McGonagall tried several times to respond to those accusations, but couldn't come up with anything to refute what he had said, given that it was the truth after all. Peter Pettigrew a fellow Gryffindor had betrayed his parents and not once but several times the members of Gryffindor House had turned against Mr. Potter and shunned or outright attacked him, while she did nothing to prevent it. True in some cases she did it to follow Albus Dumbledore's orders, because he said it would make the boy stronger and a leader who would be needed when the Dark Lord came back. He needed to be strong if the wizarding world was to survive.
Then there was Percy Weasley, whom she never would've suspected of joining the Dark Lord, but he had proved to be a bitter disappointment, both to her and to his family. At his closed trial last month, he had been condemned to death for his numerous crimes. No coercion had been necessary, to get him to list his various crimes, though once he had offered to list his crimes, they had given him veritaserum to make sure they got all of them. He had done it rather than face the prospect of having to deal with Harry Potter in an open courtroom. Now all they had to do was figure out how to kill him, given that there were no longer any Dementors to give him the Kiss, thanks to Potter. The Ministry was currently debating making the Killing Curse a legal form of execution, though McGonagall doubted anything would come of that, given that it had been an Unforgivable curse for longer than she'd been alive.
Finally realizing she wasn't going to get anywhere by trying to appeal to a sense of House loyalty, McGonagall decided to see what kind of bargain it would take to get him to undo the spell. "Mr. Potter, what will it take to get you to remove the spell you placed on Miss Granger? You may not care about your magical education, but she does. And your actions right now are no better than theirs were last year. You have taken away something she values. We may not be able to restore all of what was destroyed, but there is no need for you to sink as low as they did. You are better than that."
"A pity that didn't occur to you last year before you believed me capable of murdering one of my friends. Or before you allowed your House to set fire to my things." The expression on Harry's face was one of contempt, but then he looked thoughtful.
After a few moments silence, he told her, "All right I'll remove it… but only if she meets my conditions."
Instantly suspicious, McGonagall asked, "What conditions?"
"Oh, don't worry, it won't be anything dangerous." Harry laughed. "She simply has to get up in front of the whole school at dinnertime on Friday and swear the magically binding oath I will give you and she will have to swear it on her magic… Oh and she can't alter the oath in any way."
"Why not tomorrow at breakfast or even right now, in front of me?" McGonagall demanded. "Why make her suffer for a whole week?"
Harry's face took on an ugly expression. "Don't talk to me about suffering. She won't be suffering. Granger doesn't know the first thing about suffering and neither do you . Suffering is spending a year in Azkaban with the Dementors when you are innocent. Suffering is spending the first ten years of your life sleeping in a cupboard and being beaten or starved for things your cousin did or for working accidental magic. Suffering is watching your godfather fall through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries and knowing it was at least partly your fault he was there."
Harry stormed off up the stairs, before McGonagall come up with anything to say.
...
The rumour mill at Hogwarts being one of the best in the wizarding world, before Friday, every student knew that Harry Potter had cursed his former best friend Hermione Granger so that she could longer see the words on a printed page and why. Nor, as they also found out, could she read handwritten notes, hers or anyone else's. The rumour mill also reported that not even Dumbledore could figure out what spell Potter had used and all possible counter curses had been tried to no avail.
The Ravenclaws and Slytherins had enjoyed watching Granger get twitchier and twitchier as the week progressed because she wasn't able to read. Granger attended classes, but they couldn't understand why she was doing so. It wasn't like she would be able to get anything out of the classes, until she was able to read again. The teachers had tried to find readers among the Ravenclaws for her, so she wouldn't fall too far behind, as well as someone to proofread the homework she had done with a dictaquill, but they always found valid excuses not to do it.
None of the Slytherin or Ravenclaw students were really very fond of her. The Slytherins disliked her because she was constantly beating their scores. And the Ravenclaws because of the arrogance with which she paraded her knowledge and her certainty that all the answers in life could be found in books. They knew this was not the case. The Ravenclaws knew that there were always new things to be learned and that old information sometimes had to be revised or eliminated when some new fact came along to contradict it. It was why they rarely if ever put themselves in a position of power in the Ministry or anywhere else. They disliked looking foolish like Minister Fudge was looking right now after his blunders with Potter and his own aide.
The Ravenclaw and Slytherin students had also enjoyed watching the show put on by the other Gryffindors and Potter as they made repeated attempts to get him to undo the curse he'd placed on Granger. It had been interesting watching him cut them off with a few well-chosen words. Ron Weasley, Granger's boyfriend, had been especially persistent and for two days had sported skin of deep green and hair of silver as well as a tendency to spout complimentary things about Slytherins whenever one happened to be nearby. The Slytherins were quick to pick up on this and had hung around Weasley to make this happen.
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