2nd September 1995, the Great Hall, evening
By dinner, the whole castle knew.
Word of Harry's stand against Umbridge — the points lost, the week of detentions, the boy who'd called the Minister's own appointee a liar to her pink face — had run through the four houses by suppertime with the particular speed of a thing half the school wanted to be scandalised by. And so the snide remarks came thick, from every table that fancied itself loyal to the Prophet's version of the world.
Theodore Nott led the chorus, of course, his voice pitched just loud enough to carry from the Slytherin table. "Poor Potter. Telling tales again. You'd think a year of being laughed at would teach a boy to keep his deranged little fantasies to himself."
And it was there that something happened which Harry had never seen before in four years at Hogwarts.
Draco answered him. Loudly.
"Better a deranged fantasy than a polished lie, Nott," Draco said, half-rising, and his voice carried just as far as Theodore's had. "But then your family's always preferred the lie. More comfortable. Less blood on it — until there is."
A ripple went through the Slytherin table. Heads turned.
Because — and Harry knew this, the way anyone who'd spent four years in this castle and kept their ears open knew it — the Slytherins had an unwritten law, older than any of them, carved into the dungeon walls themselves: the snakes do not fight where the rest of the school can watch. Whatever rivalries ran through that House — and they ran deep, deeper than the other three houses ever guessed — were settled below, in the green dark, in low voices, behind a united face. Every time Draco or the Greengrass sisters had crossed Theodore before, it had been done quietly, a murmured cut, a cold word, the volume always kept down.
Not tonight.
"You want to talk about blood, Malfoy—" Theodore was on his feet now too, and his cronies with him, and a cluster of younger Slytherins behind them.
"I'd watch your mouth, Theodore." Daphne Greengrass had risen as well, and her usual disciplined elegance had gone cold and sharp as a drawn blade, her voice ringing clear down the table. "You're a prefect now. People are listening. Best they hear what you actually are while you're stupid enough to say it out loud."
The dungeon's oldest rule was breaking in the open, in front of the whole Great Hall, and the Slytherin table had split visibly into two glaring halves — and the noise was climbing fast —
A door opened.
Severus Snape swept in, and the temperature of the entire confrontation dropped twenty degrees in an instant. His black eyes took in the standing students, the divided table, the watching Hall, in one cold sweep.
At the same moment Harry's hand closed on Draco's sleeve, and Neville moved to Daphne's side — "Don't," Harry said, low and quick. "Not here. You've made your point. Sit."
Draco's jaw worked. But he sat. Daphne, with one last frozen look down the table, did the same.
Snape reached them. "All of you," he said, very softly, and the softness was worse than any shout — his gaze raking the whole knot of standing Slytherins, Theodore's faction and Draco's alike. "My office. Now. We are going to have a few private words about the conduct expected of this House in public."
The Slytherins filed out after him in a cowed line. But Draco caught Harry's eye as he passed, and gave the smallest nod — it's fine, don't worry — and Daphne did the same for Neville, and the two of them went, heads high, into whatever Snape had waiting.
Hermione and Ron returned from their prefect rounds just as the Slytherins cleared the Hall, and Harry filled them in.
"Out loud?" Ron said, gobsmacked. "Malfoy and Daphne, having a proper go at Nott, in front of everyone? But they never—" He shook his head, and then his face firmed into something fierce and admiring. "Good. Good. About time someone shoved it right back in that smug git's face where people could see."
"It cost them, though," Hermione said quietly, watching the door Snape had taken them through. "It'll be detention at least. Maybe worse." But there was pride in it too. "They knew that, and they did it anyway. For Harry."
It was then that Viktor Krum came up the Hall toward them — out of his teaching robes now, looking pleasantly worn from a full first day — and Hermione's whole face changed, and the two of them simply moved into one another, an embrace with a summer of letters behind it.
Harry and Neville smiled. Ron made a loud and elaborate retching noise.
"Hermi-ni-ni," Viktor murmured into her hair — and Ron's retching redoubled, because he knew perfectly well it was the pet name and that knowing it was the whole point —
Hermione rounded on him, fist rising, only her Bulgarian's arm round her waist keeping the punch from launching — and so she went, instead, for the killing blow: "Won-Won." A pause, sweet as poison. "Isn't that what Lavender calls you?"
Ron's ears went nuclear. The table howled.
When the laughter settled, Ron — recovering his dignity by changing the subject — asked how the teaching was going.
Viktor's serious face warmed. "Is good. I am vith Professor Flitvick — Charms. He lets me teach a little piece of the lesson, sometimes. Only a little." A rueful shrug. "I have very much still to learn. But it is good vork."
"Why teaching, though?" Harry asked — genuinely curious. "You could've gone professional for another ten years, easy. Coaching after. The whole world wanted you for Quidditch."
Hermione's eyes went soft and watchful.
Viktor considered it. "Qvidditch I love," he said at last. "Is a passion. Is vhy I play — not the fame, not the gold; those are only the — " he hunted the word " — the icing. And I have had my fill of it; it gave me much. But it vas never all of me." His dark gaze drifted to Hermione, and something in it softened entirely. "I found I love also the books. The knowing of things. Those days, last year — in your library, vith her—" the smallest smile "—she voke something in me I did not know vas sleeping. And now I think — I vould like to pass that on. To leave behind not only goals scored, but — students who know things. A legacy that lasts longer than a season."
Hermione planted a kiss square on his cheek.
"Get a ROOM," Ron groaned, to general laughter.
...
Harry and Ron walked back toward Gryffindor Tower a while later, leaving the couple to their evening stroll — and Neville to be towed off by Hannah Abbott on some errand of his own, which Ron noted with a waggle of his eyebrows and Harry filed away with quiet interest.
"She's a spy, you know," Ron said, as they climbed. "Umbridge. Stands to reason. Fudge can't shut Dumbledore up, can't shut you up, so he plants his own woman right in the middle of the school to watch the lot of us and report back. That's all that class is — eyes." He scowled. "Bet she writes him a little report every night."
"Probably," Harry agreed. He'd thought the same. And Dad'll want a report of his own, he didn't add.
Back in the common room, as the rest of the house drifted in from dinner, Harry caught sight of Fred and George in a quiet corner — and, more to the point, the cluster of nervously delighted first-years around them, one of whom was experimentally turning a worrying shade of green.
"Fred."
The twins looked up, unrepentant.
"Before you start," George said, "it's all above board."
"It is not all above board, that kid's gone green—"
"Temporary. Fully reversible. We checked." Fred ticked it off on his fingers with surprising seriousness. "Rule one: we test everything on ourselves first. Loads of times. We've both been every colour there is and worse. Rule two: anything that doesn't sort itself in a minute goes to Atid Stella for a proper safety check before it comes near a student. Rule three—" he gestured at the green first-year, who burped a small soap-bubble and grinned "—the kid's a final check, low dose, with us watching, after it's already passed everything else. We don't put out anything that isn't safe, Harry. We're not Lockhart. We actually care if it works."
"Verrona drilled it into us," George added, with something close to reverence. "Whole protocol. Said an inventor who hurts his own customers hasn't got a business, he's got a liability."
Harry looked at the green, beaming first-year, and at the twins' genuine earnestness, and found himself smiling despite himself. 'Hermione'd actually approve,' he thought. 'Don't tell them that, though. They'd never recover.'
...
The next morning, the fifth-years' world narrowed to a single set of three letters.
O.W.L.s.
Every teacher, in every lesson, delivered the same grave sermon — this is the most important year of your education to date — and then buried them in homework to prove it. Harry took it in stride; a summer of Ethan's training had given him a tolerance for being worked past his limit that ordinary coursework couldn't touch. The others bore up too — except Ron, who came out of the third lecture of the morning looking like a man who'd glimpsed his own grave.
"O.W.L.s," he moaned, "and Angelina's only gone and set the Keeper tryouts for Friday — wants the whole team there to watch — and this lot want a foot of parchment on the principles of Switching Spells by Monday. I'm going to die. I'm going to die in a library, and they'll find me under a pile of Transfiguration homework, and that'll be that."
"There, there," said Harry, entirely without sympathy.
...
Hagrid was still gone.
His absence sat over the Care of Magical Creatures lesson like a cloud, Professor Grubbly-Plank brisk and competent and entirely not-Hagrid at the head of the paddock. Before it began, Hermione drew Draco and Daphne aside.
"Snape — last night. Was it bad? Did you get—"
"Detention," Draco said. "Obviously." He didn't elaborate, and neither did Daphne; the two of them only exchanged a brief unreadable Slytherin look and said they were fine, and that breaking the dungeon's oldest rule in front of the whole Hall was always going to cost something, and it had been worth the price. Hermione let it lie.
The lesson itself nearly came apart over Theodore Nott's mouth.
"Of course Hagrid's not here," he drawled, loud enough, examining a Bowtruckle with distaste. "My father says it's only a matter of time before that great oaf's sacked outright — half-breed, dangerous creatures, no qualifications... even if he crawls back from wherever he's slunk off to. Honestly, it's a wonder they ever let a thing like that near children—"
Ron went rigid, his face flooding red, his hand twitching toward his wand —
"Don't," Hermione hissed, grabbing his arm — and then, to Theodore, sweetly and at volume: "Funny you should mention qualifications, Nott, given you've spent two lessons failing to identify a Bowtruckle that's been sitting on your sleeve for ten minutes. Perhaps leave the judgements about competence to people who have some."
Theodore looked down. The Bowtruckle waved.
"That will do," said Professor Grubbly-Plank crisply, from the front. "From both of you. Five points each, and another word and it's detention. This is a classroom."
They subsided, glaring.
After the lesson, as they trooped back up toward the castle, Harry surveyed the morning with a thoughtful air.
"You know," he observed, "I've been counting. And I'm fairly sure Nott's run his mouth more in two days this term than he managed in the whole of the last four years put together. It's almost impressive. Like he's been saving up."
Ron clapped a hand to his chest and staggered. "Saving up. He's been — all this time — rationing it — and now the dam's burst — Merlin help us, there's four years of git backed up behind that face—"
It got the laugh it was angling for, even from Draco and Daphne, and they came up the hill grinning.
And then they came through the castle doors, and Harry saw Luna.
She'd just come out of a classroom further along the corridor, evidently between lessons, her bag over one shoulder and her hair catching the torchlight — and Harry's whole face lit, and he started forward to meet her —
— and stopped dead.
Hermione, half a step behind, nearly walked into him. "Harry, what—"
His smile had gone. His eyes had gone cold — that flat, sharp, dangerous cold Hermione had only seen him turn on actual enemies — and they were fixed on a point just past Luna.
Hermione followed the line of it.
Rolf Scamander was walking beside Luna. Close beside her — heads bent together, deep in some delighted exchange — and as Hermione watched, the sandy-haired boy laughed, said something that made Luna's eyes go wide and pleased, and clapped her companionably on the shoulder before peeling off down a side corridor with a knot of other Ravenclaw boys.
Hermione looked from the departing Rolf, to Harry's frankly murderous stare, to Rolf again.
And clapped a hand over her mouth.
Draco arrived a beat later, took in the tableau — cold-eyed Harry, oblivious Luna, Rolf vanishing round the corner — and his own dawning comprehension met Hermione's eyes in a glance of perfect, gleeful understanding.
Ron, bringing up the rear, squinted after Rolf. "...Isn't that the exchange kid? The Scamander one?" He looked at Harry's face, then back at the empty corridor, entirely baffled. "What's he done?"
Hermione and Draco gave him a pair of identical pitying eye-rolls.
Then Luna turned, saw Harry, and her whole face brightened — "Hah-ree!" — and she came toward him, and in the space of a single step Harry's expression melted back into its usual warmth, the cold gone as though it had never been, his smile gentle and his eyes soft on her in the way they always went.
"Hey," he said. "Good day?"
"Mm." She tilted her head, considering. "Did you know there's the most interesting boy in my Charms class? Rolf, from Ilvermorny — he's read his grandfather's entire field journal, every page, and he knows things about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks that even Daddy doesn't—"
"Scamander," said Hermione, the surname clicking. "That's... Luna, is he related to—"
"Newt Scamander," Draco supplied, brightening. "The Scamander. Fantastic Beasts. He has to be—"
"His grandson," Luna confirmed serenely. "Isn't that lovely? Magizoology runs right through the family. He's promised to show me the journal."
"Brilliant," breathed Ron, properly awed at last — the grandson of the Newt Scamander, here, in their year.
And while the four of them fell happily to talking about Rolf and his famous grandfather and the wonders of the field journal, Harry held his smile in place by main force, and said nothing at all, and was very glad indeed that Luna was too busy enthusing to notice the slight, telling stiffness in it.
When she'd waved her goodbyes and drifted off to her next lesson, Hermione fell into step beside Harry, far too innocent.
"You went a bit odd back there, Harry," she observed sweetly. "For a moment. When Luna was with Rolf. I don't suppose you'd know why that was?"
"No idea what you mean," Harry said, with tremendous dignity. "I'm just glad she's made a friend. People don't always — they don't always see Luna properly. Half of them avoid her. It's good she's got someone who likes the same things." It was even true, every word of it.
It was also, he knew perfectly well in the bottom of his chest, not the whole truth — the whole truth being something with the word jealous in it, and possibly the word possessive, and he had absolutely no intention of looking either of those words in the eye this afternoon, thank you.
So he denied it, even to himself, and lengthened his stride to walk on ahead — and behind him, Hermione and Draco gave up the fight and dissolved into snickering, while Ron looked between the three of them, more lost than ever, and finally just scratched his head and gave it up as one of those things he'd understand later.