quickly as possible to settle the amount, prove her superiority, and walk away with her chin held high.

Power-walking down corridors and telling lies as ridiculous as being immersed in Binns's lecture was something you did only when you were completely backed into a corner.

Tyson decided to stop beating around the bush and ask directly.

"Alright. Let's stop wasting each other's time." Tyson dropped the mock teasing tone. "You haven't forgotten about our little bet, have you?"

For the first time since he'd stopped her, Daphne's composure cracked.

Her gaze flicked toward the floor before snapping back up, her fingers digging tightly into the fabric of her dark green sleeves.

"I...will provide the sum to you shortly," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "It is hardly an amount worth cornering me in a public passage over."

Tyson looked at her, stunned.

He glanced around at the open corridor.

Him?

Cornering her?

Now she was really making him sound like a villain. Sighing, Tyson decided to just drop the matter. A hundred Galleons wasn't worth muddying his reputation.

But before he could speak, the dark-haired girl beside Daphne threw her hands up in what looked like defeat, then stepped between them.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, stop it already," she blurted out, sounding like she'd had enough.

She looked straight at Tyson and said rather bluntly, "It's not her fault. Someone stole her coin pouch on the Hogwarts Express yesterday. She only found out last night after we were shown to our dormitory. So I seriously doubt she even has a single Knut on her right now to give you."

"Tracey!" Daphne's face turned an impressive shade of red as she snapped at her friend. "Shut your mouth!"

Tracey crossed her arms, completely unfazed by the death glare. "What? He's standing here looking at you like you're trying to default on a debt, and you're making things ten times worse by pretending you were too fascinated by Professor Binns to hear him. Just tell him the truth! I'm sure he'll understand."

"I am handling it just fine!" Daphne retorted, her aristocratic composure completely gone.

Tyson held up a hand and stepped slightly closer, partly to calm them down and partly to shield their conversation from the stream of students passing behind them.

Well, that explained quite a lot.

Any lingering desire he had to press Daphne for the money disappeared. He wasn't a loan shark, and he certainly wasn't going to humiliate an eleven-year-old girl who'd been pickpocketed on her first day of school. For all her attitude, Daphne was still just a kid who'd had a rather miserable first twenty-four hours.

"Did you report it to your Head of House?" Tyson asked. "The train is an enclosed space. If they know roughly where you were sitting, they might be able to find it with Accio or at least figure out when it was ta—"

"It's none of your business!" Daphne cut in, though the sharpness in her voice lacked real heat now.

She clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. "I do not require your pity."

Tyson sighed inwardly.

Right. The pureblood pride. How could he forget about it? Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if there was a secret clause in some ancient pureblood etiquette manual explaining that respectable families were allowed to lose their money, provided nobody was informed about it.

"I'm not pitying you, Greengrass. I'm simply offering common sense," Tyson said calmly. "Look, I made the bet under the assumption that a hundred Galleons was loose change for your family and that losing it would be a minor inconvenience. I definitely didn't intend for you to have a panic attack over it."

Daphne stiffened, staring at him with deep, severe suspicion, as if she didn't quite believe he would actually go so easy on her. Tyson wondered what he had done to gain such a bad reputation in her eyes.

In the end, he just waved a hand dismissively. "So forget about the bet. Consider the hundred Galleons settled. You don't owe me anything anymore."

"No!"

The answer came so quickly and firmly that Tyson paused.

Daphne straightened, looking almost offended by the suggestion.

"Greengrasses always pay their debts," she said firmly, leaving Tyson speechless.

Wait, wasn't this motto a bit familiar?

Tyson eventually looked back at her and shrugged. "Alright then. If that's how you want to handle it, I'll leave you to it. Just don't stress over it."

Tracey let out a visible sigh of relief, while Daphne's shoulders relaxed by a fraction of an inch, though she quickly tried to hide it.

"It won't take long," she said stiffly, her voice recovering its aristocratic edge. "I have already sent an owl to my father. The replacement funds will arrive shortly."

"Sure, Your Majesty," Tyson smirked, unable to resist getting one light jab in now that the tension was defused. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. Though I suggest you to accept that you're broke for a week and move on."

Daphne's eyes flashed dangerously, her mouth opening to deliver another retort.

Before she could, however, an arrogant voice drifted down the stone corridor.

"Speaking to our lessers again, are we, Greengrass?"

Daphne snapped her head toward the sound, her embarrassed expression instantly hardening into pure, unmistakable disgust.

Tyson didn't even need to turn around to know who it was. The tone alone reeked of enough superiority complex to rival all Ravenclaw years combined.

He turned around and saw a blonde boy leisurely walking over to them, flanked by two mini-Dudley's. His eyes flicked between Tyson and Daphne with a cheeky smirk.

Draco Malfoy, the self proclaimed young master of Hogwarts made an entrance.

[A/N : Will he get slapped?]

...

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