426A/N:
Hi! New story.
My Harry/Astoria fic 'Coincidences' will update this week as normal, but the idea for this story came into my head and demanded to be written.
This is a lighthearted romcom, and will be largely episodic, so if you have any scenes/ideas you'd like to see in this story, feel free to comment and I'll probably write it :)
"Daphne Greengrass, will you go out with me?" Harry Potter asked hopefully.
"I am sorry," she replied flatly. "But I cannot."
Harry walked away dejectedly. He had been harboring a crush on Daphne for the better part of his past six years at Hogwarts, and had finally worked up the courage to confess to her today. While numerous boys over the years had tried their own hand at asking out the girl, they had all been shut down without fail. Despite this, Harry was hoping against hope that he'd be the exception.
If he was being honest with himself, he wasn't totally surprised he'd been rejected. He hadn't spoken much to the girl, because who had? She spoke only when spoken to or when called upon in class, and when she did, she would give concise and clinical replies, leaving no room for further conversation.
Harry sighed. Even that was something he loved about the girl.
Harry knew the other boys asked Daphne out just because she was pretty, but he was different. Sure, he found her absolutely gorgeous, because who didn't? Long blonde hair framing a perfectly symmetrical face gave her the beauty of a doll, while her slim figure that curved in all the right places gave her the allure of a model. Her crisp blue eyes, her soft pink lips…well, he imagined they were soft anyway.
But that wasn't why Harry liked her. Certainly not entirely, in any case. He liked her for her grades, which despite the best efforts of his friend Hermione Granger, stayed at the very top of their year. He liked her for the way she followed her prefect duties down to the letter, even if it meant antagonizing the 'cool' kids, who would frequently break curfew or get caught together in broom closets. And he liked how aloof she was, even in the face of bullying from some of her jealous peers, who didn't like all the attention she drew from the boys.
So, hoping that his sincerity would come across, and praying that he might just be the one boy to be given a chance, he shot his shot.
But as fast as he could ask, he was shot down – another name on the long list of boys rejected by Daphne Greengrass.
Daphne Greengrass watched Harry walk away, the slump in his shoulders suggesting genuine dejection at her refusal to go out with him. A familiar window popped up in the corner of her optical receptors.
Possible Emotion Detected: Sympathy
Simulating Physiological Response…
Daphne felt a clang in the mechanical orb that functioned as her heart.
Printing Thought Sequence: I am sorry, Harry, but no one can know my secret. And for that, I cannot let anyone get too close…
Harry flew around the school on his broom, a habit he had picked up whenever he needed some time alone to think about something. In this case he didn't really need to think about anything, but rather just wanted to be alone so he could sulk.
Six years of love, down the drain, he thought gloomily.
There were other girls, sure. Hell, he would bet some of them even liked him. He didn't consider himself a bad looking guy, he was relatively tall, and he was the ace of the Gryffindor quidditch team. No one had ever asked him out before, but he'd definitely been flirted with, and he got plenty of chocolates from the girls every Valentine's Day.
He sighed, as he did a backflip over the Astronomy Tower. But none of those girls are Daphne Greengrass…
Daphne removed her clothes and detached her legs in an abandoned storage shed by the quidditch pitch. She had been using the shed since her first year at Hogwarts, some six years ago now. No one ever used it, and she had installed a lock just to be sure, so it was the perfect place to come whenever she needed to do 'maintenance.'
As she oiled the gears in her lower limbs, and replaced a few old screws, she thought about the boy who she had rejected earlier that day. Why did they always ask her out? Couldn't they just leave her alone to live out her isolated, friendless robot existence in peace?
Possible Emotion Detected: Longing
Simulating Physiological Response…
Daphne felt a hollowness deep inside, as her prosthetic organs shifted aside to form a hole in her thorax.
Printing Thought Sequence: I wish I could experience love, too.
Daphne was not built to feel love. The closest she would ever come, she hypothesized, was the familial 'love' she felt towards her father. Though even in that case, the emotion displayed on the window in her optics when she spoke to him was always Gratitude or Comfort, and never Love.
She had read countless romance novels, and even watched some movies when she got the chance, but love had always been a concept that even her advanced cerebronic core couldn't comprehend. That lack of understanding was probably what made her so fascinated by love in the first place; she was designed to grasp any theory as soon as it was taught to her, and yet she still couldn't make sense of that single, stupid human emotion.
Her classmates went crazy for love, and mankind had done some of both the greatest and worst things in history over it. Despite this, Daphne knew she would never understand love nor feel it, and that frustrated her to no end. Besides, even if she ever did feel love, she would never be able to pursue a relationship, as maintaining the secret behind her true nature was of the utmost priority.
Eventually, Daphne pushed the meaningless thoughts away to return to more immediate concerns, namely the gears in her back that needed replacing.
"Seriously?" Harry said aloud, as he opened the third storage shed and saw that it too was filled to the brim with brooms, leaving no place for him to store his own. "Damn that new rule that allowed first years to bring their own broom to school…"
Harry walked a long way over to the final storage shed by the quidditch pitch, the one that no one ever used due to its distance from the others and the lock on the door that no one could manage to remove.
I guess it's time for this lock to finally go, Harry thought. While his magic may have lacked precision, he had a great deal of confidence in his power. Pointing his wand at the heavy lock on the door, he channeled all of his focus into a single spell.
"Alohomora!"
The lock exploded in on itself, and the door swung open on its hinges. Harry took a step inside, coughing and waving away the smoke that his overpowered spell had created. When the smoke cleared and he took a look inside the shed, he froze. His broom, the Firebolt that his parents had finally gotten him for his 16th birthday that summer (and he now treated like his own child), fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
He didn't even notice.
There, sitting on the floor of the shed completely naked, was his crush of the past six years, Daphne Greengrass.
Harry's mouth went dry as he took in the sight of the girl in front of him. Her skin was a creamy white color, smooth and flawless. Her curves were just as attractive, if not more, than what he had imagined underneath her robes, and that was saying a lot. He was a perfectly healthy teenage boy, after all. Her legs were long and lithe, and her feet…hell, Harry didn't even think he liked feet before, but he was pretty sure he did now.
The girl, who had turned away from the door the moment it had blown in, quickly turned back around to see what had caused the disturbance. As she shifted around from her spot on the floor, her long blonde hair parted just enough for Harry to get an unobstructed view of her back.
Wow, Harry thought. Look at all those gears.
"Wait, what!?" he screamed. "Gears!?"
Daphne's cognitive circuits went into overdrive, trying to calculate a way out of the absolute disaster she had found herself in.
Possible Emotion Detected: Panic
Simulating Physiological Response…
All of the metal inside of Daphne's frame started to move around frantically as she tried to do damage control. She slammed the hatch on her back closed, hiding the machinery inside, and then waved her wand over her synthetic skin, silently casting a spell to hide the seams.
"You're a robot?" the boy standing in the door asked tentatively. Her data repository recognized his face as the boy who had asked her out earlier that same day.
"I am not a robot," she answered smoothly, her facial expressions schooled despite the chaos she could feel within her.
"But, uh, what about the gears?"
"There are no gears." she waved to her back, which at the moment looked like a perfectly normal human back.
"There's still a wind-up key between your shoulder blades."
Printing Thought Sequence: That stupid wind-up key! I always forget to cover it!
With another wave of her wand, the wind-up key disappeared, leaving only smooth skin behind.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, neither moving or speaking.
"Does anyone else know you're a robot?" Harry asked eventually.
Continuing Protocol: Denial
"I am not a robot."
"Okay…" Harry said, with an eyebrow raised. "But you know I already saw your circuitry right?"
Possible Emotion Detected: Embarrassment
Simulating Physiological Response…
Daphne felt her facial structure heat up uncomfortably, though no sign of it was visible from the exterior.
Printing Thought Sequence: Oh my Gears, he saw my circuitry! Sorry Mother, sorry Father, your little Daphne is no longer pure…
She rapidly stood up and put her back to the wall, arms behind her to cover her seams in a subconsciously programmed defense mechanism. "I am not a robot," was all she could come up with in response. Not her finest work, but she was pretty sure the mortification she felt from accidentally exposing her circuitry to the boy was addling her higher processing functions.
Harry cleared his throat and turned away blushing in response to the full force of the girl's nudity in front of him.
"Maybe you should put something on?" he suggested.
"Ah, right," she said indifferently, picking her robes up off the floor and quickly dressing herself.
Harry, ever the gentleman, resisted the urge to peek until she was done.
"So, um, what now?" Harry asked awkwardly, still unsure of how to handle the revelation that his crush was a robot.
"Nothing," she replied. "Everything is as normal, is it not?"
"I guess?" he said, but he didn't have his heart in it. "For the record," he added, "I won't tell anyone that you're a robot."
"I am not a robot."
"Sure, sure, whatever you say," he shrugged.
Harry walked over to one of the racks on the wall of the shed, and placed his broom on it. Turning around to Daphne, who hadn't moved an inch since getting changed, he impulsively spoke a thought that had come unbidden to his mind.
"I just wanted to say," he began, "that knowing your secret doesn't change how I feel about you. I still would've liked to be your boyfriend."
Harry wasn't sure exactly why he felt the need to say that, but he knew Daphne didn't have any friends, and figured it was probably because she was afraid of what they would think if they found out she was a robot. Maybe if she knew his feelings hadn't changed, she'd be more willing to open up to others in the future?
Processing Input: 'knowing your secret doesn't change how I feel about you. I still would've liked to be your boyfriend.'
Possible Emotion Detected: ERROR / EMOTION UNKNOWN
Simulating Physiological Response…
Daphne didn't understand. She had never seen an error message on the window in her optical display before.
She also didn't understand the mysterious emotion she was feeling.
Her gears felt light, her pistons oiled. She felt warm, but not in an unpleasant overheated way, rather in an energized, overclocked way. She felt like she could fly, even though her experimental wing modules were deemed a failure and uninstalled. She felt like she could run 10,000 kilometers without needing to recharge, even though she was only programmed to be able to run 5,000.
Simply put, she felt amazing.
As the boy turned to walk away, she called out to stop him.
"Wait."
Harry looked back at the girl quizzically.
"Say that again."
Harry thought back to what she might be referring to. "I still would've liked to be your boyfriend?"
Possible Emotion Detected: ERROR / EMOTION UNKNOWN
Simulating Physiological Response…
There it was again. That same error message, and that same wonderful feeling from before.
"One more time."
Harry repeated himself once more, and she got the same popup on her display, and the same pleasant warmth rushed through her mechanical body.
Daphne wasn't sure what this all meant, but she knew she wanted to feel that sensation again.
Maybe hanging around Harry would allow her to feel it more often?
Printing Thought Sequence: He already knows my secret, what is the worst that could happen?
"Okay," she said.
"What?" Harry asked, now truly puzzled.
"I will be your girlfriend."