The days following what came to be known as "The Kiss in the Owlery" were a period of quiet, joyful discovery for Ariana and Hermione. Their friendship, already the bedrock of their lives, deepened into something new and profound. They held hands under the tables in the library, shared secret, smiling glances across the Great Hall, and spent hours in the Room of Requirement, their research now interspersed with long, comfortable silences and the simple, profound pleasure of being together.
It was perfect. It was logical. And it was, Ariana knew, incomplete. There was one final, significant variable that had not yet been accounted for: Daphne Greengrass.
Daphne had been a true and loyal ally. She had stood with them, fought with them, and had become an indispensable part of their inner circle. But since the kiss, a subtle, unspoken tension had entered their trio. Daphne was as poised and supportive as ever, but there was a new, carefully guarded sadness in her eyes whenever she looked at them, a quiet flicker of longing that she tried, with all her Slytherin composure, to hide.
Hermione, consumed by her own newfound happiness, was at first oblivious. But Ariana, whose senses were now attuned to the slightest emotional dissonances, saw it clearly. She knew that for their alliance to move forward into the new, peaceful world they had created, this final emotional equation had to be solved. Hermione too noticed it later, the fact that this was something she herself was intimately familiar with was what clued her on.
It was Hermione, in the end, who brought it to a head. She had planned a celebratory picnic by the lake for the three of them, a final quiet afternoon before they all left Hogwarts for the summer. As they sat on a blanket under a large beech tree, the mood, for the first time, felt strained.
"Alright," Hermione finally said, putting down her sandwich and looking directly at Daphne. Her voice was not accusatory, but firm and full of a difficult, necessary honesty. "This isn't working."
Daphne's elegant facade faltered. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do," Hermione said gently. "You've been quiet all week. You look at us, at Ari and me, and you look… sad. And I can't stand it. I can't be fully happy if one of my best friends is miserable." She took a deep breath. "Ariana and I… we're together now. In a relationship."
She said the words plainly, laying the truth out between them.
Daphne's composure finally cracked. A single, perfect tear welled in her eye and traced a path down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away. "I know," she whispered. "I'm happy for you. Truly."
"I believe that you are," Hermione said. "But I also believe that's not the whole truth." She looked at her friend, her rival, the girl who had become an unexpected and vital part of her life. She saw the pain Daphne was trying so hard to conceal. "I need you to be honest, Daphne. With me, and with yourself."
"Honest about what?" Daphne asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"About your own feelings," Hermione said, her gaze unwavering. "About her." She nodded towards Ariana, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, observing, allowing her two friends to navigate this complex emotional territory on their own.
Daphne was silent for a long moment, her internal battle written plainly on her face. Her pureblood upbringing, her Slytherin pride, everything had taught her to conceal her vulnerabilities, to never show a weakness.
"I can't move forward, Daphne," Hermione said, her voice softening into a plea. "I can't build a future with her if there is this… this ghost between us. This unspoken thing. It's not fair to you, it's not fair to me, and it's certainly not fair to her. So please. Unless you say it, unless you put the truth out in the open where we can all look at it, none of us can ever truly be happy."
It was an ultimatum born not of jealousy, but of a profound, radical honesty. She was demanding that they deal with this, together, as the allies they had become.
Daphne looked at Hermione's strong, determined face. She looked at Ariana's calm, patient, and deeply understanding eyes. And in the safety of their unbreakable circle, she finally allowed her walls to come down.
"Alright," she breathed, the word a quiet surrender. She took a shaky breath and turned her gaze to
Ariana. "From the moment you saved me from Lockhart," she began, her voice trembling but clear, "I have respected you. When you gave my sister hope, I began to admire you. And when we worked together, when I saw the true scope of your mind and the quiet strength of your character… that admiration turned into something else."
She looked down at her hands. "I… I have feelings for you, Ariana. Feelings that go beyond friendship or alliance. I know it is impossible. I know your heart belongs to Hermione. And I would never, ever try to come between that. You are the most important thing that has ever happened to me." A fresh wave of tears streamed down her face. "But Hermione is right. It is the truth. And it is a truth I have been trying to hide. And I am sorry."
The confession hung in the quiet air, raw, painful, and incredibly brave.
Ariana listened to her, her expression one of deep, profound empathy. She looked at Daphne's pain, at Hermione's compassionate resolve. Her mind, the great, logical engine, processed this final, complex emotional variable. She saw a path forward, not of exclusion, but of a new, revolutionary kind of inclusion. The world was changing. They had changed it. Perhaps the old rules of love and relationships no longer had to apply to them.
She reached out, taking one of Daphne's hands and one of Hermione's, linking the three of them together.
"You are both my best friends," she said, her voice full of a quiet, unshakable certainty. "Hermione is the heart of my logic. Daphne is the logic of my ambition. I would be incomplete without either of you."
She looked from one to the other, a new, audacious, and deeply logical plan forming in her mind. "The traditional, binary structure of romantic relationships is, from a purely functional standpoint, often inefficient and emotionally restrictive."
Hermione and Daphne stared at her, their tears forgotten, their minds trying to keep up.
"A stable, multi-polar emotional and intellectual alliance, however," Ariana continued, a faint, thoughtful smile on her lips, "based on mutual trust, shared goals, and profound affection… is a far more logical and resilient structure."
She looked at them, at the brilliant witch who held her heart and the brave, loyal witch who mirrored her will. She was not presenting a problem. She was proposing a solution. A new, unheard-of equation for the three of them.
"Perhaps," she said softly, "our future does not have to be a choice between two variables. Perhaps it can be… a synthesis."
The suggestion hung in the air, radical and full of a breathtaking, hopeful possibility. The war was over. The world was theirs to remake. And they would do it, as they had done everything else: together.