Wednesday, January 14
"I'm sooo bored," Harry whined, thunking his head dramatically on the lunch table. "What's the point in even finishing school?"
"Obtaining your NEWTS," Hermione said haughtily.
"Quidditch," said Trent.
"Being with me," Susan flicked Harry in the head irritatingly.
"Not much, honestly," Luna hummed.
Harry blindly reached down the table until he was sure he was near Luna and reached out to pat her arm.
"That's the spirit," he said.
"You are groping my chest."
Harry sat up quickly and turned a wide eyed look at Draco, who had a single blonde brow raised at where Harry's hand had actually been on his chest.
"Jesus Christ," Harry yelped, pulling his hand away quickly as heat climbed up his neck. "Fuck. Sorry, Dray. I thought you were Luna."
"Am I meant to be less offended that you were intending on groping Luna's chest?" Draco scowled while the others roared with laughter.
"No! Fuck! No!" Harry said quickly. "I was trying to squeeze her arm, like 'thanks for backing me up, Lue'. Jesus."
"If I could make a suggestion," Blaise said with a lazy grin, "perhaps look before you go squeezing at a young lady such as Miss Lovegood?"
"Shut up," Harry grit out as everyone else laughed again. "Lue, I wasn't trying to grope you."
"I know," Luna said with a grin and an airy flip of her hand. "You meant to grope Draco, obviously."
Harry thunked his head on the table again, rattling the dishes near him. This time though, he tucked his hands beneath his legs.
No need to add fuel to the never ending Hogwarts rumor mill.
There had been a new rumor circulating around the castle, no doubt started by Ginny fucking Weasley, that Harry was 'polyamorous'. Harry had no idea what it meant when one of the fifth year Slytherins nervously came up to him and told him about the rumor. Then Theo explained it and Harry misunderstood and wound up having a bit of a spat with Fred over it.
Harry had thrown himself in the dorm, temporarily locking the other boys out and snapped Fred's name angrily in the mirror.
"You look like you're in a delightful mood," Fred grinned at Harry's fuming expression. "What's up, darlin?"
Harry spoke slowly and clearly, despite his annoyance, "I do not fucking consent to us having multiple other sexual partners."
Fred pulled the mirror a little away from himself as he blinked at Harry in surprise. "Yeaaaah," he said slowly, "me either."
"Theo said that people are saying we have 'multiple sexual partners' and I'm telling you right now, no," Harry scowled. "I don't care how fuckin lonely you might get. You can bloody well wait for me, can't you?"
"Harry, light of my life, my one and only, my happily ever after, can I call you back?"
"Why?" Harry asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.
"Wellll..." Fred tilted the mirror around and Harry blanched and had to quickly pull up his 'I am Draco Malfoy, and emotions are for peasants' mask as George, Bill, and Charlie all waved a bit awkwardly at him.
"Hiya, Harrikins," George yelled. "Good on you. I too enjoy starting my conversations off with stating my monogamous lifestyle."
And, since Harry had no fucking idea what that meant, he ignored him.
"Call me back when you have time," Harry hissed at Fred when his face came back in view. "Jesus."
They cleared it up that night.
Apparently, when Theo said that people saying Harry was polyamorous, he meant that the other students thought Harry was 'involved' with multiple partners. Not that Fred was.
Harry apologized to Fred, but Fred thought it was a laugh and told Harry that he should start all his calls off like that because his brothers thought it was hilarious.
It was no wonder Harry kept cocking it up with Fred's family. Sometimes, just sometimes, he thought that Snape's sarcastic advice of 'thinking before he speaks' held some merit after all.
Either way, Harry groping Draco's chest certainly wasn't going to convince anyone that he wasn't having sex with all of his friends.
"Am I a knife wielding maniac with a grudge against the Gryffindor's or a shameless slag shagging all of you?" Harry asked, turning his head and eyeing his friends thoughtfully. "It would be a bit weird, any of you wanting to shag me if I'm such a psycho, wouldn't it?"
"Not really," Susan shrugged. "People are attracted to psycho's all the time. In fact, I think you'd be much more attractive if you were going around stabbing the Gryffindor quidditch team."
"Not all of the Gryffindor quidditch team," Trent said hastily with a quick red-cheeked look over his shoulder and a little wave to Sapphire.
"If you are stabbing Gryffindor's, I would pay you to take Sapphire out next," Daphne said sweetly.
Harry sat up and gave Daphne an incredulous look, as did Trent. "Why?" Harry asked. He glanced over at the Gryffindors and watched as Sapphire laughed at something one of her classmates said and tossed her brunette hair over her shoulder. "Sapphire's a bit weird, but she's alright, really."
"She's a good keeper, it would make beating Gryffindor easier," Ron said quickly. He shared a little secret grin with Daphne that made Harry doubt the truth in his reasoning though. "And, no offense, Susan, but I'd be less likely to join Harry's weird little harem if he was the one stabbing people. That's barmy."
"'Less likely'?" Theo asked, smirking at Ron. "So there's a chance now?"
Daphne laughed at Ron's sudden look of horror as he glanced at Harry. Harry raised his brows, silently daring Ron to insult him, and Ron shook his head with a chuckle.
"Fred would kill me," he said with a grin. "Sorry, Harry, I guess we'll never know how great we would be."
Harry laughed, appeased by Ron's surprisingly tactful answer. "Shame," he drawled. "I suppose I'll leave you to Daphne."
This time it was Daphne's turn to blush as everyone laughed. Then Blaise leaned forward and smirked at Harry from his spot by Neville (who, apparently, he was not dating. Harry had no idea why they would say they were, but Draco called Harry an idiot and said Neville was 'as straight as a stick'. Which actually made Draco the idiot since most sticks weren't actually all that straight).
"Harry, darling, if you were going to start shagging us, who would you start with?" Blaise asked with a challenging glint in his gold eyes.
Harry would have ignored him, or hexed him, but everyone else turned to look at Harry and he knew Blaise expected him to not respond- so obviously he had to.
Harry ignored Theo and Draco, since they were actually related and that would be disgusting. He also ignored Trent, who was just a kid, which was also disgusting.
Hermione was too bossy. Too much of a know-it-all. Harry thought sex with her might be a bit like following an instruction manual and he wasn't interested at all in even hypothetically finding out if it was true.
Daphne was gorgeous, honestly one of the best looking witches in the castle. Long blonde hair, smooth pale skin, blue eyes with a spark in them that was interesting. Harry didn't know much about her though, which made him uneasy.
Lue was gorgeous too. Probably one of the prettiest witches ever, full stop. She was sweet, compassionate, and brilliant. If it weren't for Fred and Draco, Harry probably would have fallen for Luna, honestly. He'd never meet a better person than Luna Lovegood. But Blaise didn't ask who Harry would date, and just shagging people was quite a bit different. Plus, Harry couldn't imagine ever being with Luna in any way where he could accidentally hurt her. So she was off the list.
Ron wasn't bad looking, even looked like Fred a bit. But Ron had once cracked Harry's rib and split his lip open, and, unlike Susan, Harry didn't think a 'rough shag' sounded all that great.
Harry's eyes flicked between Neville, Blaise, and Susan for a moment while everyone snickered and watched him assess them all. Neville had gotten rather handsome recently, he'd gotten quite a bit taller this year and carried himself with more confidence in a way that was attractive. He was also thoughtful, polite, and had a nice smile.
Blaise was probably the most attractive bloke in the school though. His sharp cheekbones and equally sharp eyes were appealing, in a way. Harry had also beaten him easily in a hand-to-hand fight, so he doubted if Blaise could accidentally crush him during sex. Blaise was very cunning though, which was a good quality to have in a friend and ally, but not in almost any other relationship.
And Susan... Susan with her magical golden arm that could crush Harry's bones to dust... Susan was tall and curvy in the way that Harry knew that guys appreciated. And she had nice hair, shiny red curls, but... but she looked a bit like his mum Lily Potter, which was a weird thing to think and made up Harry's mind instantly.
"Neville," he told Blaise confidently. "I'm not going to, and you can tell your little gossip buddies in the other houses that, but if I did, I suppose I'd start with Neville."
"How rude," Susan sniffed while Neville winked at Harry and everyone else laughed loudly enough to bring quite a few sets of eyes towards their seats in the Great Hall. "I happen to be a great shag, Harry Potter."
Harry scoffed and sneered at the Ravenclaw's who were watching them and whispering to one another. "If I ever become 'polyamorous', I'll keep that in mind," he said sarcastically.
"I don't know if I'm offended, or relieved," Daphne said thoughtfully. "Relieved, I suppose."
"Personally, I'm insulted," said Blaise. "I suppose your crush on my mother must have kept you from seeing that obviously I am the most shaggable person in our gang."
"I do not have a crush on your mother," Harry lied in a harsh whisper. "Shut the fuck up, Zabini."
He did.
The Contessa was brilliant.
Beautiful. Deadly. Smart. Powerful. Important.
Free to live her life however she wanted, not giving a damn if it made her friends or foes along the way.
She was everything Harry ever wanted to be.
It was actually a bit embarrassing how much Harry adored her.
Thankfully, the bell rang before Blaise could quip back with anything else embarrassing.
"Where are you off to?" Theo asked curiously as Harry sighed and tossed his bag over his shoulder.
"Library," Harry said morosely. "I've got that essay for Slughorn due Monday, don't I?"
"The essay on the dangers of Polyjuice and animal hair?" Hermione asked. "Harry, that was due today."
"Right," Harry nodded, "but I didn't do it. And I told Slughorn that. So he said I could turn it in Monday."
"Slughorn would let you kill Macmillan in the middle of class and pretend he never noticed," Draco sighed and shook his head at Harry with mock-disapproval. "Teachers pet."
"Jealous prat," Harry told him with a grin. "Have fun in class, I'll see you guys at dinner."
Harry waved at everyone else as he made his way to the library with a lazy strut. He'd honestly rather go... well... anywhere, really, than go sit in the library and try to focus on writing an essay, but he couldn't just turn in a blank parchment and a roguish smile.
... could he?
No.
No. Probably not.
It was this overall apathy and lack of an interest towards his task that led Harry to noticing the other students still in the corridors more than usual. He waved to a few Slytherin boys who called his name and waved, he stopped to chat with a younger Hufflepuff girl who asked him about quidditch, and nearly made it to the library when he was stopped by a set of twins.
They were entirely identical, with their long straight black hair and their almond shaped eyes. One of them had a pair of dangly silver earrings and a Gryffindor tie on and the other wore a woolly hand-knit scar and a Ravenclaw tie though.
Harry thought they might be in his year, he recognized them vaguely, but he wasn't sure.
"Hi, Harry," the girl with the Gryffindor tie said with a bright smile.
"Hello," Harry said. He leaned on the wall next to the library doorway and gave them a curious look. "What's up?"
"We wanted to ask you for a favor," the Ravenclaw twin said, dropping her voice to a hushed whisper. "Would you mind putting up a privacy shield?"
Harry quirked a brow and smirked as he twitched his pinky the slightest bit and placed a bubble around them. He kind of doubted they wanted to fight him. If they did, then they were idiots because not only would Harry kill them, but they'd chosen a place full of witnesses.
"We have a problem, and we were hoping we could talk to you about it," the Gryffindor girl said. "Blaise and Susan said you're trustworthy."
"Did they?" Harry hummed. Harry's eyes flicked over the girl's tie and he gave her a skeptical look. "And what do your housemates say?"
"They say you're an arse," she said with a brazen look in her eyes and a factual lilt to her tone. "You're terrifying, you're a killer, you're going to take over the world one day and nobody will be safe."
Harry shrugged modestly. He would have been flattered, honestly, until the other girl chimed in.
"I heard you and your friends have orgies in the Slytherin dorms."
Whoever said 'no publicity is bad publicity' was a moron that Harry would be happy to have a talk with someday.
"We don't," Harry said coolly, his hand clenching with irritation. "What favor do you want?" he sneered at her.
The girls exchanged a long look, doing that weird twin thing that made Harry wonder if muggle twins could read each other's minds like magical ones seemed able to or not.
"Our parents want us to leave Hogwarts," the Ravenclaw girl said in a brisk tone. "We don't want to."
"Why?"
"Because they think Dumbledore isn't enough to protect the school," the Gryffindor girl said.
"No." Harry rolled his eyes. He knew why parents were yanking their kids out of Hogwarts left and right. Snape said the school had lost a quarter of the students so far, and the numbers increased with every death eater attack. "I meant, why don't you want to quit?"
"We like it here," the Ravenclaw girl said incredulously, as if it were ridiculous to consider otherwise. "We want to finish our education and stay here with our peers. We don't want to leave."
"How old are you?" Harry asked them.
"Sixteen," she said. "So you see our problem."
"I mean, yeah, but it definitely seems like a you problem," Harry shrugged. "I'm not sure how I could help, I'm not sure why I would bother. I don't even know who you are."
The Gryffindor girls jaw dropped and she looked suddenly offended. "Parvati Patil," she said slowly. "We're in your year. We've shared classes together for years."
That's right. Harry remembered Sirius mentioning a set of twins in his year on Halloween. He knew the two of them looked a bit familiar.
"Padma," the other one said, her hand stuck out to Harry. Harry glanced at it then gave her a cool look. She dropped her hand without a fuss once it was obvious Harry wasn't going to shake it. "And we need a letter of support to file for emancipation with the Ministry. We wanted to ask you to write us one. We already have one from Lavender Brown's father, agreeing to let us stay with their family. And we have one from Madame Malkin and Mister Fortescue, saying we can work for them this summer this summer to save money. But one from Harry Potter would rather seal the deal, don't you think?"
Harry laughed lightly, a smirk playing around his lips. "Why would I do that? We aren't friends. I doubt if you have anything I want."
Parvati's lip trembled a little, but Padma narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.
"Dumbledore wouldn't do it either," she said. "He thinks we should listen to our parents. Is that what you think as well?"
Harry probably would have done it just to prove that he had nothing in common, Padma's goal in saying that he was sure, but he wouldn't do it for free. And if he didn't even remember their names after six years of shared classes, he doubted if they were people he wanted to owe him a favor.
"Seems like you're in a bit of a bind," Harry said carelessly. "I'd talk to Flitwick or Black, if I were you."
"But... but you're Harry Potter!" Parvati cried. "If you wrote us a letter then it would definitely be granted! Please, Harry? Please?"
Padma must have sensed Harry's answer, because she quickly opened her mouth before he could say anything. "I'm not in your potions class, but I am your others," she said. "I'll write your essays for the rest of the year."
"Done. D'you have a letter I can just sign or do I have to write it?" Harry asked eagerly.
Padma beamed and pulled a scroll from her bag. "I have it here," she said. She handed it to Harry, "You can read it over, I swear to you it's just a standard letter saying we're model students; responsible, sensible, mature enough to handle an emancipation."
"Vow it," Harry murmured, his eyes flicking over the letter quickly. When Padma didn't reply, Harry lifted his eyes and raised his brows. "I didn't stutter," he said softly, adding a bit of a threat to his tone now. "Vow that it's just a standard letter and you want my signature for no other reason than to become legally emancipated."
"You're joking?" Parvati said. "You want an Unbreakable Vow for a letter of recommendation?"
"From two witches I don't know in the middle of a fuckin war? You bet I do," Harry told them. "C'mon, I don't have all day."
He did, actually. He had no afternoon classes, and none of his friends were available at the moment. Harry had nothing but time, but not to waste it arguing with a couple girls he barely knew who wanted a favor from him.
"We'll do it." Padma stuck her chin out and raised her wand, Parvati followed her lead after a moment of hesitation.
Harry waited until they made their vow to give them a bright smile. "Brill, give me a quill."
By the time Harry finished signing the letter, that truthfully did seem pretty normal, both girls were smiling identical pretty smiles.
"You're a lifesaver," Parvati said. "I knew you couldn't be as bad as everyone says."
"I might be worse," Harry said solemnly with a wink that made Parvati giggle and Padma sigh quietly. "Ta, ladies." Harry dispelled his bubble and resumed his path to the library. He'd barely made it inside the doors, smiling politely to Madame Pince, when someone whispered his name and he turned around.
Padma quickly walked back up to Harry and gave him a nervous sort of smile. "I didn't join your defense club last year because, truthfully, you scare me. But I didn't join the Gryffindor club either." She stuck her hand out to Harry again and looked him right in the eye, "If I had another chance, I would join your club and your side. Hermione was right, you're a smart guy."
Harry hid his surprise at her declaration behind a bored mask and accepted her handshake this time. "Ta," he said. He dropped it quickly and gave her a crooked smile, "Did Hermione really say I'm smart?"
"Hermione thinks quite highly of you," Padma said. She smiled widely, showing off a perfect set of even white teeth. "I can see why," she winked.
Harry had a bemused expression as Padma abruptly ran off.
It wasn't that weird that someone would ask Harry to use his fame for their benefit, it was just weird that Hermione apparently spoke highly of him in the Ravenclaw Tower.
It was nice, but definitely weird.
Harry sat himself at the library table and pulled out Slughorn's essay before checking his watch. If he made himself hurry up and write it in the next forty-five minutes, then Ron, Draco, and Neville would be out of Herbology and Harry could probably talk them in to going up to the Room of Secrets for target practice before dinner. Harry dipped his quill in the inkpot with confidence. He'd once lasted nearly forty-five minutes under water, in a lake, while he thought Luna was going to die. He could write an essay for that long.
No problem.
Harry lasted less than thirty minutes before he decided that he'd accept whatever grade Slughorn gave him for the essay and packed his bag back up.
Writing essays was a unique sort of torture.
Harry walked towards the main doors, planning on intercepting his friends as soon as they were released, and smiled a bit to himself. He idly wondered if he could find someone in his potions class who needed a favor that he could trade for.
"Hey, Mione?"
Hermione didn't even lift her eyes from her book as everyone ate their dinner and chatted amongst themselves. "Yes, Harry?"
"Mione, did you tell the Ravenclaw girls that I'm a smart guy?"
Hermione's cheeks turned pink, but she did an admirable job of keeping her eyes on her book and her tone nonchalant. "Maybe."
"She did," Luna confirmed with a teasing grin. "Michael Corner was rather put out one day that Professor Black let you help him teach everyone a non-verbal counter-jinx and he was being quite loud about it, so Hermione," Luna gave her a frank look of admiration, "yelled at him, in front of the whole house! She said you were one of the smartest wizards she'd ever met and Michael was just jealous because you got all O's on your OWLS."
"Even though you didn't," Theo muttered, still skeptical of Harry's self-reported grades.
Harry ignored him in favor of teasing Hermione. Honestly, as much time as she spent around Harry, he didn't think she really liked him much, let alone thought he was one of the smartest wizards she'd ever met. Powerful? Sure. Strong? Definitely.
Smart? It was an actual compliment and not just a fact, which made Harry feel rather fond of her in the moment.
"I think you're smart too," Harry told her genuinely. "Padma Patil said you think highly of me."
"Padma is a terrible gossip and a filthy liar," Hermione muttered, her blush darkening. "You shouldn't trust her. She's a snake in disguise."
"Don't listen to her," Theo smirked, "Hermione loves you Harry, she thinks you're brilliant and amazing. I'd be jealous, really, except she also thinks you're a slacker with no ambition."
Hermione slapped her book shut and scowled at Theo. "You're also a snake in disguise," she hissed. Harry didn't think she sounded mad, just embarrassed for some reason.
"Awe, babe, don't leave," Theo said as Hermione stuffed her book in her bag and got to her feet. "Give me five minutes to have pudding and we can go study in my dorm."
"I'm going to study in my dorm tonight," Hermione said with another blush. "You don't seem to care about our runes project, but I do."
Theo sighed and dragged a bowl of pudding towards him as Hermione stalked away. "I really don't care about the project," he told Harry as he dished Harry some pudding too. "Draco and I already have ours figured out."
Harry made a noncommittal humming sound and tried to catch Trent's eyes, hoping he'd save him from having to listen to Theo's impending explanation of a project for a class that Harry had absolutely no knowledge in, but Trent was talking back and forth quickly with Daphne and didn't see Harry's pleading look.
"So, we were thinking- what if we could invent something that gave you the ability to channel potion properties and mix them with the property of the runes..."
Harry ate his pudding and 'hmm'd' and 'wow'd' at random intervals as Theo gave a long, drawn out, overly detailed description of his project. Mentally though, Harry was back on the seventh floor with Ron, Draco, and Neville and shooting at little flying targets the Room of Secrets provided them with.
Another plus in Neville's 'shaggability' column, he was beginning to become a hell of a shot.
Harry and Susan had barely started their 'five minute feeling' session that night when Harry heard the dorm door slam open, then slam shut.
"What the fuck?" Harry asked, pulling his curtain open and glaring at Theo. "What's your problem?"
"Hermione's mad at me," Theo scowled. He threw himself on his bed and crossed his arms over his chest as he glowered up at the ceiling. "She doesn't want me to stay with her tonight."
"Why?" Susan asked, peeking her head out of Harry's bed curtains beside him. "What'd you do to her?"
"Apparently she's mad about what I said at dinner," Theo said with a whine lacing his words. "She wouldn't even come let me in the Ravenclaw Tower."
"Maybe she just fell asleep?" Draco suggested from his bed. "It is January, Theo, you know she's probably in exam mode already."
"That sounds like Hermione," Ron chuckled. "I'm sure she's just as disgustingly in love with you as always, mate," he told Theo. "Who can understand witches? They're barmy, the lot of them."
Theo and Susan both threw pillows at Ron, knocking him backwards.
"Jokes on you, I'm keeping them," Ron said pompously, cuddling the pillows tightly with a grin.
Harry snorted and laid back on his bed. It would be very in character for Hermione to already be stressing as much as the professors were over exams that were four months away.
Harry and Susan laid back on his bed, respelling the curtains shut, and finished their nightly ritual before falling asleep.
It wasn't until Harry, Susan, Ron, Draco, Trent, and Theo were heading up to breakfast the next morning and Theo kept whining about Hermione being mad at him that Harry felt an inkling of unease about her absence from their dorm last night.
"If she's not at breakfast, I'll have Luna take me to her dorm and find her," Harry promised Theo. "If she is at breakfast though, maybe give her some flowers, or a jumper?"
"Why a jumper?" Trent asked Harry as Theo gave him a faint smile in appreciation.
"Er..." Harry furrowed his brows and squinted as he tried to remember what he read in the courting book last year when he'd been looking for a birthday gift for Fred. "Clothes are supposed to be a domestic gift that signifies intimacy and comfort with one another," Harry said, bungling the quote entirely but confident it was the general idea of it.
"What's a fancy quill signify?"
Harry gave Trent an exasperated look. "Did you buy Sapphire a fancy quill?"
"No," Trent laughed and shook his head. "Astoria gave me a fancy quill and asked if I'd go to Hogsmeade with her on Valentine's Day."
"I thought you were sweet on Sapphire?" Blaise asked him as their group entered the Great Hall.
Harry ignored Trent's animated story about the love triangle he apparently found himself in as he glanced around for Hermione's messy bun of bushy hair. Theo gave Harry a nervous look as they both took note of Hermione's absence.
"Luna's not here yet, either," Susan said, catching on to the boys' trains of thoughts quickly. "If Luna shows up without Mione, then we can panic."
They didn't even get a chance to be reassured by Susan's words before Harry's stomach dropped as Professor McGonagall came striding between the house tables straight towards them.
Theo whimpered very quietly, and Harry stretched his hand out to grab Theo's as McGonagall approached them.
"Nott, Potter, with me," she said curtly with soft eyes that Harry knew meant trouble. She didn't even give them a chance to answer, she just went straight to the doors and held them open for them.
"Sue, get everyone," Harry murmured. He pushed Susan carefully towards the Slytherin table before jogging quickly beside Theo to get to the doors where McGonagall waited. "What's happened, ma'am?" he asked her with as much respect in his tone as he could muster in the moment.
"It's Granger. She was taken to the Hospital Wing."
Of course she was. Because the last time Hermione had been missing, she'd been petrified.
Harry was going to end up putting a tracking spell on his friends, he was sure of it.
Harry and all the others crowded around Hermione's bed, all of them quiet as they waited for her to wake up.
She looked like hell. Madame Pomfrey said she would be fine, she would wake up soon, and that she'd been attacked 'in a similar manner to the others'.
Harry had assumed that meant someone fucking stabbed her, tortured her, and wiped her memory, but they had no way of knowing until Hermione woke up.
Attacking Hermione was the god damned opposite thing Harry would expect of someone to do that wanted to gain favor with him.
Professor McGonagall said Hermione had been found in the dungeons, in an empty classroom early that morning. McGonagall's lips were as thin as Harry had ever seen them and her face had been completely colorless when she assured them that whoever did it would be expelled immediately. Harry felt both better and worse seeing the fire of fury in McGonagall's eyes- it meant someone was going to go down for this, but it also meant that something about Hermione's attack had been different.
McGonagall certainly didn't look like that when she told Harry about Seamus Finnigan.
"She was in the dungeons all night, alone," Theo moaned, his brown eyes wet and his face pale as he knelt beside Hermione's bed. "I'm so stupid. I thought she was mad at me, and she was hurt."
"Hey, it isn't your fault," Blaise swore, reaching out to touch Theo's shoulder reassuringly. "You couldn't have known, Theo."
"I SHOULD HAVE!" Theo yelled. "She's not some petty idiot- I should have fucking known something was wrong!"
Luna made a small sound and looked up at the ceiling. "Keep talking, Theo," she said softly, her eyes going in and out of focus. "Hermione'll wake up if you talk."
"Love?" Theo grabbed Hermione's hand and squeezed it tight while they all watched Hermione's sleeping face closely. "Hermione, wake up please. Please. I'm so sorry. I love you. Please wake up."
Harry bit his tongue as hard as he could as he watched Hermione's eyelids flutter and her even breathing break rhythm briefly.
"Th-Theo...?" Hermione said, her lips opening to whisper before her eyes did to see. "Theo?"
"I'm here." Theo squeezed her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing it there. "I'm here, love," he murmured.
Hermione's eyelids fluttered for another moment before she finally opened her eyes with a loud gasp. "Theo?"
Harry and the others watched silently as Hermione stared hard at Theo for a moment before suddenly Theo was in Hermione's bed, holding her as they murmured softly to one another too quickly and quietly for any of them to make out their words.
"We should go, give them a moment," Ron muttered, shifting around uneasily.
"Not yet," Susan said. "Hermione," she knelt beside the bed in Theo's abandoned spot and reached out to grab Hermione's hand that was clenched tightly on Theo's robes. "Do you remember what happened?"
Harry didn't expect an answer, he expected her to have been obliviated like Finnigan and Ginny had been, so he was caught off-guard by Hermione's sniffled response.
"A bit," she said. Theo shifted so that he was stretched out beside Hermione, as opposed to right on top of her, and Hermione gave him a quivering smile.
"Can you tell us what happened?" Neville asked Hermione quietly, his round face soft with sympathy as he looked at her.
It was a wild thought to have, but Harry was momentarily jealous that Neville was able to look so soft, so sympathetic, so caring, with just a single look.
If Harry tried that, he'd probably just look constipated.
"Wait, let me get McGonagall," Draco said. "She'll want to know."
"Not yet," Harry said softly. He didn't want McGonagall to know yet. He needed to know first.
If McGonagall expelled whoever did it before Harry had a chance to kill them, then he'd have to wait until summer.
And he was fucking sick of having to wait to hurt the people who hurt his people.
"You don't have to," Theo told Hermione gently. "Let's give you a minute, love."
"I'm f-fine," Hermione said, in a tone that didn't sound fine at all. She sounded young, much younger than seventeen. And that only added to Harry's overall feeling of unease with the changes in Hermione's attacks as compared to Ginny and Finnigan's.
Hermione sniffed and shifted to a sitting position. "I was in the library after dinner that night Harry and Theo were teasing me—"
Someone snorted quietly, and Theo quickly assured Hermione that it was only last night that she got attacked.
"Good," Hermione sighed. "Well, I was in the library, getting a book real quick, and there was a little girl, a first year, I think, I don't really remember, but she had a huge stack of books she had been trying to carry. So I offered to help her. She said she needed to take them to the dungeons, so I guess she was a Slytherin, but while we were going down the back staircase, someone stunned me in the back."
"Fucking scumbag coward," Harry hissed quietly, masking his words in Parsletongue. Not that it seemed to matter much, because Blaise looked over at him and nodded in what seemed to be agreement.
Probably just guessed that Harry had been swearing. He did do it frequently.
"Then what happened?" Susan asked Hermione softly, her voice the right mixture of sweet and curious.
Again, something Harry could never pull off himself, but sounded so natural from Susan.
"And then- then I woke up, in a classroom, petrified and- and he stabbed me." Hermione twisted on the bed, looking at her right shoulder with teary eyes. "'Scum', he called me," she sniffled. "He cursed me, and I thought I was going to pass out, but I didn't. Then... then he- he cut my robe with the knife, then said I 'wasn't bad looking, for a Mudblood'."
Harry and Theo hissed through their teeth simultaneously. And, for once, it had little to do with the phrase 'mudblood', on Harry's end anyway.
"I tried to summon my wand, to use wandless magic, but it didn't work," Hermione said, her tears freely trickling down her cheeks now and she stared at her lap and avoided looking at them. "He... he said a bunch of stuff, nasty things, vulgar, and said he was going to kill me, so who cared what happened in the meantime? And- and I thought he was going to- because he cut my shirt down the middle... in the front, and," Hermione took a deep breath, "and he opened my blouse and laughed at me. Said..." she glanced towards Theo quickly before moving her eyes back to her lap, "He said he 'didn't see what Nott was so excited about'. But someone else, a boy, I think, I couldn't see him, yelled at him to just 'kill me and get it over with'."
Nobody said anything.
There weren't words to explain the level of disgusting that it was.
Harry felt as if every drop of blood in his body was boiling. It was a mark of the magical control that Sirius hammered in his head over his week of detentions that nothing in the Hospital Wing broke, even though Harry was certain that he was cracking right down the middle.
They all waited for Hermione to collect herself a little and crowded more firmly around her bed.
"I thought I was going to die," Hermione whispered. "But- instead- he- he touched me, he rubbed my shoulder, right where he'd cut it at, and told me..." Hermione's tears seemed to drip on her lap more steadily. "He told me that he wasn't going to kill me, because- because maybe he'd 'have a use for me later'."
Harry's boiling blood suddenly froze to the point where he couldn't breathe.
How many times had he heard that? When he lived on the streets? How often had his entire existence been diminished to how useful his body was for the pleasure of others?
"Mione..."
"Then what?" Harry asked sharply, interrupting Susan. Hermione didn't need Susan's soft tone right now, Hermione had to say what happened, spit it out quickly, like a poison, or it would ruin her forever.
Harry knew that first hand.
He also knew, knew in his fucking soul, that, as horrible and disgusting as this attack had been, Hermione had only narrowly avoided being killed.
And he'd be damned if he let it happen again.
'A use for her later'? No. Harry would find a fucking use for whoever did this right fucking now.
"Then he cut me, here," Hermione reached up and trailed her fingers over her neck where a faint pink scar was all that was left of the bloody wound it once had been. "And he petrified me, left me on the floor. I- I guess I blacked out then, I don't remember anything between then and now."
"Do you remember who it was?" Theo asked, his voice hoarse with what Harry suspected was thinly veiled rage.
Hermione nodded and finally lifted her head, her eyes seeking Harry's out immediately.
"Goyle," she told him, speaking directly to Harry as if she knew what her words would incite. "The boy who did it was Goyle."
Harry stormed from the Hospital Wing, sticking his hand out as he summoned his map from his dorm and his Invisibility Cloak from wherever Snape had it. As soon as both items were in his hands, he threw the cloak on and activated the map.
Harry had a unique opportunity here- one he hadn't had since the battle in Hogsmeade. Someone hurt one of his friends, and Harry could finally enact revenge on their behalf immediately.
This wasn't Luna's dad, killed by death eaters who immediately hid from him.
This wasn't Amelia, who took out three death eaters when she left Susan behind.
This was Bellatrix cursing Susan.
This was Umbridge hurting Trent.
This was an opportunity to immediately teach someone the error in targeting Harry's gang, Harry's friends.
Harry didn't have to wait. He barely needed to hunt for them. Hermione's attacker was in the castle, and Harry had the map to track him down.
He was going to find Gregory Goyle, and he was going to fucking kill him.